Nineteen Minutes (30 page)

This time, though, he raised his virtual machine gun and watched the officers fall in a spray of bright blood.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON HIDE-N-SHRIEK! the screen read.

DO YOU WANT TO PLAY AGAIN?

On the tenth day after the shooting at Sterling High, Jordan sat in his Volvo in the parking lot of the district courthouse. As he’d expected, there were white news vans everywhere, their satellites pointed to the sky like the faces of sunflowers. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the Wiggles CD, which was doing its effortless job of keeping Sam from throwing a fit in the backseat.

Selena had already slipped into the court undeterred-no one in the media would recognize her as anyone connected to this case. As she approached the car again, Jordan got out and took the piece of paper she offered him. “Great,” he said.

“See you later.” She bent down to unbuckle Sam from the car seat as Jordan headed into the courthouse. As soon as one reporter saw him, there was a domino effect-flashbulbs burst like a string of fireworks; microphones were thrust in front of him. He pushed them away with one outstretched arm, muttered “No comment,” and hustled inside.

Peter had already been brought to the holding cell of the sheriff’s office, awaiting his appearance in court. He was pacing in a small circle, talking to himself, when Jordan was brought into the cell. “So today’s the day,” Peter said, a little nervous, a little breathless.

“Funny you should mention that,” Jordan said. “Do you remember why we’re here today?”

“Is this some kind of test?”

Jordan just stared at him.

“A probable cause hearing,” Peter said. “That’s what you told me last week.”

“Well. What I didn’t tell you is that we’re going to waive it.”

“Waive it?” Peter said. “What does that mean?”

“It means we fold before the hand’s even played,” Jordan replied. He handed Peter the piece of paper Selena had brought him in the car. “Sign it.”

Peter shook his head. “I want a new lawyer.”

“Anyone worth their salt is going to tell you the same thing-”

“What? To give up without even trying? You said-”

“I said I’d give you the best defense I can,” Jordan interrupted. “There’s already probable cause to believe that you committed a crime, since there are hundreds of witnesses claiming to have seen you shooting in the school that day. The issue isn’t whether or not you did it, Peter, it’s why you did it. Having a probable cause hearing today means they score a lot of points, and we score none-it would just be a way for the prosecution to release evidence to the media and the public before they get a chance to hear our side of the story.” He thrust the paper at Peter again. “Sign it.”

Peter met his gaze, fuming. Then he took the paper from Jordan, and a pen. “This sucks,” he said as he scrawled his signature.

“It would suck more if we did the probable cause hearing.” Jordan took the paper and left the cell, heading out of the sheriff’s office to give the waiver to the clerk. “I’ll see you in there.”

By the time he reached the courtroom, it was packed to the rafters. The media that had been allowed in stood in the back row, their cameras ready. Jordan sought out Selena-she was juggling Sam in the middle of the third row behind the prosecution’s table. So? she asked, a shorthand lift of her brows.

Jordan nodded the slightest bit. Done.

The judge presiding was inconsequential to him: someone who would rubber-stamp this process and turn it over to the court where Jordan would have to put on his dog-and-pony show. The Honorable David Iannucci: what Jordan remembered about him was that he had hair plugs, and when you appeared before him you had to do your absolute best to keep your eyes trained on his ferret-face instead of on the seeded line of his scalp.

The clerk called Peter’s case, and two bailiffs led him through a doorway. The gallery, which had been buzzing with quiet conversation, fell silent. Peter didn’t look up as he entered; he continued to stare at the ground even as he was shuttled into place beside Jordan.

Judge Iannucci scanned the paper that had been set in front of him. “I see, Mr. Houghton, that you wish to waive your probable cause hearing.” At this news-as Jordan had expected-there was a collective sigh from the media, all of whom had been hoping for a spectacle.

“Do you understand that I would have had the obligation today to find whether or not there was probable cause to believe that you committed the acts for which you are charged, and that by waiving the probable cause hearing, you are not requiring me to find that probable cause; you will now be bound over to the grand jury, and I will bind this case over to the superior court?”

Peter turned to Jordan. “Was that English?”

“Say yes,” Jordan answered.

“Yes,” Peter repeated.

Judge Iannucci stared at him. “Yes, Your Honor,” he corrected.

“Yes, Your Honor.” Peter turned to Jordan again and, under his breath, muttered, “This still sucks.”

“You’re excused,” the judge said, and the bailiffs hefted Peter out of his seat again.

Jordan stood, giving way to the next defense attorney for the next case. He approached Diana Leven at the prosecutor’s table, still organizing the files she never had a chance to use. “Well,” she said, not bothering to look up at him. “I can’t say that was a surprise.”

“When are you going to send me discovery?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t remember getting your letter requesting it yet.” She pushed past him, hurrying up the aisle. Jordan made a mental note to get Selena to type something up and send it off to the prosecutor’s office, a formality, but one that he knew Diana would uphold. In a case this big, the DA followed every rule to the letter, so that if the case ever went up on appeal, procedure would not be the downfall of the original verdict.

Just outside the double doors of the courtroom, he was waylaid by the Houghtons. “What the hell was that?” Lewis demanded. “Aren’t we paying you to work in court?”

Jordan counted to five under his breath. “I spoke about this with my client, Peter. He gave me permission to waive the hearing.”

“But you didn’t say anything,” Lacy argued. “You didn’t even give him a chance.”

“Today’s hearing wouldn’t have benefited Peter. It would, however, have put your family under the microscope of every camera outside the courthouse today. That’s going to happen anyway. Did you really want it to be sooner rather than later?” He looked from Lacy Houghton to her husband, and then back again. “I did you a favor,” Jordan said, and he left them holding the truth between them, a stone that got heavier with every passing moment.

Patrick had been heading to the probable cause hearing for Peter Houghton when he received a cell phone call that sent him screaming in the opposite direction, to Smyth’s Gun Shop in Plainfield. The owner of the store, a round little man with a tobacco-stained beard, was sitting outside on the curb, sobbing, when Patrick arrived. Beside him was a patrol officer, who jerked his chin in the direction of the open door.

Patrick sat down beside the owner. “I’m Detective Ducharme,” he said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

The man shook his head. “It was so fast. She asked to see a pistol, a Smith and Wesson. Said she wanted to keep it in the house, for protection. She asked if I had any literature on that model, and when I turned my back to find some…she…” He shook his head and went silent.

“Where did she get the bullets?” Patrick asked.

“I didn’t sell them to her,” the owner said. “She must have had them in her purse.”

Patrick nodded. “You stay here with Officer Rodriguez. I might have some more questions.”

Inside the gun shop, there was a spray of blood and brain matter on the right-hand wall. The medical examiner, Guenther Frankenstein, was already bent over the body, lying sideways on the floor. “How the hell did you get here so fast?” Patrick asked.

Guenther shrugged. “I was in town at a baseball card collectors’ show.”

Patrick squatted beside him. “You collect baseball cards?”

“Well, I can’t very well collect livers, can I?” He glanced at Patrick. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”

“I wish.”

“Pretty self-explanatory,” Guenther said. “She stuck the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”

Patrick noticed the purse on the glass counter. He rifled through it, finding a box of ammunition and the Wal-Mart receipt for them. Then he opened the woman’s wallet to find her ID, just at the same time Guenther rolled the body over.

Even with the gunshot residue blackening her features, Patrick recognized her before he saw her name. He’d spoken to Yvette Harvey; he’d been the one to tell her that her only child-a daughter with Down syndrome-had not survived the shooting at Sterling High.

Indirectly, Patrick realized, Peter Houghton’s casualty count was still rising.

“Just because someone collects guns doesn’t mean they intend to use them,” Peter said, scowling.

It was unseasonably warm for late March-a freakish eighty-five degrees-and the air-conditioning at the jail was broken. The inmates were walking around in their boxers; the guards were all on edge. The HVAC patrol, which had been called in on the pretense of humane incarceration, was working so slowly that Jordan figured they’d master their trade just in time for the snow to start falling again outside. He’d been sitting in a sweatbox of a conference room with Peter for over two hours now, and felt as if he’d soaked through every last fiber of his suit.

He wanted to quit. He wanted to go home and tell Selena that he never should have taken this case, and then he wanted to drive with his family to the eighteen stingy miles of beach that New Hampshire was blessed with and jump fully clothed into the frigid Atlantic. Dying of hypothermia couldn’t be any worse than the slow kill Diana Leven and the DA’s office had in store for him in court.

Whatever small hope Jordan had kindled by discovering a valid defense-albeit one that had never been used before a judge-had been steadily eroded in the weeks following the hearing by the discovery that had arrived from the DA’s office: stacks of paperwork, photos, and evidence. Given all this information, it was hard to imagine a jury caring why Peter had killed ten people-just that he had.

Jordan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You were collecting guns,” he repeated. “I suppose you just happened to be storing them under your bed until you could get a nice glass display case.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“People who collect guns do not hide them. People who collect guns do not have hit lists with photos circled.”

Perspiration beaded on Peter’s forehead, around the collar of his prison uniform, and his mouth tightened.

Jordan leaned forward. “Who’s the girl that got erased?”

“What girl?”

“In the photos. You circled her, and then you wrote LET LIVE.”

Peter looked away. “She’s just someone I used to know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Josie Cormier.” Peter hesitated, then faced Jordan again. “She’s okay, right?”

Cormier, Jordan thought. The only Cormier he knew was the judge sitting on Peter’s case.

It couldn’t be.

“Why?” he asked. “Did you hurt her?”

Peter shook his head. “That’s a loaded question.”

Had something happened here that Jordan didn’t know about?

“Was she your girlfriend?”

Peter smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No.”

Jordan had been in Judge Cormier’s district court a few times. He liked her. She was tough, but she was fair. In fact, she was the best judge Peter could have drawn for his case-the alternative superior court justice was Judge Wagner, who was a very old, prosecution-biased judge. Josie Cormier had not been a victim of the shooting, but that wasn’t the only scenario that would compromise Judge Cormier as the justice for the trial. Suddenly Jordan was thinking of witness tampering, of the hundred things that could go wrong. He was wondering how he could find out what Josie Cormier knew about the shooting, without anyone else learning that he’d been looking into it.

He was wondering what she knew that might help Peter’s case.

“Have you talked to her since you’ve been in here?” Jordan said.

“If I’d talked to her, would I be asking you if she was okay?”

“Well, don’t talk to her,” Jordan instructed. “Don’t talk to anyone except me.”

“That’s like talking to a brick wall,” Peter muttered.

“You know, I could rattle off a thousand things I’d rather be doing than sitting with you in a conference room that’s as hot as hell.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “Then why don’t you go do some of them? You don’t listen to a word I say, anyway.”

“I listen to every word, Peter. I listen to it, and then I think about the boxes of evidence the DA dropped at my door, all of which make you look like a cold-blooded killer. I hear you tell me you were collecting guns, like you’re some kind of Civil War buff.”

Peter flinched. “Fine. You want to know if I was going to use the guns? Yeah, I was. I planned it. I ran through the whole thing in my head. I worked out the details, down to the last second. I was going to kill the person I hated the most. But then I didn’t get to do it.”

“Those ten people-”

“Just got in the way,” Peter said.

“Then who were you trying to kill?”

On the opposite side of the room, the air conditioner suddenly choked to life. Peter turned away. “Me,” he said.

One Year Before

I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Lewis said as he opened the back door of the van. The dog, Dozer, was lying on his side, fighting to breathe.

“You heard the vet,” Lacy said, stroking the retriever’s head. Good dog. They’d gotten him when Peter was three; now, at twelve, his kidneys had shut down. Keeping him alive with medications was only for their benefit, not his: it was too hard to imagine their house without the dog padding through its halls.

“I wasn’t talking about putting him down,” Lewis clarified. “I was talking about bringing everyone along.”

The boys fell out of the back of the van like heavy stones. They squinted in the sunlight, hunched their shoulders. Their broad backs made Lacy think of oak trees that tapered to the ground; they both had the same habit of turning in their left foot when they walked. She wished they could have seen how very alike they were.