Salem Falls

by Jodi Picoult

  Starshine glanced at the untouched cup of tea in Selena's hand. "Go ahead. It won't turn you into a toad."

  She seemed to be a cross between an earth mother and a flower child, with stray braids dotting her silver hair and a ring on every toe. It made Selena nervous. She kept expecting to be zapped into nothingness, or for this woman to wiggle her nose.

  She glanced around at the walls of the store. "You get a lot of teenagers in here?"

  "Too many," Starshine said, and sighed. "The spells attract most of the kids. They hear the word witch, and immediately think they'll be able to wave a wand and hurt the bullies in school or to make the star of the basketball team fall madly for them."

  "Something tells me they're not running home to tell Mom and Dad they're Wiccans."

  "No," Starshine agreed, "and it goes right back to the Inquisition, I'm afraid. Being a witch is not something that invites confidence, because too many people misunderstand what it means if you say that you are one. And unfortunately, I think teenagers are attracted to that part of Wicca--doing something, even something natural and innocent, behind their parents' backs."

  "Does Gillian Duncan come in here often?"

  The older woman shrugged. "Just recently, she came in looking for belladonna."

  "Belladonna? The poison?"

  Starshine nodded. "She wanted it for an obsolete recipe, once used for out-of-body experiences and psychic visions. Needless to say, I tried to redirect her focus."

  "How?"

  The cat leaped into the woman's lap; she stroked its fur until its eyes slit shut. "I told her to celebrate the upcoming sabbat instead."

  "Do you remember when that conversation occurred?"

  "Right before Beltane," Starshine said, then noticed Selena's blank look. "The night of April thirtieth."

  "What if she found it somewhere else?" Jordan asked. He and Selena sat on a teak bench in his backyard, watching a blue jay fight a flock of finches at the bird feeder. They sat side by side, and Jordan could have told her exactly how many centimeters of space separated their bodies from shoulder to hip to thigh. Christ, the electricity between them was enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

  Selena didn't seem to notice. Or if she did, she was doing a damn good job of hiding it. "The belladonna?" she asked.

  "Yeah. What if she made her recipe and passed it out the night of April thirtieth? Then Jack stumbles by, drunk, and Gillian hallucinates the assault."

  Selena frowned. "It must have been some pretty good shit, then, to conjure up the semen on her thigh."

  "Okay," Jordan conceded, "that's a sticking point."

  "No pun intended?"

  "I can't explain the semen. But that's not my job. All I have to do is make the jury think for a nanosecond that there might be another explanation for what happened that night, other than rape. And the victim's credibility is called into question if we prove that her recollections are drug-impaired."

  "Still, Jordan," Selena argued, "it's not like there are occult suppliers on Main Street. Belladonna's a poison. It isn't easy to come by."

  "She could have substituted another hallucinogenic drug."

  Selena snorted. "From the local pharmacy?"

  "From the high school dealer," Jordan corrected, and then smiled slowly. "Or from Daddy."

  It took three and a half hours for the Reverend Marsh to leave the house, three and a half hours that Addie spent sitting behind a small clot of hydrangea in the front yard. She waited until he had driven off in his Buick and then she knocked on the door.

  "You lied," Addie said, the minute Catherine Marsh opened it.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You didn't have a relationship with Jack St. Bride. You never slept with him. I don't know why, Catherine, and I don't know how, exactly, but you somehow got this rumor started and managed to ruin his life."

  "He told me ... he told me ..."

  "He didn't tell you anything he wouldn't have told any other student."

  Catherine started to protest but then crumbled. There was no other word for it--the edges of her mouth waffled in, her eyes drifted shut, and all her bravado collapsed. "I didn't mean for this to happen," she whispered. "My father ... he found birth control pills in my underwear drawer, and it made him crazy. Then he found my diary ... and read that, too." Catherine swallowed. "It was only pretend. I mean, we all had crushes on Coach. When my boyfriend broke up with me ... Coach took extra care to make sure I was okay, to let me cry on his shoulder. I pretended it was because he liked me, you know, that way, a little. So I wrote about him. I wrote about us."

  "Fiction," Addie said, to clarify, and Catherine nodded miserably. "And when your father went to the police? Did you ever think that maybe you ought to tell them?"

  "I did. But they all thought I was just trying to keep him out of jail because I loved him." She dashed a tear from her cheek. "When I was lying, they hung on every word. And when I told the truth, no one listened."

  "Catherine--"

  "I am so ashamed," the girl whispered. "I am so sorry I did this to him."

  Addie fought for control. "Then help him now."

  "You're the last guy I expected to see," Charlie said, holding the door open so that Jordan could walk inside.

  "That's because I'm not here as an attorney," Jordan answered. "Just as a dad."

  Charlie invited Jordan to sit down on a floral couch with an afghan hanging over the back. "That's right. I forget you have a kid."

  "Bad news, I guess." Jordan grinned. "We defense lawyers can procreate."

  That surprised a laugh out of Charlie. "Your boy's in, what? His freshman year?"

  "Yeah." Jordan could feel himself sweating through the back of his short-sleeved polo shirt. He had absolutely no proof of what he was about to tell Charlie--this was a pure hunch, one that he hoped would prey on the detective's parental sensibilities and net Jordan a windfall. Short of this white lie, he didn't know how else to confirm his intuitions. "Charlie, first things first. This is all off the record, all right?"

  The detective nodded slowly.

  "My son--Thomas--has been seeing Chelsea Abrams."

  "Oh?" Charlie said easily. "She's a sweet kid."

  "Yeah. Well, he certainly thinks so, anyway." They both laughed. "This is a little awkward, Charlie," Jordan said, exhaling heavily. "Thomas came home with some information I thought I should pass along."

  At that, Charlie sat up, immediately alert.

  "Chelsea said that the night the girls were in the woods, they were doing drugs."

  Charlie didn't move a muscle. "My daughter doesn't ... she wouldn't do that."

  "I didn't think so. And you have to know, given our circumstances right now, this was about the last thing I figured you'd want to hear from me. But as a father--well, hell, if someone knew that about Thomas, I'd want to be told." He stood, wary of overstaying his welcome. "It's probably a misunderstanding."

  "Probably." Charlie led the way out of the house. He watched the lawyer walk down the slate path that led to the driveway. "Jordan."

  For a moment, the two men simply stared at each other.

  "Thank you," Charlie said.

  As laboratory technician, Arthur Quince had enough trouble trying to keep afloat at Duncan Pharmaceuticals without investigators coming along to foul up the rhythm of his day. Especially investigators who arrived with a light in their eyes, intent on linking your place of business to a crime. First the rape of his boss's daughter, and now a drug case right here in Salem Falls? What was this world coming to?

  "I don't know if I'll be able to help you," Arthur told Selena Damascus. "On any given week, we might be making six drugs at a time."

  "Like which six?"

  Jesus, the woman was like a dog with a bone. Arthur punched up records on his computer and pointed to the screen. "Recently, we've been making fentanyl citrate, lidocaine hydrochloride, and phenobarbital sodium."

  "What about before that?"

  He s
crolled up to the previous three-week period, starting the week of April 24. "Acyclovir, pemoline, risedronate, and atropine were in various stages of production."

  "Are any of those hallucinogens?"

  "We're not in the habit of making drugs that are sold on the street."

  "I understand. That's why it's imperative that Duncan Pharmaceuticals be ruled out as the source of the substance we're investigating." Selena lowered her voice. "Look, Dr. Quince, I don't think you guys are responsible. But you find something like this in the halls of Salem Falls High ... in the same town where there's a pharmaceutical company ... well, to cover all of our own asses, if you'll excuse my language, we have to just make sure we're not talking about the same stuff." She turned her attention to the screen again. "How come that one has a star next to it?"

  Arthur looked where she was pointing. "Duncan Pharmaceuticals is introducing a new homeopathic line--prescription drugs derived from all-natural sources instead of chemical ones. The atropine was one of the drugs in that focus group."

  Selena hiked herself up on a stool beside him. "Natural sources? Where does it come from?"

  "The belladonna plant."

  "Belladonna?"

  "That's right. You've probably heard of it. It's extremely poisonous."

  "Can you overdose on it?"

  Immediately, Arthur bristled. "Almost any drug on the market has adverse effects, Ms. Damascus."

  "What would some of these adverse effects be?"

  "Confusion. Agitation." Arthur sighed. "Delirium."

  "Delirium? So it is a hallucinogen."

  At that moment, Amos Duncan entered the lab. Noticing Selena, he did a double take. He'd seen her around town, certainly, but because Selena had known better than to try to talk to Amos directly, there was no way he'd know she was there on Jordan's behalf. "Arthur," he boomed, walking toward them. "I need to speak to you."

  "Ms. Damascus was just leaving," Arthur hurried to explain. "She's here gathering information for a drug case."

  In spite of what Arthur had thought, this information didn't make Amos the least bit nervous, as if he knew how tight a ship he ran. "You work for Charlie Saxton? You've got my sympathy!" Amos said, but he was grinning. Selena grinned right back. If he wanted to mistakenly believe she was a local cop, she wasn't going to be the one to correct him.

  No, he'd figure it out for himself when he saw her in the courtroom.

  They wandered through the aisles of the music store, clicking their fingernails on CDs arranged neatly as teeth. Without any conscious effort, other eyes gravitated toward these girls, light to a black hole. And how couldn't you look? Such ripe beauty, bursting at the seams; such confidence, left behind them as sure as footprints.

  Chelsea, Meg, and Whitney were oblivious to the power of their attraction. They shopped aimlessly, each of them as aware of their missing mate as a soldier with pain in a phantom limb.

  Meg tripped and knocked over an entire display of CDs. "Oh, gosh. Let me help," she said in apology to the pimpled employee who came to clean up.

  "Fucking cow," he muttered.

  Whitney turned, hands on her hips. "What did you say?"

  Reddening, the boy didn't look up.

  "Listen here, you little toad," Whitney whispered fiercely. "With a snap of my fingers, I could make your dick curl up and rot."

  The kid snorted. "Yeah, right."

  "Maybe I'm bluffing. And then again, maybe I'm a witch." Whitney smiled sweetly. "You wanna stick around and take that chance?"

  The employee scurried into the back room. "Whit," Meg chided. "I don't think you should have done that."

  "Why not?" She shrugged. "He was pissing me off. And besides, I could do it, too, if I wanted."

  "You don't know that," Chelsea said. "And even if you could, you're not supposed to. Magick isn't about getting rid of everything blocking your path."

  "Says who? Healing's boring. So is all that crap about moon cycles. Now that we've figured out spells, we're supposed to just keep them all inside us?"

  "It's safer that way." Chelsea shrugged. "Fewer people get hurt."

  Whitney laughed. "That little asshole made fun of Meg. Just like Hailey McCourt."

  "She's better now," Meg pointed out. "And nicer."

  "She learned a lesson, thanks to us." Whit stared in the direction the boy had fled. "The little weasel deserves to be humiliated."

  "And what about Jack St. Bride?"

  The question, which fell from Chelsea's mouth like a burning match, devoured the air between them. "Jesus," Whitney managed finally. "I don't think this is a public conversation, Chels."

  But now that it had burst from her, Chelsea couldn't stop. She held her hand up over her mouth, and still the words bled through. "Don't you wonder, Whit? Don't you think about it all the time?"

  "I do," Meg murmured. "I can't get it off my mind."

  Chelsea stared at Whitney. "Gillian's not here now," she said. "She's never going to know what we talk about. And even if you won't admit it, Whit, you know that we shouldn't have--"

  "--been discussing this," Whitney said firmly. She surreptitiously slid a CD into her macrame purse and made her way out of the store, fully expecting her friends to follow her lead.

  Charlie knew better. As a detective, the rules of evidence ... and the methods of their collection ... had been drilled into him for years. There had been recent cases where evidence was ruled inadmissible when taken without a teenager's consent from a room within his parents' house. Drug evidence.

  "What are you doing?"

  His wife's voice startled him out of his reverie, and he nearly stumbled out of Meg's closet. "Just looking," Charlie managed.

  Barbara didn't bat an eyelash. "For a corduroy skirt?"

  He looked at the hanger clutched in his hands. "For a shirt. One Meg borrowed."

  "Oh," Barbara said. "Try the dresser. Third drawer down."

  She left, and Charlie rested his head against the closet door. He didn't want Barbara to know what he was searching for. Didn't want to admit he was doubting his daughter.

  He fingered a worn friendship bracelet tied around the knob of the door--striped red and blue and green, it was one Meg had made her first summer at sleep-away camp. She'd called home crying every hour of the first two days, insisting that keeping her there was a form of child abuse. But by the time Charlie and Barbara had driven up to Maine to get her, Meggie had settled in, and she sheepishly told them to go on home.

  Kneeling, Charlie rummaged through nearly untouched sports paraphernalia--it'd taken him nearly a decade to learn that his little girl was never going to be a willing athlete--and shoes several sizes too small. There was a teddy bear with an eye missing and a poster Meg had made for a school project about the New Hampshire state bird, the purple finch. There was an old pink ballet bag and an assortment of dolls she had outgrown but couldn't bear to give away. Charlie smiled and reached for one, a naked baby with yellow hair and one stuck glass eye. A girl who sentimentally saved things like this wouldn't hide drugs from her father, would she?

  He had seen enough teen drug cases in Salem Falls to know they followed a pattern: Either the child and the parents had a complete lack of communication between them or the child was resentful of the parents or the parents were too self-absorbed to really see what their child had turned into. None of that fit the bill for himself and Meg--they'd always been closer than most parents and kids. This was something McAfee had misunderstood. Maybe his kid had heard wrong. Maybe Chelsea, for whatever reason, had been lying.

  Satisfied, Charlie went to stuff Meg's mess back into the closet in as disorganized a fashion as possible, lest she realize someone had been snooping through her things. In went the teddy bear, the hockey stick, the Rollerblades. He lifted the ballet bag and felt his hand close around something cylindrical and firm.

  Ballet clothes, ballet shoes, ballet tights--everything in that bag ought to be soft.

  Charlie unzipped the pink bag. Reaching inside, h
e pulled out a length of silver ribbon, long and silky. He removed a small stack of plastic cups and a thermos.

  The cups and the thermos were empty, except for what looked like a residue of white powder. Cocaine? Charlie sniffed it, then touched his pinky finger to the powder and lifted it up to his tongue to taste.

  It was probably nothing.

  Weary, he ran a hand down his face and rubbed his tired eyes. He would get it tested anyway, just to put his mind at ease. He had a buddy at the state lab who could run a tox screen--and who owed him a favor.

  That was what Charlie was thinking moments later when his pupils became so dilated he could not see.

  As the wiper blades on Addie's car whispered rumors to each other, she drove aimlessly through the streets of Salem Falls. She needed to go home and unpack; she needed to get back to the diner as quickly as possible. But she found herself standing instead in the narrow plastic coffin of a phone booth, scanning the tattered white pages of the phone book for the street address of Jordan McAfee.

  A few minutes later, a black woman opened the door of the house at the address she'd found. "I-I'm sorry ..." Addie stammered. "I think I have the wrong address." She headed into the driving rain, only to be called back.

  "Addie Peabody, isn't it?" When Addie nodded, the woman smiled. "My name's Selena, and no, I'm not the maid. Come on in and wait out the storm."

  It wasn't until she stepped inside that Addie remembered where she'd seen her before. "You came to the diner," she said out loud. "You ordered hot water with lemon."

  "Damn, that's impressive!" Selena said, taking Addie's slicker. "Jordan's due back soon. I know he'd like to talk to you. If you want, you're welcome to wait here with me."

  Addie sat down on an overstuffed couch in the living room. "I'm here because of Jack St. Bride."

  "I see."

  "He didn't do it," Addie said.

  Selena sat down on the edge of the coffee table. "Do you have an alibi for him?"

  "No. It's just ... I know he's innocent." She sat forward, her hands twisted in her lap. "I went to find out about his previous conviction, up in Loyal. And that girl ... the one he supposedly seduced ... she was lying. She never had a relationship with Jack."