The Tenth Circle Read online

 

  The Tenth Circle

  Jodi Picoult

 

  For Nick and Alex Adolph

  (and their parents, Jon and Sarah)

  because I promised that one day I would.

  Acknowledgments

  This was a massive undertaking, and it would have been an impossible one without the help of my Dream Team of research helpers.

  My usual suspects: Betty Martin, Lisa Schiermeier, Nick Giaccone, Frank Moran, David Toub, Jennifer Sternick, Jennifer Sobel, Claire Demarais, JoAnn Mapson, Jane Picoult.

  Two ladies with the grace to help rape victims find a fragile peace: Laurie Carrier and Annelle Edwards.

  Three terrific young women who let me peek into the life of a teenager: Meredith Olsen, Elise Baxter, and Andrea Desaulniers.

  The entire team at Atria Books and Goldberg McDuffie Communications, especially Judith Curr, Karen Mender, Jodi Lipper, Sarah Branham, Jeanne Lee, Angela Stamnes, Justin Loeber, and Camille McDuffie.

  Laura Gross, who goes above and beyond the call of agent duty on a daily basis.

  Emily Bestler, who said all the wonderful, right things I needed to hear when I gave her a book that was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  Joanne Morrissey, who gave me a refresher course on Dante and whom I’d most like to be stranded with in hell.

  My own personal comic book superheroes: Jim Lee, Wyatt Fox, and Jake van Leer.

  Pam Force, for the opening poem.

  My Alaskan hosts: Annette Rearden, and Rich and Jen Gannon.

  Don Rearden, who is not only an excellent writer (one who probably regrets ever saying, “Hey, if you ever want to go to the Alaskan bush…”) but also generous to a fault with his own knowledge and experience. And who guided me into the bush and, months later, to my last page.

  Dustin Weaver, the comic book penciler who said he thought this might be fun. Quite simply: You drew the soul of this book.

  And finally, thanks to Tim, Kyle, Jake, and Sammy, who give me my happy endings.

  ****

  In the very earliest time,

  when both people and animals lived on earth,

  a person could become an animal if he wanted to and an animal could become a human being.

  Sometimes they were people

  and sometimes animals

  and there was no difference.

  All spoke the same language.

  That was the time when words were like magic.

  The human mind had mysterious powers.

  A word spoken by chance

  might have strange consequences.

  It would suddenly come alive

  and what people wanted to happen could happen-

  all you had to do was say it.

  Nobody could explain this:

  That’s the way it was.

  -“Magic Words,” by Edward Field

  Inspired by the Inuit

  Prologue

  December 23, 2005

  This is how it feels when you realize your child is missing: The pit of your stomach freezes fast, while your legs go to jelly. There’s one single, blue-bass thud of your heart. The shape of her name, sharp as metal filings, gets caught between your teeth even as you try to force it out in a shout. Fear breathes like a monster into your ear: Where did I see her last? Would she have wandered away? Who could have taken her? And then, finally, your throat seals shut, as you swallow the fact that you’ve made a mistake you will never be able to fix.

  The first time it happened to Daniel Stone, a decade ago, he had been visiting Boston. His wife was at a colloquium at Harvard; that was a good enough reason to take a family vacation. While Laura sat on her panel, Daniel pushed Trixie’s stroller the cobbled length of the Freedom Trail. They fed the ducks in the Public Garden; they watched the sloe-eyed sea turtles doing water ballet at the aquarium. After that, when Trixie announced that she was hungry, Daniel headed toward Faneuil Hall and its endless food court.

  That particular April day was the first one warm enough for New Englanders to unzip their jackets, to remember that there was any season other than winter. In addition to the centipedes of school groups and the shutter-happy tourists, it seemed that the whole of the financial district had bled out, men Daniel’s age in suits and ties, who smelled of aftershave and envy. They sat with their gyros and chowder and corned beef on rye on the benches near the statue of Red Auerbach. They sneaked sideways glances at Daniel.

  He was used to this-it was unusual for a father to be the primary caretaker of his four-year-old daughter. Women who saw him with Trixie assumed that his wife had died, or that he was newly divorced. Men who saw him quickly looked the other way, embarrassed on his behalf. And yet Daniel would not have traded his setup for the world. He enjoyed molding his job around Trixie’s schedule. He liked her questions: Did dogs know they were naked? Is adult supervision a power grown-ups use to fight bad guys? He loved the fact that when Trixie was spacing out in her car seat and wanted attention, she always started with “Dad…?” even if Laura happened to be driving the car.

  “What do you want for lunch?” Daniel asked Trixie that day in Boston. “Pizza? Soup? A burger?”

  She stared up at him from her stroller, a miniature of her mother with the same blue eyes and strawberry hair, and nodded yes to all three. Daniel had hefted the stroller up the steps to the central food court, the scent of the salted ocean air giving way to grease and onions and stir-fry. He would get Trixie a burger and fries, he decided, and for himself, he’d buy a fisherman’s platter at another kiosk. He stood in line at the grill, the stroller jutting out like a stone that altered the flow of human traffic. “A cheeseburger,” Daniel yelled out to a cook he hoped was listening. When he was handed the paper plate he juggled his wallet free so that he could pay and then decided that it wasn’t worth a second tour of duty just to get himself lunch, too. He and Trixie could share.

  Daniel maneuvered the stroller into the stream of people again, waiting to be spit out into the cupola. After a few minutes, an elderly man sitting at a long table shuffled his trash together and left. Daniel set down the burger and turned the stroller so that he could feed Trixie-but the child inside was a dark-haired, dark-skinned infant who burst into tears when he saw the stranger in front of him.

  Daniel’s first thought: Why was this baby in Trixie’s stroller? His second: Was this Trixie’s stroller? Yes, it was yellow and blue with a tiny repeating bear print. Yes, there was a carrying basket underneath. But Graco must have sold millions of these, thousands alone in the Northeast. Now, at closer inspection, Daniel realized that this particular stroller had a plastic activity bar attached on the front. Trixie’s ratty security blanket was not folded up in the bottom, just in case of crisis.

  Such as now.

  Daniel looked down at the baby again, the baby that was not his, and immediately grabbed the stroller and starting running to the grill. Standing there, with a cabbage-cheeked Boston cop, was a hysterical mother whose sights homed in on the stroller Daniel was using to part the crowd like the Red Sea. She ran the last ten feet and yanked her baby out of the safety restraint and into her arms while Daniel tried to explain, but all that came out of his mouth was, “Where is she?” He thought, hysterical, of the fact that this was an open-air market, that there was no way to seal the entrance or even make a general public announcement, that by now five minutes had passed and his daughter could be with the psychopath who stole her on the T heading to the farthest outskirts of the Boston suburbs.

  Then he noticed the stroller-his stroller-kicked over onto its side, the safety belt undone. Trixie had gotten proficient at this just last week. It had gotten comical-they would be out walking and suddenly she