The Pact (47 page)

“Two bullets?” Emily said.

Chris lifted a shoulder. “Just in case,” he answered, daring her to ask him to explain something he did not really understand himself. Just in case one bullet didn't do the trick? Just in case he found that with Emily dead, he'd want to die, too?

Then the gun lay between them, a living thing. Emily picked it up, its weight bending her wrist. There was so much Chris wanted to say. He wanted her to tell him what this horrible secret of hers was; he wanted to beg her to stop. He wanted to tell her she could still back out of this, although he felt things had gotten so far he did not quite believe it himself. So he pressed his lips against hers, hard-a brand-but then his mouth curled around a sob and he broke away before the kiss was finished, his body folding like he'd been punched. “I am doing this,” he said, “because I love you.” Emily's face was still and white with tears. “I am doing this because I love you, too.” She gripped his hand. “I want you to hold me,” she said.

Chris moved her into his arms, her chin on his right shoulder. He committed to memory the solid weight of her, and the life that ran like a current, before pulling back slightly to give Emily room to place the gun to her head.

fandi Underwood apologized to the jury. “I work nights,” she explained, “but they didn't want to keep all of you up during the time I'm usually most lucid.” She'd just come off a thirty-six hour stint at the hospital, where she was a physician's assistant in the emergency room. “Just let me know if I don't make any sense,” she joked. “And if I try to intubate someone with a pen, slap me.” Jordan smiled. “We certainly appreciate you being here, Ms. Underwood.”

“Hey,” the witness grinned. “What's a little sleep?”

She was a large woman, still dressed in hospital scrubs that had small green snowflakes printed all over them. Jordan had already established her identity for the record. “Ms. Underwood,” he continued, “were you on duty the night of November seventh, when Emily Gold was brought into the emergency room of Bainbridge Memorial?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Do you remember her?”

“I do. She was very young, and those are always the most terrible to see. There was a lot of activity around her at first-she was arresting as the medics brought her in-but apparently that was over in a matter of seconds, and she was pronounced dead by the time she was in the ER cubicle.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“Well, standard procedure is to have someone identify the body before it's moved to the morgue. We had been told that the parents were on their way. So I started to clean her up.”

“Clean her up?”

“It's customary,” she said. “Especially when there's a great deal of blood; it's harder on the relatives to see that. Basically I wiped off her hands and her face. Nobody told us not to wash her.”

“What do you mean?”

“In police investigations, evidence is evidence, and a corpse qualifies. But the officers who brought her in said it was a suicide. No one from the police told us to treat it differently; no one came in to do tests or anything.”

“You specifically washed her hands?”

“Yes. I remember that she had on a pretty gold ring-one of those Celtic knots, you know?”

“And when did you leave the cubicle?”

“When the girl's father came in to ID the body,” she said.

Jordan smiled at the witness. “Thank you,” he said, “nothing further.” As JORDAN HAD EXPECTED, Barrie Delaney declined to cross-examine the physician's assistant. There was very little she could ask without making her star witness, Detective Marrone, look like a bumbling fool. So Jordan put Dr. Linwood Karpagian on the stand, thinking as he watched the man that he owed Selena a dozen roses for finding him.

The jury could not take their eyes off him. Dr. Karpagian looked like Cary Grant in his prime, with silvered hair waving off his temples and finely manicured hands that looked capable of holding your confidence, much less anything more conventionally substantial. He sat easily on the stand, accustomed to being the center of attention.

“Your honor,” Barrie said, “request permission to approach.” Puckett waved the lawyers closer, and Jordan raised his brow, waiting to hear what Barrie had to say. “For the appellate record, we still have an objection to this witness.”

“Ms. Delaney,” Judge Puckett said, “I already ruled on this in your pre-trial motion.” As Barrie stomped back to her table, Jordan walked Dr. Karpagian through his credentials, further impressing the jury. “Doctor,” he said, “how many teens have you worked with?”

“Thousands,” Dr. Karpagian said. “I couldn't begin to narrow that down.”

“And how many with suicidal natures?”

“Oh, I've counseled upwards of four hundred teenagers who were suicidal. And that of course doesn't count the profiles of other suicidal teens who were featured in the three books I've written on the subject.”

“So you've published your findings?”

“Yes. Beside the books, I've had studies published in the Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, and the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychiatry.”

“Since we're not nearly as familiar as you are with the phenomenon of teen suicide, could you just give us a general overview of its characteristics?”

“Certainly. Teen suicide is an alarming epidemic, increasing every year. To an adolescent, suicide is seen as a joint statement of strength and despair. Teenagers need, more than anything, to be taken seriously. And the world of a teenager revolves around himself. Now, imagine a troubled teenager with a problem. His parents brush him off, because they either don't want to accept that their child is upset or don't have time to listen. And in response, the teenager thinks, 'Oh, yeah? Well, watch what I can do.' And he kills himself. He's not thinking of being dead. He's thinking of suicide as a way to solve the problem, to end the pain, and to say, 'So there!' all at once.”

“Is there a percentage breakdown for male versus female suicides?”

“Girls try to kill themselves three times more frequently than boys, but boys succeed far more often.”

“Really?” Jordan feigned amazement. In reality, he and Dr. Karpagian had fine-tuned this testimony for hours the previous week, and there was nothing the good doctor could say that was going to surprise him. “Why is that?”

“Well, when girls try to commit suicide, they often use less decisive methods. Pills, or carbon monoxide poisoning-both of which require a long period of time to do their work, during which the victim is often found alive and taken to the hospital. Sometimes they slash their wrists, but most draw the razor across laterally, not realizing that the quickest way to die is to slash vertically, along the artery. On the other hand,” he said, “boys tend to use guns, or to hang themselves. Both methods are fast, death occurring before someone can save them or stop them.”

“I see,” Jordan said. “Is there a certain type of teenager that is more likely than another to kill him-or herself?”

“That's the intriguing thing,” Dr. Karpagian said, his eyes snapping with the interest of a scholar. “A poor teenager is just as likely to try as a wealthy one. There is no real socioeconomic profile to suicidal teens.”

“Are they any behaviors that just jump out and say, 'Whoa-this kid's about to kill himself!' ”

“Depression,” Karpagian said bluntly. “It may be something that has been going on for years; it may happen rather quickly in a matter of several months. The actual suicide is often triggered by a certain event, which-coupled with the depression-seems too overwhelming to accept.”

“Would this depression be obvious to people who knew the teenager?”

“Well, you know, Mr. McAfee, that's one of the problems. Depression can manifest itself in many different ways. It's not always noticeable to friends and family. There are certain signs of suicidal behavior that psychologists recognize and that should be taken seriously, if they occur. But some teens show none of them, and some show all of them.”

“What are these signs, Doctor?”

“Sometimes we see a preoccupation with death. Or a change in eating or sleeping habits. Rebellious behavior. Withdrawal from people, or outright running away. Some suicidal teens act persistently bored, or have difficulty concentrating. There may be evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, falling grades. They may neglect their appearance, exhibit personality changes, or have psychosomatic complaints. Sometimes we see kids giving away prized possessions, or joking about killing themselves. But, as I said, sometimes we don't see any of this.”

“Sounds like some perfectly normal teens I know,” Jordan said.

“Exactly,” the psychologist said. “That's what makes it so hard to diagnose beforehand.” Jordan lifted a document, a collection of Emily Gold's medical information and interviews with neighbors, friends, and family by both Selena and the police. “Doctor, did you have a chance to look at Emily Gold's profile?”

“I did.”

“And what did her friends and family say about her?”

“For the most part, her parents were unaware of any depression. Likewise her friends. Her art teacher's comments suggested that although Emily wasn't talking about being upset, her artwork had taken a turn toward the macabre. It seems to me, reading between the lines, that Emily was withdrawing in the weeks before her death. She was spending quite a lot of time with Chris, which is also consistent with a suicide pact.”

“A suicide pact. What does that mean, exactly?”

“Two or more deaths planned together. It's an extraordinary thought to an adult, actually-the idea of holding enough sway over someone to get them to take their life, too.” He smiled sadly at the jury.

“Most of you have forgotten-probably for good reason-what it was like when you were sixteen and seventeen; how crucially important it was to have someone understand you and admire you. You grow up, and things get more relative. But when you're an adolescent, that one close relationship is all consuming. You are so bonded to that peer that you wear the same kinds of clothes, you listen to the same kinds of music, you do the same kinds of things for fun, and you think alike. It only takes one teenager to conjure up the idea of suicide. It takes a variety of psychological reasons for a second teen to decide it's a good idea.”

Dr. Karpagian looked at Chris, as if analyzing him now. “Teens who decide to commit suicide together are usually close. But once the decision to kill themselves is made, that small world grows even smaller. The only people they want to confide in is each other. The only people they want to see is each other. And everything narrows until the only thing that matters is the act of committing suicide: the planning, the event itself. They're going to make a collective statement to all the people who are on the outside of that very small world, the people who don't understand them.”

“Dr. Karpagian, based on Emily's profile, did she seem suicidal?”

“Not having met her, the best I can say is that it is entirely possible she was depressed enough to commit suicide.”

Jordan nodded. “You're saying there doesn't have to be a blatant red flag on that profile? That a girl who looks like a pretty normal teen but is just a little bit withdrawn might be suicidal?”

“It's happened before,” Dr. Karpagian said.

“I see.” He turned toward his notes. “Did you have a chance to look at the profile of Chris?” It had been at Jordan's insistance that Selena created a profile, in much the same way one had been constructed for Emily, by talking to family and friends and eliciting comments. Knowing-albeit grudgingly-that Chris had never been suicidal, it wouldn't work to get him face-to-face with an expert, and then put that expert on the stand sworn to tell the truth.

“I did look it over. And the most important thing I saw in Chris Harte's profile was his preoccupation with Emily Gold. I was a psychologist long before I was an expert on suicide, you know, and there's a specific term for the kind of relationship that had developed between Chris and Emily over the years.”

“What's that?”

“Fusion.” He smiled at the jury. “Just like the physicists. It means that two personalities have bonded together so strongly that a whole new personality is created, and the separate ones cease to exist.”

Jordan raised his eyebrows. “Could you run that by me again?”

“In plain English,” Dr. Karpagian said, “it means that Chris and Emily's minds and personalities were so connected there really was no distinction between them. They grew up so close that they couldn't function without each other. Anything that happened to one of those kids was going to affect the other. And in the case of the death of one of them, the other one literally would not be able to go on living.” He looked at Jordan. “Does that make more sense?”

“It's more clear,” Jordan said, “but it's hard to accept.” Dr. Karpagian smiled. “Congratulations, Mr. McAfee. That simply means you're mentally healthy.” Jordan grinned. “Don't know that Ms. Delaney would agree, sir, but I thank you.” The jury tittered behind him. “So in your expert opinion, Dr. Karpagian, did you come to any conclusions about Chris Harte and Emily Gold?”

“Yes. I see Emily as being the one who was suicidal for whatever reason. And-it's important to note this-we may never know what that reason was. But something made her depressed and death seemed a way out. She turned to Chris hecause he was the person closest to her by far, and she told him she was going to commit suicide. But once she confided in Chris, he realized that if Emily was dead, there would be no reason for him to be alive.”

Jordan stared at the jury. “So what you're saying is that whatever made Emily suicidal was not the same thing that made Chris suicidal?”

“No. It was most likely the simple fact that Emily was going to kill herself that made Chris agree to a suicide pact.”

Jordan closed his eyes briefly. To him, that was the biggest hurdle in his defense-getting the jury even to believe that two kids could have come up with this awful idea together. The good doctor, thank God-or Selena, who'd found him-had made it seem possible. “One more thing,” Jordan said.

“Emily purchased a very expensive gift for someone several months before her suicide. What would you say about that kind of behavior?”