by Jodi Picoult
“There’s no family to fight it?”
“The mother gave consent already.”
Ted sighs. “The publicity is going to be outrageous.”
Leaning back in his chair, Quentin grins. “Let me take care of it,” he offers.
• • •
Fisher storms into the district attorney’s office, uncharacteristically flustered. He has been there before, of course, but who knows where the hell they’ve ensconced Quentin Brown while he’s prosecuting Nina’s case. He has just opened up his mouth to ask the secretary when Brown himself walks out of the small kitchen area, carrying a cup of coffee. “Mr. Carrington,” he says pleasantly. “Looking for me?”
Fisher withdraws the paperwork he’s received that morning from his breast pocket. The Motion to Exhume. “What is this?”
Quentin shrugs. “You must know. You’re the one who asked for the DNA records to be rushed over, after all.”
Fisher has no idea why, in fact. The DNA records were rushed over at Nina’s behest, but he’ll be damned if he lets Brown know this. “What are you trying to do, counselor?”
“A simple test that proves the priest your client killed wasn’t the same guy who abused her kid.”
Fisher steels his gaze. “I’ll see you in court tomorrow morning,” he says, and by the time he gets into his car to drive to Nina’s home, he has begun to understand how an ordinary human might become frustrated enough to kill.
• • •
“Fisher!” I say, and I’m actually delighted to see the man. This amazes me—either I have truly bedded down with the Enemy, or I’ve been under house arrest too long. I throw open the door to let him in, and realize that he is furious. “You knew,” he says, his voice calm and that much more frightening for all its control. He hands me a motion filed by the assistant attorney general.
My insides begin to quiver; I feel absolutely sick. With tremendous effort I swallow and meet Fisher’s eye—better to come clean eventually, than to not come clean at all. “I didn’t know if I should tell you. I didn’t know if the information was going to be important to my case.”
“That’s my job!” Fisher explodes. “You are paying me for a reason, Nina, and it’s because you know on some level, although apparently not a conscious one, that I am qualified to get you acquitted. In fact, I’m more qualified to do that than any other attorney in Maine . . . including you.”
I look away. At heart, I am a prosecutor, and prosecutors don’t tell defense attorneys everything. They dance around each other, but the prosecutor is always the one who leads, leaving the other lawyer to find his footing.
Always.
“I don’t trust you,” I say finally.
Fisher fields this like a blow. “Well, then. We’re even.”
We stare at each other, two great dogs with their teeth bared. Fisher turns away, angry, and in that moment I see my face in the reflection of the window. The truth is, I’m not a prosecutor anymore. I’m not capable of defending myself. I’m not sure I even want to.
“Fisher,” I call out when he is halfway out the door. “How badly will this hurt me?”
“I don’t know, Nina. It doesn’t make you look any less crazy, but it’s also going to strip you of public sympathy. You’re not a hero anymore, killing a pedophile. You’re a hothead who knocked off an innocent man—a priest, no less.” He shakes his head. “You’re the prime example of why we have laws in the first place.”
In his eyes, I see what’s coming—the fact that I am no longer a mother doing what she had to for her child, but simply a reckless woman who thought she knew better than anyone else. I wonder if camera flashes feel different on your skin when they capture you as a criminal, instead of a victim. I wonder if parents who once fathomed my actions—even if they disagreed with them—will look at me now and cross the street, just in case faulty judgment is contagious.
Fisher exhales heavily. “I can’t keep them from exhuming the body.”
“I know.”
“And if you keep hiding information from me, it will hurt you, because I won’t know how to work with it.”
I duck my head. “I understand.”
He raises his hand in farewell. I stand on the porch and watch him go, hugging myself against the wind. When his car heads down the street, its exhaust freezes, a sigh caught in the cold. With a deep breath I turn to find Caleb standing not three feet behind me. “Nina,” he says, “what was that?”
Pushing past him, I shake my head, but he grabs my arm and will not let me go. “You lied to me. Lied to me!”
“Caleb, you don’t understand—”
He grasps my shoulders and shakes me once, hard. “What is it I don’t understand? That you killed an innocent man? Jesus, Nina, when is it going to hit you?”
Once, Nathaniel asked me how the snow disappears. It is like that in Maine—instead of melting over time, it takes one warm day for drifts that are thigh-high in the morning to evaporate by the time the sun goes down. Together we went to the library to learn the answer—sublimation, the process by which something solid vanishes into thin air.
With Caleb’s hands holding me up, I fall apart. I let out everything I have been afraid to set free for the past week. Father Szyszynski’s voice fills my head; his face swims in front of me. “I know,” I sob. “Oh, Caleb, I know. I thought I could do this. I thought I could take care of it. But I made a mistake.” I fold myself into the wall of his chest, waiting for his arms to come around me.
They don’t.
Caleb takes a step back, shoves his hands in his pockets. His eyes are red-rimmed, haunted. “What’s the mistake, Nina? That you killed a man?” he asks hoarsely. “Or that you didn’t?”
• • •
“It’s a shame, is what it is,” the church secretary says. Myra Lester shakes her head, then hands Patrick the cup of tea she’s made him. “Christmas Mass just around the corner, and us without a chaplain.”
Patrick knows that the best road to information is not always the one that’s paved and straightforward, but the one that cuts around back and is most often forgotten as an access route. He also knows, from his long-lapsed days of growing up Catholic, that the collective memory—and gossip mill—most often is the church secretary. So he offers his most concerned expression, the one that always got him a pinch on the cheek from his elderly aunts. “The congregation must be devastated.”
“Between the rumors flying around about Father Szyszynski, and the way he was killed—well, it’s most un-Christian, that’s all I have to say about it.” She sniffs, then settles her considerable bottom on a wing chair in the rectory office.
He would like to have assumed a different persona, now—a newcomer to Biddeford, for example, checking out the parish—but he has already been seen in his capacity as a detective, during the sexual abuse investigation. “Myra,” Patrick says, then looks up at her and smiles. “I’m sorry. I meant Mrs. Lester, of course.”
Her cheeks flame, and she titters. “Oh, no, you feel free to call me whatever you like, Detective.”
“Well, Myra, I’ve been trying to get in touch with the priests that were visiting St. Anne’s shortly before Father Szyszynski’s death.”
“Oh, yes, they were lovely. Just lovely! That Father O’Toole, he had the most scrumptious Southern accent. Like peach schnapps, that’s what I thought of every time he spoke . . . . Or was that Father Gwynne?”
“The prosecution’s hounding me. I don’t suppose you’d have any idea where I could find them?”
“They’ve gone back to their own congregations, of course.”
“Is there a record of that? A forwarding address, maybe?”
Myra frowns, and a small pattern of lines in the shape of a spider appears on her forehead. “I’m sure there must be. Nothing in this church goes on without me knowing the details.” She walks toward all the ledgers and logs stacked behind her desk. Flipping through the pages of a leather-bound book, she finds an entry and smacks it with the f
lat of her hand. “It’s right here. Fathers Brendan O’Toole, from St. Dennis’s, in Harwich, Massachusetts, and Arthur Gwynne, due to depart this afternoon as per the See of Portland.” Myra scratches her hair with the eraser of a pencil. “I suppose the other priest could have come from Harwich, too, but that wouldn’t explain the peach schnapps.”
“Maybe he moved as a child,” Patrick suggests. “What’s the Sea of Portland?”
“See, S-E-E. It’s the governing diocese hereabouts in Maine, of course.” She lifts her face to Patrick’s. “They’re the ones who sent the priests to us in the first place.”
• • •
Midnight, in a graveyard, with an unearthed casket—Patrick can think of a thousand places he’d rather be. But he stands beside the two sweating men who have hauled the coffin from the ground and set it beside Father Szyszynski’s resting place, like an altar in the moonlight. He has promised to be Nina’s eyes, Nina’s legs. And if necessary, Nina’s hands.
They are all wearing Hazmat suits—Patrick and Evan Chao, Fisher Carrington and Quentin Brown, Frankie Martine, and the medical examiner, Vern Potter. In the black circle beyond their flashlights, an owl screams.
Vern jumps a foot. “Holy sweet Jesus. Any minute now I keep expecting the zombies to get up from behind the tombstones. Couldn’t we have done this in broad daylight?”
“I’ll take zombies over the press any day,” Evan Chao mutters. “Get it over with, Vern.”
“Hokey-dokey.” The medical examiner takes a crowbar and pries open Father Szyszynski’s casket. The foul air that puffs from its insides has Patrick gagging. Fisher Carrington turns away and holds a handkerchief to his face mask. Quentin walks off briskly to vomit behind a tree.
The priest does not look all that different. Half of his face is still missing. His arms lie at his sides. His skin, gray and wrinkled, has not yet decomposed. “Open wide,” Vern murmurs, and he ratchets down the jaw, reaches inside, and pulls out a molar with a pair of tooth pliers.
“Get me a couple wisdom teeth, too,” Frankie says. “And hair.”
Evan nods to Patrick, calling him aside. “You believe this?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Maybe the bastard’s just getting what he deserves.”
Patrick is stunned for a moment, until he remembers: There is no reason to believe Evan would know what Patrick knows—that Father Szyszynski was innocent. “Maybe,” he manages.
A few minutes later, Vern hands a jar and an envelope to Frankie. Quentin hurries away with her, Fisher close behind. The ME closes the casket and turns to the grave diggers. “You can put him back now,” he instructs, then turns to Patrick. “On your way out?”
“In a sec.” Patrick watches Vern go, then turns to the grave, where the two big men have dropped the coffin again and are starting to shovel dirt over it again. He waits until they are finished, because he thinks someone should.
• • •
By the time Patrick gets to the Biddeford District Court, he wonders whether Father Arthur Gwynne ever existed at all. He’s driven from the graveyard, where the body was being exhumed, to the Catholic See in Portland . . . where he was told by the chancellor that their records only showed Father O’Toole coming to visit Biddeford. If Father Gwynne was at the church too, it might have been a personal connection to the Biddeford chaplain that brought him there. Which, of course, is exactly what Patrick needs to confirm.
The probate clerk hands him a copy of the priest’s Last Will and Testament, which became a public record a month ago, when it was filed with the court. The document is simple to a fault. Father Szyszynski left fifty percent of his estate to his mother. And the rest to the executor of his will: Arthur Gwynne, of Belle Chasse, Louisiana.
• • •
Enamel is the strongest material naturally found in the human body, which makes it a bitch to crack open. To this end, Frankie soaks the extracted molar in liquid nitrogen for about five minutes, because frozen, it is more likely to shatter. “Hey, Quentin,” she says, grinning at the attorney, waiting impatiently. “Can you break a dollar?”
He fishes in his pockets, but shakes his head. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” She takes a buck from her wallet and floats it in the liquid nitrogen, then pulls it out, smashes it on the counter, and laughs. “I can.”
He sighs. “Is this why it takes so long to get results from the state lab?”
“Hey, I’m letting you cut in line, aren’t I?” Frankie removes the tooth from its bath and sets it in a sterile mortar and pestle. She grinds at it, pounding harder and harder, but the tooth will not crack.
“Mortar and pestle?” Quentin asks.
“We used to use the ME’s skull saw, but we had to get a new blade every time. Plus, the cutting edge gets too hot, and denatures the DNA.” She glances at him over her protective goggles. “You don’t want me to screw up, do you?” Another whack, but the tooth remains intact. “Oh, for God’s sake.” Frankie plucks a second tooth out of the liquid nitrogen. “Come with me. I want to get this over with.”
She double-bags the tooth in Ziplocs and leads Quentin to the stairwell, all the way to the basement garage of the laboratory. “Stand back,” she says, and then squats, setting the bag on the floor. Taking a hammer out of the pocket of her lab coat, Frankie begins to pound, her own jaw aching in sympathy. The tooth shatters on the fourth try, its pieces splintering into the plastic bag.
“Now what?” Quentin asks.
The pulp is brownish, slight . . . but most definitely there. “Now,” she says, “you wait.”
• • •
Quentin, who is unused to staying up in graveyards all night and then driving to the lab in Augusta, falls asleep on a bank of chairs in the lobby. When he feels a cool hand on the back of his neck, he startles awake, sitting up so quickly he is momentarily dizzy. Frankie stands before him, holding out a report. “And?” he asks.
“The tooth pulp was chimeric.”
“English?”
Frankie sits down beside him. “The reason we test tooth pulp is because it has blood cells in it . . . but also tissue cells. For you and me and most people, the DNA in both of those cells will be the same. But if someone gets a bone marrow transplant, they’re going to show a mixture of two DNA profiles in their tooth pulp. The first profile will be the DNA they were born with, and that’ll be in the tissue cells. The second profile will be the DNA that came from their marrow donor, and will be in the blood cells. In this sample, the suspect’s tooth pulp yielded a mixture.”
Quentin frowns at the numbers on the page. “So—”
“So here’s your proof,” Frankie says. “Somebody else perved that kid.”
• • •
After Fisher calls me with the news, I go right into the bathroom and throw up. Again, and again, until there is nothing left in my stomach but the guilt. The truth is, a man was killed by my own hand, a man who deserved no punishment. What does this make me?
I want to shower until I don’t feel dirty; I want to strip off my own skin. But the horror is at the heart of me. Cut a gut feeling, watch yourself bleed to death.
Like I watched him.
In the hallway, I brush past Caleb, who has not been speaking to me anyway. There are no more words between us, each one has a charge on it, an ion that might attach to either him or to me and push us farther apart. In my bedroom, I kick off my shoes and crawl fully dressed under the covers. I pull them up over my head; breathe in the same cocoon. If you pass out, and there’s still no air, what will happen?
I can’t get warm. This is where I will stay, because now any of my decisions may be suspect. Better to do nothing at all, than to take another risk that might change the world.
• • •
It’s an instinct, Patrick realizes—to want to hurt someone as badly as they’ve hurt you. There were moments in his career in the military police that his arrests became violent, blood running over his hands that felt like a balm at the time. Now,
he understands that the theory can go one step further: It’s an instinct to want to hurt someone as badly as they’ve hurt someone you care about. This is the only explanation he can offer for sitting on a 757 en route from Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans.
The question isn’t what he would do for Nina. “Anything,” Patrick would answer, without hesitation. She had expressly warned him away from hunting down Arthur Gwynne, and all of Patrick’s actions up to this point could be classified as information-seeking, but even he could not couch the truth, now: He had no reason to fly to Louisiana, if not to meet this man face-to-face.
Even now, he cannot tell himself what is going to happen. He has spent his life guided by principle and rules—in the Navy, as a cop, as an unrequited lover. But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn’t, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? What’s stronger—the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one’s back on it?
It has been shattering for Patrick to realize that the criminal mind is not all that far away from that of a rational man. It comes down, really, to the power of a craving. Addicts will sell their own bodies for another gram of coke. Arsonists will put their own lives in danger to feel something go up in flames around them. Patrick has always believed, as an officer of the law, he is above this driving need. But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago—and you are willing to do whatever it takes?
This was Nina’s error; she wrongly equated stopping time with turning it backward. And he couldn’t even blame her, because he’d made the same mistake, every time he was in her company.
The question Patrick knew he should be asking was not what he would do for Nina . . . but what he wouldn’t.
The flight attendant pushes the beverage cart like a baby carriage, braking beside Patrick’s row. “What can I get for you?” she asks. Her smile reminds him of Nathaniel’s Halloween mask from last year.