by Jodi Picoult
THE HARTES' HOUSE WAS DECORATED, for the most part, in the serviceable New England WASP style that included spindly Chippendale furniture, threadbare antique carpets, and paintings of stiff-lipped subjects who were not related to the family. By contrast, the kitchen--where Jordan was currently sitting--looked as if several ethnic festivals had recently collided within it. Delft tiles decorated the splashboard of the sink; Colonial ladderback chairs offset a marble-topped ice cream parlor table; a shoji screen blocked off the doorway to the dining room. Rainbow-hued Zapotec Indian place mats surrounded a German Hofbrauhaus beer stein, which held a mismatched assortment of silverware and plastic utensils. The eclectic surroundings set off Gus Harte beautifully, Jordan thought, as he watched her pour him a glass of cold water. As for James--he turned his attention to the man, hands shoved in his pockets as he stared out the window at a bird feeder--well, he probably spent his time in the rest of the house.
"There you go," Gus said, drawing up the second chair to the tiny round table. She frowned at its surface. "Do we need to move?" she asked. "There isn't much room here."
They should have moved; Jordan had brought a crate full of papers. But there was something about being in one of the more staid, conservative rooms that didn't appeal to Jordan, not when it came to discussing a case that required nearly gymnastic flexibility. "This is fine," he said, steepling his hands. He looked from Gus to James. "I came today to talk about your testimonies."
"Testimonies?"
It had been Gus's question; Jordan let his eyes touch on her face. "Yes," he said. "We're going to need you as a character witness for Chris. Who knows him better than his own mother?"
Gus nodded, her face pale. "What do I have to talk about?"
Jordan smiled sympathetically. It was quite common for people to be afraid of going up on the stand; after all, every eye in the courtroom was focused on you. "Nothing you won't have heard before, Gus," he assured her. "We'll talk about the questions I'm going to put to you before the actual testimony. Basically we'll cover Chris's character, his interests, his relationship with Emily. Whether, in your esteemed opinion, your son could ever have committed murder."
"But the attorney general--doesn't she get to ask questions too?"
"She does," Jordan said smoothly, "but we can probably figure out what they're going to be."
"What if she asks me if Chris was suicidal?" Gus blurted out. "I'd have to lie."
"If she does, I'll object. On the grounds that you're not an expert in teen suicide. So then Barrie Delaney will rephrase, and ask whether Chris ever mentioned anything to you about killing himself, to which you'll simply say no."
Jordan pivoted in his seat to address James, who was still looking out the window. "As for you, James, we're not going to use you as a character witness. What I'd like to get out of you is the possibility that Emily might have taken the gun herself. Did Emily know where the guns were kept in your household?"
"Yes," James said softly.
"And did she ever see you take one from the gun cabinet? Or Chris, for that matter?"
"I'm sure she did," James said.
"So is it possible, since you weren't there to actually see it happen, that it was Emily and not Chris who removed the Colt from the safe?"
"It's possible," James said, and Jordan broke into a smile.
"There," he said. "That's all you'll have to say."
James lifted a finger and set a stained-glass angel sun catcher swinging in the window. "Unfortunately," he said, "I won't be taking the stand."
"Excuse me?" Jordan sputtered. He'd believed, until this moment, that the Hartes would condone anything short of and possibly including bribery to get their son free. "You won't take the stand?"
James shook his head. "I can't."
"I see," Jordan said, although he didn't. "Could you tell me why?"
The cuckoo clock on the wall came obscenely to life, its small dweller slipping out like a tongue seven consecutive times. "Actually," James said, "no."
Jordan was the first to recover his voice. "You do understand that all the defense has to do to vindicate Chris is present a reasonable doubt. And that your testimony, as the owner of that gun, would almost singlehandedly do that."
"I understand," James said. "And I refuse."
"You bastard." Gus stood in front of the shoji screen, her arms crossed. "You selfish, rotten bastard." She walked up to her husband, so close her anger stirred the strands of his hair. "Tell him why you won't do it." James turned away. "Tell him!" She whipped around to face Jordan. "It has nothing to do with stage fright," she said tightly. "It's because if James gets up at the trial, he can't pretend that this was all a nasty nightmare. If he gets up at the trial, he's actively involved in defending his son ... which would mean there was a problem in the first place." She snorted in disgust, and James pushed past her and left the room.
For a moment both Jordan and Gus were quiet. Then she sat down in the chair across from him once again, her hands toying with the collection of silverware in the beer mug, making it clink against the ceramic lip. "I can put him on the witness list," Jordan said, "in case he changes his mind."
"He won't," Gus said. "But you can ask me the questions you were going to ask him."
Surprised, Jordan lifted his brows. "You've seen Emily with Chris when he was getting into the gun cabinet?"
"No," Gus said. "Actually, I don't even know where James keeps the key." She scrubbed her thumbnail over the engraved design of the mug. "But I'll say anything you need me to, for Chris."
"Yes," Jordan murmured. "I imagine you would."
THE UNWRITTEN RULE in the jail was that baby killers got no peace. If they were showering, you threw things into the stall. If they were shitting, you walked in on them. If they were sleeping, you woke them up.
As the medium security ward population dwindled--supposedly, the huge influx occurred after the Christmas holiday--the two prisoners who'd shared a cell with Chris and Steve were moved out. One was transferred to maximum security for spitting at an officer. The other finished his sentence and was released. With these cellmates out of the picture, Hector began anew his campaign to make Steve pay for his crime.
Unfortunately, Chris still shared the cell with Steve.
One Monday when Chris was sleeping, Hector began to bang on the bars of the cell. Privacy was an illusion in jail, especially during times when they weren't locked down. But even if the door to a cell was open, you did not walk in uninvited. And if the inhabitants were asleep, you left them alone.
Steve and Chris both sat up in bed at the sound of Hector, playing xylophone across the front of the cell with the legs of a bridge chair. "Oh," he said, grinning, when he saw them. "Were you guys sleeping?"
"Jesus," Chris said, swinging his legs off the bunk. "What is with you?"
"No, professor," Hector said. "What's with you?" He leaned across the threshold, his breath still stale with the night. "Guess now it makes sense. You compare notes?"
Chris rubbed his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Hector leaned even closer. "How long did you think it would take me to find out that you killed the girl 'cause she was having your kid?"
"You motherfucker," Chris said, his hands flying of their own volition around Hector's neck. Behind him, he could feel Steve pulling at his shoulder, but he shook him off easily, putting all his strength and all his concentration into strangling the asshole in front of him who'd spoken such a filthy lie.
It did not occur to him to wonder how this information had become public knowledge. Perhaps Jordan had mentioned it to the nurse, and an inmate had been washing the floors outside the medical office at the time. Maybe a guard had overheard. Maybe it had been leaked into the papers which were available for the inmates in the day room.
"Chris," Steve said, the voice floating thin over his shoulder. "Let go." And suddenly Chris could not stand the fact that everyone in this--this hellhole--would be lumping him together with Steve. There
was a huge difference between hanging with Steve because Chris wanted to, and hanging with Steve because there was no one else.
Hector's eyes were bulging, his cheeks puffed and eggplant purple, and Chris did not think he'd ever seen anything so beautiful. And then all of a sudden his arms were wrenched behind his back and handcuffed and he'd been driven to his knees by a blow to the neck. Hector, restrained by another officer, was getting back his color and his wind. "You little fuck," he shouted, as Chris was dragged out of the pod. "I'm going to get you for this!"
It was not until Chris reached the control desk that he managed to ask where they were going. And even then, he didn't get an answer. "You act like an animal," the officer said, "you get treated like one."
He led Chris to the isolation cell. Before the officer unlocked the handcuffs, he checked beneath the mattress. There was no pillow.
Without another word, the officer freed Chris's hands and left him alone.
"Hey!" Chris said, rushing toward the door, solid metal except for the slat where his food tray would be passed in. He stuck his fingers through the slat. "You can't do this to me. You have to have a DR for me."
From somewhere down the hall, he could hear laughter.
He sank down on the floor and turned around bleakly. He would have his disciplinary review eventually, he supposed, sometime after he'd served his punishment. In the meantime, he was stuck in the hole for God knew how long, and the small cell had not been cleaned up from its last inhabitant. There was a puddle of vomit in the corner, and feces smeared one of the walls.
Chris sprang up, stretching to reach along the three-inch ledge at the top of the shower, just to see if anyone had left something behind. He scrabbled beneath the mattress and the nailed-down bunk, to no avail. Then he settled back in his original position, huddled against the door, his knees drawn up to his chest, gagging with every breath.
At 12:15 his lunch was shoved through the slot.
At 2:30 the maximum security inmates went to the exercise room, passing the isolation cell. One of them spat through the slot, mucus streaking across the back of Chris's shirt.
At 3:45, when the medium security men came to the exercise room, Chris took off his shirt and slid it under the door, a flat fabric puddle. He waited for something to fall onto it as the thunder of feet passed by, and then carefully drew back the shirt. Someone--Steve, he supposed--had tossed him a pen.
He tried to draw on the walls, but the ink didn't take to the cinder block. Or to the metal bunks or shower stall, which left only one thing. For the next three hours, until dinner-time, Chris drew on his prison-issue pants and shirt, wild designs that reminded him of Emily's artistic doodling.
After dinner he lay on his back and ran through every practice relay his coach had ever written on the locker room chalkboard. He crossed his arms over his chest and pictured his blood coursing from heart to artery to vein.
When he heard the squeak of crepe-soled shoes outside, he was certain that he'd imagined it. "Hey!" he yelled. "Hey! Who's there?"
He tried to squint out the opening, but the angle of the metal prevented him from seeing anything. Honing his senses, he made out the roll of wheels and the slush of a mop. The custodians. "Hey," he said again. "Help me."
There was a definite pause in the routine swing of the mop. Chris tilted his head against the slot again, then jumped back when something winged him in the temple.
He scrabbled at his feet, hoping for food, but felt the unmistakably thick binding of a Bible.
With a sigh, Chris crawled onto the bunk, and started to read.
CHRISTMAS VACATION BEGAN ON THURSDAY, so Selena was extremely grateful when Mrs. Bertrand agreed to speak to her Wednesday afternoon. She sat uncomfortably in the small wooden chair, wondering who the hell thought this furniture was conducive to learning. Chris Harte was nearly as tall as Selena's six feet; how could he ever have jammed his legs under a table like this? No wonder today's adolescents couldn't wait to get out of school--
"I am so glad," Mrs. Bertrand said, "that you called."
"You are?" Selena was taken aback. In her professional career, she could count on one hand the number of people who didn't look at her funny when she said she was working for a defense attorney.
"Yes. I mean, of course I've read the papers. And the very thought of someone like Chris ... well, it's ridiculous, that's what." She smiled broadly, as if that was enough to acquit. "Now, what is it I can help you with?"
Selena extracted her ubiquitous pen and pad from her coat pocket. "Mrs. Bertrand," she started.
"Please--Joan."
"Joan, then. What we're looking for is certain information that can be presented to a jury to make the murder charge seem ... as you said, ridiculous. How long have you known Chris?"
"Oh, four years, I suppose. I had him in ninth-grade English, and then I sort of knew what he was doing even in the years I didn't have him--he's the kind teachers are always talking about, you know, in a good way--and then he was put in my class this year, as well."
"You teach honors English?"
"Advanced Placement," she said. "The kids take the test in May."
"So Chris is a good student."
"Good!" Joan Bertrand shook her head. "Chris is extraordinary. He has a gift for clarity, for getting to the heart of a complicated tangle. It wouldn't surprise me if he went on to college to become a writer. Or a lawyer," she added. "The thought of that sort of mind just ... wasting for months in a jail," she shook her head, unable to continue.
"You're not the first person to feel that way," Selena murmured. She frowned at the filing cabinet, lettered with the alphabet.
"Student portfolios," Joan said. "Writing folders." She leaped to her feet. "I should show you Chris's."
"Did you have Emily Gold as a student too?"
"Yes," Joan said. "Again, another straight-A kid. But more reserved than Chris. Certainly, they were always together--I imagine the principal could even have told you that. But I just didn't know her as well as I do Chris."
"Did she seem depressed in class?"
"No. Very attentive to her work, as usual."
Selena looked up. "Could I see her folder, too?"
The English teacher brought back two manila leaves. "Emily's," she pointed. "And Chris's."
Selena opened Emily's folder first. There were poems inside--none that mentioned death--and a creative writing piece fashioned like Arthur Conan Doyle's work. Absolutely nothing useful. She closed the folder and glanced up again. "Did Chris seem depressed?"
She had to ask, although she knew what the answer would be. It was unlikely that an outsider would have noticed suicidal tendencies that were never there. "Oh, good Lord, no."
"Did Chris ever come to you for help?"
"Not in schoolwork; he was capable of that on his own. He asked me about colleges, when he started applying. I wrote him a letter of recommendation, too."
"I meant personal things."
Joan's brow wrinkled. "I encouraged him to come to me, after--after Emily died. I knew he'd need someone. But he didn't have a chance," she said delicately. "We had a memorial here for Emily. To everyone's surprise, when Chris was asked to make a speech, he started to laugh."
Selena reconsidered the wisdom of putting Mrs. Bertrand on the stand.
"Of course, knowing Chris the way I do, I chalked it all up to stress," she said. Clearly uncomfortable with the recollection, Joan reached for Chris's folder and opened it in front of Selena. "I told the teachers who were gossiping about it to read this," she said, slapping her palm against an argumentative essay. "Any mind with this much promise wouldn't be a party to murder."
Selena didn't really agree, having met her fair share of intelligent criminals, but she politely glanced down at the essay. "The assignment said to come down on one side of a sensitive issue," Joan explained. "To present convincing evidence for that side, and then to dismiss the alternative point of view. This is something, you know, that most college graduate
s can't even do. But Chris pulled it off beautifully."
Chris's paragraphs were neatly aligned, justified by the computer printer. "In conclusion," Selena read, "being 'pro-choice' is a misnomer. There is not really an issue of choice at all. It is against the law to cut short someone's life, period. To say that a fetus is not a life is to split hairs, since all major bodily systems are in place at the time most abortions are undertaken. To say that it is a woman's right to choose is also unclear, because it is not only her body but another's as well. In a society that stands behind the best interests of a child, it seems strange indeed ... "
Selena lifted her head and let a white grin split over her face. "Merry Christmas, Mrs. Bertrand," she said.
IT SEEMED ARCHAIC TO OFFER a Bible as comfort, in a world where a vial of crack would probably have been preferred two to one, but Chris found himself entranced. He had never really read the Bible. For a brief stint, he'd gone to Sunday School, but that was because his father insisted on belonging to the local Episcopal church for the social statement it made. Eventually, they stopped attending with the exception of holidays, when one was most likely to be seen.
The familiar quotations leaped out at him, making Chris feel as if he'd populated the small cell with old friends. "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you." He stared at the heavy door. Not bloody likely.
When the lights went out--no warnings, up here, just a misty darkness--Chris rolled off the bunk and got to his knees. The floor was freezing beneath the thin cotton of his pants, and in the new dark the smell of the shit on the wall seemed suddenly stronger, but he managed to knot his hands together and bow his head. "Now I lay me down to sleep," he whispered, feeling very, very young. "I pray the Lord my soul to keep." He furrowed his brow, trying to remember the rest of it, but couldn't.
"I haven't done this in a long time," Chris said, feeling foolish. "I hope You can hear me. I don't blame You for putting me in here. And I probably don't deserve any favors." He let his voice trail off, thinking of what he most wanted. Surely, if he only asked for one thing, he had a fighting chance of getting it. "I want to pray for Hector," he said softly. "I pray that he gets out of here soon."