The Jodi Picoult Collection #3

by Jodi Picoult

  Trixie closed her eyes. She had lost her virginity in a field of lupine behind the ice rink, where the Zamboni shavings were dumped, an artificial winter smack in the middle of the September flowers. Jason had borrowed the key from the rinkmaster and taken her skating after the rink was closed for the day. He’d laced up her skates and told her to close her eyes. Then he’d reached for her hands, skating backward so fast she felt like she was falling to earth. We’re writing in cursive, he told her as he pulled in a straight line. Can you read it? Then he looped the breadth of the rink, skated a circle, a right angle, a tinier loop, finishing with a curl. I LOVE O? Trixie had recited, and Jason had laughed. Close enough, he’d said. Later, in that field, with the pile of snow hiding them from sight, Jason had again been moving at lightning speed, and Trixie could not quite keep up. When he pushed inside her, she turned her head to watch the lupine tremble on their shivering stems, so that he wouldn’t realize he’d hurt her.

  “In the past few days, you who are Jason’s family and friends have been struggling with the questions that surround his death. You are feeling a fraction of the pain, maybe, that Jason felt in those last, dark hours. You might be reliving the last time you spoke to him. You might be wondering, Is there anything I should have said or done that I didn’t? That might have made a difference?”

  Trixie suddenly saw Jason holding her down on Zephyr’s white living room carpet. If she’d been brave enough to peek that night, would she have seen the bruises blooming on his jaw, the smile rotting off his face?

  “Into your hands, O Savior, we commend your servant Jason Underhill. We pray for you to recognize this child of yours . . .”

  His breath fell onto her lips, but he tasted of worms. His fingers bit so hard into her wrists that she looked down and saw only his bones, as the flesh peeled away from him.

  “Receive him into your never-ending mercy. Grant him everlasting peace, and eternal life in your light.”

  Trixie tried to swim back to the minister’s words. She craved light, too, but all she could see were the black and blue stripes of the nights when Jason came to haunt her. Or maybe she was seeing the nights when she had gone to him willingly. It was all mixed up now. She couldn’t separate the real Jason from the ghost; she couldn’t untangle what she’d wanted from what she didn’t.

  Maybe it had always been like that.

  The scream started so deep inside of her that she thought it was just a resonance, like a tuning fork that could not stop trembling. Trixie didn’t realize that the sound spilled through her seams, over-flowing, bearing Jason’s coffin like a tide and sweeping it off its stanchions. She didn’t know that she’d fallen to her knees, and that every single eye in the congregation was on her, as it had been before the service began. And she didn’t trust herself to believe that the savior the minister had been summoning had reached through the very roof of the church and carried her outside where she could breathe again—not until she found the courage to open her eyes and found herself safe and away, cradled in her father’s arms.

  • • •

  Trixie’s boot prints matched. Unfortunately, they were Sorels, which accounted for a large portion of all winter footwear sold in the state of Maine. They had no telltale crack of the sole, or a tack stuck into the rubber, to prove without any considerable doubt that it was Trixie’s particular boot that had been on that bridge the night Jason Underhill had died, as opposed to anyone else who wore a size seven and happened to favor the same footwear.

  As a rape victim, she had the motive to be a suspect. But a boot print alone—one that hundreds of townspeople shared—wouldn’t be enough probable cause to convince a judge to swear out a warrant for Trixie’s arrest.

  “Ernie, get out of there,” Bartholemew said, scolding the potbellied pig he’d brought out for a walk. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t wholly professional to bring a pig to a crime scene, but he’d been working round the clock and couldn’t leave Ernestine at home alone any longer. He figured as long as he kept her away from the area that had been cordoned off by the techs, it was all right.

  “Not near the water,” Bartholemew called. The pig glanced at him and scooted down the riverbank. “Fine,” he said. “Go drown. See if I care.”

  But all the same, Bartholemew leaned over the railing of the bridge to watch the pig walk along the edge of the river. The spot where Jason’s body had broken the ice was frozen again, more translucent than the rest. A fluorescent orange flag stapled to a stake marked the northern edge of the crime scene.

  Laura Stone’s alibi had checked out: Phone records put her at the college, and then back at her residence. But several witnesses had noticed both Daniel and Trixie Stone at the Winterfest. One driver had even seen them both, in a parking lot, with Jason Underhill.

  Trixie could have murdered Jason, in spite of the size difference between them. Jason had been drunk, and a well-placed shove might have tumbled him over the bridge. It wouldn’t account for Jason’s bruised and fractured face, but Bartholemew didn’t hold Trixie responsible for that. Most likely, it had gone down this way: Jason saw Trixie in town and started to talk to her, but Daniel Stone stumbled onto their encounter. He beat the guy to a pulp, Jason ran off, and Trixie followed him to the bridge.

  Bartholemew had believed, initially, that Daniel had lied about not seeing Jason in town that night, and that Trixie had told him about the fight to cover for her father. But what if it had been the other way around? What if Trixie had told the truth, and Daniel—knowing that his daughter had been in contact with Jason already that night—had lied to protect her?

  Suddenly Ernestine began to root, her snout burrowing. God only knew what she’d found—the most she’d ever turned up was a dead mouse that had crawled under the foundation of his garage. He watched with mild interest as she created a pile of dirty snow behind her.

  Then something winked at him.

  Bartholemew slid down the steep grade of the riverbank, slipped on a plastic glove from his pocket, and pulled a man’s wristwatch out of the snow behind Ernestine.

  It was an Eddie Bauer watch with a royal blue face and a woven canvas band. The buckle was missing. Bartholemew squinted up at the bridge, trying to imagine the trajectory and the distance from there to here. Could Jason’s arm have struck the railing and snapped the buckle? The medical examiner had found splinters in the boy’s fingers—had he lost his watch while he was desperately trying to hang on?

  He took out his cell phone and dialed the medical examiner’s number. “It’s Bartholemew,” he said when Anjali answered. “Did Jason Underhill wear a watch?”

  “He wasn’t brought in wearing one.”

  “I just found one at the crime scene. Is there any way to tell if it’s his?”

  “Hang on.” Bartholemew heard her rummage through papers. “I’ve got the autopsy photos here. On the left wrist, there’s a band of skin that’s a bit lighter than the rest of his arm’s skin tone. Why don’t you see if the parents recognize it?”

  “That’s my next stop,” Bartholemew said. “Thanks.” As he hung up and started to slide the watch into a plastic evidence bag, he noticed something he hadn’t seen at first—a hair had gotten caught around the little knob used to set the time.

  It was about an inch long, and coarse. There seemed to be a root attached, as if it had been yanked out.

  Mike thought of Jason’s all-American good looks, of his dark hair and blue eyes. He held the watch up against the white canvas of his own dress shirt sleeve for comparison. In such stark relief, the hair was as red as a sunset, as red as shame, as red as any other hair on Trixie Stone’s head.

  • • •

  “Twice in one week?” Daniel said, opening the door to find Detective Bartholemew standing on the porch again. “I must have won the lottery.”

  Daniel was still wearing his button-down shirt from the funeral, although he’d stripped off the tie and left it noosed around one of the kitchen chairs. He could feel the detective surveyin
g the house over his right shoulder.

  “You got a minute, Mr. Stone?” Bartholemew asked. “And actually . . . is Trixie here? It would be great if she could sit down with us.”

  “She’s asleep,” Daniel said. “We went to Jason’s funeral, and she got pretty upset there. When we got home, she went straight to bed.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “She’s at the college. Guess I’m it for right now.”

  He led Bartholemew into the living room and sat across from him. “I wouldn’t have expected you to attend Jason Underhill’s funeral,” the detective said.

  “It was Trixie’s idea. I think she was looking for closure.”

  “You said she got upset during the service?”

  “I think it was too much for her, emotionally.” Daniel hesitated. “You didn’t come here to ask about this, did you?”

  The detective shook his head. “Mr. Stone, on the night of the Winterfest, you said you never ran into Jason. But Trixie told me that you and Jason had a fistfight.”

  Daniel felt the blood drain from his face. When had Bartholemew talked to Trixie?

  “Am I supposed to assume that your daughter was lying?”

  “No, I was,” Daniel said. “I was afraid you’d charge me with assault.”

  “Trixie also told me that Jason ran off.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did she follow him, Mr. Stone?”

  Daniel blinked. “What?”

  “Did she follow Jason Underhill to the bridge?”

  He pictured the light of the turning car washing over them, and the minute Jason wrenched away. He heard himself calling for Trixie and realizing she wasn’t there. “Of course not,” he said.

  “That’s interesting. Because I’ve got boot prints, and blood, and hair that puts her at the crime scene.”

  “What crime scene?” Daniel said. “Jason Underhill committed suicide.”

  The detective just lifted his gaze. Daniel thought of the hour he’d spent searching for Trixie after she’d run away. He remembered the cuts he’d seen on Trixie’s arms the day she was washing the dishes, scratches he’d assumed had been made by her own hand, and not someone else’s, trying desperately to hold on.

  Daniel had bequeathed Trixie his dimples, his long fingers, his photographic memory. But what about the other markers of heredity? Could a parent pass along the gene for revenge, for rage, for escape? Could a trait he’d buried so long ago resurface where he least expected it: in his daughter?

  “I’d really like to speak to Trixie,” Bartholemew said.

  “She didn’t kill Jason.”

  “Terrific,” the detective replied. “Then she won’t mind giving us a blood sample to compare with the physical evidence, so that we can rule her out.” He clasped his hands together between his knees. “Why don’t you see if she’s about ready to wake up?”

  • • •

  Although Daniel knew life didn’t work this way, he truly believed that he had the chance to save his daughter the way he hadn’t been able to save her the night she was raped, as if there were some running cosmic tally of victory and defeat. He could get a lawyer. He could spirit her away to Fiji or Guadalcanal or somewhere they’d never be found. He could do whatever was necessary; he just needed to formulate a plan.

  The first step was to talk to her before the detective did.

  After convincing Bartholemew to wait in the living room—Trixie was, after all, still scared of her own shadow half the time—Daniel headed upstairs. He was shaking, terrified with what he would say to Trixie, even more terrified to hear her response. With every step up the stairs, he thought of escape routes: the attic, his bedroom balcony. Sheets knotted together and tossed out a window.

  Daniel decided he’d ask her point-blank, when she was too wrapped in the silver veil of sleep to dissemble. Depending on her answer, he’d either take her down to Bartholemew to prove the detective wrong, or he’d carry Trixie to the far ends of the earth himself.

  The door to Trixie’s room was still closed; with his ear pressed against it, Daniel heard nothing but silence.

  After they had come home from the funeral, Daniel had sat on Trixie’s bed with her curled in his lap, the way he had once held her during bouts of stomach flu, rubbing her belly or her back until she slipped over the fine line of sleep. Now he turned the knob slowly, hoping to wake Trixie up by degrees.

  The first thing Daniel noticed was how cold it was. The second was the window, wide open.

  The room looked like the aftermath of a tropical storm. Clothes lay trampled on the floor. Sheets were balled at the foot of the bed. Makeup, looseleaf papers, and magazines had been dumped—the contents of a missing knapsack. Her toothbrush and hairbrush were gone. And the little clay jar where Trixie kept her cash was empty.

  Had Trixie heard the detective downstairs? Had she left before Bartholemew even arrived? She was only a teenager; how far could she get?

  Daniel moved to the window and traced the zigzag track of her flight on the snow from her room to the sloped roof, to the maple tree’s outstretched arm, across the lawn to bare pavement, at which point she simply disappeared. He thought of her words to him, a day before, when he’d seen the cuts on her arm: It’s how I run away.

  Frantic, he stared at the icy roof. She could have killed herself.

  And on the heels of that thought: She still might.

  What if Trixie managed to get someplace where, when she tried to swallow pills or cut her wrists or sleep in a cloud of carbon monoxide, nobody stopped her?

  A person was never who you thought he was. It was true for him; maybe it was true for Trixie too. Maybe—in spite of what he wanted to believe, in spite of what he hoped—she had killed Jason.

  What if Daniel wasn’t the first one to find her?

  What if he was?

  6

  It was late enough in December that all the radio stations played only Christmas carols. Trixie’s hiding place was directly over the driver’s seat, in the little jut of the box truck that sat over the cab. She had seen the truck at the dairy farm just past the high school athletic fields. With the doors wide open and no one around, she had climbed inside and hidden in that upper nook, drawing hay over herself for camouflage.

  They’d loaded two calves into the truck—not down in the bottom, like Trixie had figured, but nearly on top of her in the narrow space where she was curled. This way, she supposed, they wouldn’t stand up during the trip. Once they’d started under way, Trixie had poked her head out from the straw and looked at one calf. It had eyes as large as planets, and when she held out her finger, the calf sucked hard on it.

  At the next stop, another farm not ten minutes down the road, an enormous Holstein limped up the ramp into the back of the truck. It stared right at Trixie and mooed. “Damn shame,” the trucker said, as the farmer shoved the cow from behind.

  “Ayuh, she went down on some ice,” he said. “In you go, now.” Then the door swung shut and everything went black.

  She didn’t know where they were headed and didn’t particularly care. Prior to this, the farthest Trixie had ever been by herself was the Mall of Maine. She wondered if her father was looking for her yet. She wished she could phone him and tell him she was all right—but under the circumstances, she couldn’t call. She might never.

  She lay down on one calf’s smooth side. It smelled of grass and grain and daylight, and with every breath, she felt herself rising and falling. She wondered why the cows were in transit. Maybe they were going to a new farm for Christmas. Or to be part of a Nativity play. She pictured the doors swinging open and farmhands in crisp overalls coming to lift down the calves. They would find Trixie and would give her fresh milk and homemade ice cream and they wouldn’t even think to ask her how she’d wound up in the back of a livestock truck.

  In a way, it was a mystery to Trixie, too. She had seen the detective at Jason’s funeral, although he thought he’d been hiding. And then, when everyone tho
ught she was asleep, she’d stood on the balcony and heard what he’d said to her father.

  Enough to know that she had to get out of there.

  She was, in a way, a little proud of herself. Who knew that she’d be able to run away without a car, with only two hundred bucks in her pocket? She’d never considered herself to be the kind of person who was cool in the face of crisis—and yet, you never knew what you were capable of until you arrived at that given moment. Life was just a whole string of spots where you continued to surprise yourself.

  She must have fallen asleep for a while, sandwiched between the knobby knees and globe bellies of the two calves, but when the truck stopped again they struggled to stand—impossible in that cramped space. Below them, the cow began to bellow, one low note that ricocheted. There was the sound of a seal being breached, a mighty creak, and then the doors to the back of the truck swung open.

  Trixie blinked into the light and saw what she hadn’t earlier: The cow had a lesion on her right foreleg, one that made it buckle beneath her. The Holstein calves on either side of her were males, no good for producing milk. She peered out the double doors and squinted so that she could read the sign at the end of the driveway: LaRue and Sons Beef, Berlin, NH.

  This was not a petting zoo or Old MacDonald’s Farm, as Trixie had imagined. This was a slaughterhouse.

  She scrambled down from her ledge, startling the animals—not to mention the truck driver who was unhooking the tether of the cow—and took off like a shot down the long gravel driveway. Trixie ran until her lungs were on fire, until she had reached what passed for a town, with a Burger King and a gas station. The Burger King made her think of the calves, which made her think that she was going to be a vegetarian, if she ever got through the other side of this nightmare.

  Suddenly, there was a siren. Trixie went still as stone, her eyes trained on the circling blue lights of the advancing police cruiser.

  The car went screaming past her, on to someone else’s emergency.