by Jodi Picoult
Chris ate, brushed his teeth with the toothbrush he'd gotten in the booking room the night before, and picked up the disposable razor an officer had put in his cell. Unsure of himself, he walked out of the cell and down the catwalk to the shower stall and sink.
Chris shaved while he waited for the other man to finish showering, squinting into a mirror that offered as clear a reflection as tinfoil. When the other man stepped out, Chris nodded and went inside.
He drew closed the curtain but just past the edge he could see the black-eyed man soaping his face in front of the sink, towel slung around his waist while he shaved around his goatee. Chris undressed and hung his clothes over the curtain rod. Then he turned on the water and lathered himself with the soap, closing his eyes and trying to make believe he'd just swum an in-fucking-credible four-hundred-meter butterfly, and was getting ready to go home after the meet.
"What are you in for?"
Chris blinked water out of his eyes. "Excuse me?" he said.
Through the crack between the shower curtain and the wall, Chris saw the man leaning against the sink. "How come you're here?"
Wet, his hair reached almost to his shoulders. That was the way Chris could tell the prisoners from the detainees awaiting arraignment--those serving sentences had their hair cut military-short. Like his already was. "I shouldn't be here," Chris said. "It's a mistake."
The man laughed. "Says you and everyone else. For a prison, there are a heck of a lot of people in here who didn't do jackshit."
Chris turned away and soaped up his chest.
"Just 'cause you can't see me don't mean I gone away," the man said.
Shaking water out of his hair, Chris turned off the shower faucet. "What did you do?"
"Cut off my old lady's head," the man said dispassionately.
Suddenly Chris felt his knees give out. He did not think he could stay upright, so he leaned against the plastic wall of the shower. He was not standing beside a felon in a county jail. He was not going to be charged with murder. He blindly wrapped his towel around his waist, grabbed his clothes, and stumbled back to his cell, where he sat down on the bunk and tucked his head between his knees so he wouldn't throw up.
He wanted to go home.
An officer walked to his cell to retrieve the razor he had been given. "Your lawyer's here," he said. "He's brought clothes for you. Get dressed and we'll bring you upstairs to change."
Chris nodded, expecting him to stand by and watch him change again, but the officer left. The doors of the cells were open. The man who'd decapitated his wife was watching the Today show at the end of the catwalk.
"I'm, um ... ready," he said to a different officer, who escorted him to the door that led out of the pod.
"Good luck," the black-eyed man called out, eyes still on the TV show.
Chris paused, looked over his shoulder. "Thanks," he said softly.
THE CLOTHES WERE WAITING for him in the booking room. Chris recognized the Brooks Brothers blazer he'd bought with his mother down in Boston. They had gone shopping specifically for an outfit he could wear on college interviews.
Instead, he was wearing it to his arraignment.
He dressed in the white button-down shirt and gray flannel trousers, the buttery loafers. He slid the tie through the collar of the shirt and tried to knot it, but couldn't get it right. He was used to watching himself do it in front of a mirror, and there wasn't one in the booking room.
He settled for the back tail of the tie hanging a fraction lower than the front.
Then he shrugged into his blazer and walked toward the officer who was waiting, doing some paperwork. They walked in silence to a room Chris hadn't seen before, and the officer opened the door.
Jordan McAfee was waiting in the interview room. "Thanks," he said to the officer, motioning for Chris to sit across from him at the table. He waited until the door closed behind the officer. "Morning," he said. "How was your night?"
He knew damn well how it had been; any idiot could look at the circles beneath Chris's eyes and realize he hadn't slept at all. But Jordan waited to see what his client would say. It would go a long way toward indicating how much fortitude he could expect from Chris for the remainder of the long haul.
"It was okay," Chris said, unblinking.
Jordan stifled a smile. "You remember what I told you about today?"
Chris nodded. "Where are my mom and dad?"
"Over at the courthouse, waiting."
"My mom brought you the clothes?"
"Yes," Jordan said. "Nice outfit. Very preppy, very classy. It will help set your image for the judge."
"I have an image?" Chris asked.
Jordan waved his hand. "Yeah. White, upper middle class, student athlete, rah-rah good ol' boy." He locked his gaze on Chris. "As opposed to lowlife scum murderer." He tapped his pencil on the legal pad in front of him, on which he'd written nonsense. The thing about arraignments was that as a defense attorney you went in cold, like a cat ready to land on the balls of its feet no matter how it was thrown. You had the charge that had been leveled against a client, but you had no idea what the prosecutor was thinking until you got your hands on the files after the arraignment. "Follow my lead today. If I need you to do something, I'll write it on the pad. But this is going to be pretty straightforward."
"Okay," Chris said. He stood up, shaking his legs as if he were getting ready to step up to the block before a race. "So let's go," he said.
Jordan glanced up, surprised that he hadn't expected this. "You can't walk over to the courthouse with me," he said. "The sheriff will bring you over."
"Oh," Chris said, sinking back into his chair.
"I'll be there, waiting," Jordan hastened to add. "So will your parents."
"Right," Chris said.
Jordan slid the legal pad back into his briefcase. He looked at Chris, frowned at his tie. "Come here," he said, and when Chris stood he snugged the tie so that it lay correctly.
"I couldn't do it right," Chris said. "No mirror."
Jordan did not say anything. He clapped Chris on the shoulder and nodded at his overall appearance. Then he walked out of the room, leaving Chris to stare at the open door, the hall that led outside the jail, and the guard who stood between the two.
IT WAS FELONY DAY at the Grafton County Courthouse.
In a state as rural as New Hampshire, serious crimes were committed fairly infrequently, so the felony arraignments were gathered into bunches every few weeks. More interesting than petty infractions, the proceedings were attended by local reporters, court groupies, law students.
Even so, the Hartes were sitting in the front row, behind the defense table. They'd arrived at the courthouse shortly after six in the morning, just in case, Gus had said. Gus's hands were clenched so tightly in her lap that she did not know if she'd ever be able to untangle them. James sat beside her, staring at the judge. She was a grandmotherly, middle-aged woman with a bad perm. Surely, Gus thought, someone who looked like that would take one look at a child like Chris and would stop this debacle from going any further.
Gus leaned toward Jordan McAfee, who was arranging documents on his lap. "When is he going to be brought in?" she asked.
"Any minute," Jordan said.
James turned to the man beside him. "Is that the Times?" he asked. When the man offered the discarded paper, James grinned and thanked him.
Gus stared at her husband, stunned. "You can read?" she said. "At a time like this?"
James meticulously creased the first section. He ran over the crease with his thumbnail, then did it again. "If I don't," he said evenly, "I will go crazy." He began to scan the front page.
There were other women in here like her, Gus knew; women who might not have been wearing a designer suit or diamond studs like hers but who had a son who was going to be brought to that table like Chris was, accused of something too horrible to imagine. Some of those children had actually committed the crimes. In this, she supposed, she was lucky.
She could not imagine what it was like for those mothers, whose sons had intentionally set fire to houses or stabbed enemies or raped young women. She could not fathom what it was like to know that you'd grown someone within your body capable of these atrocities; to know that if you hadn't given birth, this small measure of evil in the world might not have come to pass.
At the sound of heels clicking down the aisle, Gus turned her head. Melanie and Michael Gold slid into the seats across from Gus. Melanie glanced at Gus blankly and Gus felt her chest constrict. She had expected disdain; she had not realized that indifference could cut more deeply.
A bailiff opened a door at the right rear of the courtroom and led in Chris. His hands were cuffed in front of him, attached to a waist chain. He kept his eyes lowered. Jordan immediately rose and stepped up to the defense table, helping Chris into the chair beside him.
The assistant attorney general was a young woman with short black hair and a nervous walk. Her voice irritated Gus. It was low and gravelly; it reminded her of the rasp a cinnamon stick made when you drew it over a grater. Judge Hawkins pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "What's next?" she asked.
The clerk read: "The State of New Hampshire v. Christopher Harte. Grand Jury 5327 handed down an indictment on November seventeenth, 1997, on a count of murder in the first degree. Christopher Harte is charged with willfully, knowingly, and deliberately shooting Emily Gold in the head and intentionally causing her death."
The handcuffs rattled as Chris swayed. Hearing the words out loud, and his name linked to them, he felt a horrible, bubbling urge to laugh again, like he had at Em's memorial service. He thought of Dr. Feinstein telling him how close together certain strong emotions were, and he wondered what might be the flip side of panic.
There was a harsh laugh from the gallery, and for a moment Chris thought he'd actually done it--let it fly loose past his clenched teeth. But when his head whipped around, like everyone else's, he saw Emily's mother still snickering.
The judge was staring at Chris. "Mr. Harte, how do you plead?"
Chris looked at Jordan, who nodded. "Not guilty," he said, his voice thin.
Behind him, Melanie Gold snorted. "Not guilty of what?"
The judge narrowed her eyes at Melanie. "Ma'am," she said, "I must ask you to remain quiet."
During the reprimand, Gus did not look at Melanie. Her head had bowed farther and farther toward her lap during the reading of the indictment. Murder in the first degree was the stuff of courtroom novels, of TV movies. It did not happen in real life. It did not happen in her life.
"Does the state wish to be heard on bail?"
The assistant attorney general stood. "Your Honor," Barrie Delaney said, "given the severity of the charge we request that the defendant be held without bail."
Jordan McAfee was arguing before she even finished. "Your Honor, that's ludicrous. My client's a good student, a respected athlete. His family is well-established in the community. He has few resources of his own; he poses no flight risk."
"How come," Melanie called, "he should get to go free? My daughter can't."
The judge rapped her gavel. "Bailiff, escort this woman from the court."
Gus listened to the click of Melanie's heels the entire way out.
"Your Honor," said the prosecutor, as if the interruption had never occurred, "given the sentence accompanying a charge of murder in the first degree, there is certainly a flight risk."
"Your Honor," Jordan retorted, "the prosecution is wrongly assuming there will be a conviction."
"All right, all right." The judge pressed her hands to her temples and closed her eyes. "Counsel, save it for the trial. We're talking about murder in the first degree; the defendant will be held without bail." Gus drew in a breath, but could not get enough air. She felt James's hand steal into her lap and grasp hers tightly.
A bailiff walked toward Chris to lead him from the courtroom. "Wait," Chris said, looking back over his shoulder. He looked at his mother, at his lawyer. "Where am I going now?"
Chris began shaking all over. The handcuffs were cutting into his wrists and the waist chain sang with every step he took. He found himself back in the holding cell at the sheriffs office in the county court, a deputy locking the door behind him. "Excuse me," Chris said, summoning all his strength to call back the man who was already retreating. "Where do I go now?"
"Back," the deputy said.
"To court?"
The man shook his head. "To jail."
IN A SMALL CAFETERIA at the county courthouse, Gus rounded on Jordan McAfee. "You didn't even say anything," she hotly accused. "You didn't even try to keep him out of jail!"
Jordan held his hands out in front of him, placating. "That was a standard arraignment for a charge of that nature; there was very little I could do. A conviction of first-degree murder carries with it a sentence of life imprisonment. The AG figured that's enough reason for Chris to skip town. Or for you to help him do that." He hesitated for a second. "It has nothing to do with Chris. It's just that judges don't grant bail to accused murderers."
Gus, white-faced, fell silent. James sat forward, hands clasped. "There must be someone we can call," he said. "Strings we can pull. Surely this isn't fair--to be innocent, but kept in jail until the trial."
"First of all," Jordan said, "it's the way the legal system works. Second of all, it's in Chris's best interests to have several months pending trial."
"Months?" Gus whispered.
"Yes, months," Jordan answered, unblinking. "I'm not about to motion for a faster trial--the time he waits to come up on the docket is the same amount of time I have to come up with a defense."
"My son," Gus said, "is going to live for months with criminals?"
"He'll be housed in general population at the jail, and I'm sure with his conduct he'll be promoted to medium security. He's not mixed in with convicts serving out sentences, just with other people awaiting their own trials."
"Oh," Gus spat. "You mean like the man who raped the twelve-year-old, or the guy who shot the gas station owner during the robbery, or any of the other good citizens who were arraigned this morning."
"Gus," Jordan said calmly, "any of those men could be just as wrongly accused as you believe your son to be."
"Come off it!" Gus said, standing up so abruptly she knocked over her chair. "Look at them. Just look at them compared to Chris."
Jordan had defended his share of well-to-do clients, all shelled in a clean-cut persona and guilty as sin inside. He thought of the Preppy Murderer, of the Menendez brothers, of John Du Pont--all rich, all presentably charming. But he said, "The time will go by more quickly than you think."
"For you," Gus said. "Not for Chris. What's this going to do to him? If he wanted to kill himself a week ago ... "
"We can move to have his psychiatrist visit him at Grafton," Jordan said.
"And what's he supposed to do about school?"
"We'll have something arranged."
He looked at James, who watched his wife from a distance, stuck behind his own wall of terror. Jordan had seen that expression before; it was not so much disinterest as apprehension, stemming from the belief that any smidgen of emotion revealed would crack the careful mask of control and leave the person in pieces. "Excuse me," James said thickly, walking out of the cafeteria.
Gus jackknifed, hugging her knees. "I've got to see him. I've got to get in to see him."
"You can do that," Jordan said. "They have weekly visiting hours." He sat back and sighed. "Look, Gus," he said, "I'm going to jump through every possible hoop to figure out what I can do to get Chris out permanently. I want you to believe that."
Gus nodded. "Okay."
"Okay," Jordan said quietly. "Why don't I walk you out?"
Gus shook her head stiffly. "I'm just going to stay here for a while," she said, rocking back and forth on the perch of her chair.
"Well. All right." Jordan stood up. "I'll give you a call the second I have some inf
ormation."
Gus nodded absently, staring at the table. Her voice, when it came, was so soft that at first Jordan thought he'd imagined it. He turned anyway to find her staring at him. "Does Chris know?"
She was asking, he realized, whether her son understood that he'd be in jail for several months. But Jordan heard the question at its simplest level: Does Chris know? And he thought that, perhaps, Chris was the only one who did.
THE BAILIFF HAD ESCORTED MELANIE to a point several feet down the hall from the courtroom door. It did not bother her that she'd been kicked out of court after making a fool of herself. She had never intended to call out; the words just burst out of her like an odd, vengeful bout of Tourette's syndrome. The first time she'd spoken, she felt something give in her chest, like the spring on an old watch that had been wound too tight. The second time, a righteousness coursed through her that felt like the few dizzy moments after childbirth, when she had felt simultaneously exhausted and powerful enough to move mountains. It had not even hurt to see Chris sitting in the courtroom. Melanie had stared at the handcuffs on his wrists, at the red spots where they'd rubbed raw his skin. Good, she had thought.
She leaned against the brick wall now, waiting for the arraignment to be over so that Michael could come out and tell her what had happened. Her eyes were closed and her head tipped back when the door to the courtroom swung open. A young man wearing a suede driving jacket approached her and stopped a few feet away. From inside his coat he withdrew a pack of Camels and held it out to her.
Melanie had not smoked since 1973. She reached for one. "Thanks," she said, smiling.
"You looked like you needed a fix."
A fix. She did. But in the more elemental sense of the word.
"I saw you in there," the man said, holding out his hand. "I'm Lou Ballard."
"Melanie Gold."
"Gold," Lou said, whistling. "You must be the victim's mother."
Melanie nodded. "Which explains why I was there."
"I'm a stringer for the Grafton County Gazette."
Melanie raised her eyebrows, inhaling deeply. "Court beat?"
"None other." He laughed. "I'm sure you've seen my stuff buried on page eighteen behind the weather map."