Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

Patrick had been heading to the probable cause hearing for Peter Houghton when he received a cell phone call that sent him screaming in the opposite direction, to Smyth’s Gun Shop in Plainfield. The owner of the store, a round little man with a tobacco-stained beard, was sitting outside on the curb, sobbing, when Patrick arrived. Beside him was a patrol officer, who jerked his chin in the direction of the open door.

Patrick sat down beside the owner. “I’m Detective Ducharme,” he said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

The man shook his head. “It was so fast. She asked to see a pistol, a Smith and Wesson. Said she wanted to keep it in the house, for protection. She asked if I had any literature on that model, and when I turned my back to find some…she…” He shook his head and went silent.

“Where did she get the bullets?” Patrick asked.

“I didn’t sell them to her,” the owner said. “She must have had them in her purse.”

Patrick nodded. “You stay here with Officer Rodriguez. I might have some more questions.”

Inside the gun shop, there was a spray of blood and brain matter on the right-hand wall. The medical examiner, Guenther Frankenstein, was already bent over the body, lying sideways on the floor. “How the hell did you get here so fast?” Patrick asked.

Guenther shrugged. “I was in town at a baseball card collectors’ show.”

Patrick squatted beside him. “You collect baseball cards?”

“Well, I can’t very well collect livers, can I?” He glanced at Patrick. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”

“I wish.”

“Pretty self-explanatory,” Guenther said. “She stuck the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”

Patrick noticed the purse on the glass counter. He rifled through it, finding a box of ammunition and the Wal-Mart receipt for them. Then he opened the woman’s wallet to find her ID, just at the same time Guenther rolled the body over.

Even with the gunshot residue blackening her features, Patrick recognized her before he saw her name. He’d spoken to Yvette Harvey; he’d been the one to tell her that her only child-a daughter with Down syndrome-had not survived the shooting at Sterling High.

Indirectly, Patrick realized, Peter Houghton’s casualty count was still rising.

“Just because someone collects guns doesn’t mean they intend to use them,” Peter said, scowling.

It was unseasonably warm for late March-a freakish eighty-five degrees-and the air-conditioning at the jail was broken. The inmates were walking around in their boxers; the guards were all on edge. The HVAC patrol, which had been called in on the pretense of humane incarceration, was working so slowly that Jordan figured they’d master their trade just in time for the snow to start falling again outside. He’d been sitting in a sweatbox of a conference room with Peter for over two hours now, and felt as if he’d soaked through every last fiber of his suit.

He wanted to quit. He wanted to go home and tell Selena that he never should have taken this case, and then he wanted to drive with his family to the eighteen stingy miles of beach that New Hampshire was blessed with and jump fully clothed into the frigid Atlantic. Dying of hypothermia couldn’t be any worse than the slow kill Diana Leven and the DA’s office had in store for him in court.

Whatever small hope Jordan had kindled by discovering a valid defense-albeit one that had never been used before a judge-had been steadily eroded in the weeks following the hearing by the discovery that had arrived from the DA’s office: stacks of paperwork, photos, and evidence. Given all this information, it was hard to imagine a jury caring why Peter had killed ten people-just that he had.

Jordan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You were collecting guns,” he repeated. “I suppose you just happened to be storing them under your bed until you could get a nice glass display case.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“People who collect guns do not hide them. People who collect guns do not have hit lists with photos circled.”

Perspiration beaded on Peter’s forehead, around the collar of his prison uniform, and his mouth tightened.

Jordan leaned forward. “Who’s the girl that got erased?”

“What girl?”

“In the photos. You circled her, and then you wrote LET LIVE.”

Peter looked away. “She’s just someone I used to know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Josie Cormier.” Peter hesitated, then faced Jordan again. “She’s okay, right?”

Cormier, Jordan thought. The only Cormier he knew was the judge sitting on Peter’s case.

It couldn’t be.

“Why?” he asked. “Did you hurt her?”

Peter shook his head. “That’s a loaded question.”

Had something happened here that Jordan didn’t know about?

“Was she your girlfriend?”

Peter smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No.”

Jordan had been in Judge Cormier’s district court a few times. He liked her. She was tough, but she was fair. In fact, she was the best judge Peter could have drawn for his case-the alternative superior court justice was Judge Wagner, who was a very old, prosecution-biased judge. Josie Cormier had not been a victim of the shooting, but that wasn’t the only scenario that would compromise Judge Cormier as the justice for the trial. Suddenly Jordan was thinking of witness tampering, of the hundred things that could go wrong. He was wondering how he could find out what Josie Cormier knew about the shooting, without anyone else learning that he’d been looking into it.

He was wondering what she knew that might help Peter’s case.

“Have you talked to her since you’ve been in here?” Jordan said.

“If I’d talked to her, would I be asking you if she was okay?”

“Well, don’t talk to her,” Jordan instructed. “Don’t talk to anyone except me.”

“That’s like talking to a brick wall,” Peter muttered.

“You know, I could rattle off a thousand things I’d rather be doing than sitting with you in a conference room that’s as hot as hell.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “Then why don’t you go do some of them? You don’t listen to a word I say, anyway.”

“I listen to every word, Peter. I listen to it, and then I think about the boxes of evidence the DA dropped at my door, all of which make you look like a cold-blooded killer. I hear you tell me you were collecting guns, like you’re some kind of Civil War buff.”

Peter flinched. “Fine. You want to know if I was going to use the guns? Yeah, I was. I planned it. I ran through the whole thing in my head. I worked out the details, down to the last second. I was going to kill the person I hated the most. But then I didn’t get to do it.”

“Those ten people-”

“Just got in the way,” Peter said.

“Then who were you trying to kill?”

On the opposite side of the room, the air conditioner suddenly choked to life. Peter turned away. “Me,” he said.

One Year Before

I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Lewis said as he opened the back door of the van. The dog, Dozer, was lying on his side, fighting to breathe.

“You heard the vet,” Lacy said, stroking the retriever’s head. Good dog. They’d gotten him when Peter was three; now, at twelve, his kidneys had shut down. Keeping him alive with medications was only for their benefit, not his: it was too hard to imagine their house without the dog padding through its halls.

“I wasn’t talking about putting him down,” Lewis clarified. “I was talking about bringing everyone along.”

The boys fell out of the back of the van like heavy stones. They squinted in the sunlight, hunched their shoulders. Their broad backs made Lacy think of oak trees that tapered to the ground; they both had the same habit of turning in their left foot when they walked. She wished they could have seen how very alike they were.