Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

“You mean a rape? It’s possible, but usually women admit to being raped, unless they’re protecting someone. My gut feeling is that there’s more to Katie’s story on that particular point.”

Ellie nodded. “And the killing?”

“Katie recounted in great detail the night before the delivery, the actual birth, and falling asleep with the infant in her arms. She says the baby was gone when she woke up, along with the scissors she used to cut the umbilicus.”

“Did she look for the baby?”

“No. She went back to her room to sleep, entirely consistent with women who commit neonaticide-the problem’s out of sight, out of mind.”

Ellie’s head was spinning. “How long was she unconscious in the barn?”

“She said she doesn’t know.”

“It couldn’t have been long, based on the police reports,” Ellie mused aloud. “What if-”

“Ms. Hathaway, I realize what you’re thinking. But remember-up until now, Katie didn’t recall the birth of the baby. Tomorrow, who knows? She may recall in excruciating detail how she smothered it. As much as we might want to think she didn’t kill that infant, we have to take her recollections with a grain of salt. By the mere definition of dissociation, there are gaps of time and logic missing for Katie. Chances are awfully good that she did indeed kill the baby, even if she’s never able to verbally admit to it.”

“So you believe that she’s guilty,” Ellie said.

“I believe that she fits the profile of many other women I’ve interviewed who killed their newborns while in a dissociative state,” the psychiatrist corrected. “I believe that her pattern of behavior is consistent with what we know of the phenomenon of neonaticide.”

Ellie stopped walking along the stream’s edge. “Is my client sane, Dr. Polacci?”

The psychiatrist exhaled heavily. “That’s a loaded question. Are you talking medically sane, or legally sane? Medical insanity suggests that a person is not in touch with reality-but a person in a dissociative state is in touch with reality. She looks and appears normal while in a totally abnormal state. However, legal insanity has nothing to do with reality-it hinges on cognitive tests. And if a woman commits murder while in a dissociative state, she most likely will not understand the nature and quality of the act, or know that what she’s doing is wrong.”

“So I can use an insanity defense.”

“You can use whatever you want,” Polacci said flatly. “You’re really asking if an insanity defense can get your client off. Frankly, Ms. Hathaway, I don’t know. I will tell you that juries usually want to know practical issues: that the woman is safe, and that this won’t happen again-both of which are affirmative for most women who commit neonaticide. Best-case scenario? My testimony can give the jury something to hang their hats on-if they want to acquit, they will, as long as there’s something they can point to to rationalize their actions.”

“Worst-case scenario?”

Dr. Polacci shrugged. “The jury learns more about neonaticide than they ever wanted to know.”

“And Katie?”

The psychiatrist fixed her gaze on Ellie. “And Katie goes to jail.”

• • •

Katie felt like the green twig that she was mangling in her own hands-bent double backward, nearly ready to break. She fought the urge to stand up and start pacing, to look out the hayloft window, to do anything but speak to her attorney right now.

She understood the point of the drill-Ellie was trying to get her ready for what would certainly be an unpleasant grilling by the forensic psychiatrist who’d been hired by the State. Ellie had said Dr. Polacci believed Katie was holding back about how the baby was conceived. “And,” she’d finished, “I’ll be damned if you spill the beans to the prosecution’s expert.”

So now they were in the hayloft-she and Ellie, who’d somehow become so ruthless and unforgiving that every now and then Katie had to turn and make sure her face was familiar.

“You don’t remember having sex,” Ellie said.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you. You said you didn’t remember the pregnancy or the birth, and lo and behold, three days later, you’re a veritable font of information.”

“But it’s true!” Katie felt her hands sweating; she wiped them on her apron.

“You had a baby. Explain that.”

“I already did, to Dr.-”

“Explain how it was conceived.” At Katie’s prolonged silence, Ellie wearily propped her head in her heads. “Look,” she said. “You’re bluffing. The psychiatrist knows it and I know it, and Katie, you know it too. We’re all on the same goddamned side, here, but you’re making it twice as hard for us to defend you. I know of one Immaculate Conception, and yours wasn’t it.”

With resignation Katie’s gaze fluttered to her lap. What would it mean, to come clean? To confess, as she had for the bishop and the congregation? “Okay,” Katie said finally, softly. She swallowed hard. “I was visiting my brother, and we went to a graduation party at one of the fraternity houses. I didn’t want to go, but Jacob did, and I didn’t want him to feel badly for having me there like . . . what is it you say? Like a fifth wheel. We went to the party, and it was very crowded, very hot. Jacob went to get us something to eat and didn’t come back for a while. In the meantime, a boy came up to me. He gave me a glass of punch and said I looked like I needed it. I told him I was waiting for someone, and he laughed, and said, ‘Finders, keepers.’ Then he started to talk to me.”

Katie walked to the rear of the hayloft, fingering the spikes on a rake propped against the far wall. “I must have drunk some of the punch while he was talking, without really thinking about it. And it made me feel just awful-all sick to my stomach, and my head spinning like a top. I stood up to try to see Jacob in the crowd, and the whole room tilted.” She bit her lip. “The next thing, I was lying on a bed I didn’t recognize, with my clothes all . . . and he was . . .” Katie closed her eyes. “I . . . I didn’t even know his name.”

She bent her head to the wooden wall, feeling the rough plane of the board against her forehead. Her entire body was shaking, and she was afraid to turn and see Ellie’s expression.

She didn’t have to. Ellie embraced her from behind. “Oh, Katie,” she soothed. “I’m so sorry.”

Katie turned in her arms, this safe place, and burst into tears.

This time, when Katie finished telling the story, she was grasping Ellie’s hand for support. If she was aware of the tears streaming over her cheeks, she made no mention of it. Ellie itched to wipe them away, to catch Katie’s eye and smile and tell her she’d done a great job.

Dr. Polacci, who’d been called back for the confession, looked from Katie to Ellie, and back again. Then she lifted her hands and began clapping, her expression impassive. “Nice story,” she said. “Try again.”

“She’s lying,” Dr. Polacci said. “She knows exactly where and when she conceived that baby, and that charming little date rape story wasn’t it.”

Ellie bristled at the thought that Katie was lying; at the thought that Katie had been lying deliberately to her. “We’re not talking about an average teenager who fabricates excuses for her parents and spends the night horizontal in the back of her boyfriend’s four-by-four.”

“Exactly. This story was just too good. Too calculated, too rehearsed. She was telling you what you wanted to hear. If she’d been raped, she would have admitted to it by now in her sessions with the clinical psychiatrist, unless she was protecting the rapist, which her tale didn’t support. And then there’s the small matter of the graduation party held three months after a June graduation-I’m assuming she conceived in October, based on the medical examiner’s report.”