The Pact (37 page)

“From the AG's office, you mean?” Jordan shrugged. “Pay sucked.” Selena glanced around the well worn house. Jordan liked his creature comforts, but was never going to be ostentatious. “The truth,” she pressed.

He swung his eyes toward her. “You know how I feel about the truth,” he said quietly.

“Your story, then,” Selena said.

“Well,” Jordan answered, “as a prosecutor, you've got the burden of proof. As a defense lawyer, all you have to do is introduce a tiny doubt. And how can't a jury have some doubt? I mean, they weren't there at the scene of the crime, right?”

“You're telling me you switched sides because you wanted the easy way out? I don't buy it.”

“I switched sides,” Jordan said, “because I didn't buy it either. The idea of there being one correct story. You have to believe in that, to prosecute, or what the hell is your case all about?” Selena shifted, turning onto her side so that her face was only inches away from Jordan's. “Do you think Chris Harte did it?” She put a hand on his arm. “I know you don't think it makes any difference,” she said. “You'd still defend him, and well. But I just want to know.” Jordan looked down at his hands. “I think he loved that girl, and I think that he was scared shitless when the police found them. Beyond that?” He shook his head. “I think Chris Harte is a very good liar,” he said slowly. Then he looked up at Selena. “But not quite as good as the prosecution thinks.” It WAS THURSDAY, a quiet day in the cemetery, so that the voice of the rabbi seemed to carry, floating up to the branches of the trees where the finches watched with their button black eyes, their beaks closing around the words as if prayers were as nourishing as thistle seed. Michael stood beside Melanie, his dress shoes no match for the cold that came up through the packed earth. How, he wondered, did they get the stone in? And for the fiftieth time that morning, his eyes wandered to the brand new pink marble headstone on Emily's grave, the purpose for this unveiling ceremony. The stone itself did not say much: Emily's name, the dates of her birth and death. And slightly below that, in large letters, a single word: BELOVED. Michael did not remember ordering that phrase from the stonecutter, but he supposed it was possible; it had been so long ago, and his mind had been so disordered. Then again, it would not have surprised him to learn that Melanie had had that part added. He wondered, though, if it had been her idea to put the slightest of spaces between the E and the L, or if that had been a slip of the carver's hand, so that you could not be sure if the word was a description of Emily-BELOVED-or BE LOVED, a directive issued on her behalf. He listened to the guttural run of Hebrew coming from the rabbi, and the soft sound of Melanie's tears. But his eyes kept roaming, wandering, until he saw what he had been waiting for. Coming up over the rise of the hill was Gus, dressed in a voluminous black parka and a dark skirt, her head bowed into the wind. She met Michael's eyes squarely and took up a spot slightly behind him, on the other side of Melanie.

Michael took a step back, and then another, until he was standing beside Gus. Hidden beneath the blowing folds of her coat, he touched her gloved hand. “You came,” he whispered.

“You asked,” she murmured in response.

And then it was over. Michael bent down and picked up a small rock, which he laid at the base of the new headstone. Melanie did the same, and then briskly walked past Gus as if she were not there. Gus knelt and found a smooth white pebble, walked toward the grave, and set her offering beside the other two.

She felt Michael's hand on her arm again. “I'll take you to your car,” he said, turning to let Melanie know where he was going, but she'd disappeared.

Gus waited while Michael talked to the rabbi and handed him an en-velope. Then she fell into step beside him, neither one speaking until they reached the car. “Thank you,” Michael said.

“No, thank you” Gus said. “I wanted to come.” She glanced up at Michael to say good-bye, but something about his face-the lines at the corners of his eyes, or maybe his shaky smile-made her open her arms and let him step into them. When Michael pulled back her eyes were as damp as his.

“Saturday?” he asked.

“Saturday,” she said. He looked abstracted for a moment, as if struggling internally, and then apparently came to a decision. Still holding her loosely, he leaned down, kissed her softly on the mouth, and walked away.

Gus PULLED THE CAR OVER a quarter mile from the cemetery. It was entirely possible that in the strain of the moment-and an unveiling was certainly stressful-Michael had not really thought about what he was doing. Then again, Gus would have staked her savings on the fact that Michael was clearly aware.

She was emotionally needy, she knew that. God, it had been months since she'd slept with James, longer since she'd really talked to him. And at the same time she'd lost her husband, her best friend had turned her back. Having some adult who wanted-wanted!-to talk about Chris was seductive. But she wondered, feeling slightly ill, whether she looked forward to seeing Michael because she could talk about Chris, or whether she'd been using Chris as an excuse to see Michael. They did speak of Chris, and Emily, and the trial. And it was good to get all that off her chest. But it didn't account for the way the hair on the back of Gus's neck stood up when he looked at her and smiled, or for the fact that she could close her eyes now, and picture his face in a variety of expressions with the same recall that she had once had for James.

She had known Michael for years, knew him nearly as well as she knew her own husband. It was an attraction born of close quarters, and false familiarity. It meant, she told herself, absolutely nothing. Yet she drove home one-handed, the fingertips of her free hand gently touching her mouth, her tires sibilant on the smooth road, whispering, “Beloved.”

ALTHOUGH NEITHER OF THEM had spoken of it, ever since James's forthright decision not to testify as a witness for Chris, Gus had been sleeping in a different room. Chris's room, actually. There was comfort in feeling the mattress curved beneath her where it had spooned her son's body for years; in smelling the rank collection of athletic gear fermenting on the floor of the closet, in waking up to the sound of an alarm tuned to his favorite radio station-all of which contributed to the illusion that he was still just as close to Gus as any one of these things. It was James's late night at the hospital. Gus heard him coming in, the heavy click of the front door, the rhythm of his footsteps on the stairs. There was a slight creak as he checked on Kate, asleep hours before, and the sound of water rushing through the pipes as he turned on the shower in the master bath. He did not come to talk to Gus. He did not go near Chris's room at all. She slipped out of the bed, her feet silent on the carpet as she shrugged into her robe. It was strange seeing her bed. The sheets were clean and smooth, but lapped untucked from the comforter like a lolling tongue-clear evidence that she wasn't sleeping here. James liked the sheets free; on Gus's side, they always stayed tucked, the line of demarcation shifting subtly night after night.

The water in the shower stopped running. Gus imagined James stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his waist, his hair standing on end from a vigorous scrubbing. Then she pushed open the bathroom door.

James turned to her immediately. “What's the matter?” he asked, certain there was no other reason, barring emergency, for her to be there.

“Everything,” Gus said, as she untied the terry-cloth robe and let it fall. She stepped toward him hesitantly, laid her palms flat on his chest. With amazing force, James's arms closed around her. He slid down the length of her, his mouth on her breast and her ribs, and rested his cheek on her belly.

She tugged him upright and led him into the bedroom. James fell back upon her, his heart pounding every bit as hard as hers. Gus ran her hands over the joinings of the muscles in his arms, the light furring of his buttocks, the smooth divots at the bottom of his spine-all places she needed to touch, and commit again to memory. As he entered her, she arched beneath him like a willow. James thrust again and Gus bit down hard on the skin of his shoulder, afraid of what she might say. And then as quickly as it had escalated, it was over, James straining above her, their hands ripping at the bedclothes and each other, still in silence.

With a shy smile, James went off to the bathroom, nail marks raking his back. Gus patted her breasts, rubbed raw with beard stubble, and looked down at the bed. It was a mess, sheets tangled, quilt discarded. There was even blood on the sheets, from James's back, and they'd knocked over a nightstand lamp. It did not look like the site of a reconciliation, or a bower of love. In fact, Gus thought, it did not look like anything so much as the scene of a crime.

Jordan unsnapped the rubber band from the small packet of mail. At the letterhead of the Grafton County Superior Court, he felt his pulse pick up. He ripped open the envelope to find the letter sent by the Honorable Leslie Puckett, in response to the pretrial motions he and Barrie had filed. The prosecutor's motions, seeking to exclude two of his expert witnesses and the pro-choice English essay Selena had found, had been denied.

His own motion of suppression to bar the interview Detective Marrone had done at the hospital had been granted, on the grounds that Chris Harte had not felt he was free to leave the interview, and thus had been formally questioned without being Mirandized.

It was a small victory, but it made him smile. Jordan shuffled the letter to the back of the pile, walked back into his office, and closed the door.

WHEN CHRIS SAW HIS FATHER standing stiffly behind the metal bridge chair down in the visitor's area, he froze. He had told his mother that he wanted James to come, but he hadn't really expected his wish to be granted. After all, when Chris had banned him from visiting months before, they all knew he was just taking the blame for something James would have done, anyway.

“Chris,” his father said, holding out a hand.

“Dad.” They shook, and Chris was momentarily shocked by the heat of his father's skin. He remembered, in a quick flash, that his father's palms had always seemed reassuringly warm, on his shoulders in a duck blind, or bracing his arms as he taught him to shoot. “Thank you for coming.” James nodded. “Thank you for having me,” he said formally.

“Did Mom come with you?”

“No,” James said. “I understood that you wanted to see me by myself.” Chris had never said that, but that was how his mother had interpreted it. And probably, it wasn't a bad idea. “Was there something in particular you wanted to ask me?” James said. Chris nodded. He thought of many things at once: If I go to prison, will you help Mom get on with her life? If 1 ask you, will you tell me to my face that I've hurt you more than you ever thought possible? But instead his mouth opened, rolling over a sentence that surprised Chris as much as it did James. “Dad,” he said, “in your whole life, haven't you ever done anything wrong?” James covered his startled laughter with a cough. “Well, sure,” he said. “I failed biology the first term of college. I shoplifted a pack of gum when I was little. And I crashed my father's car up after a fraternity party.” He chuckled, crossing his legs. “I just never came close to murder.” Chris stared at him. “Neither did I,” he said softly.

James's face went pale. “I didn't mean . . . that is . . .” Finally, he shook his head. “I don't blame you for what happened.”

“But do you believe me?”

James met his son's gaze. “It is very hard to believe you,” he said, “when I'm trying so hard to pretend it never happened.”

“It did happen,” Chris said, his voice choked. “Emily's dead. And I'm stuck in this stinking jail, and I can't change what's already been done.”

“Neither can I.” James clasped his hands between his knees. “You have to understand-I grew up being told by my parents that the best way to get out of a sticky situation was to assume it didn't exist,” he said. “Let the rumors fly ... if the family isn't bothered, why should anyone else be?” Chris smiled slightly. “Making believe I'm in a swanky hotel doesn't make the food taste any better here, or the cells any bigger.”

“Well,” James said, his voice softer. “There's nothing that says you can't learn from your own children, too.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “As a matter of fact, now that you've got me thinking, there was one thing I've done in my life that was really awful.” Chris leaned forward, intrigued. “What was it?”

James smiled with so much of his heart that Chris had to look away. “I stayed away from here,” he said, “until now.”

Steve's murder trial had lasted four days. His lawyer was a public defender, since neither he nor his parents could afford someone more glitzy. And although he didn't talk to Chris about his case, Chris knew that he grew more and more nervous as the close of the trial drew near. The night before the jury was supposed to return a verdict, Chris woke to the sound of a slight scratching. He rolled over in his bunk to find Steve rubbing a razor blade over the edge of the toilet.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Chris whispered.

Steve looked up. “I'm going to prison,” he said, his voice heavy.

“You're already in prison,” Chris said.

Steve shook his head. “This is a country club compared to the State Pen. Do you know what they do there to guys serving time for killing kids? Do you?”

Chris smiled a little. “Make you the company whore?”

“You think it's so frigging funny? Because you could be in the same goddamned boat three months from now.” Steve was breathing harshly, trying not to cry. “Sometimes they just beat you up, and the guards look away 'cause they think you've got it coming. Sometimes they go so far as to kill you.” He picked up the silver sliver of razor, a gleam in the half light of the cell. “I thought I'd save them the trouble,” Steve said.

Still muzzy with sleep, it took Chris a moment to understand what Steve was saying. “You can't do that,” he said.

“Chris,” Steve murmured, “it's about the only thing I can do.” Chris suddenly remembered Emily, trying to explain to him how she felt. I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there. Chris watched Steve lift a shaking hand, the blade of the razor trembling like a flame. And he jumped off his bunk and started pounding at the bars of the cell, screaming to attract the attention of an officer and do for this friend what he had not done for Emily. Rumors flew through a jail, pervasive as gnats and just as difficult to ignore. By breakfast the next day everyone knew that Steve had been taken to the suicide cell down in maximum, where he was monitored by camera in the control room. By lunch, he was being led away by the sheriff, to the courthouse to hear the jury's decision.