The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Jeez. I only wanted to borrow the shaving cream,” he said. He squinted in the mirror at his father’s face. “Better do something about that,” he advised, and closed the door behind him.

  Jordan swore and splashed water onto his cheeks and jaw. The shaving cream burned where it seeped into the cut. He patted his face dry with a towel and looked up.

  It was one long, straight, thin cut, carved down the center of his right cheek.

  “Jesus,” he mused aloud. “I look like St. Bride.”

  He blotted toilet paper against it, until it stopped bleeding, then wiped up around the sink and started out of the bathroom to get dressed. A moment later, he found himself in front of the mirror again, staring more carefully at his cheek.

  Gillian Duncan stated that she’d scratched Jack in an effort to get him away from her. Charlie Saxton had photographed the corresponding scrape on Jack’s cheek when he was being booked; it was in the file. But a man who had been scratched by a girl fighting off a rape would have four or five parallel marks—the scars of several fingernails, where they’d connected with his skin.

  And Jack didn’t.

  May 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  Jack and Gill went up the hill

  To fetch a pail of water.

  Jack poked Gill just for the thrill

  Of nailing Duncan’s daughter.

  Charlie crumpled the handwritten ode that had been left taped to his computer terminal. “Not funny,” he yelled in the general vicinity of the rest of the precinct, then plastered a smile to his face as the first of his three interviewees entered the building, clutching her father’s arm.

  “Ed,” Charlie said, nodding. “And Chelsea. Good to see you again.”

  He led them to the small conference room at the station, which in his opinion was a slight cut above the interrogation room. These girls were nervous enough already to be party to an investigation; he didn’t need to make them any more jittery. Holding the door open, Charlie let Ed and his daughter pass inside.

  “You understand why it’s important for me to take your statement?” Charlie asked, as soon as they all were seated.

  Chelsea nodded, her blue eyes wide as pools. “I’ll do anything to help Gilly.”

  “That’s good. Now, I’m just going to tape our talk here today, so that the prosecutor gets a chance to hear what a loyal friend you are, too.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Ed Abrams asked.

  “Yeah, Ed, I’m afraid it is.” Charlie turned to Chelsea again, then started the microcassette recorder. “Can you tell me where you went that night, Chelsea?”

  She glanced sideways at her father. “We were just getting cabin fever, you know?”

  “Where did you go?” Charlie asked.

  “We met at the old cemetery on the edge of town, at eleven P.M. Meg and Gilly came together; Whit and me were waiting when they got there. Then we all went up that little path that goes into the woods behind it.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  “Just talk, girl stuff. And build a fire, so we’d have, like, some light.” Her head snapped up. “Just a tiny fire, not the kind you need a permit for or anything.”

  “I understand. How long were you there?”

  “I guess about two hours. We were getting ready to go when . . . Jack St. Bride showed up.”

  “You knew who he was?”

  “Yeah.” Chelsea brushed her hair away from her face. “He worked at the diner.”

  “Had he talked to you before that night?”

  She nodded. “It was . . . kind of creepy. I mean, he was a grown man, and he was always trying to make jokes with us and stuff. Like he wanted us to think he was cool.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Chelsea sat up straighter in her chair. “He was wearing a yellow shirt and jeans, and he looked like he’d been in a fight. His eye, it was all bruised and swollen.” She wrinkled her nose. “And he smelled like he had been swimming in whiskey.”

  “Were there any cuts on his face?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “How did you feel?”

  “God,” Chelsea breathed, “I was so scared. I mean, he was the reason we were all supposed to be at home that night.”

  “Did he seem angry? Upset?”

  “No.” Chelsea blushed. “When I was little, my mom used to make me watch this commercial about not taking candy from strangers. And that’s what he reminded me of . . . someone who looked all normal on the outside but who would turn to the camera when we weren’t looking and smile like a monster.”

  “What happened?”

  “We said we were getting ready to leave, and he said good-bye. A few minutes later, we left, too.”

  “Together?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “Gilly went in a different direction, toward her house.”

  “Did you hear anything, after you left?”

  Chelsea bowed her head. “No.”

  “No screaming, scuffling, hitting, shouting?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then what happened?” Charlie asked.

  “We were walking for a while, just out of the woods on the edge of the cemetery, when we heard something crashing through the trees. Like a deer, that’s what I thought. But it turned out to be Gilly. She came running at us, crying.” Chelsea closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Her . . . her hair, it was all full of leaves. There was dirt all over her clothes. And she was hysterical. I tried to touch her, just to calm her down, and she started to hit me. It was like she didn’t even know who we were.” Chelsea pulled the sleeve of her shirt down over her wrist and used it to wipe her eyes. “She said that he raped her.”

  “Why did you let Gilly leave by herself?”

  Chelsea looked into her lap. “I didn’t want to. I even offered to walk her home.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No,” Chelsea said. “Gilly told me I was being just as bad as our parents. That nothing was going to happen.” She twisted the hem of her shirt into a knot. “But it did.”

  Whitney O’Neill frowned at a spot on the conference table. “None of your friends suggested it might not be a bright idea to let your friend go off into the woods alone?” Charlie asked.

  “Is my daughter a witness or a suspect?” Tom O’Neill blustered.

  “Daddy,” Whitney said. “It’s okay. It’s a good question. I guess we were all just tired, or maybe even a little shaky after having him show up . . . Chels and Meg and I hadn’t gone ten feet before we realized that we probably ought to go with her. That’s when I yelled for Gilly.”

  “You yelled,” Charlie clarified. “Not Chelsea or Meg.”

  “Yeah,” Whitney said defensively. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  Charlie ignored the heated stares of the girl and her father. “Did Gillian answer?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t go back to check? To make sure Gillian was all right?”

  “No,” Whitney whispered, her lower lip trembling. “And you have no idea how I wish I had.”

  When Meg had been a little kid, she used to hide under the sofa every time her father dressed in uniform. It wasn’t that she was afraid of police officers, exactly . . . but when her dad wore his shiny shoes and brimmed hat and sparkling badge, he was not the same man who fixed her Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes on Sundays and who tickled her feet to get them underneath the covers at night. When he was working, he seemed harder, somehow, as if he could bend only so far before snapping in half.

  Now, it was totally weird to be sitting on her bed with all her stuffed animals . . . and to have her dad interviewing her with his tape recorder. Even weirder, he looked just as freaked out as she was.

  Meg’s heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s, so fast she was certain it would just explode out of her chest any minute. That whole night was a blur, one that faded in and out like the colors on a kaleidoscope. Not for the first time, she