Salem Falls (33 page)

“Pornography,” the county attorney repeated. “Playboy magazines, maybe a video . . . Internet sites of nude children?”

“No!”

“Was your own relationship with him sexually deviant?”

“Excuse me?”

That wide, gap-toothed smile again. “Ms. Peabody, I realize these questions are rude and personal. But I’m sure you see why it’s information we need to have.”

“No,” she said.

“No, you don’t see . . . ?”

“No,” Addie interrupted, “he was not sexually deviant.” In the background, there was a snap as Wes broke the arm off a little clay figurine of a fisherman that sat on her father’s bookshelves. He hastily balanced it and turned away, muttering an apology.

“Was St. Bride ever violent toward you?”

Addie raised her chin. “He was the gentlest man I’ve ever met.”

“Did he drink?”

Her lips formed a thin line. She knew what the prosecutor was getting at; and God help her, even if Jack was guilty, she didn’t want to contribute to his downfall any more than she already had.

“Ms. Peabody?”

Then again, a girl was out there. A girl who had been raped.

“He was drinking that night,” Addie admitted. “With my father.”

“I see,” Matt said. “Were you together that night?”

“He left my house about nine-thirty P.M. My father was with him until eleven-thirty P.M. I didn’t see him again until one-thirty in the morning.”

“Did he tell you where he’d been?”

Addie closed her eyes. “No. And I . . . I never asked.”

The dimpled ball sailed over the wide, green sea of the driving range, landing somewhere in the vicinity of a sand trap. Without missing a beat, Jordan bent down and took another one out of the bucket to balance on the tee. He lifted his club, readying for the swing . . . and jerked at Selena’s voice.

“Whose face are you seeing on that little thing? Houlihan’s . . . or St. Bride’s?”

Jordan swung and carried through, shading his eyes against the sun to see the ball fall way off the mark. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to interrupt a golfer?”

Selena set down the peel of the orange she was dissecting and popped the first section into her mouth. “You’re not a golfer, Jordan; you’re a dilettante.”

Ignoring her, Jordan hit three more balls. “Got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“If you were charged with murder, who would you get to defend you?”

Selena frowned, considering for a moment. “I think I’d try for Mark D’Amato. Or Ralph Concannon, if Mark wasn’t available.”

Jordan glanced at her over his shoulder. “Mark’s good,” he conceded.

She burst out laughing. “God, Jordan, you’ve got to work on your poker face. Go on, ask me why I didn’t pick you.”

He set down his club. “Well . . . why not?”

“Because you’re the only person I’d ever get angry enough with to actually kill, so you wouldn’t be around to defend me. Happy now?”

“I’m not sure,” Jordan frowned. “Let me think on it.”

Selena glanced at the half bucket of balls. “You get enough stress out of your system to tell me about your meeting this morning?”

“That might take six buckets.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Why do I feel that this one’s gonna be a huge pain in the ass?”

“Because St. Bride is dragging you out of a cushy retirement. An open-and-shut acquittal would still make you grumpy. Is he gonna plead?”

“Nope. Our marching orders are to go to trial.”

“No kidding?”

“You heard me.”

She shrugged. “Okay. Do we have a game plan?”

“We’ve got nothing from our esteemed client, who’s conveniently amnesiac. Which means you get to prove the girl is a liar.”

Selena was so quiet that Jordan went through six more shots before he realized she hadn’t responded. “I know,” he commiserated. “It’ll be next to impossible. Everything I’ve seen in her statement checks out so far.”

“No, that’s not what I was thinking.” She looked up. “Who’s Dr. Horowitz?”

“You’ve got me. Someone from ER?”

“He . . . or she . . . is the doctor mentioned in the victim’s statement. My guess is a psychiatrist Gillian Duncan met with in the past.”

For the first time that day, Jordan’s ball landed within spitting distance of the flag. He turned slowly from the green and stared at Selena, who raised her brows and handed him the last slice of the orange. As he took it, their fingers brushed. “Good guess,” he said.

It was all Jack could do to look at the pile of clothes folded neatly on the chair beside him and not start scratching.

In the three days he’d been in solitary confinement, he’d been fastidious about showering. At first, he’d dried off with his T-shirt. Then, as it began to mildew, he let himself air dry, bare-chested. But to be brought to the superintendent’s office, the guard made him put on his shirt again. It stuck to his skin and smelled like the bottom of a sewage tank.

Jack looked longingly at the clothes. “Attractive, aren’t they?” the superintendent said. “They’re yours for the taking.”

“No, thank you.”

“Mr. St. Bride, you’ve made your point.”

Jack smiled. “Tell me that when you’re standing in my shoes.”

“The clothing is for your own safety.”

“No, it’s for yours. You want me to put on that jumpsuit so that every other man in here knows I follow your rules. But the minute I do, you’ve got control of me.”

The superintendent’s eyes gleamed; Jack knew he was treading on very thin ice. “We don’t use our solitary cells as penthouse suites. You can’t stay there forever.”

“Then let me wear my clothes into a regular cell.”

“I can’t do that.”

Jack let his gaze slide to the fresh clothing on the seat beside him. “Neither can I,” he answered softly.

The guard behind him stepped forward at a nod from the superintendent. “Put Mr. St. Bride back in solitary for six days. And this time, turn off the water line to his shower.”

Jack felt himself being hauled to his feet. He smoothed the front of his shirt as if it were the tunic of a king.

“Mr. St. Bride,” the superintendent said. “You’re not going to win.”

Jack paused, but did not turn around. “On the other hand, I have nothing to lose.”

Francesca Martine had the body of a Playboy centerfold and the brain of a nuclear physicist, something that didn’t usually sit well with the men who got up the nerve to ask her out. Then again, she had learned her lesson: Instead of telling dates that she was a DNA scientist, she simply said that she worked in a lab, leaving them to assume she spent her days getting lunch for the real scientists, and cleaning out the cages of mice and rats.

She set a sample beneath a microscope. “So, Frankie,” Matt said, grinning. “That come from one of your boyfriends?”

“Oh, yeah. I have so little to do here I’ve taken to swabbing myself to see what’s swimming around, just in case the fact that I haven’t had a relationship in six months isn’t enough to tip me off.” She squinted into the lens. “How’s that cute kid of yours?”

“Molly . . . God. I can’t even describe how incredible she is. So I guess you’ll have to have one yourself.”

“How come perfectly normal people become matchmakers the minute they get married themselves?”

“It’s Darwinian, I think. Trying to keep the species going.” Restless, Matt got to his feet. “Besides, you brainy types need to be reminded that it’s nice to replicate DNA in something other than a thermocycler.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Frankie said dryly. “Did you specifically come here to talk about my pathetic love life, or is there something else?”

“That rape kit Charlie Saxton brought in-”

“I haven’t gotten to it yet, Matt. I was in court yesterday, and this morning I-”

“I’m not rushing you.” He smiled sheepishly. “Well, not any more than I usually do, anyway. I just wanted to let you know what I’m looking for.”

“Let me guess,” Frankie said deadpan. “Semen?”

“Yeah. I’d like to know about the blood on the shirt, too. And the soil from the boots.” He swung away from the counter. “So, you’ll get me my results in two weeks?”

“Three,” Frankie murmured, peering into a microscope.

“Gosh, yeah-ten days would be great.” Matt backed away before she could complain. “Thanks.”

Frankie turned to the scope again. Sperm frozen in time, tailless and immobile. “That’s what they all say,” she sighed.

Addie didn’t know where she got the courage necessary to knock on the heavy door of the Carroll County Jail. If they don’t come, I’ll just turn away, Addie thought. I’ll go home and try some other day, when I feel more the thing.

A guard opened the door. “Can I help you?”

“I . . . I . . .”

A kindly smile spread across the man’s face. “First visit? Come on in.”

He led Addie into a vestibule, where a small line of people snaked like a tapeworm from a glass-enclosed booth. “Wait here,” the guard said. “They’ll tell you what to do.”

Addie nodded, more to herself than to the guard, who had already moved away. Visiting hours were Wednesday nights, from 6 to 9. She’d called the switchboard for that information, which had been easy enough. Getting in her car and driving there had been slightly more challenging. Downright impossible would be the moment she saw Jack again and struggled for something to say.

It was after speaking to Matt Houlihan that she realized she needed to do the one thing she hadn’t: hear Jack’s side of the story, before she believed anyone else’s.

She was terrified that he would lie to her, and that their whole time together would just have been an extension of that lie. She was equally terrified that he would tell her the truth, and then she would have to understand how God could be cruel enough to let her give her heart to a man who’d committed rape.

“Next!”

Addie advanced as the man before her was buzzed through a barred door. She found herself facing a correctional officer with a face as misshapen as a potato. “Name?”

Her heart leaped beneath her light jacket. “Addie Peabody.”

“Name of the inmate you’re here to visit.”

“Oh. Jack St. Bride.”

The officer scanned a list. “St. Bride’s not allowed visitors.”

“Not allowed-”

“He’s in solitary.” The guard glanced over her shoulder. “Next!”

But Addie didn’t move. “How am I supposed to get in touch with him?”

“ESP,” the officer suggested, as Addie was shoved out of the way.

The human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

In an average lifetime, a person will grow 590 miles of hair.

Jack scratched at his thickening beard again, this time drawing blood. There was a rational part of him that knew he was all right, that going without a shower for a week wouldn’t kill him. And in spite of what it felt like, a colony of insects had not taken up root on his scalp. But sometimes, when he sat very still, he could feel the threads of their legs digging into his skin, could hear the buzz of their bodies.

Insects outnumber humans 100,000,000 to one.

He thought of these things, these useless facts, because they were so much easier to consider than other things: Would Addie come to see him? Would he remember what had happened that night? Would he, once again, be convicted?

Suddenly, from a distance, there were footsteps. Usually, no one came down here after the janitor’s soft-soled shoes paced the length of the hall, rasping a mop in their wake. These shoes were definitive, a sure stride that stopped just outside his door.

“I take it you’re still mulling over your decisions,” the superintendent said. “I wanted to pass along a bit of information to you. You had a visitor today, who of course was turned away, since you’re in a disciplinary lockdown.”

A visitor? Addie?

Just the thought of her walking into a place like this, the knowledge that she wouldn’t have had to if not for Jack, was enough to make him cry a river. Tears sluiced down his face, washing away the grime, and maybe a little bit of his pride.

Reaching up, he scratched vigorously at his temple.

The average person, Jack thought, accidentally eats 430 bugs in a year.

As a defense attorney, Jordan had dealt with his share of society’s losers-all of whom were convinced they’d been given the fuzzy end of the lollipop. It wasn’t his job to judge them on the things they’d done, or even on their own misconceptions of entitlement. Never, though, had Jordan been treated to a client who was so single-mindedly hell-bent on his own destruction-and all in the alleged pursuit of justice. He pulled in his folding chair as another cavalcade of prisoners returned from the exercise yard, disrupting the meeting he was holding on the other side of the solitary cell’s metal door. “They’re clothes, Jack,” Jordan said wearily, for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Just clothes.”