Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“If I’d found this out before the trial started, I would have taken it to Diana and used it tactically,” Jordan said. “But since the jury’s already sitting, maybe I can do something even better.”

“Nothing like an eleventh-hour Hail Mary pass,” Selena said.

“Let’s assume we put Josie on the stand to say all this in court. All of a sudden, those ten deaths aren’t what they seemed to be. No one knew the real story behind this one, and that calls into question everything else the prosecution’s told the jury about the shootings. In other words, if the state didn’t know this, what else don’t they know?”

“And,” Selena pointed out, “it highlights what King Wah said. Here was one of the kids who’d tormented Peter, holding a gun on him, just like he’d figured all along would happen.” She hesitated. “Granted, Peter was the one who brought in the gun…”

“That’s irrelevant,” Jordan said. “I don’t have to have all the answers.” He kissed Selena square on the mouth. “I just need to make sure that the state doesn’t either.”

Alex sat on the bench, watching a ragged crew of college students playing Ultimate Frisbee as if they had no idea that the world had split at its seams. Beside her, Josie hugged her knees to her chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex asked.

Josie lifted her face. “I couldn’t. You were the judge on the case.”

Alex felt a stab beneath her breastbone. “But even after I recused myself, Josie…when we went to see Jordan, and you said you didn’t remember anything…That’s why I had you swear the affidavit.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted me to do,” Josie said. “You told me if I signed it, I wouldn’t have to be a witness…and I didn’t want to go to court. I didn’t want to see Peter again.”

One of the college players leaped and missed the Frisbee. It sailed toward Alex, landing in a scuffle of dust at her feet. “Sorry,” the boy called, waving.

Alex picked it up and sent it soaring. The wind lifted the Frisbee and carried it higher, a stain against a perfectly blue sky.

“Mommy,” Josie said, although she had not called Alex that for years. “What’s going to happen to me?”

She didn’t know. Not as a judge, not as a lawyer, not as a mother. The only thing she could do was offer good counsel and hope it withstood what was yet to come. “From here on out,” Alex told Josie, “all you have to do is tell the truth.”

Patrick had been called into a domestic-violence hostage negotiation down in Cornish and did not reach Sterling until it was nearly midnight. Instead of heading to his own house, he went to Alex’s-it felt more like home, anyway. He’d tried to call her several times today to see what had happened with Jordan McAfee, but he couldn’t get cell phone service where he was.

He found her sitting in the dark on the living room sofa, and sank down beside her. For a moment, he stared at the wall, just like Alex. “What are we doing?” he whispered.

She faced him, and that’s when he realized she had been crying. He blamed himself-You should have tried harder to call, you should have come home earlier. “What’s wrong?”

“I screwed up, Patrick,” Alex said. “I thought I was helping her. I thought I knew what I was doing. As it turned out, I didn’t know anything at all.”

“Josie?” he asked, trying to fit together the pieces. “Where is she?”

“Asleep. I gave her a sleeping pill.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“We saw Jordan McAfee today, and Josie told him…she told him that she remembered something about the shooting. In fact, she remembered everything.”

Patrick whistled softly. “So she was lying?”

“I don’t know. I think she was scared.” Alex glanced up at Patrick. “That’s not all. According to Josie, Matt shot at Peter first.”

“What?”

“The knapsack Peter was carrying fell down in front of Matt, and he got hold of one of the guns. He shot, but he missed.”

Patrick rubbed a hand down his face. Diana Leven was not going to be happy.

“What’s going to happen to Josie?” Alex said. “The best-case scenario is that she gets on the stand and the entire town hates her for testifying on Peter’s behalf. The worst-case scenario is that she commits perjury on the stand and gets charged with it.”

Patrick’s mind was racing. “You can’t worry about this. It’s out of your hands. Besides, Josie will be fine. She’s a survivor.”

He leaned down and kissed her, softly, his mouth rounding over words he couldn’t yet tell her, and promises he was afraid to make. He kissed her until he felt the tightness go out of her spine. “You ought to go take one of those sleeping pills,” he whispered.

Alex tilted her head. “You’re not staying?”

“Can’t. I’ve still got work to do.”

“You came all the way over here to tell me you’re leaving?”

Patrick looked at her, wishing he could explain what he had to do. “I’ll see you later, Alex,” he said.

Alex had confided in him, but as a judge, she would know that Patrick could not keep her secret. On Monday morning, when Patrick saw the prosecutor, he’d have to tell Diana what he now knew about Matt Royston firing the first shot in the locker room. Legally, he was obligated to disclose this new wrinkle. However, technically, he had all day Sunday to do with that information whatever he liked.

If Patrick could find evidence to back up Josie’s allegations, then it would soften the blow for her on the stand-and make him a hero in Alex’s eyes. But there was another part of him that wanted to search the locker room again for another reason. Patrick knew he had personally combed that small space for evidence, that no other bullet had been found. And if Matt had shot first at Peter, there should have been one.

He hadn’t wanted to say this to Alex, but Josie had lied to them once. There was no reason she couldn’t be doing it again.

At six in the morning, Sterling High School was a sleeping giant. Patrick unlocked the front door and moved through the corridors in the dark. They had been professionally cleaned, but that didn’t stop him from seeing, in the beam of his flashlight, the spots where bullets had broken windows and blood had stained the floor. He moved quickly, the heels of his boots echoing, as he pushed aside blue construction tarps and avoided stacks of lumber.

Patrick opened the double doors of the gym and squeaked his way across the Morse-coded markings on the polyurethaned boards. He flicked a bank of switches and the gym flooded with light. The last time he’d been in here, there had been emergency blankets lying on the floor, corresponding to the numbers that had been inked on the foreheads of Noah James and Michael Beach and Justin Friedman and Dusty Spears and Austin Prokiov. There had been crime-scene techs crawling on their hands and knees, taking photographs of chips in the cement block, digging bullets out of the backboard of the basketball hoop.

He had spent hours at the police station, his first stop after leaving Alex’s house, scrutinizing the enlarged fingerprint that had been on Gun B. An inconclusive one; one that he’d assumed, lazily, to be Peter’s. But what if it was Matt’s? Was there any way to prove that Royston had held the gun, as Josie claimed? Patrick had studied the prints taken from Matt’s dead body and held them up every which way against the partial print, until the lines and ridges blurred even more than they should have.

If he was going to find proof, it was going to have to be in the school itself.

The locker room looked exactly like the photo he’d used during his testimony earlier this week, except that the bodies, of course, had been removed. Unlike the corridors and classrooms of the school, the locker room hadn’t been cleaned or patched. The small area held too much damage-not physical, but psychological-and the administration had unanimously agreed to tear it down, along with the rest of the gym and the cafeteria, later this month.