Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  “Katie,” I said softly, and she jumped a foot.

  “How come they haven’t started yet?”

  “It’s still early.” Now her hands were tucked beneath her apron, her eyes darting over the activity in the front of the courtroom. Her gaze lit upon George Callahan, six feet away at the prosecutor’s table.

  “He looks kind,” she mused.

  “He won’t be. His job is to get the jury to believe all the bad things he’s going to say about you.” I hesitated, then decided in Katie’s case, it would be best to know what’s coming. “It’s going to be hard for you to hear, Katie.”

  “Why?”

  I blinked at her. “Why will it be hard?”

  “No. Why will he lie about me? Why would the jury believe him and not me?”

  I thought about the rules of forensic evidence, the distinctions between casting a motive and spinning a false tale, the psychometric profiles that had been written on juries-all idiosyncrasies that Katie would not understand. How did one explain to an Amish girl that in a trial, it often came down to who had the best story? “It’s the way the legal system works in the English world,” I said. “It’s part of the game.”

  “Game,” Katie said slowly, turning the word in her mouth until it softened. “Like football!” She smiled up at me, remembering our earlier conversation. “A game with winning and losing, but you get paid for it.”

  I felt sick to my stomach again. “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

  “All rise; the Honorable Philomena Ledbetter presiding!”

  I got to my feet and made sure Katie was doing the same as the judge bustled in from the side door of the courtroom. She climbed the steps, her robes billowing out behind her. “Be seated.” Her eyes roamed the gallery, narrowing on the concentrated band of media representatives in the rear. “Before we begin might I remind the press that the use of cameras or video photography is forbidden in this courtroom, and if I see a single violation, I’ll toss the lot of you into the lobby for the remainder of the trial.”

  She turned her attention to Katie, measuring her in silence before she spoke to the county attorney. “If the prosecution’s ready, you may begin.”

  George Callahan strolled toward the jury box, as if he’d long been friends with every member. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “This is a trial for murder-so where’s the accused? Surely that little Amish girl sitting over there, wearing her apron and her little white cap, couldn’t have killed a fly, much less another human being.” He shook his head. “You all live in this county. You all see the Amish in their buggies and at their farm stands. If you know nothing else about them, you at least have picked up on the fact that they’re a highly religious group that keep to themselves and don’t make waves. I mean, really-when was the last time you heard of an Amish person being brought up on felony charges?

  “Last year, that’s when. When the idyllic bubble of Amish life was burst by two of its youth, peddling cocaine. And today, when you hear how this young woman cold-bloodedly killed her own newborn infant.”

  He ran his hand along the rail of the jury box. “Shocking, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe any mother would kill her own child, much less a girl who looks as innocent as the one sitting over there. Well, let me put your mind to rest. During the course of this trial you’ll learn that the defendant is not innocent-in fact, she’s a proven liar. For six years, she’s been sneaking off her parents’ farm to spend nights and weekends on a college campus, where she lets down her hair and dresses in jeans and tight sweaters and parties like any other teenager. She lied about that-just like she lied about the fact that she’d gotten pregnant during one of these wild weekends; just like she lied about committing murder.”

  He turned toward Katie, pinned her with his gaze. “So what’s the truth? The truth is that shortly after two A.M. on July tenth, the defendant awakened with labor pains. The truth is that she got up, tiptoed to the barn, and in silence gave birth to a live baby boy. The truth is that she knew if the baby was discovered, life as she knew it would be over. She’d be thrown out of her home, out of her church, and out of her community. So the truth is, she did what she had to do to keep the lie intact-she willfully, deliberately, and premeditatedly killed her own baby.”

  George flicked his eyes away from Katie and turned back to the jury. “When you look at the defendant, look past the quaint costume. That’s what she wants you to see. See instead a woman smothering a crying baby. When you listen to the defendant, pay attention to what she has to say. But remember that what comes out of her mouth can’t be trusted. This so-called sweet little Amish girl hid a forbidden pregnancy, murdered a newborn with her bare hands, and fooled everyone around her while it was happening. Don’t let her fool you.”

  The jury was made up of eight women and four men, and I vacillated between thinking that worked for or against us. Women would be likely to feel more sympathy for an unwed teen-but more contempt for someone who killed her newborn. What it all boiled down to, of course, was how willing this particular mix of people was to look for a loophole.

  I squeezed Katie’s trembling hand beneath the defense table and stood. “Mr. Callahan would like you to believe that a certain party in this courtroom is an expert when it comes to not telling the truth. And you know what? He’s right. The thing is, Katie Fisher isn’t that person. Actually, it’s me.” I raised my hand and waved it cheerfully. “Yep, guilty as charged. I’m a liar and I’m rather good at it, if I say so myself. So good that it’s made me a pretty accomplished attorney. And although I’m not about to put words in the county attorney’s mouth, I bet he’s bent the facts a time or two himself.” I raised my brows at the jury. “You guys hear all the jokes-I don’t have to tell you about lawyers. Not only do we lie well, but we get paid a lot to do it.”

  I leaned against the railing of the jury box. “Katie Fisher, on the other hand, doesn’t lie. How do I know this, for a fact? Well, because I wanted to use a defense of temporary insanity today. I had experts who were going to stand up here and tell you that Katie didn’t know what she was doing the morning she gave birth. But Katie wouldn’t let me. She said she wasn’t insane, and she hadn’t murdered her baby. And even if it meant risking her conviction, she wanted you, the jury, to know that.”

  I shrugged. “So here I am, a lawyer armed with a novel weapon-the truth. That’s all I’ve got to contradict the prosecution’s allegations: the truth, and perhaps a clearer eye. Nothing that Mr. Callahan will show you is conclusive proof, and for good reason-Katie Fisher did not murder her newborn. Having lived with her and her family now for several months, I know something that Mr. Callahan does not-that Katie Fisher is Amish, through and through. You don’t ‘act’ Amish, like Mr. Callahan is suggesting. You live it. You are it. Through the course of this trial, you’ll come to understand this complex, peaceful group, as I have. Maybe a suburban teenager would give birth and stuff the baby in the toilet, but not an Amish woman. Not Katie Fisher.

  “Now, let’s look at some of Mr. Callahan’s points. Did Katie sneak away repeatedly to a college town? Yes, she did-see, I’m telling you the truth. But what the prosecutor left out is why she was going there. Katie’s brother, her only remaining living sibling, decided to leave the Amish church and study at college. Her father, hurt by this decision, restricted contact with this son. But family means everything to Katie, as to most Amish, and she missed her brother so much she was willing to risk anything to see him. So you see, Katie wasn’t living a lie. She was maintaining a love.

  “Mr. Callahan also suggested that Katie needed to hide the illegitimate pregnancy, or else suffer being kicked out of her faith. However, you will learn that the Amish are forgiving. Even an illegitimate pregnancy would have been accepted by the church, and the infant would have grown up with more love and support than is found in many homes in our own communities.”

  I turned toward Katie, who was regarding me with wide, bright eyes. “Which brings me to Mr. Callahan’s final
point: why, then, would Katie Fisher kill her own baby? The answer is simple, ladies and gentlemen. She didn’t.

  “The judge will explain to you that to convict Katie, you have to believe the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt. By the time this trial’s over, you’ll have more than a reasonable doubt, you’ll have a whole wagon full of them. You will see that there’s no way for the prosecution to prove that Katie killed her baby. They have no physical witnesses to the fact. They have nothing but speculation and dubious evidence.

  “On the other hand, I’m going to show you that there were a number of ways that baby might have died.” I walked toward Katie, so that the jury would be staring at her as well as me. “I’m going to show you why the Amish don’t commit murder. And most importantly,” I finished, “I’m going to let Katie Fisher tell you the truth.”

  THIRTEEN

  Lizzie Munro would never have laid odds on the fact that one day, she’d be testifying against an Amish murder suspect. The girl was sitting at the defense table next to that high-powered attorney of hers, head bowed and hands clasped like one of those godawful Precious Moments figurines Lizzie’s mother liked to litter her windowsills with. Lizzie herself hated them-each angel too calculatedly cute, each shepherd boy too doe-eyed to be taken seriously. Similarly, looking at Katie Fisher gave Lizzie the overwhelming urge to turn away.

  She focused instead on George Callahan, dapper in his dark suit. “Can you state your name and address?” he asked.

  “Elizabeth Grace Munro. 1313 Grand Street, Ephrata.”

  “Where are you employed?”

  “At the East Paradise Township Police Department. I’m a detective-sergeant.”

  George didn’t even have to ask her the questions; they’d been through this opening act so often she knew what was coming. “How long have you been a detective?”

  “For the past six years. Prior to that, I was a patrol officer for five years.”

  “Can you tell us a little bit about your work, Detective Munro?”

  Lizzie leaned back in the witness chair-for her, a comfortable place. “For the most part, I investigate felony cases in East Paradise Township.”

  “Roughly how many are there?”

  “Well, we took about fifteen thousand calls last year, total. Of those, there were only a handful of felonies-mostly we see misdemeanors.”

  “How many murders occurred last year?”

  “None,” Lizzie answered.

  “Of those fifteen thousand calls, do many take you into Amish homes?”

  “No,” she said. “The Amish will call the police in if there’s theft or damage to their properties, and occasionally we’ll have to book an Amish youth for DUI or disorderly conduct, but for the most part they have a fairly minimal relationship to local law enforcement authorities.”

  “Detective, could you tell us what happened on the morning of July tenth?”

  Lizzie straightened in her chair. “I was at the station when someone called to report finding a dead infant in a barn. An ambulance had been dispatched to the scene, and then I went out there as well.”

  “What did you find when you arrived?”

  “It was about five-twenty A.M., near sunrise. The barn belonged to an Amish dairy farmer. He and his two employees were still in the barn, milking their cows. I taped the front and back door of the barn to secure the scene. I went into the tack room, where the body had been found, and spoke to the EMTs. They said the baby was newborn and premature, and couldn’t be resuscitated. I took down the names of the four men: Aaron and Elam Fisher, Samuel Stoltzfus, and Levi Esch. I asked if they’d seen anything suspicious or if they’d disturbed anything in the barn. The youngest boy, Levi, had been the one to find the baby. He hadn’t touched anything but a couple of horse blankets on top of the dead infant, which was wrapped in a boy’s shirt. Aaron Fisher, the owner of the farm, said that a pair of scissors used to cut baling twine was missing from a peg near the calving pen. All four men told me that no one had been found in the barn, and that no women in the household had been pregnant.

  “After that, I went through the stalls, looking for a lead. The MCU of the state police was called in, as well. It was fairly impossible to take prints off the rough wooden beams and the hay, and any partial prints we found matched those of family members who would have had reason to be in the barn.”

  “At this point, were you suspecting foul play?”

  “No. I wasn’t suspecting much of anything, other than abandonment.” George nodded. “Please continue.”

  “Finally, we found the site of the birth-in a corner of the calving pen fresh hay had been scattered to cover up matted blood. At the spot where the baby’s body had been discovered, we found a footprint in the dirt floor.”

  “Did you determine anything about the footprint?”

  “It would have belonged to a barefoot woman who wore a size seven shoe.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I tried to find the woman who’d given birth. First I interviewed Aaron Fisher’s wife, Sarah. I found out that she’d had a hysterectomy nearly a decade ago, and was unable to have children. I questioned the neighbors and their two teenage girls, all of whom had alibis. By the time I got back to the farm, the Fishers’ daughter, Katie, had come downstairs. In fact, she came into the tack room where the medical examiner was with the newborn’s body.”

  “What was her reaction?”

  “She was very disturbed,” Lizzie said. “She ran out of the barn.”

  “Did you follow her?”

  “Yes. I caught up with her on the porch. I asked Ms. Fisher if she’d been pregnant, and she denied it.”

  “Did that seem suspicious to you?”

  “Not at all. It was what her parents had told me, too. But then I noticed blood running down her legs and pooling on the floor. Although she was reluctant, I had her forcibly removed by the EMTs and taken to the hospital for her own personal safety.”

  “At this point what was running through your mind?”

  “That this girl needed medical attention. But then I wondered if perhaps the defendant’s parents had never known she was pregnant-if she’d hidden the truth from them, like she’d tried to hide it from me.”

  “How did you discover that she’d hidden the truth?” George asked.

  “I went to the hospital and spoke to the defendant’s doctor, who confirmed that she had delivered a baby, was in critical condition, and needed emergency treatment to stop the vaginal bleeding. Once I knew that she had lied to me about the pregnancy, I got warrants to search the farm and the house, and to get a blood test and DNA from the baby and from the defendant. The next step was to match the blood in the hay of the calving pen to that of the defendant, the blood on the baby’s body to that of the defendant, and the blood type in the baby’s body to that of the defendant.”

  “What came of the information you got from these warrants?”

  “Underneath the defendant’s bed was a bloody nightgown. In her closet were boots and shoes in a size seven. All the lab tests positively linked the blood in the barn to the defendant, and the blood on and in the baby to the defendant.”

  “What did this lead you to believe?”

  Lizzie let her gaze rest lightly on Katie Fisher. “That in spite of her denial, the defendant was the mother of that baby.”

  “At this point, did you believe that the defendant had killed the baby?”

  “No. Murder’s rare in East Paradise, and virtually unheard of in the Amish community. I believed, at this point, that the baby was stillborn. But then the medical examiner sent me the autopsy report, and I had to refine my conclusions.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, the baby had been born alive. For another, the umbilical cord had been cut by scissors-which made me think of the scissors Aaron Fisher said were missing; scissors from which we might have lifted a print. The newborn had died of asphyxia, but the medical examiner found fibers deep in the baby’s mouth that matc
hed the shirt it had been wrapped in, suggesting that he had been smothered. That was when I realized that the defendant was a potential suspect.”

  Lizzie took a sip of water from a glass perched beside the witness stand. “After that, I interviewed everyone close to the defendant, and the defendant herself. The defendant’s mother confirmed that a younger child had died many years ago, and that she had no idea her daughter was pregnant-nor any reason to think so. The father wouldn’t speak to me at all. I also interviewed Samuel Stoltzfus, one of the hired hands and coincidentally the defendant’s boyfriend. From him I learned that he’d planned to marry the defendant this fall. He also told me that the defendant had never had sexual intercourse with him.”

  “What did that lead you to believe?”

  Lizzie raised her brows. “At first I wondered if he’d found out that Katie Fisher had two-timed him-and if he’d smothered the baby out of revenge. But Samuel Stoltzfus lives ten miles from the Fisher farm with his parents, who confirmed that he was sleeping there during the window of time the medical examiner said death occurred. Then I began to think that maybe I had it backward-that the information pointed to the defendant, instead. I mean, here was a motive: Amish girl, Amish parents, Amish boyfriend-and she gets pregnant by someone else? That’s an excuse to hide the birth, maybe even get rid of it.”

  “Did you interview anyone else?”

  “Yes, Levi Esch, the second hired hand on the farm. He said that the defendant had been sneaking to Penn State for the past six years to meet with her brother. Jacob Fisher did not live like the Amish anymore, but like any other college student.”

  “Why was that relevant?”

  Lizzie smiled. “It’s a lot easier to meet a guy other than your Amish boyfriend when a whole new world is at your fingertips-one with booze and frat parties and Maybelline.”