Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“Did you ever go back to the clearing behind the cemetery?”

“Yes, the next morning.”

“What did you find?”

“The remnants of a bonfire,” Charlie said. “Some spots where leaves were kicked around. A boot print.”

“Did you find a condom?”

“No.”

“A condom wrapper?”

“No.”

“Did you see Gillian again the next day?”

“Yeah,” Charlie murmured. “I stopped in to check up on her.”

“How did she look?”

The way Meg does now, Charlie realized, and as he stared into the dark, empty eyes of Jack St. Bride, he could feel himself drowning.

Jordan stalked toward the witness before the prosecutor had even settled in his chair. “The search you did at the cemetery wasn’t the only search you did in conjunction with this case, was it?”

“No.”

“In fact, Detective, you searched your own daughter’s room and found evidence that you believed was connected, correct?”

A memory flashed between them: Jordan sitting on the edge of Charlie’s couch, as he awkwardly confessed his suspicions to the policeman. “Yes.”

Jordan took an item from the prosecutor’s table, one he’d requested to have brought along. “Do you recognize this?”

“Yes. It’s a ribbon I found.”

“Where?”

“In my daughter’s closet.”

“What else did you find with this ribbon?” Jordan asked.

“Some plastic cups, and a thermos.”

“Was there a powdery residue in them?”

“Yes.”

“Which you had tested.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes.”

“That powder was atropine, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what I was told,” he admitted.

“Do you know what atropine is?”

“A drug,” Charlie said.

“Isn’t it true that atropine can occasionally produce side effects consistent with more traditional recreational drugs?”

“Yes.”

“So, in fact, Detective, the only evidence you found of a criminal act was in your own daughter’s room, wasn’t it? Because you didn’t find anything at the cemetery that would indicate a sexual assault happened there, did you?”

“Not specifically.”

“Isn’t it true that you asked Ms. Duncan to look at several condoms to see if she could pick out the one used that night?”

“Yes.”

“Yet she couldn’t identify it, could she?”

“No . . . but I imagine she wasn’t comparison-shopping at the time of the rape.”

The judge frowned at Charlie. “Just answer the question, Detective.”

“When you found the girls that night, they were at the edge of the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“How far was that from the spot where the bonfire had been lit?”

“The clearing is about fifty yards away,” Charlie said.

“How long did it take you to walk there?”

“I didn’t time myself.”

Jordan walked toward Charlie. “Longer than thirty seconds?”

“No.”

“Were there any obstacles in the way?”

“No.”

“No rocks you had to climb over? No ditches to fall into?”

“It’s a flat, level path.”

By now, Jordan was almost face-to-face with the detective. “After his arrest, my client told you he was innocent, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” Charlie shrugged. “So do most perps.”

“But unlike most perps, you didn’t get a confession out of my client at the station. In fact, my client has steadily denied his involvement in this crime, isn’t that true?”

“Objection!” Matt cried.

“Sustained.”

Jordan didn’t blink. “When you met Gillian Duncan at the edge of the cemetery, how did her clothing appear to you?”

“Dirty, covered in leaves. Her shirt, it was buttoned all wrong.” Charlie glanced at Jack. “Like she’d had it ripped off her.”

“I have here the transcript of Ms. Duncan’s testimony yesterday, Detective. Would you mind reading the section I’ve marked off?” Jordan handed Charlie a piece of paper.

“ ‘How about your sweater? Did he take that off?’ ” Charlie read, and then gave Gillian’s answer. “No. ‘Unbutton it?’ No.”

“Thank you.” Jordan held up a photograph of Jack that had been placed on the evidence table. “Did you take this photo of Mr. St. Bride?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a fair and accurate representation of how he looked when you arrested him?”

“Yes.”

“Take a look at the scratch on his face. Is that one scratch or five?”

“One.”

“Is that consistent with five fingers being raked across a face?”

Charlie suddenly remembered Gillian’s hands twisting in her lap, how Amos had reached for one to hold. She’d had long fingernails, bright red, the same color polish his daughter had come home wearing that week after visiting Gilly at her house. “I’m not sure,” Charlie murmured.

Jordan slapped the picture down. “Nothing further.”

The incense cast a lavender cloud over Gilly’s bedroom, and as she drew it in, she imagined that she was drifting with the smoke, dissolving, energy rising. Cinnamon sprinkled freckles over her mother’s cheek, the worn photo tucked beneath a candle. “I call upon the Earth, Air, Fire, Water,” she whispered. “I call upon the Sun, Moon, and Stars.”

She did not know what was going on in the courtroom across town, and at this moment, she truly did not care. In fact, she was not thinking of her father, seated behind Matt Houlihan like the dragon who guarded Gilly’s virtue. She was not thinking of Jack St. Bride. Sweet sage tickled the inside of her nose, and with all she had inside her, Gillian wished for her mother.

Just on the edge of the circle, she could see her, a translucent figure with a laugh that fell into the shell of Gilly’s ear. And this time, something happened. Instead of the candle sputtering out and her mother simply disappearing, she looked Gillian in the eye and sang her name, a series of bells. “You shouldn’t,” her mother said, and the flame on the candle roared so bright it was blinding.

By the time Gillian realized the rug was on re, her mother had gone. She batted at the flames but didn’t manage to save the photograph. It was charred through, the only remaining fragment a piece of her mother’s hand, now curled and scorched with heat.

Gillian threw herself down beside the ashes, breathing in the smoke and sobbing. She would not learn until much later that she had burned her hands putting out the flames, that each broken blister would scar in the shape of a heart.

Matt Houlihan was tired. He wanted to go home and have Molly fall asleep on his chest while Syd rubbed his feet. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion, so that when he was tottering at the edge of consciousness, he wouldn’t have to see Gillian Duncan’s face.

He was almost done.

That, more than anything else, drew Matt to his feet. He slipped a piece of paper from a manila envelope and offered it to McAfee, who’d known ever since the motions hearing that it was coming. “Judge, the state has no more witnesses for its case in chief. However, at this time I’d like to offer a certified copy of the conviction of Jack St. Bride for sexual assault on a plea of guilty entered August 20, 1998, in Grafton County, New Hampshire. To wit, Mr. McBride admitted that he sexually assaulted a fifteen-year-old victim and received a sentence of eight months to serve in the Grafton County Correctional Facility.”

The jury gaped. They looked at Matt, they looked at the defendant, and they thought what any reasonable man or woman would think when presented with this evidence-if he’s done it before, he most likely has done it again.

Matt placed the conviction on the clerk’s desk, then looked directly at Jack St. Bride, hoping to hell the bastard was fully suffering the terror of being at someone else’s mercy, someone who held all the cards. “Your Honor,” Matt said. “The state rests.”