The Pact (51 page)

“It hurts to lose my daughter. It hurts more than anything else has ever hurt in my life. And because it hurts so much, it's very tempting to pass the blame. It makes it much easier for me, for my wife ... for any parent out there who this might happen to in the future, if we say, 'Oh, there were no signs to see. She wasn't suicidal; she was murdered.' ” Michael turned to the jury. “A father ought to be able to tell that his daughter's suicidal, right? Or even depressed? But I didn't. If I can point a ringer at someone else, then it's not my fault that I didn't notice; that I wasn't looking closely.” He raked one hand through his silver hair. “I don't know what happened at the carousel that night. But I do know that I can't accuse someone else, just so that I won't feel guilty.” Jordan let out the breath he'd been holding. Gold had given more than he'd expected, and-feeling optimistic-he decided to push a little. “Mr. Gold,” he said, “we have two scenarios here: murder or suicide. Neither is something you want to believe, but the fact remains that somehow, some way, your daughter is dead.”

“Objection,” Barrie said. “Is there a question before the witness?”

“I'm getting to the point, Your Honor. Give me some leeway.”

“Overruled,” Puckett said.

Jordan turned back to Michael. “You say you knew Chris as well as you knew Emily. Having known Chris his whole life-and as a long-term witness to Chris and Emily's relationship-was it murder, or was it suicide?” Michael held his head in his hands. “I don't know. I just don't know.” Jordan stared at him. “What do you know, Mr. Gold?” There was a long silence. “That Chris wouldn't have wanted to live without my daughter,” Michael said finally. “And that even though he's sitting over there, he's not the only one who should be judged.”

Barrie Delaney did not like Michael Gold. She had not liked him at her first meeting, when he seemed absolutely incapable of grasping the fact that all the evidence pointed to the boy next door offing his own daughter. She liked him even less when she'd found out that he was testifying for the defense. And now, after his self-flagellation on the stand, she absolutely couldn't stand him.

“Mr. Gold,” she said, oozing false sympathy, “I am so sorry you have to be here today.”

“So am I, Ms. Delaney.”

She crossed in front of the witness stand, until she was aligned at the edge of the jury box. “You said you were very close to Emily,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You also said you didn't spend as much time with your daughter as Chris did.” Michael nodded.

“You said you didn't know she was upset.”

“No.”

“You didn't know she was pregnant.”

“No,” Michael admitted. “I didn't.”

“You also said she told Chris everything.”

“Yes.”

“You couldn't imagine anything Emily didn't tell Chris.”

“That's right.”

“So she would have told Chris she was pregnant, correct?”

“I... I don't know.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes, I guess.”

Barrie nodded. “Mr. Gold, you said that you came here because you know Chris Harte so well.”

“That's right.”

“But this trial is about your daughter, and what happened to her. Either she committed suicide, or she was murdered. It's a horrific choice, just as Mr. McAfee said. It's terrible that it has to be your next-door neighbor who stands charged; and it's even more terrible that it's your daughter who is dead, but the fact is the jury has those two choices, Mr. Gold. And so do you.” She took a deep breath. “Can you actually see your daughter picking up a gun, holding it to her head, and pulling the trigger?”

Michael closed his eyes, doing what the prosecutor asked, for the sake of Emily and his wife and that strident voice inside his head. He imagined Emily's beautiful face, amber eyes drifting shut, the gun nuzzling her temple. He imagined a hand wrapped around that gun with confidence, with despair, with pain. But he could not say for sure that it was Emily's.

He felt tears streak from the corners of his eyes, and he curled slightly on the stand, as if to protect himself.

“Mr. Gold?” the prosecutor prompted.

“No,” he whispered. He shook his head, the tears coming faster now. “No.” Barrie Delaney turned to the jury. “Then what,” she asked, “are we left with?” The ACT OF CHANGING from his trial clothes to his prison uniform seemed to Chris a shedding of skin, as if in peeling off the blazer and natty trousers he also removed a layer of civility and social grace, leaving him raw and primal back in his cell. For the first hour after returning from the courthouse, Chris wouldn't speak to anyone, and other inmates were careful not to approach him. He had to breathe in the stale air of the jail until it was all that filled his lungs, cramp himself to his accommodations, and only then could he move with the sure footing and indifference he'd cultivated after seven months in prison.

He ventured into the day room of the medium security unit, aware of a buzz and disquietude. Several of the other men cast furtive glances in his direction, then looked at the TV or the walls or the row of lockers. Chris had been there long enough to know that people left you alone during your trial, but this went deeper. They were not ignoring him; they were keeping a secret. He walked over to a table surrounded by men. “What?” he said simply.

“Man, didn't you hear? Vernon hung himself at the State Pen last night. With a friggin' pair of shoelaces.”

Chris shook his head to clear it. “He what?”

“He's dead, man.”

“No.” Chris backed away from the knot of inmates watching him. “No.” He walked swiftly to the cell he'd shared with Steve a month earlier.

He could bring Steve's face to mind more easily now than he could Emily's. He thought of what Steve had said before he was transferred, about what they did in Concord to convicts who'd killed children.

By the end of the week, Chris could be heading to the state prison, too.

He burrowed beneath his blankets, shaking quietly with grief and fear until he heard himself being paged to Control to meet a visitor.

Gus threw her arms around Chris the minute he came close enough for her to do so. “Jordan tells me it's going well,” she enthused. “Couldn't be better.”

“You're not there,” Chris said stiffening. “And what's he supposed to say? That you're not getting your money's worth?”

“Well,” Gus said, settling into her bridge chair. “He has no reason to lie.” Chris bent his head, massaging his temples. “Saint Jordan,” he muttered. There was nobody else in the visiting room. Usually Gus arrived earlier, but with the trial she'd had to get home to Kate and make dinner before she struck off again to visit Chris. Chris, who seemed awfully agitated. Gus peered at him curiously. “Are you all right?” she asked. He rubbed his eyes, and blinked up at her. “Fine,” he said. “Peachy.” He started to drum his fingertips on the table, and looked at the officer posted by the stairs.

“Jordan says I'm the star witness,” Gus said. “He told me that the jury's going to ride my emotion all the way to a not guilty verdict.”

Chris jerked. “Sounds like something he'd say.”

“You seem very edgy tonight,” Gus said. “But from all accounts, Michael helped you tremendously today. Jordan's done a remarkable job up to this point. And certainly you know I'd do handsprings to get you free, Chris.”

“What I'm saying, Mom,” Chris answered, “is that the jury may not want to see your handsprings. That they've already made up their minds.”

“That's crazy. That's not the way the system works.”

“What do you know about the way the system works? Is it right that I've been in jail for nearly a year, just waiting for a trial? Is it right that my lawyer's never once asked me, Hey, Chris. What really happened?” He leveled cold blue eyes on his mother. “Have you thought about it, Mom? This trial's going to be over in a day. Have you thought about what color you're going to paint my room when they take me away for the rest of my life? About what I'm going to look like, at forty and fifty and sixty, when I've been living in a room the size of a closet all those years?” He was quivering by the time he finished, and there was a wildness to his gaze that Gus recognized as the edge of panic. “Chris,” she soothed, “that isn't going to happen.”

“How do you know?” he cried. “How the hell do you know?” From the corner of her eye, Gus saw the officer take a step toward them. She shook her head slightly, and he resumed his post at the stairs. Then she gently touched Chris's arm, carefully masking her own fear at seeing her son red-faced and trembling. She realized what a strain it must be to be eighteen, and listening to strangers decide your life. It was just as James had told her: Chris was wearing a mask in the courtroom. Simply being able to sit there without breaking down spoke volumes about his determination, and his character. “Sweetheart,” she said, “I can understand why this is so frightening-”

“No you can't!”

“I can. I'm your mother. I know you.”

Chris's head swiveled toward her slowly, a bull about to charge. “Oh?” he said. “And what do you know?”

“I know that you're the same wonderful son I've, always loved. I know that you're going to get through this, like you've gotten through everything else. And I know that the jury isn't going to convict someone who's innocent.”

Chris was shaking so hard at this point that Gus's hand fell away from his shoulder. “What you don't know, Mom,” he said softly, “is that I shot Emily.” And with a muffled cry, he turned and fled up the stairs to the guards who would safely lock him away.

Gus MADE IT THROUGH SIGNING OUT at the control booth, past the officer who unlocked the jail door, and all the way to her car before she fell to her knees in the parking lot and threw up. I'm your mother, she had said. I know you. But apparently, she hadn't. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket and slid behind the wheel of the car, blindly fumbling the keys into the ignition before realizing she was in no condition to drive.

Chris had said it, clear as day. He shot Emily. And while Gus had defended him from gossip and slander and even his father's indifference, she had been playing the fool.

Small darts stabbed at her mind: Chris's shirt at the hospital, covered with blood; Chris's reluctance to talk to Dr. Feinstein; Chris admitting with relief that he'd never been suicidal. She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and moaned softly. Chris, oh, God, Chris had killed Emily. How could she not have seen through him?

She put the car into gear and drove slowly out of the parking lot of the jail. She would go home and tell James and he'd know what to do ... no, she couldn't tell James, because then he would tell Jordan McAfee, and even Gus's rudimentary knowledge of criminal defense told her that would be a bad idea. She would go home and pretend that she had never come to visit her son that night. In the morning, everything would look different.

And then she'd be put on the witness stand.

It STRUCK Gus AS STRANGE that in the legal system, there was an immunity that could protect you from testifying against your husband, but there was nothing that you could hold up as a shield to keep you from testifying against your child. Odd, since a child was the one who had your smile, or your eyes, or at the very least, your blood running through its veins. Gus would have been ten times more likely to give evidence against James than Chris. And it was not a matter of perjury, in her battered mind, but motherhood.

She was wearing a garnet-colored dress whose gathered sleeves only set off the fact that she was trembling uncontrollably. Gus had fixed a smile on her face, certain that if she even let her lips relax from their rictus the slighest bit, she would blurt out what she knew. She stood outside the double doors of the courtroom, having been told by Jordan that she'd be the first-and only-witness called that day. The bailiff stood across from her, impassive.

Suddenly the door opened, and she was led down the courtroom aisle. She kept her eyes on her feet the whole way. As she sat down in the small box, she thought, How much bigger is the one they'll fock Chris in for life?

She knew that Jordan had wanted her to look at Chris as soon as she was seated, but she kept her gaze trained on her lap. She could feel her son, a magnetic pull toward her left, his nerves jangling nearly as loudly as hers. But if she lifted her eyes to his, she knew that she'd start to cry. Suddenly a thick, worn Bible was thrust before her. The clerk of the court instructed her to place her left hand on it and raise her right. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

So help you God. For the first time since entering the courtroom, Gus locked her gaze with her son's. “Yes,” she said, in a voice that carried. “I do.” JORDAN DIDN'T KNOW WHAT the hell had happened to Gus Harte. Every time he'd seen herChrist, even the night her son was carted off by the local police with an arrest warrant-she'd seemed self-possessed and beautiful. Slightly wild and natural, with that tumble of strawberry curls, but lovely all the same. Today, however, on the one day he'd needed her to be perfect, she was a total mess. Her hair was straggling from a hasty braid; her face was pale and pinched without makeup; her fingernails were bitten to the quick.

Being a witness affected everyone differently. Some people grandstanded. Some seemed in awe of the system. Most settled down to the task with a suitable amount of reverence. Gus Harte only looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but there.

Squaring his shoulders, Jordan walked toward her. “Could you state your name and address for the record?”

Gus leaned toward the microphone. “Augusta Harte,” she said. “Thirty-four Wood Hollow Road, Bainbridge.”

“And could you tell us how you know Chris?”

“I'm his mother.”

Jordan turned his back to the jury and Barrie Delaney and smiled at Gus, hoping to loosen her up. Relax, he mouthed silently. “Mrs. Harte, tell us about your son.” Gus's eyes darted nervously around the courtroom. On one side she saw Melanie, with her stone face, and Michael, his hands clenched on his knees. On the other side was James, who was nodding at her slightly. Her mouth opened and closed silently. “Chris is-he's a very good swimmer,” she finally said, and Jordan wheeled about.