Salem Falls

by Jodie Picoult

  Melton grinned. “Good thing. If you said you wanted to order moo shu pork, you’d be in the wrong place. Why do you think you’re going to be charged?”

  “The police said as much. They called me in to . . .talk. . . a few days ago. A girl . . . a student of mine . . . has implied that she and I . . . that we . . . ”

  Melton whistled through his teeth. “I can guess the rest.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Jack insisted.

  The lawyer handed him a card. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  In spite of the heat, Jack went running. He put on his old college soccer jersey and shorts and took off dead east from the porch of his house. He ran two miles, four, six. Sweat poured into his eyes, and he gasped great drafts of air. He passed the town line and kept running. He ran the perimeter of a pond, twice. And when he realized that no matter how hard he tried he could not outrace his fear, he collapsed at the edge, buried his face in his hands, and cried.

  Catherine Marsh remembered with vivid clarity the first time Jack St. Bride had touched her.

  She had been playing forward, her eye on the ball, so intent on ring it into the goal of the opposing team that she’d completely missed seeing the other player hurtling toward her with the same single-mindedness. They smacked heads with an audible crunch, the last noise Catherine could remember hearing before she was unconscious. When she came to, Coach was leaning over her, his golden hair haloed by the sun, the way it always looks in the movies when the hero comes along. “Catherine,” he asked, “you all right?” At first she hadn’t been able to answer because his hands were running up and down her body, checking for broken bones. “I think your ankle is swelling,” he said. Then he’d taken off her cleat and peeled off her sock, examining her sweaty foot like Cinderella’s prince. “Perfect,” he pronounced. And Catherine had thought, Yes, you are.

  She knew that there was something special between them, from the way he kept her after practice to show her a drill to the way he sometimes slung an arm over her shoulders when they were walking off the field together. When she’d confided that she was thinking of sleeping with Billy Haines, Coach had been the one to drive her to the clinic two towns over, to get birth control pills. Oh, he hadn’t wanted to at first-but he’d given in because he cared about her. And when Billy had dumped her two days later, Coach had let her cry on his shoulder.

  She wondered several times a day what he’d done with the bra she’d left behind after that Ancient History class. It had fallen out of her bundle of clothes completely by accident . . . or maybe it was just fate, now that she got to thinking about it. She’d realized it was missing and had gone back to the field to retrieve it . . . just in time to see Coach pick up her bra and pocket it. Something had made her turn away without asking for it back. Maybe he slept with it beneath his pillow. Maybe he just let the silk slip through his fingers and pretended it was her skin.

  Yesterday, Catherine hadn’t gone to school. Her father wouldn’t let her. And it was probably best that way, since she did not know what she would have said to Jack. She had heard through the grapevine that he had been taken off to jail in handcuffs, like he was some criminal. If Catherine had been there, she would have knelt at his feet and kissed every spot on his wrists the metal touched. She would have asked to wear them in his place. She would do anything to show him how much she loved him, anything at all.

  * * *

  Jack leaned so close to Melton Sprigg he could see the weave of the attorney’s bow tie. “I didn’t do it,” he said through his teeth. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “I’m just saying that in today’s day and age, there are ways to make a jury understand why a man of . . . advanced years . . . might develop an interest in a younger girl.”

  “Good. You can use that defense for a client who’s actually guilty.” Jack sank into a chair, suddenly overwhelmed. Today, his best friend had charged him with felonious sexual assault. He’d been arraigned. His bank account was $5,000 lighter, thanks to posting bail. His wrist was bruised where the handcuff had pinched it while he was being led up to the courtroom. “We’re going to fight this. That’s what the system is about, right? Giving each side the chance to speak. And who’s going to listen to what a fifteen-year-old says?”

  Melton nodded and smiled, for his client’s sake. And did not tell him what he was thinking: that simply because Catherine Marsh was fifteen, everyone would be listening.

  “I’ll cut right through the bullshit,” Herb Thayer said. “This is downright awkward.”

  Finally, someone who agreed with him. “Tell me about it,” Jack said. “I had to walk into the station yesterday, so that Jay Kavanaugh could read me my rights! For God’s sake, I played racquetball with him last Saturday, and here he was booking me.” Once he began to speak, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop. “It came out of left field, Herb. I have no idea what this kid is thinking.”

  “You and Catherine Marsh have a close rapport,” Herb stated.

  “You . . . you don’t believe what she said, do you?”

  “God, Jack, of course not. I’m just pointing out that I can see how . . . others . . . might have come to this conclusion.”

  Jack got to his feet and began to prowl around the office. On a shelf behind him were four district championship trophies for girls’ soccer, each of which he’d earned by means of the close rapport Herb was questioning now. “I never touched her.”

  Herb gazed out the window to where several students were eating lunch. “You know,” he said softly, “you’re the best teacher in this school. You can turn kids on to learning like I’ve never seen before.”

  Jack felt a rush in his bloodstream, the swift realization that things might not turn out to be quite as dismal as he’d believed.

  The headmaster picked up a pen, drummed it on the desktop. “Look, Jack. I believe you. But I’ve got parents who want to know what kind of school employs a teacher whose conduct is suspect. I’ve got Ellidor Marsh breathing down my neck-”

  “Ellidor Marsh is a fundamentalist asshole who has no place being a private school chaplain.”

  “He’s also a father who thinks his fifteen-year-old daughter was having sex with a guy twice her age who should have known better!” The accusation hung between them, black as smoke, hovering over the desk.

  “Nothing’s been proven,” Jack said, words that tasted like dust.

  Herb could not meet his eye. “Try to see it from my point of view, Jack. For the good of the school, I can’t have a teacher here who’s been accused of statutory rape.” He walked around the desk. “If there’s some other way I can help . . .”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Jack murmured, and left before Herb could say anything else.

  Annalise St. Bride actually knew Brooke Astor. She had a tiger-skin rug in her bedroom-her husband had shot the beast on safari; she kept a home on the Upper West Side that had been featured in Architectural Digest more often than had Gracie Square. But these were not the amazing things about Annalise. It was far more interesting that she shared her apartment with her husband’s former lover, who was now her closest friend. Or that she knew just as many prostitutes as she did debutantes. She was best known for her decade-long crusade to fight violence against women. Twenty rape crisis centers dotted the seediest parts of New York City, thanks to Annalise’s checkbook and iron resolve.

  So when Jack found his mother on the front doorstep of his home, he was stunned, to say the least.

  That she had come to support him-without knowing all the details-cracked his heart wide. Just looking at her, Jack felt the protective wall he’d been building around himself begin to tumble down. He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she ducked away.

  “I’m not staying, Jack. But what I came to say, I wanted to say in person.” Annalise regarded him soberly. “Do you know how many women I’ve seen after a rape?”

  Jack tried to draw a breath but couldn’t. It was not enough that his em
ployer, his students, his attorney, and his colleagues believed this charge. His own mother did, too.

  “You . . . you can’t think I’m guilty,” he whispered.

  Annalise raised her brows. “Why on earth would a woman lie about that?”

  Suddenly Jack remembered when his mother had taken him to the Central Park Zoo as a child. He’d stayed too long in the dark hut of the bats, fascinated by the way they could fold themselves up like tiny umbrellas. When he’d turned around, his mother had been gone. He had not been afraid for himself, not even at seven; instead, he’d felt bad for his mother, who surely would have been frantic by now. But he found her standing outside the hut, talking to an acquaintance she’d met. Jack had pressed up against her leg, a limpet. “Oh,” she’d said blithely, as if she’d never noticed his absence. “Are we finished here?”

  Now, Jack swallowed hard. “You have to believe me. I’m your son.”

  “Not anymore,” said Annalise.

  He puts his hands under my shirt, and I feel them burning. I’m aching for him. Oh, Jack. I know it won’t hurt with him, because he promises me. Even when he’s sticking it in me, I don’t mind, because finally we are one.

  Jack pushed away the photocopied pages. “What is this shit?”

  Melton shrugged. “Discovery. Evidence. This is the diary entry that apparently sent Catherine’s father over the edge.” He shuffled through his own notes. “Well, along with the birth control pills.”

  “Did anyone ever stop to consider that maybe this is fiction?”

  “Of course, Jack.” Melton pushed his half-glasses up on his nose. “But she also says you were the one who took her to get contraception.”

  “By default, Melton. She wanted to sleep with her boyfriend and no one else would take her to Planned Parenthood!”

  “According to Catherine, there was no boyfriend. She says she got the Pill because you wanted to sleep with her.”

  “Look. She has a crush on me. I knew that on some level, even if I didn’t address it. I didn’t want to embarrass her, and I figured she’d just grow out of it. Things like this happen all the time.”

  “There’s a difference between a minor imagining she has a crush on an older man and a minor who has sexual intercourse with that man.”

  “You’ve got it backwards! She’s imagining the sex!” Jack took a deep breath. “Okay. So they have her testimony, and this diary. And some birth control pills. I don’t see how any of that conclusively points to my carrying on an intimate relationship with her.”

  “I agree,” Melton said. “You’d be in much better shape if the police hadn’t found anything when they searched your house.”

  Jack frowned. The police had arrived with a warrant, and he’d let them search the premises, but he hadn’t realized anything fruitful had come of it. Melton pushed a photograph across the table at him. “What is this, a rag?”

  “Apparently,” Melton said, “it’s Catherine Marsh’s bra. It was in your briefcase.”

  Jack stared at it for a second. Then he started laughing. “Christ, Melton, they can’t think . . . I picked it up for her after she left it in class. No, wait-that came out sounding bad. We were working on a unit on ancient Greek history in this sweltering heat, and the kids had all gotten into togas made out of tablecloths, and-”

  “And the police found a bra, with Catherine Marsh’s name sewn into it, in your briefcase. That’s all they know, Jack. And that’s plenty.”

  “But I can explain it.”

  “I know,” Melton said. “Unfortunately, so can the prosecutor.”

  Jack had to see her. He had read and reread the conditions of his bail, which stipulated in black and white that he stay away not only from minors but specifically from Catherine Marsh. If he was caught, there would be another hearing. He would be charged with violating his bail condition and held in contempt of court. He would most likely be put into jail until his trial came up on the docket.

  If he were caught, it would contribute to the prosecution’s case against him.

  But if he could get away with this one small thing, he had a chance of stopping this charge from going forward.

  The schedules of students at Westonbrook had been computerized two years ago, thanks to the diligence of an intern who happened to be a technical whiz. It took Jack less than ten minutes to find Catherine Marsh’s whereabouts. Within an hour, he was standing behind a large oak at the edge of the campus, watching as girls passed by in small clusters, bright butterflies lighting from conversation to conversation.

  Catherine was walking alone, the first stroke of luck since this whole debacle had begun. Sweat broke out on his brow as he willed her to come closer. The sun glinted off the brass clutch of her knapsack, momentarily blinding him.

  He reached out to grab her upper arm. Pressing her up against the tree, his hand clapped over her mouth. Catherine’s eyes went wide with fear, then suddenly softened. He let go of her. “Coach,” she said, smiling, as if she had not overturned the whole bowl of his life.

  He swallowed, reaching for reason, but it was the anger that finally pushed one sentence through, rough and rusty as a spike. “Catherine,” Jack hissed, “what the hell did you do?”

  She had never seen him angry before. Well, maybe once or twice, but that usually had to do with a player whose mind was on some stupid guy instead of practice. The bite of his fingers into the bones of her shoulders scared her with one heartbeat, then thrilled her the next. He came here for me, she thought.

  Suddenly, he got himself under control again. “What did you tell them?”

  In that moment, her feelings were a featherbed, downy and inviting. Catherine took a deep breath and jumped. “That I love you.”

  “You love me,” he repeated, the words sounding all wrong on the twist of his mouth. “Catherine, you don’t love me.”

  “I do. And I know you love me, too.”

  “Anything I’ve ever said to you or done with you I would have said or done with any student,” Coach said. “Catherine, you’ve got to stop lying to them. Don’t you see I could end up in jail?”

  For a moment, Catherine’s heart stopped beating. And then she realized this was a test. A way of safeguarding his heart, until her own was laid bare. She smiled tremulously. “You don’t have to hide the truth anymore.”

  “The truth?”

  “You know . . . how we’re going to be together.”

  His eyes flashed. “Before or after I’m tried for a felony?”

  “Oh, Jack,” Catherine whispered, and she reached out to him.

  He recoiled, unwilling to touch her, unwilling to be touched by her. And this, finally, gave Catherine pause. Even as she called to him, he continued to back away with his palms raised, as if he was no longer seeing a pretty young girl but a poisonous snake that might strike when he least expected.

  “Of course she’s skittish,” the prosecutor said gently to Reverend Marsh. Loretta Winwood folded her hands on her desk, patient. “If she wasn’t reluctant to testify, I’d be concerned about her motivations. But it’s common to have underage witnesses balk. In fact, a hesitant witness on the stand is a powerful piece of evidence in a statutory rape case.”

  “But you heard her! She says she made the whole thing up.”

  Loretta gave the man a moment to compose himself. Poor guy, to find out just a few days ago that his daughter had been carrying on an affair with a teacher and then today to have her recant in a puddle at his feet. It was at moments like this that she truly understood why attorneys were called counselors. “Reverend Marsh, do you believe her?”

  “My daughter’s a good Christian girl.”

  “Yes, but she’s either lying about this sexual affair . . . or she’s lying about lying about it.”

  Marsh pressed his fingers to his temples. “I don’t know, Ms. Winwood.”

  “What reason would Catherine have to make up a story about a consensual sexual relationship that doesn’t exist?”

  “None.”r />
  “All right. Now, let’s assume that she has been involved in a relationship with Dr. St. Bride, upsetting as that is to consider. What reason would Catherine have to suddenly retract everything she’s confessed?”

  Marsh closed his eyes. “To save him.”

  Loretta nodded. “One reason it’s against the law to have intercourse with people under the age of sixteen is because minors are so susceptible to manipulation. What your daughter just told me-well, I see it a lot, Reverend Marsh. Unfortunately, these girls are in love. And once they triumphantly tell the world and the object of their affection is carted off in cuffs, they suddenly wonder if that was such a good idea.”

  “Can . . . can you force her to be a witness?”

  “I can force her to sit on the stand, but if she won’t testify, she won’t testify. That’s why so many of these cases never make it to trial.” She closed the file in front of her. “If Catherine tells the jury this affair existed only in her imagination, I can’t impeach her with her prior statements to the contrary. We have some incriminating evidence . . . but nothing as strong as Catherine’s testimony. And I’m sorry to say that means Jack St. Bride will most likely be acquitted-and will most likely seduce another underage girl in the future.”

  Marsh’s face mottled pink. “He’ll burn in hell one day.”

  This was a gray area in the law. If Catherine had been lying today about never having sex with St. Bride, it wasn’t really exculpatory evidence . . . which meant her confession didn’t have to be turned over to the defense . . . which meant that Melton Sprigg would not know that Catherine was unwilling to testify against his client. “Hell would be fine,” Loretta said. “But there might be something a little more immediate.”

  “A plea bargain?” Jack said. “Doesn’t that mean they’re running scared?”

  The attorney shook his head. “Most cases that go to court . . . well, ten percent are sure wins for the county attorney, and ten percent are sure losses. But the bulk of the cases-eighty percent-fall smack in the middle. Prosecutors offer pleas all the time, because they ensure a conviction.”