Nineteen Minutes (41 page)

“It would be a happy ending,” Peter said.

Lacy drew in a breath. “Not if you weren’t here.”

Peter looked at her for a long moment. “You’re lying,” he said-not angry, not accusing. Just as if he was stating the facts, in a way that she wasn’t.

“I am not-”

“You can say it a million times, but that doesn’t make it any more true.” Peter smiled then, so guileless that Lacy felt it smart like a stripe from a whip. “You might be able to fool Dad, and the cops, and anyone else who’ll listen,” he said. “You just can’t fool another liar.”

By the time Diana reached the docket board to check which judge was sitting on the Houghton arraignment, Jordan McAfee was already standing there. Diana hated him on principle, because he hadn’t ripped two pairs of stockings trying to get them on, because he wasn’t having a bad hair day, because he didn’t seem to be the least bit ruffled about the fact that half the town of Sterling was on the front steps of the courthouse, demanding blood. “Morning,” he said, not even glancing at her.

Diana didn’t answer. Instead, her mouth dropped open as she read the name of the judge sitting on the case. “I think there’s a mistake,” she said to the clerk.

The clerk glanced over her shoulder at the docket board. “Judge Cormier’s sitting this morning.”

“On the Houghton case? Are you kidding me?”

The clerk shook her head. “Nope.”

“But her daughter-” Diana snapped her mouth shut, her thoughts reeling. “We need to have a chambers conference with the judge before the arraignment.”

The moment the clerk was gone, Diana faced Jordan. “What the hell is Cormier thinking?”

It wasn’t often that Jordan got to see Diana Leven sweat, and frankly, it was entertaining. To be honest, Jordan had been just as shocked to see Cormier’s name on the docket board as the prosecutor had been, but he wasn’t about to tell Diana. Not tipping his hand was the only advantage he had right now, because frankly, his case wasn’t worth anything.

Diana frowned. “Didn’t you expect her to-”

The clerk reappeared. Jordan got a kick out of Eleanor; she cut him slack in the superior courthouse and even laughed at the dumb-blonde jokes he saved for her, whereas most clerks had a terminal case of self-importance. “Her Honor will see you now,” Eleanor said.

As Jordan followed the clerk into chambers, he leaned down and whispered the punch line he’d been getting at, before Leven so rudely interrupted his joke with her arrival. “So her husband looks at the box and says, ‘Honey, it’s not a puzzle…it’s some Frosted Flakes!’”

Eleanor snickered, and Diana scowled. “What’s that, some kind of code?”

“Yeah, Diana. It’s secret defense attorney language for: Whatever you do, don’t tell the prosecutor what I’m saying.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Diana murmured, and then they were in chambers.

Judge Cormier was already in her robe, ready to start the arraignment. Her arms were folded; she was leaning against her desk. “All right, Counselors, we have a lot of people in the courtroom waiting. What’s the problem?”

Diana glanced at Jordan, but he just raised his eyebrows. If she wanted to poke at the hornet’s nest, that was just fine, but he’d be standing far away when it happened. Let Cormier hold a grudge against the prosecution, not the defense.

“Judge,” Diana said hesitantly, “it’s my understanding that your daughter was in the school at the time of the shooting. In fact, we’ve interviewed her.”

Jordan had to give Cormier credit-she somehow managed to stare Diana down as if the prosecutor hadn’t just presented a valid and disturbing fact, but had said something absolutely ludicrous instead. Like the punch line of a dumb-blonde joke, for example. “I’m quite aware of that,” the judge said. “There were a thousand children in the school at the time of the shooting.”

“Of course, Your Honor. I just…I wanted to ask before we got out there in front of everyone whether the court was planning to just handle the arraignment, or if you’re planning to sit during the whole case?”

Jordan looked at Diana, wondering why she was so dead sure that Cormier shouldn’t be sitting on this case. What did she know about Josie Cormier that he didn’t?

“As I said, there were thousands of kids in that school. Some of their parents are police officers, some work here at the superior court. One even works in your office, Ms. Leven.”

“Yes, Your Honor…but that particular attorney isn’t handling this case.”

The judge stared at her, calm. “Are you calling my daughter as a witness, Ms. Leven?”

Diana hesitated. “No, Your Honor.”

“Well, I’ve read my daughter’s statement, Counselor, and I don’t see any reason that we can’t proceed.”

Jordan ran through what he knew so far:

Peter had asked about Josie’s welfare.

Josie was present during the shooting.

Josie’s yearbook photo, in the discovery, was the only one that had been marked with the words LET LIVE.

But according to her mother, whatever she told the police wouldn’t affect the case. According to Diana, nothing Josie knew was important enough to make her a witness for the prosecution.

He dropped his gaze, his mind replaying these facts over and over like a loop of videotape.

One that just didn’t make sense.

The former elementary school that was serving as the physical location for Sterling High did not have a cafeteria-little kids ate in their classrooms, at their desks. But somehow this was considered unhealthy for teenagers, so the library had been turned into a makeshift cafeteria. There were no books or shelves there anymore, but the carpet still had ABC’s sprinkled into its weave, and a poster of the Cat in the Hat still hung beside the double doors.

Josie no longer sat with her friends in the cafeteria. It just didn’t feel right-as if some critical mass were missing, and they were likely to be split apart like an atom under pressure. Instead, she sequestered herself in a corner of the library where there were carpeted risers, where she liked to imagine a teacher reading aloud to her kindergartners.

Today, when they’d arrived at school, the television cameras were already waiting. You had to walk right through them to get to the front door. They’d dribbled away over the past week-no doubt there was some tragedy somewhere else for these reporters to cover-but returned in full force to report on the arraignment. Josie had wondered how they were going to hightail it from the school all the way north to the courthouse in time. She wondered how many times in the course of her high school career they would come back. On the last day of school? At the anniversary of the shooting? At graduation? She imagined the People magazine article that would be written in a decade about the survivors of the Sterling High massacre-“Where Are They Now?” Would John Eberhard be playing hockey again, or even walking? Would Courtney’s parents have moved out of Sterling? Where would Josie be?

And Peter?

Her mother was the judge at his trial. Even if she didn’t talk about it with Josie-legally, she couldn’t-it wasn’t as if Josie didn’t know. Josie was caught somewhere between utter relief, knowing her mom would be sitting on the case, and absolute terror. On the one hand, she knew her mother would start piecing together the events of that day, and that meant Josie wouldn’t have to talk about it herself. On the other hand, once her mother did start piecing together the events of that day, what else would she figure out?

Drew walked into the library, tossing an orange up in the air and catching it repeatedly in his fist. He glanced around at the pods of students, settled in small groups on the carpet with their hot lunch trays balanced on their knees like the bows of crickets, and then spotted Josie. “What’s up?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“Not much.”

“Did the jackals get you?”

He was talking about the television reporters. “I sort of ran past them.”

“I wish they’d all just go fuck themselves,” Drew said.

Josie leaned her head against the wall. “I wish it would all just go back to normal.”

“Maybe after the trial.” Drew turned to her. “Is it weird, you know, with your mom and all?”

“We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about anything, really.” She picked up her bottled water and took a sip, so that Drew wouldn’t realize that her hand was shaking.

“He’s not crazy.”

“Who?”

“Peter Houghton. I saw his eyes that day. He knew exactly what the hell he was doing.”

“Drew, shut up,” Josie sighed.

“Well, it’s true. Doesn’t matter what some hotshot fucking lawyer says to try to get him off the hook.”

“I think that’s something the jury gets to decide, not you.”

“Jesus Christ, Josie,” he said. “Of all people, I wouldn’t think you’d want to defend him.”

“I’m not defending him. I’m just telling you how the legal system works.”

“Well, thanks, Marcia Clark. But somehow you give less of a damn about that when you’re the one with a slug being pulled out of your shoulder. Or when your best friend-or your boyfriend-is bleeding to death in front of-” He broke off abruptly as Josie fumbled her bottle of water, soaking herself and Drew.

“Sorry,” she said, mopping up the mess with a napkin.

Drew sighed. “Me, too. I guess I’m a little freaked out, with the cameras and everything.” He tore off a piece of the damp napkin and stuck it in his mouth, then tossed the spitball at the back of an overweight boy who carried the tuba in the school marching band.

Oh my God, Josie thought. Nothing’s changed at all. Drew tore off another piece of napkin and rolled it in his palm. “Stop it,” Josie said.

“What?” Drew shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to go back to normal.”

There were four television cameras in the courtroom: ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN; plus reporters from Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Associated Press. The media had met with Alex last week in chambers, so that she could decide who would be represented in the courtroom while the others waited outside on the steps of the courthouse. She was aware of the tiny red lights on the cameras that indicated they were recording; of the scratch of pens on paper as the reporters wrote down her words verbatim. Peter Houghton had become infamous, and as a result of that, Alex would now have her fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe sixty, Alex thought. It would take her that long to simply read through all the charges.

“Mr. Houghton,” Alex said, “you are charged with, on March 6, 2007, a count of first-degree murder, contrary to 631:1-A, in that you purposely caused the death of another, to wit, Courtney Ignatio. You are charged with, on March 6, 2007, a count of first-degree murder, contrary to 631:1-A, in that you purposely caused the death of another, to wit…” She glanced down at the name. “Matthew Royston.”

The words were routine, something Alex could do in her sleep. But she focused on them, on keeping her voice measured and even, on giving weight to the name of each dead child. The gallery was packed full, and Alex could recognize the parents of these students, and some students themselves. One mother, a woman Alex did not know by sight or name, sat in the front row behind the defense table, clutching an 8 x 10 photo of a smiling girl.

Jordan McAfee sat beside his client, who was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and shackles, and was doing everything he could to avoid looking at Alex as she read the charges.

“You are charged with, on March 6, 2007, a count of first-degree murder, contrary to 631:1-A, in that you purposely caused the death of another, to wit, Justin Friedman….

“You are charged with, on March 6, 2007, a count of first-degree murder, contrary to 631:1-A, in that you purposely caused the death of another, to wit, Christopher McPhee….

“You are charged with, on March 6, 2007, a count of first-degree murder, contrary to 631:1-A, in that you purposely caused the death of another, to wit, Grace Murtaugh….”

The woman with the photo stood up as Alex was reciting the charges. She leaned over the bar, between Peter Houghton and his attorney, and smacked the photograph down so hard that the glass cracked. “Do you remember her?” the woman cried, her voice raw. “Do you remember Grace?”

McAfee whipped around. Peter ducked his head, keeping his eyes trained on the table in front of him.

Alex had had disruptive people in her courtroom before, but she could not remember them stealing her breath away. This mother’s pain seemed to take up all the empty space in the gallery; heat the emotions of the other spectators to a boiling point.

Her hands began to tremble; she slipped them underneath the bench so that nobody could see. “Ma’am,” Alex said. “I’m going to have to ask you to sit down…”

“Did you look her in the face when you shot her, you bastard?”

Did you? Alex thought.

“Your Honor,” McAfee called.

Alex’s ability to judge this case impartially had already been challenged by the prosecution. While she didn’t have to justify her decisions to anyone, she’d just told the attorneys that she could easily separate her personal and her professional involvement in this case. She’d thought it would be a matter of seeing Josie not as her daughter, specifically, but as one of hundreds present during the shooting. She had not realized that it would actually come down to seeing herself not as a judge, but as another mother.

You can do this, she told herself. Just remember why you’re here. “Bailiffs,” Alex murmured, and the two beefy courtroom attendants grabbed the woman by the arms to escort her out of the courtroom.

“You’ll burn in hell,” the woman shouted as the television cameras followed her progress down the aisle.

Alex didn’t. She kept her eyes on Peter Houghton, while his attorney’s attention was distracted. “Mr. McAfee,” she said.

“Yes, Your Honor?”

“Please ask your client to hold out his hand.”

“I’m sorry, Judge, but I think there’s already been enough prejudicial-”

“Do it, Counselor.”

McAfee nodded at Peter, who lifted his shackled wrists and opened his fists. Winking in Peter’s palm was a shard of broken glass from the picture frame. Blanching, the attorney reached for the glass. “Thank you, Your Honor,” he muttered.