Salem Falls (43 page)

“The things hanging on the dogwood . . . were they ornaments of some kind?”

“Not Christmas tree balls, if that’s what you mean. More like those little things that women stick in their lingerie drawers.”

“And Gillian Duncan was naked,” Jordan said.

Jack nodded. “Two other girls had their shirts off, too, but got dressed when I came.”

Jordan bowed his head, utterly lost. “Was it some kind of orgy?”

“With each other? They weren’t . . . doing anything like that when I came.”

“What were they doing?”

Jack thought for a moment. “Dancing. Around the fire. Like Native American warriors.”

“Ah, yes. Clearly, they were celebrating the kill of a buffalo.”

“A celebration,” Jack said slowly. “That’s what Gillian called it, too.”

It was after two in the morning when Jordan eased his way into the house, taking care not to wake anyone up. His mind was humming so strongly that it took him a moment to realize the lights were still on. When he stepped into the foyer, Thomas and Selena were waiting.

“You won’t believe this,” Jordan began, grinning from the inside out.

“Dad,” Thomas interrupted, stealing his thunder. “She’s a witch.”

Salem Falls

III

Now Jack did laugh and Jill did cry, but her tears did soon abate;

Then Jill did say that they should play

At see-saw across the gate.

We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!

-THE CRUCIBLE

June 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

A ddie paid ten dollars for a copy of Jack’s first conviction, but didn’t know what she was going to do with it. Keep it in the re-safe box where Chloe’s birth and death certificates were? Burn it, in some kind of ritual? Bury it in the yard, with all her other dreams?

A night of tossing and turning had convinced her that Jack had spun lies as easily as a silkworm crafted threads, and the result was something just as beautiful to behold. She couldn’t blame him for telling her that he hadn’t had a relationship with Catherine Marsh, or that he hadn’t raped Gillian Duncan, or even that he loved Addie. A lie took two parties-the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.

The clerk of the Grafton County Superior Court handed Addie a receipt. “Here you go,” he said. “State of New Hampshire v. Jack St. Bride.”

Addie thanked the man and looked at the court records. “Jack St. Bride?” a voice said to her left.

The tall man wore a police uniform. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a nose that was too big for his face, and many laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Yes,” Addie answered.

“You know him?”

Her fist gripped the paper so tightly it bunched in her hand. “I thought I did.”

Addie noticed there was something about Jack’s name that brought a sad shadow to the man’s eyes, just like it did to hers. “I know,” he said finally. “So did I.”

It was the first time Addie could recall sitting in a diner as a patron rather than as an owner. Jay Kavanaugh ordered an entire breakfast, but Addie wasn’t hungry. She had to fight the overwhelming urge to stand up and get her own coffee from the burner.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jay said, after hearing that Jack had again been charged with rape. “Sexual perps tend to be repeaters. What does surprise me is that I fell for it the first time around.” Shaking his head, he added, “I’m a cop, so I have this incredible sixth sense-like I can tell it’s bullshit, pardon my French, from half a mile away. And I swear to God, I believed hook, line, and sinker that Jack was just some struggling prep school teacher-you know, an ordinary guy. Then it comes out that his family is rich as the Rockefellers and that in his spare time he wasn’t doing lesson plans but seducing students.”

“The Rockefellers?” Addie said. “Jack’s broke.”

Jay glanced up. “That’s just something else he told you.” He shrugged. “It’s good to hear he’s a career con artist. Makes me feel less like a moron.”

He continued talking as the waitress set down his plate. “Jack was Mr. Spontaneous all the time-Go climb a mountain? Sure! Cover some teacher’s class that period? No problem!-But every time I suggested we go out for a beer or to play a game of racquetball after his soccer practices, he turned me down. Couldn’t go until late at night, he said. Told me he had a standing engagement at seven-and never, not once, did he back down from that. I figured it was some faculty meeting or something. ’Course, later on, the girl said that was when they met. Every night, seven P.M., in the locker room.”

It was both liberating and depressing to find this man, another casualty of Jack’s. Yet no matter how grievously wronged Jay Kavanaugh felt, he had not let Jack slip beneath his defenses, into his heart, into his body. He had not heard Jack say I love you. He had not listened, wide-eyed, and believed it.

“Hey,” Jay said. “You’re a million miles away.”

“No, just thinking.”

“About Jack?”

Addie shook her head. “About how much I don’t like men.”

“Don’t judge us all by Jack. Most of us are a lot stupider than he is and don’t have nearly the finesse to carry off that kind of ruse.” Jay smiled gently. “Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty. And it doesn’t hurt as much, after a while. I’ve had ten months to think on this. But I still remember sitting at my desk after I had to arrest him-my best friend!-and wondering how the hell this had slipped by me.”

Addie watched him spear the yolk of an egg. It ran across the plate, a yellow pool dammed by a wall of hash browns. “How is the girl now?”

“She left Westonbrook. I hear that she’s being home-schooled and that she doesn’t keep in touch with friends who are still in Loyal.” He paused, then added quietly, “I think she just wants to forget this ever happened.”

That was when Addie remembered Catherine Marsh had believed she loved Jack, too. “She won’t be able to,” Addie whispered.

In her hotel room, Addie packed up her suitcase again, with Rosie O’Donnell keeping her company on the TV. She folded her shirts and stacked them on top of her jeans. She tucked her boots into plastic bags so that they did not get anything else dirty.

“I swear, John,” Rosie was saying, “I’m going to win. I’ve been practicing.” Addie looked up as the comedienne’s face filled the screen. “Kelsey Grammer and Joy Behar,” she said, “do you know your potent potables?”

“What’s a potable?” her bandleader asked.

“A drink,” Rosie said. “If you were destined to be the celebrity Jeopardy! champion, you’d know that, as well as the largest lake in Africa and the fact that the queen in the Netherlands is second cousins to the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. I’m making that last one up, John, but see, only a celebrity Jeopardy! champion like myself would even realize this.”

Laughter from the audience. Addie felt her heart contract as she heard Jack’s voice in her head. They water down the questions for the celebrity tournament, he’d told her. Because otherwise, none of those stars would get a single one right.

Jack would have. Most of us are a lot stupider than he is, Jay had said. “Seven P.M. tonight, here on ABC,” Rosie announced. “I’m telling you, John, this could be a whole new career for me.”

Addie remembered Jack telling her about prison, how his knowledge of trivia had saved him from being abused. She remembered unsuccessfully trying to distract him with her body during the show. All that trivia in his head, she used to think. How can there be room for me?

Suddenly, she began to tear through the papers on the table welcoming her as a guest to this hotel. There was a small guide to the Dartmouth-Sunapee region of New Hampshire, and a flyer from an outlet store, and a placard from a pizza place that would deliver until three in the morning. From underneath the mess of blankets and sheets on the bed, she unearthed the complimentary local newspaper. Scanning the pages, she finally found what she was looking for-the little grid of local television programming.

In Loyal, Jeopardy! was syndicated and aired on ABC. At 7 P.M.

Addie did not know nearly as much as Jack did about geography or presidents or even potent potables. She did not know if a discrepancy like this would have ever stood up in a court of law. But she did know that for one half hour a day, nothing would come between Jack and a television trivia show.

Not even Catherine Marsh.

The occult bookstore smelled like an apothecary, and rows of glass jars with small scripted labels held things that Selena really didn’t want to consider. Books were jammed into the narrow shelves, with titles like Anastasia’s Grimoire and Transfiguration for Beginners and The Solitary Witch’s Guide. A cat with a bell around its neck stalked the countertop, and an opiate cloud of incense hung in the air.

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.”