Salem Falls (35 page)

“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I wouldn’t be asking if this didn’t mean so much to me? All these years I’ve watched you sneak out to drink, and I pretended I didn’t see. All the times I’ve understood that sometimes a person needs to do something, and the hell with the consequences . . . why can’t you grant me the same privilege?”

Her father leaned forward, covering Addie’s hand with his own. “Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?”

“Because!” Addie cried. “What if he didn’t do it?”

“And what if Chloe hadn’t really died? And what if your mom walked right through those swinging doors?” Roy sighed. “You’re not going because you want to prove to yourself he’s guilty; a court is gonna do that soon enough. You’re going because you don’t want to believe the truth that’s right in front of you.”

“You don’t even know where to start looking,” Delilah added.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“And if you don’t find what you’re looking for?”

At Roy’s question, Addie looked up. “Then all I’ve lost is time.”

It wasn’t true, and all of them knew it. But neither Roy nor Delilah, nor even Addie, wanted to admit that after a certain point, a heart with so many stress fractures would never be anything but broken.

Jordan stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped around his waist and scraped the razor over his beard stubble. Each stroke cleared a line through the shaving foam, like a snowplow. It made him think of Jack, who had been showered and shaved-thank the good Lord-when he’d summoned Jordan in the middle of the night to talk about twig crucifixes or whatever the hell was hanging from the trees.

He tapped the razor against the edge of the sink and rinsed the blade before lifting it to his jaw again. He could always go with a variation of the infamous Twinkie defense, which had acquitted a murderer by suggesting he was on a sugar high. Or he could imply that physical impairment wasn’t the only side effect of liquor . . . that psychologically, one’s thoughts were disabled, too. Maybe he could even find a crackpot shrink to say that drinking caused dissociation, or some other nifty catchword that excused Jack of being aware of his actions at the time he committed them. It was a cousin to the insanity defense . . . not guilty by reason of inebriation.

“Dad?”

As Thomas opened the door, Jordan jumped a foot, lost in his own thoughts. The razor nicked his cheek, and blood began to run freely down his jaw and neck. “Goddamn, Thomas! Can’t you knock?”

“Jeez. I only wanted to borrow the shaving cream,” he said. He squinted in the mirror at his father’s face. “Better do something about that,” he advised, and closed the door behind him.

Jordan swore and splashed water onto his cheeks and jaw. The shaving cream burned where it seeped into the cut. He patted his face dry with a towel and looked up.

It was one long, straight, thin cut, carved down the center of his right cheek.

“Jesus,” he mused aloud. “I look like St. Bride.”

He blotted toilet paper against it, until it stopped bleeding, then wiped up around the sink and started out of the bathroom to get dressed. A moment later, he found himself in front of the mirror again, staring more carefully at his cheek.

Gillian Duncan stated that she’d scratched Jack in an effort to get him away from her. Charlie Saxton had photographed the corresponding scrape on Jack’s cheek when he was being booked; it was in the le. But a man who had been scratched by a girl fighting off a rape would have four or five parallel marks-the scars of several fingernails, where they’d connected with his skin.

And Jack didn’t.

May 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

Jack and Gill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water.

Jack poked Gill just for the thrill

Of nailing Duncan’s daughter.

C harlie crumpled the handwritten ode that had been left taped to his computer terminal. “Not funny,” he yelled in the general vicinity of the rest of the precinct, then plastered a smile to his face as the first of his three interviewees entered the building, clutching her father’s arm.

“Ed,” Charlie said, nodding. “And Chelsea. Good to see you again.”

He led them to the small conference room at the station, which in his opinion was a slight cut above the interrogation room. These girls were nervous enough already to be party to an investigation; he didn’t need to make them any more jittery. Holding the door open, Charlie let Ed and his daughter pass inside.

“You understand why it’s important for me to take your statement?” Charlie asked, as soon as they all were seated.

Chelsea nodded, her blue eyes wide as pools. “I’ll do anything to help Gilly.”

“That’s good. Now, I’m just going to tape our talk here today, so that the prosecutor gets a chance to hear what a loyal friend you are, too.”

“Is that really necessary?” Ed Abrams asked.

“Yeah, Ed, I’m afraid it is.” Charlie turned to Chelsea again, then started the microcassette recorder. “Can you tell me where you went that night, Chelsea?”

She glanced sideways at her father. “We were just getting cabin fever, you know?”

“Where did you go?” Charlie asked.

“We met at the old cemetery on the edge of town, at eleven P.M. Meg and Gilly came together; Whit and me were waiting when they got there. Then we all went up that little path that goes into the woods behind it.”

“What were you going to do?”

“Just talk, girl stuff. And build a re, so we’d have, like, some light.” Her head snapped up. “Just a tiny fire, not the kind you need a permit for or anything.”

“I understand. How long were you there?”

“I guess about two hours. We were getting ready to go when . . . Jack St. Bride showed up.”

“You knew who he was?”

“Yeah.” Chelsea brushed her hair away from her face. “He worked at the diner.”

“Had he talked to you before that night?”

She nodded. “It was . . . kind of creepy. I mean, he was a grown man, and he was always trying to make jokes with us and stuff. Like he wanted us to think he was cool.”

“What did he look like?”

Chelsea sat up straighter in her chair. “He was wearing a yellow shirt and jeans, and he looked like he’d been in a fight. His eye, it was all bruised and swollen.” She wrinkled her nose. “And he smelled like he had been swimming in whiskey.”

“Were there any cuts on his face?”

“Not that I remember.”

“How did you feel?”

“God,” Chelsea breathed, “I was so scared. I mean, he was the reason we were all supposed to be at home that night.”

“Did he seem angry? Upset?”

“No.” Chelsea blushed. “When I was little, my mom used to make me watch this commercial about not taking candy from strangers. And that’s what he reminded me of . . . someone who looked all normal on the outside but who would turn to the camera when we weren’t looking and smile like a monster.”

“What happened?”

“We said we were getting ready to leave, and he said good-bye. A few minutes later, we left, too.”

“Together?”

Chelsea shook her head. “Gilly went in a different direction, toward her house.”

“Did you hear anything, after you left?”

Chelsea bowed her head. “No.”

“No screaming, scuffling, hitting, shouting?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what happened?” Charlie asked.

“We were walking for a while, just out of the woods on the edge of the cemetery, when we heard something crashing through the trees. Like a deer, that’s what I thought. But it turned out to be Gilly. She came running at us, crying.” Chelsea closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Her . . . her hair, it was all full of leaves. There was dirt all over her clothes. And she was hysterical. I tried to touch her, just to calm her down, and she started to hit me. It was like she didn’t even know who we were.” Chelsea pulled the sleeve of her shirt down over her wrist and used it to wipe her eyes. “She said that he raped her.”

“Why did you let Gilly leave by herself?”

Chelsea looked into her lap. “I didn’t want to. I even offered to walk her home.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Chelsea said. “Gilly told me I was being just as bad as our parents. That nothing was going to happen.” She twisted the hem of her shirt into a knot. “But it did.”

Whitney O’Neill frowned at a spot on the conference table. “None of your friends suggested it might not be a bright idea to let your friend go off into the woods alone?” Charlie asked.

“Is my daughter a witness or a suspect?” Tom O’Neill blustered.

“Daddy,” Whitney said. “It’s okay. It’s a good question. I guess we were all just tired, or maybe even a little shaky after having him show up . . . Chels and Meg and I hadn’t gone ten feet before we realized that we probably ought to go with her. That’s when I yelled for Gilly.”

“You yelled,” Charlie clarified. “Not Chelsea or Meg.”

“Yeah,” Whitney said defensively. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Charlie ignored the heated stares of the girl and her father. “Did Gillian answer?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t go back to check? To make sure Gillian was all right?”

“No,” Whitney whispered, her lower lip trembling. “And you have no idea how I wish I had.”

When Meg had been a little kid, she used to hide under the sofa every time her father dressed in uniform. It wasn’t that she was afraid of police officers, exactly . . . but when her dad wore his shiny shoes and brimmed hat and sparkling badge, he was not the same man who fixed her Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes on Sundays and who tickled her feet to get them underneath the covers at night. When he was working, he seemed harder, somehow, as if he could bend only so far before snapping in half.

Now, it was totally weird to be sitting on her bed with all her stuffed animals . . . and to have her dad interviewing her with his tape recorder. Even weirder, he looked just as freaked out as she was.

Meg’s heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s, so fast she was certain it would just explode out of her chest any minute. That whole night was a blur, one that faded in and out like the colors on a kaleidoscope. Not for the first time, she wished she’d been able to give her statement with Chelsea and Whitney in attendance. You can do this, she told herself.

She closed her eyes and thought of herself sneaking back to the woods, to clear the branches of the dogwood and the ribbons from the maypole. She’d done that, and no one had found out.

“Honey?” her father asked. “You all right?”

Meg nodded. “Just thinking of Gillian.”

He leaned forward, brushing her hair back from her face and catching it behind her ear. “You’re doing great. We don’t have much more to go over.”

“Good, because it’s hard to talk about,” Meg admitted.

Her father turned on the recorder again. “Did you hear anything after you left?”

“No.”

“No screams from Gillian? Fighting? Trees rustling?”

“Nothing.”

Charlie looked up. “Why did you let her go off alone?”

“It . . . it’s hard to remember exactly . . .”

“Try.”

“It was Gilly’s idea,” Meg said faintly. “You know how she is when she gets something in her head. After talking with him for a while, I guess she figured she was brave enough to handle anything.”

“Did someone try to get her to rethink this?”

Meg nodded quickly. “Chelsea . . . or maybe Whitney, I can’t really remember. Someone told her she shouldn’t go.”

“And?”

“And she just . . . didn’t listen. She said she wanted to walk through the lion’s den and live to tell about it. She’s like that sometimes.”

He stared at her, every inch a detective, so that it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. “Daddy,” Meg whispered. “Can I say something . . . off the record?”

He nodded, and turned off the tape recorder.

“That night . . . when I sneaked out of the house . . .” Meg lowered her eyes. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Meg, I-”

“I know you didn’t say anything when I told you on tape,” she continued in a rush. “And I know it’s your job to be the detective, not the dad. But I just wanted you to know that I should have stayed home, like you wanted. I knew better.”

“Can I say something, too? Off the record?” Her father looked away, at a small watermark on the ceiling, blinking hard as if he were crying, although that impression must have been a mistake, because in her whole life Meg had never seen him do that. “The whole time I was taking Gillian’s statement, I kept hearing your voice. And every piece of evidence I drove to the lab I pictured coming from you. I hate that this happened to your friend, Meg . . . but I’m so goddamned grateful that it didn’t happen to you.”