Salem Falls (32 page)

She lifted another section, cutting it. And another. Until her skull was covered with uneven spikes, short as a boy’s. Until her bare feet were covered with hanks of her hair, a pit of auburn snakes. Until her head felt so light and free that Gilly thought it might lift from her neck like a helium balloon and soar as far away as possible.

Now, she thought, he wouldn’t look twice at me.

The conference rooms at the jail were narrow and ugly, with battered legal books stacked on a scarred table, windows that had been sealed shut, and a thermostat cranked up to eighty degrees. Jordan sat on one of the two chairs, strumming his fingers on the table, waiting for Jack St. Bride to be brought through the door.

St. Bride was clearly a loser-getting himself caught in a similar situation twice. But to learn that Jack had also managed to get thrown into solitary within an hour of his arrival . . . well, defending him was like being given a sow’s ear and told to make a silk purse.

The correctional officer who opened the door pushed Jack in. He stumbled once, glancing over his shoulder. “Nice to know the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply here,” he muttered.

“Why would it? This isn’t a war, Jack. Although, rumor has it you’ve been ready for combat from the moment you stepped in here.” Jordan came to his feet in one smooth motion. “Frankly, it doesn’t do me any good to find you in solitary after just one day. I had to offer my balls on a silver platter to the guards to get to meet with you in private in a conference room instead of through the slit in the steel door down there. You want to play the rebel here, fine-just be aware that everything you say and do here is going to wind up getting back to the prosecutor, and that you might feel the ripples all the way through your case.”

The speech had been intended to put the fear of God into Jack; to scare him into good behavior. But Jack only set his jaw. “I’m not a prisoner.”

Jordan had been a defense attorney long enough to ignore him. Denial was something his clients excelled at. Christ, he’d once stood up for a guy who was arrested in the act of plunging a knife into his girlfriend’s heart, and who maintained all the way to the State Pen that the cops had mistaken him for someone else. “Like I said yesterday, you’ve been charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault. Do you want to plead guilty?”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

“You did the last time you were charged.”

“But that was . . . that was . . .” Jack couldn’t even get the words out. “I was wrongly accused. And my attorney said it was the safest course of action.”

Jordan nodded. “He was right.”

“Don’t you want to know if I committed this crime?”

“Not particularly. It isn’t important to my job as your defense attorney.”

“It’s crucial.” Jack leaned over the table, right in Jordan’s face. “The last thing I need is another lawyer who doesn’t even listen to me when I tell him the truth.”

“You listen to me, Jack. I didn’t put you in jail last year, and I didn’t get you arrested this time around, either. Whether you get acquitted or convicted, I get to leave that courtroom free and clear. My role here is simply to be your advocate, and to translate that into the simplest terms possible, it means I’m your best goddamned hope. While you’re sitting in solitary, I get to go out and fight on your behalf. And if you cooperate with me rather than jump down my throat every other fucking minute, I’m bound to fight considerably harder.”

Jack shook his head. “You listen. I didn’t rape her. I was nowhere even close to her that night. That’s the God’s honest truth. I’m innocent. That’s why I don’t want to wear their clothes and sit in their cell. I don’t belong here.”

Jordan returned his gaze evenly. “You were willing enough to do it before when you accepted a plea, in spite of your . . . innocence.”

“And that’s why,” Jack said, his voice breaking, “there’s no way I’m going to do it again. I will kill myself before I sit in jail again for a crime I didn’t commit.”

Jordan looked at Jack’s rumpled clothing, his wild eyes. He’d had clients before who seemed to feel that an impassioned cry for justice was the only way to muster an attorney’s enthusiasm for a case; they never seemed to realize that a good lawyer could identify bullshit by its stink. “All right. You weren’t there that night.”

“No.”

“Where were you?”

Jack picked at his thumbnail. “Drinking,” he admitted.

“Of course,” Jordan muttered, amazed that this case could get any worse. “With whom?”

“Roy Peabody. I was at the Rooster’s Spit until they closed up.”

“How much did you drink?”

Jack glanced away. “More than I should have.”

“Fabulous,” Jordan sighed.

“Then I went out for a walk.”

“A midnight walk. Did anyone see you?”

Jack hesitated, for only an instant. “No.”

“Where did you go?”

“Just . . . around. Behind town.”

“But not near the woods behind the cemetery. Not anywhere near Gillian Duncan.”

“I told you, I never saw her that night, let alone touched her.”

“That’s funny, Jack. Because I’m looking at that scratch on your cheek, the one that Gillian Duncan said she gave you in her victim’s statement.”

“It was a branch,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

“Ah. From the forest you weren’t in?” Jordan’s gaze skimmed over Jack’s bruised face. “Did she beat you up, too?”

“No. It was a bunch of guys in ski masks.”

“Ski masks,” Jordan repeated, not buying a word of it. “Why were people in ski masks beating you up?”

“I don’t know.”

Jordan sighed. “What else can you remember about that night?”

Jack hesitated. “I remember leaving Addie’s . . . and then finding her again at the diner.”

“How much time elapsed in between?”

“Four hours.”

“And what were you doing during those four hours?”

At Jack’s silence, Jordan rolled his eyes. “You don’t want to plead. You say you weren’t in the woods that night, but you can’t provide an alibi. You tell me, then-what have we got?”

“A liar,” Jack said succinctly. “I don’t know why she’s doing it, or what she’s got against me. But I didn’t do this, I swear it. I didn’t rape Gillian Duncan.”

“Fine,” Jordan said, although he didn’t believe him in the least. “We’ll go to trial.”

“No,” Charlie said.

On the other end of the phone, Matt paused in the notes he was writing to himself on a yellow pad. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I can’t, Matt. I don’t have the time for this.”

Matt set down his pen. “Maybe you’ve forgotten the way this works, Charlie. We have a case; I tell you what I need; you get it. And if that means putting down your doughnut and getting your ass out of your swivel chair to interview Addie Peabody, then do it.”

“I’ve got to drive the rape kit down to the lab in Concord. Then I’ve got three teenage girls to interview. And somewhere in there I have to figure out who the hell stole the VCR from the high school audiovisual lab. Did I mention that I happen to be the only detective on staff here at the SFPD?”

“I’m sorry your town budget doesn’t include the salary for a sidekick. But be that as it may, you’re the only one who can take Addie’s statement.”

“You can do it,” Charlie suggested. “Besides, you aren’t the one whose face she remembers every time she thinks back to the moment her boyfriend was arrested. She’ll probably be more forthcoming with you.”

Matt knew Addie Peabody would talk to him. Hell, everyone talked to him. Even after they said they didn’t want to, he’d ask a question, and they’d start spilling their guts. The issue here was what would happen if she told Matt one thing and then said another thing on the stand. “She’s not a sure thing, Charlie. If she changes her story between now and the trial, I can’t call myself as a witness to impeach her.”

“She won’t lie.”

“You don’t know that,” Matt said. “So what if she was shocked at the arrest? Who wouldn’t be? By now, she may have decided that she’ll stay on St. Bride’s ship until it sinks. Or that she can play Mata Hari with the prosecution and somehow secure his acquittal. She’s exactly the kind of witness who’ll keep me up nights before the trial.”

“Look, I know Addie. I’ve known her my whole life.” Charlie sounded as if the words were being tugged out of him, all angles and cramps. “She’s the kind of person who takes a shitty situation and deals with it, instead of pretending it never happened. If it makes you feel better, take Wes Courtemanche along during the interview; he can take the stand for you if it comes to impeaching Addie. Now, are you finished? Or do I have to let your physical evidence sit in the fridge during another lecture?”

“I hope you hit traffic,” Matt growled, and slammed down the receiver.

She’d been all thumbs since the moment she set foot in the diner that morning-breaking three glasses, letting a platter of pancakes tumble over the front of her apron, spilling coffee on a customer’s paper. “Addie,” her father said, putting his hand on her shoulder, and that was enough to nearly make her topple the entire tray of table six’s food. “I think maybe you ought to call in Darla.”

Ignoring him, she swung into the kitchen, Roy following. “Thank the holy Lord,” Delilah said. “I hope you’re here to wash.” She nodded toward the stack of filthy china piled high.

Addie tucked an order into Delilah’s rotating file. “Sorry. Too swamped.”

The cook lifted the slip of paper and frowned. “Well, honey, I’ll make you your frittata, but I’m gonna have to serve it up on a dirty plate.”

“Frankly, Delilah, I don’t care if you bring it out in one of your shoes.”

Addie held tight to the last thread of her self-control. She had gone to work in the hopes that staying busy would keep her from dwelling on what had happened. After all, it had helped after Chloe. But it seemed that everywhere she went in the diner, all she could concentrate on was the fact that Jack wasn’t there, too.

“Addie,” her father said, “you’re a mess. No one’s going to think any less of you if you go up and lie down for a little while.”

“Some of us might even think a little more of you if you found us a new dishwasher,” Delilah muttered.

It was the last straw. Tears sprang to Addie’s eyes as she ripped off her apron and flung it onto the kitchen floor. “Do you think I don’t know that I haven’t slept in three nights? Or that we don’t have enough kitchen staff? A man that I . . . that I thought I could love was arrested right in front of me for rape. And I can’t tell you if he did it or not. That’s what I’m thinking about, not whether the goddamned dishes get washed or if I’ve dropped an order all over the floor. I am trying to make everyone happy. For God’s sake, what do all you people want from me?!”

The voice that answered was unexpected, quiet, and cool. “Well,” said Matt Houlihan, standing behind her with Wes. “For starters, how about a little talk?”

Houlihan seemed like a perfectly nice man, even if he was aiming to lock Jack away for twenty years. When he smiled, there was a gap between his front teeth, and to Addie’s surprise, his eyes seemed to reflect an understanding she never would have expected to find. “This must be very difficult for you, Ms. Peabody,” Matt said. In the corner of Roy’s living room, Wes snorted, then covered it with a cough.

“Do I have to talk to you?”

“No, of course not. But I’d like to talk to you, so that you’ll know what I’m going to be asking you in court, instead of just subpoenaing you cold turkey.” He smiled sympathetically. “I understand you were intimately involved with Mr. St. Bride.”

Addie nodded, certain that she wouldn’t be able to force a single word of explanation out of her narrow throat.

“Can you tell me about him?”

She picked up her father’s television remote control in her hands and thought of Jack watching Jeopardy! “He’s very smart,” Addie said softly. “A trivia buff.”

“How long have you been involved with him?”

“I hired him two months ago, in March. He started working as a dishwasher.”

“Did you know at the time that he had a criminal record?”

Addie’s cheeks burned. “I thought . . . he was down on his luck.”

She could feel Wes’s eyes on her, and studiously ignored them. “Did St. Bride ever say anything to you about Gillian Duncan?” Matt asked.

“No.”

“Did you ever see them together?”

“Only when she and her friends came to the diner and Jack had to clean their table.” As she spoke, her mind fishtailed back, trying to remember if she’d ever seen Jack smiling at the girls, flirting, staying a moment too long after clearing their plates. What had she missed? What had she wanted to miss?

“Did he ever read pornography?”

Addie’s head snapped up. “What?”