The Pact

by Jodi Picoult

  Chris's Jeep left at six-fifteen. Emily watched the headlights disappear down Wood Hollow Road until she could not see them anymore. She imagined where Chris would be taking Donna DeFelice on a Friday night. She did not have to imagine what they would be doing.

  Disgusted with herself, she sat down at her desk and tried to concentrate on the English paper she had to write by Monday. But she only got as far as sliding the paper clip from the pages she'd drafted. She stared down at the words, reading none of them, and bent the clip back and forth, letting friction work up a heat until it broke apart.

  At eleven, when Chris was still not home, Emily's mother knocked on the door and let herself in. "How are you feeling, honey?" she asked, sitting down beside Emily on the bed.

  Emily turned toward the wall. "Not good," she said thickly.

  "We can go to the doctor in the morning," Melanie offered.

  "No ... it's not that. I'm all right. I just ... I just want to stay up here for a while."

  "And does this have to do with Chris?"

  Amazed, Emily whipped around to face her mother. "Who told you?"

  Melanie laughed. "It doesn't take a graduate degree to figure out that you two haven't called each other all week."

  Emily ran a hand through her hair. "We had a fight," she admitted.

  "And?"

  And what? She certainly wasn't going to tell her mother what they'd been fighting about. "And I think I made him mad enough for him to stay away." She took a deep breath. "Mom," she said, "what do I do to bring him back?"

  Melanie looked stunned. "You don't have to do anything. He'll come around."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because you're two halves of a whole," Melanie said, then kissed her daughter's forehead and left the room.

  Emily glanced down at a sharp pain in her forearm to find that she was still holding the jagged edge of the paper clip. Curiously she drew it over her skin, scratching the surface. The red line grew brighter when she traced a second time, and a third. She dug deeper and deeper until she was bleeding, until Chris's initials were carved hard enough into her arm to leave a scar.

  CHRIS'S JEEP GOT HOME shortly after one in the morning. Emily watched him from her bedroom window; he turned on light after light as he worked his way through the kitchen and up the stairs. By the time he entered his own room and started to get ready for bed, Emily had thrown a sweatshirt over her nightgown and stuffed her bare feet into sneakers.

  The ground, considerably softened by the recent weather, was damp and soft, and pine needles that had been sleeping beneath snow squelched under her feet. Chris's window was directly over the kitchen. It had been years since she'd done it, but Emily picked up a thin twig and tossed it at the panes of glass. It landed with a light snap, and bounced back toward her. She picked it up from between her feet and threw it again.

  This time, a table lamp flared on and Chris's face appeared at the window. Seeing Emily, he opened the sash and stuck his head out. "What are you doing?" he hissed. "Stay there."

  Seconds later, he eased open the kitchen door. "What?" he demanded.

  There was much she had imagined in this reunion, but anger had never been part of it. Remorse, maybe. Joy, acceptance. Certainly not the look that was on Chris's face right now. "I came to ask," she said, her voice trembling, "if you had a nice time on your date."

  Chris swore and rubbed a hand down his face. "I don't need this. I can't do this right now." He turned on his heel and started back into the house.

  "Wait!" Emily cried. Her words were thick with tears, but she lifted her chin and crossed her arms tight over her chest to keep from shaking. "I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I'm pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend." She swallowed and looked at the black ground. "The thing is, they're both you."

  "Emily," Chris whispered, and pulled her close.

  She tried not to think of the unfamiliar scent of him, something perfumed mixed with something else lush and ripe. Instead Emily concentrated on the way it felt to be next to Chris again. Two halves of a whole.

  He kissed her forehead, her eyelids. She buried her face against his shirt. "I can't stand it," she said, and she was not certain what she was talking about.

  Suddenly Chris grasped her wrist. "Jesus," he said. "You're bleeding."

  "I know. I cut myself."

  "On what?"

  Emily shook her head. "It's nothing," she said. But she let Chris lead her into the kitchen and sit her down while he retrieved a Band-Aid. If he noticed that his own initials were on her arm, he was wise enough to keep silent. She closed her eyes while he touched her with all the care in the world, and she started to heal.

  NOW

  December 1997

  Chris had thirty-five square feet to himself.

  His cell was painted a strange shade of gray that sucked up all the light. The bottom bunk had a pillow and plastic mattress, and the blanket he'd been given. Beside it was a toilet and sink. His cell was sandwiched between two others, like a tight row of teeth. When the barred doors of the cell were open--most of the day, except for mealtimes--Chris could stand on the narrow walk that ran the length of the pod. At one end was a shower and a phone, where he could make collect calls. At the other end was a television, strategically placed on the free side of the bars.

  Chris learned a great deal his first day, without ever asking for information. He discovered that from the moment you entered jail, your slate was wiped clean. Where you wound up--from the security level to the position of your bunk--was not determined by your charged offense or behavior prior to incarceration, but by the way you acted once you got there. The good news was that the classification board met every Tuesday, and you could petition for a change of locale. The bad news was that today was Thursday.

  Chris decided that he would simply go for a week without speaking to anyone. Then, next Tuesday, he'd surely be moved out of the maximum security section, into medium security.

  He'd heard that upstairs, the walls were yellow.

  He'd just finished a meal, served in his locked cell on an insulated plastic tray, when two inmates came to the door. "Hey," one said, the man he'd spoken to yesterday. "What's your name?"

  "Chris," he said. "You?"

  "Hector. And that's Damon." The unfamiliar man with long greasy hair nodded at Chris. "You never did tell me what you're in here for," Hector said.

  "They think I murdered my girlfriend," Chris muttered.

  Hector and Damon exchanged a look. "No shit?" Damon said. "I had you pegged for a narc."

  Hector scratched his back against the bars. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, with rubber thongs. "What'd you use?" Chris stared at him blankly. "Knife, gun, you know."

  Chris tried to push past them. "I don't want to talk about it," he said. He broad-shouldered Damon, only to feel the larger man's hand on his shoulder. He glanced down to find a makeshift knife in Hector's hand, a razor blade pressed against Chris's ribs. "Maybe I do," Hector said.

  Chris swallowed and backed off. Hector slipped the knife inside his shirt. "Look," Chris said carefully. "Why don't we try acting rationally?"

  "Rationally," Damon said. "There's a five-dollar word."

  Hector snorted. "You sound like a fancy-ass college boy," he said. "You from the college?"

  "I'm in high school," Chris said.

  At that, Hector crowed. "Actually, college boy, you're in jail." He rapped his hand against the bars. "Hey," he yelled out. "We got us a genius down here." He cocked one foot up against the lower bunk. "Tell me this, college boy. If you're so smart, how come you got caught?"

  Chris was saved from answering by an officer walking down the length of the barred catwalk. "Anyone want to go to the exercise room?"

  He stood up. Hector and Damon also started toward the door at the end of the pod. Damon turned around and whispered, "We're not done, man."

  They filed through a corridor dotted with cameras.
A few men called out to each other; this was the only time each day they had contact. As they went around the corner, Chris noticed Damon slipping behind, person by person, until he could jab a well-aimed elbow into the back of another inmate at a certain turn of the hall. It was, Chris realized, the blind spot between two cameras.

  Just before the exercise room were two isolation cells. You could wind up in isolation two ways--by force, because you were acting out; or by request, because you were scared of the other inmates. Only one was occupied now. The prisoners started to holler, pounding on the door, one even leaning down to spit in the slotted opening.

  The exercise room was small and sparsely furnished, with only a handful of equipment. But it filled like everything else in jail, by prearrangement. There was no waiting and no fight as two large black men claimed the stationary bicycles; as Hector and Damon picked up the table tennis paddles; as a tall guy with a swastika tattoo on his cheek began to bench press. There was a pecking order, Chris realized, that he was not privy to. But then again, why should he be? He did not fit in.

  Frowning, he walked out to the exercise courtyard, a muddy square heavily ringed with barbed wire. Men were talking in small groups, gesturing with their hands. Others moved aimlessly, counterclockwise. Chris found someone leaning against the chain-link fence, staring at the mountains in the distance. "That guy in the isolation room," he said without preamble. "What did he do?"

  The man shrugged. "Shook his baby to death. Frigging animal."

  Chris looked over the barbed wire, and thought of honor among thieves.

  HE CALLED HOME COLLECT. "Chris?"

  "Mom," he said, just that word, over and over, with his head leaning against the blue pay phone.

  "Oh, honey. I tried to come to see you, did they tell you?"

  Chris closed his eyes. "No," he said tightly.

  "Well, I did. But they said visiting hours aren't until Saturday. So I'll be there first thing." She took a deep breath. "This is a horrible mistake, you know. Jordan's already got the prosecution's files. He's going to find a way to get you out as quickly as possible."

  "When is he coming to see me?"

  "I'll call him and ask," his mother said. "Are you eating all right? Can I bring you anything?"

  He thought about that, unsure what was allowed in. "Money," he said.

  "Hang on, Chris. Your father wants to talk to you."

  "I ... no. I've got to go. Someone needs the phone," he lied.

  "Oh ... all right. You call here whenever you want, do you understand? We don't care about your reversing the charges."

  "Okay, Mom."

  Suddenly there was a tinny, recorded voice: "This call," it announced, "is being made from the county correctional facility." Both Chris and his mother were silent for a moment. "I love you, sweetheart," Gus finally said.

  Chris swallowed, and slipped the receiver back into the cradle. He stayed there for a moment, leaning his head against the pay phone, until he felt the hard press of a body behind him.

  Damon was rubbing his spine, his breath on Chris's neck. "You miss your mama, professor?" He pushed his hips forward, his groin coming in contact with Chris's behind.

  Wasn't this what he had been expecting? Wasn't this what he had been afraid of? Chris whirled around, catching the bigger man by surprise. "Get away from me," he said, his eyes glittering, and he backed into his cell.

  Even with the covers over his head, he heard Damon laughing.

  CHRIS THANKED GOD FOR his lack of a cellmate. He lived in fear of suddenly having Damon thrown into his bunk, because although the officers were fairly good about keeping control during the day, who knew what they bothered to hear at night? He picked up the story lines on Days of Our Lives. He went to an AA meeting on Wednesday night, just to get out of the pod.

  He filled out a commissary order, which reminded him of the room service breakfast sheet at the hotel in Canada his family had visited last summer. An eight-ounce jar of coffee was $5.25; a Three Musketeers bar was sixty cents. Thongs were $2. His items were delivered to him that afternoon by an officer, and the total amount was deducted from his prison account.

  He slept a lot, pretending even when he wasn't tired so that people would leave him alone. And when clusters of men gathered in the exercise yard, Chris was always standing by himself.

  A LONG TIME AGO, Jordan had stopped believing in the truth.

  There was no truth, at least not in his profession. There were versions. And a trial was not based on truth, anyway, but on what the police had, and how you could respond to it. A good criminal defense lawyer did not think about the truth, and focused instead on what a jury was going to hear.

  Years earlier, Jordan had stopped asking his clients for the real story. Now he went in with a blank face, and simply said, "What happened?"

  He was standing at the control area of the maximum security unit, waiting for the officer in charge to slide the clipboard out so that he could sign in as a visitor. For his first post-arraignment interview with Chris, he'd brought along Selena Damascus, a six-foot-one black female private investigator who seemed better suited to fashion runways than doing Jordan's legwork, but who had been doing a damn good job all the same for several years.

  "Where are they keeping him?" Selena asked.

  "Maximum," Jordan answered. "He's only been here two days."

  A heavy barred door closed somewhere upstairs, and a uniformed prison officer came down. "Hey, Bill," the officer at the control station said. "Tell Harte his lawyer's here."

  Another gated door snapped open--no matter how many times Jordan heard it, he just couldn't get used to the sound, which was rather like a gunshot--and he walked in, getting only the slightest glimpse of the inmates before he turned left toward the conference room used for client visitation.

  Selena moved behind him, a shadow, and took a seat beside him at the conference table. She tipped her chair back and stared at the ceiling. "Damn ugly jail," she said. "I think that every time I'm here."

  "Mmm," Jordan agreed. "The decor certainly isn't the reason it's so popular."

  The door swung open and Chris entered the room, his eyes moving from Jordan to Selena. "Chris," Jordan said, standing up. "This is Selena Damascus. She's a private investigator who'll be helping with your case."

  "Look," Chris said without preamble, "I have to get out of here."

  Jordan took out a stack of papers from his briefcase. "In the best-case scenario, Chris, that's exactly what's going to happen."

  "No, you don't understand. I need to get out of here now."

  Something in the boy's tone made Jordan look up. Gone was the frightened boy who'd been on the verge of tears in the Bainbridge police lockup, and in its place was someone harder, stronger, and capable of hiding his terrors.

  "What, exactly, is the problem?"

  At that, Chris exploded. "What's the problem? What's the problem? I'm sitting on my ass in a jail cell, that's all. I'm supposed to graduate this year. I'm supposed to go to college. But instead I'm locked in a cage with a bunch of ... of criminals!"

  Jordan did not blink an eye. "It's unfortunate that the judge didn't grant you bail. And you're right--it means you're stuck in jail until the trial, which could be six to nine months. But it's not wasted time. Every minute you're sitting in that cell, I'm coming up with a stronger case to get you free."

  He leaned forward, hardening his voice. "Let's get something straight," Jordan said. "I'm not the enemy here. I'm not the reason you wound up in jail. I'm the lawyer, and you're the client. Period. And you've been indicted on a charge of first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence of imprisonment. What that means, Chris, is that your life is literally in my hands. Whether you spend it in prison or at Harvard comes down to whether or not I can get you off." He stood up and walked behind Selena. "And that depends on the amount of cooperation I get from you.

  "Whatever you tell me and Selena does not leave this room. I'm in control of what you say, and who you say it
to. And I need to know what I need to know when I need to know it. Understood?"

  "Understood," Chris said, meeting his gaze.

  "All right. Let me explain where we stand. I'm going to make a lot of the decisions in this case, after I consult with you--but there are three things that only you can decide. The first is whether or not to accept a plea bargain or go to trial. The second is, if you do go to trial, whether you want that trial held in front of a judge only, or a jury as well. Finally, if there is a trial, whether or not you want to take the stand. I'll give you as much information as possible to make informed decisions, but you'll have to make your choices as we prepare. You following me?"

  Chris nodded.

  "Okay. Next. I'm going to be getting the discovery from the attorney general's office fairly soon. After I do, I'll come back here and we'll review it together in detail."

  "When is that going to be?"

  "In about two weeks," Jordan said. "Then in five weeks or so, there'll be a preliminary pretrial conference." He raised his brows. "Before we start, do you have any other questions?"

  "Yeah. Can I see Dr. Feinstein?"

  Jordan narrowed his eyes slightly. "I don't think it's a good idea."

  Chris's mouth dropped open. "He's a psychiatrist."

  "He's also someone who could be subpoenaed. The doctor-patient confidentiality relationship isn't always inviolable, especially when you throw in a charge of murder. Having you speak to anyone about the crime could come back to haunt us. Which reminds me--don't say a thing to anyone in the jail."

  Chris snorted. "Like I've made so many friends here."

  Jordan pretended not to hear him. "There are guys in here for drug cases, up for seven-year sentences. But if they can get any information on you and plead it up, they will. The cops might even put a narc in with you for that very purpose."

  "What if Dr. Feinstein and I don't talk about what ... happened?"

  "What are you going to talk about, then?"

  "Stuff," Chris said softly.

  Jordan leaned against the table, next to Chris. "If you need someone to confide in," he said, "that person will be me." He began walking back to his seat. "Any other questions?"