The Pact Read online

  Chris ate, brushed his teeth with the toothbrush he'd gotten in the booking room the night before, and picked up the disposable razor an officer had put in his cell. Unsure of himself, he walked out of the cell and down the catwalk to the shower stall and sink.

  Chris shaved while he waited for the other man to finish showering, squinting into a mirror that offered as clear a reflection as tinfoil. When the other man stepped out, Chris nodded and went inside.

  He drew closed the curtain but just past the edge he could see the black-eyed man soaping his face in front of the sink, towel slung around his waist while he shaved around his goatee. Chris undressed and hung his clothes over the curtain rod. Then he turned on the water and lathered himself with the soap, closing his eyes and trying to make believe he'd just swum an in-fucking-credible four-hundred-meter butterfly, and was getting ready to go home after the meet.

  "What are you in for?"

  Chris blinked water out of his eyes. "Excuse me?" he said.

  Through the crack between the shower curtain and the wall, Chris saw the man leaning against the sink. "How come you're here?"

  Wet, his hair reached almost to his shoulders. That was the way Chris could tell the prisoners from the detainees awaiting arraignment--those serving sentences had their hair cut military-short. Like his already was. "I shouldn't be here," Chris said. "It's a mistake."

  The man laughed. "Says you and everyone else. For a prison, there are a heck of a lot of people in here who didn't do jackshit."

  Chris turned away and soaped up his chest.

  "Just 'cause you can't see me don't mean I gone away," the man said.

  Shaking water out of his hair, Chris turned off the shower faucet. "What did you do?"

  "Cut off my old lady's head," the man said dispassionately.

  Suddenly Chris felt his knees give out. He did not think he could stay upright, so he leaned against the plastic wall of the shower. He was not standing beside a felon in a county jail. He was not going to be charged with murder. He blindly wrapped his towel around his waist, grabbed his clothes, and stumbled back to his cell, where he sat down on the bunk and tucked his head between his knees so he wouldn't throw up.

  He wanted to go home.

  An officer walked to his cell to retrieve the razor he had been given. "Your lawyer's here," he said. "He's brought clothes for you. Get dressed and we'll bring you upstairs to change."

  Chris nodded, expecting him to stand by and watch him change again, but the officer left. The doors of the cells were open. The man who'd decapitated his wife was watching the Today show at the end of the catwalk.

  "I'm, um ... ready," he said to a different officer, who escorted him to the door that led out of the pod.

  "Good luck," the black-eyed man called out, eyes still on the TV show.

  Chris paused, looked over his shoulder. "Thanks," he said softly.

  THE CLOTHES WERE WAITING for him in the booking room. Chris recognized the Brooks Brothers blazer he'd bought with his mother down in Boston. They had gone shopping specifically for an outfit he could wear on college interviews.

  Instead, he was wearing it to his arraignment.

  He dressed in the white button-down shirt and gray flannel trousers, the buttery loafers. He slid the tie through the collar of the shirt and tried to knot it, but couldn't get it right. He was used to watching himself do it in front of a mirror, and there wasn't one in the booking room.

  He settled for the back tail of the tie hanging a fraction lower than the front.

  Then he shrugged into his blazer and walked toward the officer who was waiting, doing some paperwork. They walked in silence to a room Chris hadn't seen before, and the officer opened the door.

  Jordan McAfee was waiting in the interview room. "Thanks," he said to the officer, motioning for Chris to sit across from him at the table. He waited until the door closed behind the officer. "Morning," he said. "How was your night?"

  He knew damn well how it had been; any idiot could look at the circles beneath Chris's eyes and realize he hadn't slept at all. But Jordan waited to see what his client would say. It would go a long way toward indicating how much fortitude he could expect from Chris for the remainder of the long haul.

  "It was okay," Chris said, unblinking.

  Jordan stifled a smile. "You remember what I told you about today?"

  Chris nodded. "Where are my mom and dad?"

  "Over at the courthouse, waiting."

  "My mom brought you the clothes?"

  "Yes," Jordan said. "Nice outfit. Very preppy, very classy. It will help set your image for the judge."

  "I have an image?" Chris asked.

  Jordan waved his hand. "Yeah. White, upper middle class, student athlete, rah-rah good ol' boy." He locked his gaze on Chris. "As opposed to lowlife scum murderer." He tapped his pencil on the legal pad in front of him, on which he'd written nonsense. The thing about arraignments was that as a defense attorney you went in cold, like a cat ready to land on the balls of its feet no matter how it was thrown. You had the charge that had been leveled against a client, but you had no idea what the prosecutor was thinking until you got your hands on the files after the arraignment. "Follow my lead today. If I need you to do something, I'll write it on the pad. But this is going to be pretty straightforward."

  "Okay," Chris said. He stood up, shaking his legs as if he were getting ready to step up to the block before a race. "So let's go," he said.

  Jordan glanced up, surprised that he hadn't expected this. "You can't walk over to the courthouse with me," he said. "The sheriff will bring you over."

  "Oh," Chris said, sinking back into his chair.

  "I'll be there, waiting," Jordan hastened to add. "So will your parents."

  "Right," Chris said.

  Jordan slid the legal pad back into his briefcase. He looked at Chris, frowned at his tie. "Come here," he said, and when Chris stood he snugged the tie so that it lay correctly.

  "I couldn't do it right," Chris said. "No mirror."

  Jordan did not say anything. He clapped Chris on the shoulder and nodded at his overall appearance. Then he walked out of the room, leaving Chris to stare at the open door, the hall that led outside the jail, and the guard who stood between the two.

  IT WAS FELONY DAY at the Grafton County Courthouse.

  In a state as rural as New Hampshire, serious crimes were committed fairly infrequently, so the felony arraignments were gathered into bunches every few weeks. More interesting than petty infractions, the proceedings were attended by local reporters, court groupies, law students.

  Even so, the Hartes were sitting in the front row, behind the defense table. They'd arrived at the courthouse shortly after six in the morning, just in case, Gus had said. Gus's hands were clenched so tightly in her lap that she did not know if she'd ever be able to untangle them. James sat beside her, staring at the judge. She was a grandmotherly, middle-aged woman with a bad perm. Surely, Gus thought, someone who looked like that would take one look at a child like Chris and would stop this debacle from going any further.

  Gus leaned toward Jordan McAfee, who was arranging documents on his lap. "When is he going to be brought in?" she asked.

  "Any minute," Jordan said.

  James turned to the man beside him. "Is that the Times?" he asked. When the man offered the discarded paper, James grinned and thanked him.

  Gus stared at her husband, stunned. "You can read?" she said. "At a time like this?"

  James meticulously creased the first section. He ran over the crease with his thumbnail, then did it again. "If I don't," he said evenly, "I will go crazy." He began to scan the front page.

  There were other women in here like her, Gus knew; women who might not have been wearing a designer suit or diamond studs like hers but who had a son who was going to be brought to that table like Chris was, accused of something too horrible to imagine. Some of those children had actually committed the crimes. In this, she supposed, she was lucky.