Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

Lizzie smiled tightly. “I do now.”

“Was Levi barefoot when you arrived at the farm?”

“Yes.”

“Had Levi, by his own admission, been standing on the floor near that pile of horse blankets to reach for one when he happened to find the body of the infant?”

“Yes.”

“So is it possible that the footprint you’re chalking up to evidentiary proof of Katie committing murder actually belonged to someone else who was in the same spot for a completely innocent reason?”

“It’s possible.”

“All right,” Ellie said. “You said the umbilical cord was cut with scissors.”

“Missing scissors,” Lizzie interjected.

“If a girl was going to kill her baby, Detective, would she bother to cut the cord?”

“I have no idea.”

“What if I told you that clamping and cutting the cord prompts the reflex that makes the newborn breathe on its own? Would it make sense to do that, if you’re going to smother it a few minutes later?”

“I suppose not,” Lizzie answered evenly, “but then again, I doubt most people know that cutting the cord leads to breathing. More likely, it’s a step in the birthing process they’ve seen on TV. Or in this case, from watching farm animals.”

Taken down a peg, Ellie stepped back to regroup. “If a girl was going to kill her baby, wouldn’t it be easier to cover it up with hay and leave it to die of exposure?”

“Maybe.”

“Yet this baby was found wiped clean, lovingly wrapped. Detective, what murderous young mother is going to swab and swaddle her baby?”

“I don’t know. But it happened,” Lizzie said firmly.

“That brings me to another point,” Ellie continued. “According to your theory, Katie hid the pregnancy for seven months and sneaked into the barn to deliver the baby in absolute silence-going to great lengths to keep anyone from finding out that a baby ever existed either in utero or out. So why on earth would she leave it in a place that she knew very well would be crawling with people doing the milking a few hours later? Why not dump the baby in the pond behind the barn?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or in the manure pile, where it wouldn’t have been found for some time?”

“I don’t know.”

“There are a lot of places on an Amish farm where the body of a baby could be disposed of that are far more clever than under a pile of blankets.”

Shrugging, Lizzie replied, “No one said the defendant was clever. Just that she committed murder.”

“Murder? We’re talking basic common sense here. Why cut the cord, get the baby breathing, swaddle it, kill it-and then leave it where it’s sure to be discovered?”

Lizzie sighed. “Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Ellie rounded on her. “And yet by the very terms of a charge of murder, you allege that she was cognizant of this act, that she premeditated this act, that she committed it with intent? Can you be deliberate and confused all at the same time?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, Ms. Hathaway. I don’t know.”

“No,” Ellie said meaningfully. “You don’t.”

When Katie and Jacob had been small, they’d played together in the fields, zigzagging through the summer cornfields as if they were a maze. Incredible, how thick and green those walls could grow, so that she could be a foot away from her brother just on the other side, and never know it.

Once, when she was about eight, she got lost. She’d been playing follow-the-leader, but Jacob got ahead of her and disappeared. Katie had called out for him, but he was teasing her that day and wouldn’t come. She walked in circles, she grew tired and thirsty, and finally she lay down on her back on the ground. She squinted up between the slats of stalks and took comfort from the fact that this was the same old sun, the same old sky, the same familiar world she’d awakened in that morning. And eventually, feeling guilty, Jacob came and found her.

At the defense table, with a flurry of words hailing around her like a storm, Katie remembered that day in the corn.

Things had a way of working out for the best, when you let them run their course.

“The patient was brought into the ER with vaginal bleeding, and a urine pregnancy test was positive. She had a boggy uterus about twenty-four weeks’ size, and an open cervical os,” said Dr. Seaborn Blair. “We started her on a drip of pitocin to stop the bleeding. A BSU confirmed that the patient was pregnant.”

“Was the defendant cooperative about treatment?” George asked.

“Not as I recall,” Dr. Blair answered. “She was very upset about having a pelvic done-although we do see that from time to time in young women from remote areas.”

“After you treated the defendant, did you have a chance to speak to her?”

“Yes. Naturally, my first question was about the baby. It was clear that Ms. Fisher had recently delivered, yet she wasn’t brought in with a neonate.”

“What was the defendant’s explanation?”

Dr. Blair looked at Katie. “That she hadn’t had a baby.”

“Ah,” George said. “Which you knew to be medically inaccurate.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you question her further?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t admit to the pregnancy. At that point, I suggested a psychiatric consult.”

“Did a psychiatrist ever examine the defendant at the hospital?”

“Not as far as I know,” the doctor said. “The patient wouldn’t permit it.”

“Thank you,” George finished. “Your witness.”

Ellie drummed her fingers on the defense table for a moment, then stood. “The boggy uterus, the positive BSU, the bleeding, the pelvic exam. Did these observations lead you to believe that Katie had had a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Did these observations lead you to believe that Katie had killed that baby?”

Dr. Blair glanced, again, at Katie. “No,” he said.

Dr. Carl Edgerton had been the medical examiner in Lancaster County for over fifteen years and easily fit the role, with his tufted eyebrows and white hair waving back from a central part. He’d participated in hundreds of trials, and approached every one with the same slightly irritated look on his face, one that said he’d rather be back in his lab. “Doctor,” the prosecutor said, “can you tell us the results of the autopsy on Baby Fisher?”

“Yes. He was a premature liveborn male infant with no congenital abnormalities. There was evidence of acute chorioamnionitis, as well as some meconium aspiration and early pneumonia. There were various indications of perinatal asphyxia. Additionally, there were perioral ecchymoses and intraoral cotton fibers that matched the shirt the infant was found in.”

“Let’s break that down a bit for those of us who didn’t go to med school,” George said, smiling at the jury. “When you say it was premature and liveborn, what does that mean?”

“The baby wasn’t carried to term. Its skeletal age was consistent with a gestational age of thirty-two weeks.”

“And liveborn?”

“As opposed to stillborn. The lungs of the infant were pink and aerated. Representative samples of each lower lobe, with a control sample of liver, were suspended in water. The lung tissue floated, while the liver sank-which indicates that the infant was born and breathed air.”

“How about a lack of congenital abnormalities-why is that important?”

“The baby would have been born viable. There were also no chromosomal defects and no evidence of substance abuse-all significant negative findings.”

“And the chorioamnionitis?”

“Basically, it’s an infection in the mother that led to premature delivery. Additional examination of the placenta ruled out the usual other common causes for premature labor. The cause of the chorioamnionitis was not identified because the fetal tissues and placenta were contaminated.”