The Pact (49 page)

She leaned over the railing of the witness box. “Could I... could you bring it closer?” Jordan walked the painting over and propped it between Sandra and the judge. “What's really disturbing, too, are some of the details in the picture. It's in the surreal style-”

“Does that make a difference?”

“Not really, no. But the way the items are put together in this picture does. You can see here that although it is a bony skull, there are also long developed eyelashes, and a highly realistic tongue coming out of the mouth. Those things send off warning signals in me about sexual abuse.”

“Sexual abuse?”

“Yes. Victims of abuse fixate on tongues, eyelashes, and wedge-shaped objects. Also belts.” She squinted at the painting, considering. “And the skull is floating in the sky. Usually when we see someone who draws a floating image of a body with no hands or a detached head, it indicates that they don't have a feeling of control in their life. Their feet aren't on the ground, so to speak, so they can't walk away from whatever is bothering them.”

Jordan set the painting back on the exhibit table. “Ms. Vemon, if you saw this painting in a professional capacity, what would be your clinical recommendation for the artist?” Sandra Vernon shook her head. “I'd be very concerned about the mental state of the artist, with regard to issues of depression and even suicide,” she said. “I'd suggest seeing a therapist.” MELANIE shifted IN her seat. It was the first day she'd been allowed to hear testimony, since her own stint as a witness was over. And of all the testimonies she wanted to hear, this woman from Berkeley had to be the most upsetting. Tongues. Eyelashes. Wedge-shaped objects. Warning signals; sexual abuse.

Her hands clenched in her lap, and she clearly remembered the feel of Emily's journal, the one that she'd found tucked behind the rotted panel of the closet. The one she'd fed to the fire. The one she'd read through to the end.

Melanie pushed past the other people in her row and stumbled out of the courtroom, past Gus Harte and her husband and a hundred other people, until she reached the ladies' room and was sick all over the floor.

“Ms. Vernon, did you go to art school?”

“Yes,” Sandra said, grinning at the prosecutor. “Back when the dinosaurs were still around.” Barrie did not crack a smile. “Isn't it true that you need to gather fifteen to twenty slides of your artwork to send to an art school with your application?”

“Yes.”

“Could this painting be illustrating an alternative style to that art school, to exhibit the artist's range?”

“Actually, schools prefer to know that an artist is fairly consistent.”

“But it is possible, Ms. Vernon?”

“Yes.”

Barrie walked over and extracted two small plastic squares from her briefcase. “I'd like to enter these into evidence,” she said, placing the two compact discs on the exhibit table to be tagged. “Ms. Vernon, these are CDs taken from Emily Gold's bedroom. Can you describe them to us?” The art therapist took the discs from the prosecutor's outstretched hand. “One's a Grateful Dead CD,” she said. “A mighty good one, I should add.”

“What do you see on the cover?”

“A skull, floating on a psychedelic background.”

“And what about the other one?” Barrie asked.

“The Rolling Stones. With the cover art of a mouth, and a long tongue.”

“Have you ever known teenagers to reproduce artwork that is important to them, Ms. Vernon?”

“Yes, we see that quite often. It's part of adolescence.”

“So it is entirely possible that the artist who painted the skull might only have been copying elements from the cover art of some favorite CDs?”

“That's definitely possible.”

“Thank you,” Barrie said, taking back the music. “You also mentioned that you were disturbed by certain elements that you saw in the painting. Can you cite a specific source for me that says that clouds mean suicide?”

“Well, no. It's not one specific source, it's the result of studies of many directives issued to children.”

“Can you give us the name of a study, then, that says a tongue coming out of the mouth indicates sexual abuse?”

“Again, it was a compilation of different cases.”

“So you couldn't really say with any specificity that because there is red and black in a painting, this person is going to kill herself.”

“Well, no. But in ninety out of one hundred paintings where there is red and black like that, we have found that the artists felt suicidal.”

Barrie smiled. “How interesting that you should say that.” She pulled out a poster, and held it up for Jordan.

“Objection,” he said immediately, walking up to the bench. “What the hell is that?” he asked Barrie.

“And what does it have to do with this case?”

“Come on, Jordan. It's a Magritte. I know you're a cretin when it comes to culture, but even you can see where I'm going to go with this.”

Jordan turned to the judge. “If I knew she was going to put a goddamn Magritte up there, I would have done some research on the subject.”

“Oh, give it up,” Barrie said. “This just came to me last night. Let me have a little leeway.”

“If you put that thing up on the stand,” Jordan said, “then I want leeway too. I want time to find out whatever I can about Magritte.”

Barrie smiled sweetly. “With your knowledge of art, by then your client could be seventy.”

“I want time to research Magritte,” Jordan repeated. “He was probably seeing frigging Freud.”

“I'm going to allow it,” Puckett said.

“What?” Barrie and Jordan spoke in unison.

“I'm going to allow it,” he said. “You're the one who brought in an art expert, Jordan. Let Barrie give her something to cut her teeth on.”

As Jordan stalked back to his table, Barrie entered the Magritte poster into evidence. “Do you recognize this painting?”

“Of course. It's a Magritte.”

“Magritte?”

“He was a Belgian painter,” Sandra explained. “He did a number of variations on that particular work.” She gestured toward the image of a silhouetted man, his conservative bowler filled with clouds.

“Can you see similarities between this poster and the painting Mr. McAfee asked you to examine?”

“Sure. There are clouds, although Magritte's aren't quite as stormy, which fill not only the eyes but the entire head.” Sandra smiled. “You've gotta love Magritte.”

“Someone does,” Jordan muttered.

“Was Magritte in therapy?” Barrie asked.

“I don't know.”

“Did he receive therapy after painting this?”

“No idea.”

“Was he depressed when he painted this?”

“I couldn't say.”

Barrie turned toward the jury quizzically. “What you're telling me, then, is that art therapy is not conclusive. You can't look at a painting and say, without a doubt, that if someone paints a realistic tongue, therefore she was sexually abused. Or if someone paints a storm where her eyes should be, therefore she is suicidal. Isn't that true, Ms. Vernon?”

“Yes,” the therapist conceded.

“I have another question for you,” Barrie said. “In art therapy, you issue a directive to a child or teenager, correct?”

“Yes. We ask them to draw a house, a person, or a scene of some kind.”

“Are most of the studies that have been done in art therapy based on directives?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you supposed to issue a directive?”

“Part of art therapy,” Sandy explained, “involves watching the person create. That's just as important as the finished product for divining what's troubling them.”

“Can you give us an example?”

“Sure. A girl who is asked to draw a picture of her family and who hesitates drawing the father or completely skips drawing his lower half is possibly indicating signs of sexual abuse.”

“Ms. Vernon, did you see Emily Gold painting that portrait of a skull?”

“No.”

“Had you issued her a directive, to draw a self-portrait?”

“No.”

“So the fact that you are being presented with this picture now, for the first time, might change the level of certainty with which you can make assumptions about this painting?”

“I'd have to say yes.”

“Could it be possible, then, that Emily Gold was not suicidal when she did this painting, and that she was not sexually abused, and that... perhaps like Mr. Magritte over there ... she was only having a bad day?”

“It is possible,” Sandra said. “But then again, this was a painting that was produced over a series of a couple of months, I'd wager. That's a heck of a lot of consecutive bad days.” Barrie's mouth tightened at the unintended verbal slap. “Your witness.”

“I'll redirect,” Jordan said. He stood up, walking toward the art therapist. “You told Ms. Delaney that you cannot say conclusively that any one of the disturbing things in Emily's painting proves that there's been sexual abuse or suicidal thoughts. This could be just another style she was attempting in order to get into the Sorbonne. But in your expert opinion, what's the likelihood of that?”

“Pretty slim. There's a lot of strange stuff going on in that picture. If it was just one or two things,” Sandra said, “like a melting clock, or an apple in the middle of the face-I'd say she was trying surrealism on for size. But there's a way to show off your range without throwing in a handful of different things that raise the hackles on an art therapist's neck.”

Jordan nodded, then walked toward the exhibit table and gingerly lifted the Magritte poster by his fingertips. “Now, I think if anything's been proven in this trial, it's my own absolute dearth of knowledge when it comes to art.” The therapist smiled at him. “So you've definitely got me at a disadvantage here. But I'll take your word ... and Ms. Delaney's. . . that this is a Magritte.”

“Yes. He was a wonderful painter.”

Jordan scratched his head. “I don't know. I wouldn't hang it in my house.” He turned to the jury, holding the poster up for their perusal. “Now, even I know that van Gogh cut his ear off, and Picasso's faces didn't match up, and that as a group, artists are often very emotional people. Do you know if Mr. Magritte was seeing a psychologist?”

“No.”

“So he might have been mentally disturbed.”

“I suppose so.”

“Might he have been sexually abused?”

“It's possible,” Sandy said.

“Unfortunately,” Jordan continued, “I haven't had any time to do any research on Magritte, but what you're saying here is that Magritte looks, to an art therapist, like he might have had some emotional problems. Right?”

Sandy laughed. “Sure.”

“You also told Ms. Delaney that most of your studies deal with directives. Is that to say you never look at random pictures to see if there might be a problem for a particular child?”

“No, we do that every now and then.”

“A parent who's concerned might bring in a piece of artwork done by a child?”

“Yes.”

“And can you determine from those pieces of artwork if a child has a problem?”

“Often, yes.”

“When you look at non-directive-issued artwork, how often do you diagnose problems and later discover the artist did in fact need help?”

“Oh, nine out of ten times,” Sandra said. “We're pretty discerning.”

“Unfortunately,” Jordan said, “Emily is not here for you to give a directive to. Maybe if she was, you could have helped her. But in lieu of that, and having seen this piece of artwork, would you as a certified art therapist have been concerned about Emily's mental health?”

“Yes, I would have.”

“Nothing further.” Jordan sat down, smiling at Chris.

“I'd like to recross, Your Honor.” Barrie stepped in front of Sandra Ver-non. “You just told Mr. McAfee that you occasionally do preliminary assessments from art that isn't directive-issued.”

“Yes.”

“And you said that nine out of ten pictures which have disturbing elements wind up pointing to someone with mental problems that need to be resolved.”

“Yes.”

“What about the other one?”

“Well,” Sandra said. “He or she is usually just fine.”

Barrie smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

JOAN Bertrand WAS a PLAIN, middle-aged woman whose dreamy green eyes spoke of hours spent recasting herself in the world's greatest novels or even, perhaps, with her favorite male students. Within moments of taking the stand for the defense, Chris's English teacher managed to convey that he was not only a beloved pupil, but quite possibly-in her opinion-one of next great minds of the twentieth century. Jordan gritted his teeth around a smile. Off the stand, when her only props were a chalkboard and rows of student desks, Bertrand hadn't been quite the zealot she appeared to be in a courtroom.

“What kind of student is Chris?”

Joan Bertrand clasped her hands to her heart. “Oh, excellent. I don't think I've ever given him less than an A. He was the sort of student the faculty discussed in the teacher's lounge-you know, 'Who's got Chris Harte for social studies this term?' and things like that.”

“Was he in your class last fall?”

“Yes, for three months.”

“Mrs. Bertrand, do you recognize this?” Jordan held up a neatly typed essay.

“Yes,” she said. “Chris wrote this for Advanced Placement English. It was handed in the last week of October.”

“What was the assignment?”

“To craft an argumentative essay. I told the students to take a confrontational issue, a very hot topic, and to come down on one side of it using their own personal beliefs. They were required to state a thesis, find support for it, disprove the antithesis, and come to a conclusion.” Jordan cleared his throat. “I did almost as poorly in English as I did in art,” he said, full of sheepish charm. “Could you run that by me again?”

Mrs. Bertrand simpered. “They had to take an issue, state the pros and cons, and come to a conclusion.”

“Ah,” Jordan said. “I understand that much better.”

“Most college sophomores couldn't do this. Yet Chris did a wonderful job.”

“Could you tell us what Chris's essay was about, Mrs. Bertrand?”

“Abortion.”

“And what side did he favor?”

“He was very impassioned about being pro-life.”

“Were the students required to actually believe in the issues they wrote about?”