Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  "Where did you hear that?"

  "The man, last night, on TV."

  Caleb takes a deep breath. "It means your mother loves you, more than anything. And that's why she did what she did."

  Nathaniel fingers the seam of his seat belt, considering. "Then why is it wrong?" he asks.

  The parking lot is a sea of people: cameramen trying to get their reporters in their sights, producers adjusting the line feeds from their satellites, a group of militant Catholic women demanding Nina's judgment at the hands of the Lord. Patrick shoulders his way through the throngs, stunned to see national newscasters he recognizes by virtue of their celebrity.

  An audible buzz sweeps the line of onlookers hovering around the courthouse steps. Then a car door slams, and suddenly Nina is hurrying up the stairs with Fisher's avuncular arm around her shoulders. A cheer goes up from the waiting crowd, along with an equally loud catcall of disapproval.

  Patrick pushes closer to the steps. "Nina!" he yells. "Nina!"

  He yanks his badge out, but brandishing it doesn't get him where he needs to be. "Nina!" Patrick shouts again.

  She seems to stumble, to look around. But Fisher grabs her arm and directs her into the courthouse before Patrick has the chance to make himself heard.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Quentin Brown, and I'm an assistant attorney general for the state of Maine." He smiles at the jury. "The reason you're all here today is because on October thirtieth, 2001, this woman, Nina Frost, got up and drove with her husband to the Biddeford District Court to watch a man being arraigned. But she left her husband waiting there while she went to Moe's Gun Shop in Sanford, Maine--where she paid four hundred dollars cash for a Barretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and twelve rounds of ammunition. She tucked these in her purse, got back in her car, and returned to the courthouse."

  Quentin approaches the jury as if he has all the time in the world. "Now, you all know, from coming in here today, that you had to pass through a security-screening device. But on October thirtieth, Nina Frost didn't. Why? Because she'd worked as a prosecutor for the past seven years. She knew the bailiff posted at the screening device. She walked by him without a backward glance, and she took that gun and the bullets she'd loaded into it, into a courtroom just like this one."

  He moves toward the defense table, coming up behind Nina to point a finger at the base of her skull. "A few minutes later she put that gun up to Father Glen Szyszynski's head and fired four rounds directly into his brain, killing him."

  Quentin surveys the jury; they are all staring at the defendant now, just like he wants. "Ladies and gentlemen, the facts in this case are crystal clear. In fact, WCSH News, which was covering that morning's arraignment, caught Ms. Frost's actions on tape. So the question for you will not be if she committed this crime. We know that she did. The question will be: Why should she be allowed to get away with it?"

  He stares into the eyes of each juror in sequence. "She would like you to believe that the reason she should be held exempt from the law is because Father Szyszynski, her parish priest, had been charged with sexually molesting her five-year-old son. Yet she didn't even bother to make sure that this allegation was true. The state will show you scientifically, forensically, conclusively, that Father Szyszynski was not the man who abused her child ... and still the defendant murdered him."

  Quentin turns his back on Nina Frost. "In Maine, if a person unlawfully kills someone with premeditation, she is guilty of murder. During this trial, the state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that this is exactly what Nina Frost did. It doesn't matter if the person who is murdered was accused of a crime. It doesn't matter if the person who was murdered was murdered by mistake. If the person was murdered, period, there needs to be punishment exacted." He looks to the jury box. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where you come in."

  Fisher only has eyes for that jury. He walks toward the box and meets each man's or woman's gaze, making a personal connection before he even speaks a word. It's what used to drive me crazy about him, when I faced him in a courtroom. He has this amazing ability to become everyone's confidante, no matter if the juror is a twenty-year-old single welfare mother or an e-commerce king with a million tucked into the stock market.

  "What Mr. Brown just told you all is absolutely true. On the morning of October thirtieth, Nina Frost did buy a gun. She did drive to the courthouse. She did stand up and fire four bullets into the head of Father Szyszynski. What Mr. Brown would like you to believe is that there's nothing to this case beyond those facts ... but we don't live in a world of facts. We live in a world of feelings. And what he's left out of his version of the story is what had been going on in Nina's head and heart that would lead her to such a moment."

  Fisher walks behind me, like Quentin did while he graphically showed the jury how to sneak up on a defendant and shoot him. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and it is comforting. "For weeks, Nina Frost had been living a hell that no parent should have to live. She'd found out that her five-year-old son had been sexually abused. Worse, the police had identified the abuser as her own priest--a man she had confided in. Betrayed, heartbroken, and aching for her son, she began to lose her grasp on what was right and what was wrong. The only thing in her mind by the time she went to court that morning to see the priest arraigned was that she needed to protect her child.

  "Nina Frost, of all people, knows how the system of justice works for--and fails--children. She, of all people, understands what the rules are in an American court of law, because for the past seven years she has measured up to them on a daily basis. But on October thirtieth, ladies and gentlemen, she wasn't a prosecutor. She was just Nathaniel's mother." He comes to stand beside me. "Please listen to everything. And when you make your decision, don't make it only with your head. Make it with your heart."

  Moe Baedeker, proprietor of Moe's Gun Shop, does not know what to do with his baseball cap. The bailiffs made him take it off, but his hair is matted and messy. He puts the cap on his lap and finger-combs his hair. In doing so, he catches sight of his nails, with grease and gun blueing caught beneath the cuticles, and he quickly sticks his hands beneath his thighs. "Ayuh, I recognize her," he says, nodding at me. "She came into my store once. Walked right up to the counter and told me she wanted a semiautomatic handgun."

  "Had you ever seen her before?"

  "Nope."

  "Did she look around the store at all?" Quentin asks.

  "Nope. She was waiting in the parking lot when I opened, and then she came right up to the counter." He shrugs. "I did an instant background check on her, and when she came out clean, I sold her what she wanted."

  "Did she ask for any bullets?"

  "Twelve rounds."

  "Did you show the defendant how to use the gun?"

  Moe shakes his head. "She told me she knew how."

  His testimony breaks over me like a wave. I can remember the smell of that little shop, the raw wood on the walls, and the pictures of Rugers and Glocks behind the counter. The way the cash register was old-fashioned and actually made a ching sound. He gave me my change in new twenty-dollar bills, holding each one up to the light and pointing out how you could tell whether they were counterfeit or not.

  By the time I focus again, Fisher is doing the cross-exam. "What did she do while you were running the background check?"

  "She kept looking at her watch. Pacing, like."

  "Was there anyone else in the store?"

  "Nope."

  "Did she tell you why she needed a gun?"

  "Ain't my place to ask," Moe says.

  One of the twenties he'd given me had been written on, a man's signature. "I did that once," Moe told me that morning. "And, swear to God, got the same bill back six years later." He'd handed me my gun, hot in my hand. "What goes around comes around," he'd said, and at the time, I was too self-absorbed to heed this as the warning it was.

  The cameraman had been filming for WCSH and was set up in the corner, acco
rding to Quentin Brown's diagram of the Biddeford courtroom. As the videotape is slipped into a TV/VCR, I keep my eyes on the jury. I want to watch them watching me.

  Once, maybe, I saw this segment. But it was months ago, when I believed I had done the right thing. The familiar voice of the judge draws my attention, and then I cannot help but stare at this small screen.

  My hands shake when I hold up the gun. My eyes are wide and wild. But my motion is smooth and beautiful, a ballet. As I press the gun to the priest's head my own tilts backward, and for one stunning moment my face is split into masques of comedy and tragedy--half grief, half relief.

  The shot is so loud that even on tape, it makes me jump in my seat.

  Shouts. A cry. The cameraman's voice, saying, "Holy fucking shit!" Then the camera tilts on its axis and there are my feet, flying over the bar, and the thud of the bailiffs' bodies pinning me, and Patrick.

  "Fisher," I whisper. "I'm going to be sick."

  The viewpoint shifts again, spinning to rest on its side on the floor. The priest's head lies in a spreading pool of blood. Half of it is missing, and the spots and flecks on the film suggest the spray of brain matter on the camera lens. One eye stares dully at me from the screen. "Did I get him?" My own voice. "Is he dead?"

  "Fisher ..." The room revolves.

  I feel him stand up beside me. "Your Honor, if I could request a short recess ..."

  But there isn't time for that. I jump out of my seat and stumble through the gate at the bar, flying down the aisle of the courtroom with two bailiffs in pursuit. I make it through the double doors, then fall to my knees and vomit repeatedly, until the only thing left in my stomach is guilt.

  "Frost Heaves," I say minutes later, when I have cleaned myself up and Fisher has whisked me to a private conference room away from the eyes of the press. "That'll be tomorrow's headline."

  He steeples his fingers. "You know, I've got to tell you, that was good. Amazing, really."

  I glance at him. "You think I threw up on purpose?"

  "Didn't you?"

  "My God." Turning away, I stare out the window. If anything, the crowd outside has grown. "Fisher, did you see that tape? How could any juror acquit me after that?"

  Fisher is quiet for a moment. "Nina, what were you thinking when you were watching it?"

  "Thinking? Who had time to think, with all the visual cues? I mean, that's an unbelievable amount of blood. And the brains--"

  "What were you thinking about yourself?"

  I shake my head, close my eyes, but there are no words for what I've done.

  Fisher pats my arm. "That," he says, "is why they'll acquit you."

  In the lobby, where he is sequestered as an upcoming witness, Patrick tries to keep his mind off Nina and her trial. He's done a crossword puzzle in a paper left on the seat beside him; he's had enough cups of coffee to raise his pulse a few notches; he's talked to other cops coming in and out. But it's all pointless; Nina runs through his blood.

  When she staggered from the courtroom, her hand clapped over her mouth, Patrick had risen out of his chair. He was already halfway across the lobby, trying to make sure she was all right, when Caleb burst out of the double doors on the heels of the bailiffs.

  So Patrick sat back down.

  On his hip, his beeper begins to vibrate. Patrick pulls it off his belt and glances at the number on the screen. Finally, he thinks, and he goes to find a pay phone.

  When it is time for lunch, Caleb gets sandwiches from a nearby deli and brings them back to the conference room where I am ensconced. "I can't eat," I say, as he hands me one wrapped sub. I expect him to tell me that I have to, but instead Caleb just shrugs and lets the sandwich sit in front of me. From the corner of my eye I watch him chew his food in silence. He has already conceded this war; he no longer even cares enough to fight me.

  There is a rattle of the locked door, followed by an insistent banging. Caleb scowls, then gets up to tell whoever it is to go away. But when he opens it a crack, Patrick is standing on the other side. The door falls open, and the two men stand uneasily facing each other, a seam of energy crackling between them that keeps them from getting too close.

  I realize at that moment that although I have many photographs of Patrick and many photographs of Caleb, I haven't got a single one of all three of us--as if, in that combination, it is impossible to fit so much emotion in the frame of the camera.

  "Nina," he says, coming inside. "I have to talk to you."

  Not now, I think, going cold. Surely Patrick has enough sense to not bring up what happened in front of my husband. Or maybe that is exactly what he wants to do.

  "Father Gwynne's dead." Patrick hands me a faxed Nexus article. "I got a call from the Belle Chasse police chief. I got tired of working on Southern time a few days ago, and I put a little pressure on the authorities ... anyway, it seems that by the time they went to arrest him, he'd died."

  My face is frozen. "Who did it?" I whisper.

  "No one. It was a stroke."

  Patrick keeps talking, his words falling like hailstones onto the paper I'm trying to read. "... took the damn chief two whole days to get around to calling me ..."

  Father Gwynne, a beloved local chaplain, was found dead in his living quarters by his housekeeper.

  "... apparently, he had a family history of cardiovascular disease ..."

  "He looked so peaceful, you know, in his easy chair," said Margaret Mary Seurat, who had worked for the priest for the past five years. "Like he'd just fallen asleep after finishing his cup of cocoa."

  "... and get this: They said his cat died of a broken heart ..."

  In a strange, connected twist, Gwynne's cherished pet, a cat well known to his parishioners, died shortly after authorities arrived. To those who knew the Father, this was no surprise: "She loved him too much," Seurat suggested. "We all did."

  "It's over, Nina."

  Archbishop Schulte will lead a funeral Mass at Our Lady of Mercy, Wednesday morning at 9:00 A.M.

  "He's dead." I test the truth on my tongue. "He's dead." Maybe there is a God, then; maybe there are cosmic wheels of justice. Maybe this is what retribution is supposed to feel like. "Caleb," I say, turning. Everything else passes between us without a single word: that Nathaniel is safe, now; that there will be no sexual abuse trial for him to testify at; that the villain in this drama will never hurt someone else's little boy; that after my verdict, this nightmare will truly be finished.

  His face has gone just as white as mine. "I heard."

  In the middle of this tiny conference room, with two hours of damning testimony behind me, I feel an unmitigated joy. And in that instant it does not matter what has been missing between Caleb and myself. Much more important is this triumph of news, and it's something to share. I throw my arms around my husband.

  Who does not embrace me in return.

  Heat floods my cheeks. When I manage to lift my gaze with some shred of dignity, Caleb is staring at Patrick, who has turned his back. "Well," Patrick says, without looking at me. "I thought you'd want to know."

  Bailiffs are human fire hydrants: They're placed in the court in case of an emergency but fade into the landscape otherwise and are rarely put to practical use. Like most bailiffs of my acquaintance, Bobby Ianucci isn't too athletic or too bright. And like most bailiffs, Bobby understands he is lower on the feeding chain than the attorneys in the courtroom--which accounts for his absolute intimidation at the hands of Quentin Brown.

  "Who was in the courtroom when you brought Father Szyszynski in from the holding cell?" the prosecutor asks, a few minutes into the testimony.

  Bobby has to think about this, and the effort is visible on his doughy face. "Uh, well, the judge, yeah. On the bench. And there was a clerk, and a stenographer, and the dead guy's lawyer, whose name I don't remember. And a DA from Portland."

  "Where were Mr. and Mrs. Frost sitting?" Quentin asks.

  "In the front row with Detective Ducharme."

  "What happened n
ext?"

  Bobby straightens his shoulders. "Me and Roanoke, that's the other bailiff, we walked the Father across the room to his lawyer. Then, you know, I stepped back, because he had to sit down, so I stood behind him." He takes a deep breath. "And then ..."

  "Yes, Mr. Ianucci?"

  "Well, I don't know where she came from. I don't know how she did it. But the next thing, there's gunshots being fired and blood all over the place, and Father Szyszynski's falling out of his chair."

  "What happened after that?"

  "I tackled her. And so did Roanoke, and a couple of other guys posted at the back of the courtroom, and Detective Ducharme, too. She dropped the gun and I grabbed it, and then Detective Ducharme, he hauled her up and took her off to the holding cell in cuffs."

  "Did you get shot, Mr. Ianucci?"

  Bobby shakes his head, lost in his memories. "No. But if I'd been, like, five inches to the right, she could have hit me."

  "So would you say the defendant was very careful with how she aimed that weapon at Father Szyszynksi?"

  Fisher stands beside me. "Objection."

  "Sustained," Judge Neal rules.

  The prosecutor shrugs. "Withdrawn. Your witness."

  As he returns to his seat, Fisher approaches the bailiff. "Did you talk to Nina Frost the morning before the shooting?"

  "No."

  "In fact, you were busy doing your job--maintaining the security of the courthouse, and dealing with prisoners--so you had no need to watch Mrs. Frost, did you?"

  "No."

  "Did you see her pull the gun out?"

  "No."

  "You said several bailiffs immediately jumped on her. Did you have to fight Mrs. Frost for the gun?"

  "No."

  "And she didn't struggle with any of you when you tried to subdue her?"

  "She was trying to see around us. She kept asking if he was dead."

  Fisher dismisses this with a shrug. "But she wasn't trying to get away from you. She wasn't trying to hurt you."

  "Oh, no."

  Fisher lets that answer hang for a moment. "You knew Mrs. Frost before this, didn't you, Mr. Ianucci?"

  "Sure."

  "What was your relationship with her like?"

  Bobby glances at me; then his eyes skitter away. "Well, she's a DA. She comes in all the time." He pauses, then adds. "She's one of the nice ones."