The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  As an aggressive photographer makes her way toward the holding cell, Patrick moves slightly to block the camera’s view of Nina. His job, right now, is to protect her. He just wishes there were someone to protect him.

  He jostles her in his arms so that he can shut the door. It will be easier to wait out the arrival of the Biddeford Police Department that way. As it swings closed, he sees the paramedics arriving, leaning down over the body.

  “Is he dead?” Nina asks. “I just need you to tell me, Patrick. I killed him, right? How many shots did I get off? I had to do it, you know I had to do it. He’s dead, isn’t he? The paramedics can’t revive him, can they? Tell me they won’t. Please, just tell me he’s dead. I promise, I’ll sit right here and not move if you just go look and see if he’s dead.”

  “He’s dead, Nina,” Patrick says quietly.

  She closes her eyes, sways a little. “Thank God. Oh, God, God, thank God.” She sinks down onto the metal bunk in the small cell.

  Patrick turns his back on her. In the courtroom, his colleagues have arrived. Evan Chao, another detective-lieutenant in the department, supervises the securing of the crime scene, yelling over the crescendo of shrieks and sobs. Policemen crouch, dusting for fingerprints, taking photos of the spreading pool of blood and the broken railing where Patrick tackled Nina to get the gun out of her hand. The Maine state police SWAT team arrives, thundering down the center aisle like a tornado. One woman, a reporter sequestered for questioning, glances at what is left of the priest and vomits. It is a grim, chaotic scene; it is the stuff of nightmares, and yet Patrick stares fixedly, far more willing to face this reality than the one crying quietly behind him.

  • • •

  What Nathaniel hates about this particular board game is that all you have to do is spin the spinner the wrong way, and that’s it, your little game piece is coasting down that big long slide in the middle. It’s true that if you spin the right way, you can climb that extra tall ladder . . . but it doesn’t always work like that, and before you know it, you’ve lost.

  Monica lets him win, but Nathaniel doesn’t like that as much as he thought he would. It makes him feel the way he did when he fell off his bike and had this totally gross cut all across his chin. People looked at him and pretended that there was nothing wrong with him but you could see in their eyes that they really wanted to turn away.

  “Are you going to spin, or do I have to wait until you turn six?” Monica teases.

  Nathaniel flicks the spinner. Four. He moves his little man the right number of spaces and, it figures, winds up on one of those slides. He pauses at the top, knowing that if he only moves three instead, Monica won’t say a word.

  But before he can decide whether or not to cheat, something catches his attention behind her shoulder. Through the wide glass window of the playroom, he sees one policeman . . . no, two . . . five . . . racing through the hallway. They don’t look like Patrick does when he works—all rumply, in a regular shirt and tie. They are wearing shiny boots and silver badges, and their hands are on their guns, just like Nathaniel sees late at night on TV when he comes downstairs to get a drink and his parents don’t change the channel fast enough.

  “Shoot,” he says softly.

  Monica smiles at him. “That’s right, a chute. But you’ll have better luck next time, Nathaniel.”

  “No . . . shoot.” He curves his fingers into a gun, the sign for the letter G. “You know. Bang.”

  He realizes the moment Monica understands him. She looks behind her at the sound of all those running feet, and her eyes go wide. But she turns back to Nathaniel with a smile glued over the question that shivers on her lips. “It’s your spin, right?” Monica says, although they both know his turn has come and gone.

  • • •

  When feeling returns to Caleb’s fingers and feet, it comes slowly, an emotional frostbite that leaves his extremities swollen and unfamiliar. He stumbles forward, past the spot where Nina has just shot a man in cold blood, past the people jostling for position so that they can do the jobs they were trained to do. Caleb gives the body of Father Szyszynski a wide berth. His body jerks toward the door where he last saw Nina, being shoved forward into a cell.

  Jesus, a cell.

  A detective who does not recognize him grabs his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” Silent, Caleb pushes past the man, and then he sees Patrick’s face in the small window of the door. Caleb knocks, but Patrick seems to be deciding whether or not to open the door.

  At that point, Caleb realizes that all these people, all these detectives, think he might be Nina’s accomplice.

  His mouth goes dry as sand, so that when Patrick finally does open the door a crack, he can’t even request to see his wife. “Get Nathaniel and go home,” Patrick suggests quietly. “I’ll call you, Caleb.”

  Yes, Nathaniel. Nathaniel. The very thought of his son, a floor below while all this has been going on, makes Caleb’s stomach cramp. He moves with a speed and grace unlikely for someone his size, barreling past people until he reaches the far end of the courtroom, the door at the rear of the aisle. A bailiff stands guard, watching Caleb approach. “My son, he’s downstairs. Please. You have to let me get to him.”

  Maybe it is the pain carved into Caleb’s face; maybe it is the way his words come out in the color of grief—for whatever reason, the bailiff wavers. “I swear I’ll come right back. But I have to make sure he’s all right.”

  A nod, one that Caleb isn’t meant to see. When the bailiff looks away, Caleb slips out the door behind him. He takes the stairs two at a time and runs down the hall to the playroom.

  For a moment, he stands outside the plate-glass window, watching his son play and letting it bring him back to center. Then Nathaniel sees him and beams, jumping up to open the door and throw himself into Caleb’s arms.

  Monica’s tight face swims into the sea of his vision. “What happened up there?” she mouths silently.

  But Caleb only buries his face against his son’s neck, as silent as Nathaniel had been when something happened that he could not explain.

  • • •

  Nina once told Patrick that she used to stand at the side of Nathaniel’s crib and watch him sleep. It’s amazing, she’d said. Innocence in a blanket. He understands, now. Watching Nina sleep, you’d never know what had happened just two hours before. You’d never know from that smooth brow what thoughts lay underneath the surface.

  Patrick, on the other hand, is absolutely ill. He cannot seem to catch his breath; his stomach knots with each step. And every time he looks at Nina’s face, he cannot decide what he’d rather find out: that this morning, she simply went crazy . . . or that she didn’t.

  • • •

  As soon as the door opens, I’m wide-awake. I jackknife to a sitting position on the bunk, my hand smoothing the jacket Patrick gave me as a makeshift pillow. It is wool, scratchy; it has left lines pressed into my cheek.

  A policeman I don’t know sticks his head inside. “Lieutenant,” he says formally, “we need you to come give a statement.”

  Of course. Patrick’s seen it too.

  The policeman’s eyes are insects on my skin. As Patrick moves toward the door I stand, grab onto the bars of the cell. “Can you find out if he’s dead? Please? I have to know. I have to. I just have to know if he’s dead.” My words hit Patrick between the shoulder blades, slow him down. But he doesn’t look at me, not as he walks away from the holding cell, past the other policeman, and opens the door.

  In the slice of room revealed, I see the activity that Patrick’s kept hidden from me for the past few hours. The Murder Winnebago must have arrived—a state police mobile unit that contains everything the cops need to investigate a homicide and the key personnel to do it. Now they cover the courtroom like a mass of maggots, dusting for fingerprints and taking down the names and statements of eyewitnesses. A person shifts, revealing a crimson smear that outlines a splayed, graying hand. As I watch, a photographer leans down,