Salem Falls (53 page)

“What did you do with it?”

“I put the swab in the paper envelope included in the kit. I wrote my name and the date and the patient’s name on it, then sealed it and put my initials over the seal.”

“Did you take any other physical evidence from Gillian that night?”

“Yes. I did a pubic hair combing and put the evidence in the kit. I clipped her fingernails and collected each one in a separate, sterile white paper envelope, which was also included in the kit. Finally, I drew blood from the patient for a known sample, marked it, and put it in the kit.”

“After you marked and sealed all these envelopes and swabs and vials, what did you do with the kit?”

“I handed it to Detective Saxton, who had brought the patient in.”

“Between the time you collected all of this evidence and the time you turned it over to the detective, did anyone else have access to it?”

“No.”

“Did you treat Gillian?”

“Yes. We gave her a heavy dose of antibiotics to protect against venereal disease, and a pill to prevent pregnancy.”

Matt crossed to stand in front of the jury. “Dr. Paulson, when you first walked into the ER cubicle . . . when you first saw Gillian . . . what did she look like?”

For the first time during her testimony, the doctor’s professional demeanor slipped. “Very pale, and quiet. Lethargic. She was skittish, too, about having me touch her.”

“Is that behavior you’ve seen before in your line of work?”

“Unfortunately, it is,” Dr. Paulson admitted. “In victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault.”

“If there’s no semen in the vagina, Doctor, you can’t tell from a pelvic exam if someone has recently had intercourse . . . right?”

Dr. Paulson regarded Jordan coolly. “No, you can’t.”

“And there wasn’t any semen visible during Gillian’s pelvic exam?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“Isn’t it also true that you didn’t find any bruising inside Gillian’s vagina?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t find any bruising on her external genitalia?”

“No.”

“Did you find bruises on her face?”

“No.”

“Her neck?”

“No.”

“How about her upper arm, or her thighs?”

“No. Only on her right wrist, Mr. McAfee.”

Jordan crossed to the jury box. “You found semen on Ms. Duncan’s inner thigh?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that this victim had reported to Detective Saxton that she was sexually active at the time this happened?”

“That wasn’t part of my exam,” Dr. Paulson said.

“So you have no way of knowing if that semen you swabbed from Gillian Duncan’s thigh had anything to do with this alleged assault or with some other man she had sexual relations with recently.”

“No.”

“Doctor, isn’t it true that there is no physical evidence that conclusively supports Ms. Duncan’s claim of being subjected to violent sexual intercourse that night? That all we really have is what Gillian said happened?”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have any way of knowing whether she was lying?”

Dr. Paulson shook her head. “I don’t.”

Whitney O’Neill was a nervous wreck. She kept chewing her fingernails, to the point where Jordan expected them to bleed at any moment. It was a small miracle, in fact, that she’d even made it through the direct examination. “So ten seconds after you left the clearing with Meg and Chelsea, you called out to Gillian?” Jordan said, wanting clarification.

Whitney bit her lower lip. “Yeah, but she didn’t answer.”

“No one had suggested, prior to her departure, that she stay with you? Do some kind of buddy system?”

“No,” Whitney said.

“How much longer after you called out to her did Gillian come running up to you?”

“Um, maybe like another ten or fifteen minutes.”

Jordan walked up to the map Matt had brought. “Do you know how far it is from the edge of the cemetery to the point where you and your friends lit the bonfire?”

“No.”

“Fifty-two yards, Ms. O’Neill. That’s half the length of a football field.” Jordan took a few steps forward. “Do you have any idea how incredibly slow you’d have to walk in order for it to take fifteen minutes to cover fifty yards of ground?”

“I, um, it may-”

“You could have been blindfolded, going backward in crab walk, and it would take you five minutes, at the most.”

“Objection,” Matt sighed. “He’s badgering my witness.”

“Have a care, Mr. McAfee,” said the judge.

“My apologies,” Jordan told the girl, but anyone could see he wasn’t all that sorry.

“Maybe it didn’t take fifteen minutes, exactly,” Whitney whispered.

“Are you telling me that you lied a minute ago? Under oath?”

Whitney blanched. “No. I mean, it just felt like forever. Or about fifteen minutes.”

Jordan shrugged. “You know what? Let’s compromise. Let’s say it took ten. Does that seem fair?”

The girl nodded vigorously.

“While it was taking you ten minutes to walk the fifty-two yards, your friend was supposedly within fifty-two yards of you, being assaulted. Given that extremely brief distance, don’t you think you might have heard something going on?”

Whitney swallowed. “I didn’t. It was too far away.”

“You didn’t hear your friend calling out?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hear branches breaking? Or a scuffle?”

“No.”

Jordan stared at her for a moment. Then he asked for permission to approach the bench. “Judge, I’d like a little leeway for a physical demonstration.”

Judge Justice narrowed her eyes. “Mental browbeating isn’t enough?”

“I’d like to make this particular point a little more realistic for the jury.”

“Your Honor,” Matt said, “it’s completely inappropriate for Mr. McAfee to re-create the scenario that night.”

The judge looked from one man to the other, then to the witness cowering on the stand. “You know, Mr. Houlihan, I’m gonna allow this. Go ahead, Mr. McAfee.”

Jordan took a yardstick from Selena in the gallery. “I’m just going to measure off fifty-two yards,” he explained. He paced his way down the aisle of the courtroom, through the double doors, and into the lobby. Conversation stopped as he continued past the banks of blue chairs and the office of the clerk of the court and a few vending machines. Finally, he rapped the yardstick on the floor and peered down the straight course, to where the witness sat. “Ms. O’Neill,” he called, “can you hear me?”

He saw her nod her head, saw her lips form the word yes.

Jordan strode back to the courtroom. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s all.”

Whitney started to rise, intent on getting off the witness stand as quickly as possible. But before she could, Matt rose, furious. “Redirect, Your Honor,” he barked. “Ms. O’Neill, did you just hear Mr. McAfee call out to you from fifty-two yards away?”

“Um, yes.”

Matt pointed to the rear of the courtroom. “If Mr. McAfee had been fifty-two yards away but pinned to the ground with someone else’s hand over his mouth and fighting for his life against a rapist, do you think you would have been able to hear him call out?”

“N-no,” Whitney said.

Matt turned on his heel. “Nothing further.”

At the breakfast table that morning, Thomas had asked if Jordan was going to cross-examine Chelsea Abrams. “Don’t know for sure,” he’d answered. “It depends on what she says on direct.”

Thomas’s shoulders had rounded so much his face had nearly dipped into his cereal bowl. “Just do me one favor,” Thomas had said. “Try not to be a dick.”

That, in a nutshell, was why Jordan was going to blast Chelsea Abrams’s testimony to pieces. Because the pretty girl looking up at him with a tiny smile was seeing him as Thomas’s dad when she should have been considering him an adversary.

“Ms. Abrams,” Jordan said, standing up to do his cross, “tell me again who was there that night in the woods.”

Confusion clouded Chelsea’s eyes as she realized Jordan meant business. “Meg, Whitney, Gilly, and me.”

“And Jack, my client?”

“Yeah.”

“And Jack left first.”

“Yes.”

“The rest of you, though, were standing together for a minute before you went home?”

“Yes.”

“So if anyone said something before you left, the four of you would have heard it?”

“Sure.”

“You testified that before you left, you asked Gillian whether she wanted you to walk her home.”

“Yes.”

“Where was Whitney standing when you asked this?”

“Right next to me.”

“After you and Whitney and Meg left, did anyone say anything?”

“No,” Chelsea said. “We just walked down the path single file.”

He looked at the jurors, hoping to hell that every single one of them remembered that Whitney had said something different. “Isn’t it true that April thirtieth, the night you all met in the woods, was Beltane?”

He had to give her credit: Chelsea looked blankly at him. “What?”

“Isn’t Beltane a sabbat, according to the earth-based Wiccan religion?”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

“Objection,” Matt said. “The witness obviously can’t answer this line of questioning.”

“Your Honor, if you’d just give me a moment-”

“So this time you can measure your way to Kentucky?” Matt said under his breath.

Jordan scowled. “This goes toward my argument, Your Honor.”

“I’m giving you one more question, Mr. McAfee,” the judge warned.

“Isn’t it true, Ms. Abrams, that you and your friends had gone to the clearing that night to celebrate Beltane, just as witches all over the world were doing at that time?”

At the prosecutor’s table, Matt Houlihan was choking on something. Or maybe just trying to keep from laughing out loud. “Objection!”

But before the judge could respond, Chelsea did. Her cheeks were bright with anger, and her expression was one only a teenager could manage, putting Jordan in a mental place she reserved for slugs and sewer refuse. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, or what all this Bel-whatever stuff is. My friends and I went to chill. Period.”

“Mr. McAfee,” the judge said, “you will move on. Now.”

The jury was looking at Jordan with nearly the same scorn as Chelsea. Okay, so maybe he’d pushed a little hard . . . and what he was driving at was, admittedly, nuts. He’d dismiss the witness. With luck, it would all work out in the end and Thomas would still be speaking to him.

Thomas.

Jordan silently winged an apology to his son. “Ms. Abrams, do you wear jewelry?”

Again, that look. God, was it something they were teaching in public schools these days? “No,” she said.

“No earrings?”

“Sometimes, I guess.”

“No bracelet or necklace or ring?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it true that you’re actually wearing a necklace right now?”

“Yes,” she said tightly.

“And isn’t it true that you never take that necklace off your body?”

“Well, I-”

“Could you show it to us?”

Chelsea looked to the prosecutor for permission. Then she slowly tugged a long chain from the neckline of her blouse, to reveal the five-pointed star.

“What is that symbol, Ms. Abrams?”

“I don’t know. I just think it’s pretty.”

“Are you aware that a five-pointed star is called a pentagram?”

“No.”

“And that the pentagram is a symbol of pagan religions . . . the same groups that would have been celebrating Beltane the night of April thirtieth?”

Chelsea slipped the necklace beneath her collar again. “It’s just a necklace.”

“Of course . . . and you and your friends were just chilling that night.”

“Objection!”

“Withdrawn,” Jordan said. “Nothing further.”

Later that day

Carroll County Courthouse

O h, God, it hurt to see him here.

The moment Addie had been escorted into the courtroom as a witness, her eyes had zeroed in on Jack. Her heart hurt so badly she had to slide her hand inside her jacket, just to press down against the ache. When he smiled at her and nodded, as if to say she could get through this, Addie thought she was going to burst into tears.