Mercy (28 page)

The defendant, of course, and the defense attorney could be in Bermuda or o rbiting the moon, for all she knew. In a strange and--for her side--wonderf ul twist of justice, the defendant had absolutely nothing to do with a gran d jury proceeding. Even in a crime where someone was unjustly accused, at a grand jury hearing the defendant was not allowed to be present. With the high surge of anticipation burning a patch down her spine, Audra Campbell stepped into the conference room and closed the door. They're going to indict me," Jamie said glumly, sitting on a bag of Blue S

eal dog food and watching Angus go about his morning chores. Graham MacPhe e, who had come over to offer emotional support on a day that was bound to be difficult, was leaning against the garage, trying not to get dog shit on his expensive Bally loafers.

"A grand jury indicts everyone. If the prosecution said a ham sandwich had committed a murder, hell, they'd indict a ham sandwich," Graham said. "It i sn't a personal thing, and it doesn't have any bearing on the trial." He wa tched Angus move out of the way of a mean black Rottweiler. "The best thing we can do is just take the information Allie gave us, and start preparing your defense."

Angus had been given the dubious honor of being Wheelock's dogcatcher. Cam had offered him the position to keep him busy when he'd first dragged him all the way over from Scotland, and Angus took to it eagerly, constructin g a large wire kennel in his backyard and diligently roaming the back road s of Wheelock to find unlicensed, uncollared dogs.

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Today, there were two mutts, the Rottweiler, a fluffy thing that looked to J

amie like a bichon frise, and a fat Dalmatian, all barking furiously to get Angus's attention as he calmly poured dog food into several large bowls. Ang us locked up the gate of the kennel, pulled a small pouch of tobacco from hi s pocket, and lit his pipe, taking a deep draw before turning to Graham and Jamie. "Having a ceilidh, are ye?"

"No, not quite a party," Graham said. "Jamie's not in a festive mood."

"Aye, well, ye should have had your hearing at Carrymuir, laddie. Scots justi ce comes down to 'guilty,' 'not guilty'--but there's a third verdict, too--'n ot proven.' " He paused for a moment, then turned sharp eyes on Jamie. "Sort of means 'not guilty--but dinna do it again.'

Jamie kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot. "Not much chance of that."

"Jamie," Graham said, "we're going to get you off." He grinned. "Scot-free, i f you'll pardon the expression. You won't have this hanging over your head fo r the rest of your life."

Jamie smiled ruefully. "Do you think it's as easy as that?"

"Oh, yeah," Graham said, pushing away from the garage and walking toward Jamie with the best image of confidence he could present. "Piece of cake.

"

Angus looked from Graham to Jamie and back again. "Clot-head, " he mutter ed. He straightened, stared at the whooping dogs, and started back to the house. "Would ye care for a wee dram, Graham?" he called over his should er. "No?" he said, not giving Graham a chance to answer. "Well, you'll ha ve to come again sometime when you're no' due back at the office." The sc reen door slammed behind him, leaving Jamie and Graham alone.

"I'll let you know what I hear," Graham said, moving down the driveway. Jamie walked into Angus s house and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sighed.

"Blue-deviled, are ye?"

Jamie looked up to see Angus holding a bottle of whiskey and a small tumble r. Angus poured some liquor into the glass and handed it to him. "It's bare ly eleven in the morning," Jamie said.

i Jodi Picoult

"That's as good a reason as any." Angus tipped the bottle up to his mouth and sank down beside Jamie. "Is she with ye much today?"

"Who?" Jamie said warily.

"Maggie." He patted Jamie's arm. "Some days are stronger than others. Fee u sed to tell me when I got to looking like you do now that I'd best snap out of it and stop digging my own grave, since she fully intended to go before me."

"Fee?"

"Fiona. My wife. Died--just like she said she would--in '75." Jamie's mouth dropped open. "I didn't know you were married."

"Oh, aye, well." Angus smiled. "She was scared to death of being left behind

. I'd wake up from a doze in a chair to find her poking my side, or holding a mirror up under my nose." He laughed. "It got where if she wasn't trying s omething or other when I woke up, I figured I must be well and truly dead." His eyes stared through the screen of the door, unfocused. "In the end, 'twa s I who found Fee, asleep too late in the morning for all to be right." Angu s closed his eyes, remembering how, in that moment of stillness, her face ha d blurred at its edges, until he was left looking at the smile of the girl h e'd met barefoot beside the river Dee.

Jamie took the bottle from Angus and poured him a drink in his own glass. He passed it wordlessly to his uncle and waited for him to drain it. "It all w orks out in the end, though, no?" Angus said, pulling himself up on the bani ster.

"What do you mean?"

Angus held the bottle of whiskey up to the light. Jamie watched his uncle t hrough the amber liquid, which did not distort the old man's face, but made it take on darker and more somber shadows. "It willna matter, after a time

, that Maggie and Fee have gone," Angus said softly. "What matters now and for always, Jamie, is that they went the way they wished." This case," said Audra, pinning all twenty-three jurors with her gaze, "is a bout murder. Murder One is legally defined as a murder with malice aforethou ght. If you find the defendant guilty, he has to be guilty of three separate processes: premeditation, deliberation, and willfulness. Premeditation mean s he formed a plan

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to kill. Deliberation means he considered the pluses and minuses of his plan

--even if this consideration lasted only a couple of seconds. And willfulnes s means that he intentionally carried out what he planned to do.

"Now, as you know, Maggie MacDonald is, indeed, dead. We have a witness who heard the defendant confess to killing his wife. We have a statement signe d by the defendant which indicates he actually drove all the way to a diffe rent town from the one in which he resided to commit the murder. You'll hea r from the officer who investigated the crime scene, finding incontrovertib le evidence that links the defendant to the scene of the crime. And you'll also hear from the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the deceas ed." She stood up from her rigid plastic chair, her feet braced apart, her hands clasped behind her back. "I'll bring each witness in, and I'll questi on him. If there are any issues you need clarified, I'll turn to you afterward." Audra opened the door and gestured down the hall to Hugo Huntley, who fold ed his crossword into his pocket and moved toward her reluctantly, as if h e were being pulled slowly and inexorably into her web.

The foreman of the grand jury swore Hugo in. His hair was brushed asymmetr ically back over his left ear, as if to conceal a bald spot. His hooked, b ulbous nose reminded Audra of a pelican. "Would you please state your name and address for the record?"

"Hugo Huntley," he said. "Fourteen-fifty Braemar Way, Whee-lock, Massach usetts."

"And Mr. Huntley, what is your profession?"

Hugo licked his lips. "I'm the owner of Huntley's Funeral Parlor in Wheelock

. I also serve as the medical examiner for the local police." Audra nodded. "Could you describe for these people what you saw on the a fternoon of September nineteenth?"

"I was working when Zandy Monroe--he's a sergeant with the police station-asked me to come over to retrieve a body. So he brought me across the str eet, and showed me this woman in the front seat of a pickup truck who had been dead, at first glance, for several hours. We took--"

"We?" Audra pressed.

"We meaning me, and Zandy, and Allie MacDonald--she's the Jodi Picoult

chiefs wife and she happened to be there at the time with Zandy. We took Magg ie's body to the funeral parlor and I started to take care of her like I take care of all the funerals in Wheelock."

"But this wasn't an ordinary funeral," Audra prompted. Hugo blinked at her. "It was very nice. Flowers and everything." Audra set her teeth. "I was speaking in terms of the deceased. Can you descr ibe the cause of death?"

"Asphyxiation," he said curtly. "Most likely by smothering, as there were no bruises on the neck that would indicate strangulation or any other kind of struggle." He stopped, removed his glasses, and wiped them on the lapel of h is jacket.

"Was there anything else you found?"

Hugo thought for a moment. "Various evidence of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and the radical mastectomy scar on her right breast." Audra froze in her tracks, scanning the faces of the jury to sense the slight est confusion or leanings toward sympathy. "I meant anything out of the ordin ary."

Hugo stared at her. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"Did you find evidence of the defendant's skin beneath the victim's fingernai ls?"

Hugo nodded.

"You'll have to speak up," Audra prompted.

"Yes," he said dutifully.

"Which would indicate what, exactly?"

He shrugged. "She scratched him. But that doesn't mean much. I mean, who's to say there was a fight? It could have been a back rub." He blushed. "Now, I certainly didn't know the two of them when the missus was alive, but I s aw that man at her funeral. Believe me, I've seen plenty of mourners, but J

amie MacDonald is the only widower I've seen who couldn't stand because of the grief. He was . . . distraught. I guess that's the term."

"Thank you, Mr. Huntley," Audra smoothly interrupted, before he could go a ny farther to undermine her case. "I have nothing further." Hugo left, closing the door behind him. Audra turned to the grand jury, smi ling warmly. "Now," she said, "are there any questions?" 201

Cam walked around the small studio apartment, which was overfurnished in a country-kitchen way complete with an oxen yoke over the doorway and braid ed rag rugs. There was a staggering amount of bovine paraphernalia: Holste in-patterned spoon rests and salt and pepper shakers, a milk pitcher in th e shape of a heifer, a black-and-white-spotted armchair, cow quilts and po sters framed and tacked on the wall. It was a frowsy, overblown room and h e never would have believed it was Mia's if he hadn't seen her bonsai, cen tered by itself on the kitchen table, a palm tree on an island in a storm. Bally Beene had called him three weeks and one day after Mia left, to tell him she'd been under his nose the whole time. He had braced himself when he

'd taken the call at the station, expecting to be given an address in the T

exas Panhandle, or maybe Bombay, but Bally had only laughed. "You won't bel ieve this," he said. "She's living over a family's garage in North Adams." For a nominal fee, Bally had been able to get Cam an extra key. North Adams was fifteen minutes away from Wheelock, if you were driving very fast.

Cam told Allie he had a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education meeting tha t night; not to expect him for dinner. He had been planning to work the day and then set off for North Adams. But he had gone out on patrol and pulled over a drunk driver, only to find that he couldn't remember the words that made up the Miranda rights--something he could normally recite in his slee p. So after lunch, when he could not sit still behind his desk any longer, he drove to Mia's new address.

He parked his car down the street and just stared at the place where Mia ha d managed to exist for three weeks without him. He played the scene over an d over in his mind, the one where she opened the door and found him standin g on the other side. She was wearing a fluffy white robe and a towel over h er wet hair; she held her hand to her throat as if she were seeing a ghost. Then she whispered his name and leaned forward, fitting herself to him. The funny thing was, he did not picture hopping into bed with her. He imag ined sitting down on the floor, his back to a corner, with Mia between his legs. He imagined pulling the towel from her head and combing the tangles from her hair. He imagined

their voices weaving the house into a delicate net that could hold the night as it fell all around them.

When it became clear she was not there, Cam made himself at home in Mia's apa rtment. He ran his fingers over the familiar curled edges of the old bonsai t ree and let Kafka rub up against his legs. He opened a can of salmon, gave ha lf to the cat, and ate the other half himself. He would have liked a beer, bu t the only things in the refrigerator were mustard and a large vat of aloe ve ra juice, so he settled for a tall glass of water.

He was sitting in the dark on the cow armchair, Kafka curled on his should er, when he heard Mia coming up the stairs. She opened the door, slung her knapsack onto a small table, and flicked on the lights. When she saw Cam, her hands went up to her mouth, and then fluttered back to her sides. Her eyes narrowed. "Get out of my apartment."

"I will," Cam murmured, coming to his feet. "Soon." Kafka ran between Mia's legs, meowing. She scooped him up in her arms, wei ghing him as if he could serve as a weapon. Mia turned her back on Cam, an d for the first time he realized what she was wearing. The short red skirt barely covered her bottom, and her long legs were encased in crimson tigh ts. A striped halter top with puffy sleeves and a hat that looked like a c oxcomb completed the uniform. Bally had told him she was working at a Joll y Chicken fast-food place, but he hadn't remembered until now.

"You smell like french fries," he said.

Mia moved toward the kitchen. "Occupational hazard," she answered curtly. He crossed the room to the counter which separated the kitchenette from the rest of the apartment. "Why'd you go?"

Mia looked up at him over a glass of water. "Why did you find me?" Cam smiled. She was angry, she was being ridiculously belligerent, she looke d like an idiot in the Jolly Chicken suit, but he could not tear his eyes aw ay from her. He could feel every inch of the space he occupied, from the bal ls of his feet to the edges of his fingertips against the counter, and he th ought that it was weeks since he'd been so patently in control of himself. " You answer my question," he bargained, "and then I'll answer yours." 203