The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Did you determine anything about the footprint?”

  “It would have belonged to a barefoot woman who wore a size seven shoe.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I tried to find the woman who’d given birth. First I interviewed Aaron Fisher’s wife, Sarah. I found out that she’d had a hysterectomy nearly a decade ago, and was unable to have children. I questioned the neighbors and their two teenage girls, all of whom had alibis. By the time I got back to the farm, the Fishers’ daughter, Katie, had come downstairs. In fact, she came into the tack room where the medical examiner was with the newborn’s body.”

  “What was her reaction?”

  “She was very disturbed,” Lizzie said. “She ran out of the barn.”

  “Did you follow her?”

  “Yes. I caught up with her on the porch. I asked Ms. Fisher if she’d been pregnant, and she denied it.”

  “Did that seem suspicious to you?”

  “Not at all. It was what her parents had told me, too. But then I noticed blood running down her legs and pooling on the floor. Although she was reluctant, I had her forcibly removed by the EMTs and taken to the hospital for her own personal safety.”

  “At this point what was running through your mind?”

  “That this girl needed medical attention. But then I wondered if perhaps the defendant’s parents had never known she was pregnant—if she’d hidden the truth from them, like she’d tried to hide it from me.”

  “How did you discover that she’d hidden the truth?” George asked.

  “I went to the hospital and spoke to the defendant’s doctor, who confirmed that she had delivered a baby, was in critical condition, and needed emergency treatment to stop the vaginal bleeding. Once I knew that she had lied to me about the pregnancy, I got warrants to search the farm and the house, and to get a blood test and DNA from the baby and from the defendant. The next step was to match the blood in the hay of the calving pen to that of the defendant, the blood on the baby’s body to that of the defendant, and the blood type in the baby’s body to that of the defendant.”

  “What came of the information you got from these warrants?”

  “Underneath the defendant’s bed was a bloody nightgown. In her closet were boots and shoes in a size seven. All the lab tests positively linked the blood in the barn to the defendant, and the blood on and in the baby to the defendant.”

  “What did this lead you to believe?”

  Lizzie let her gaze rest lightly on Katie Fisher. “That in spite of her denial, the defendant was the mother of that baby.”

  “At this point, did you believe that the defendant had killed the baby?”

  “No. Murder’s rare in East Paradise, and virtually unheard of in the Amish community. I believed, at this point, that the baby was stillborn. But then the medical examiner sent me the autopsy report, and I had to refine my conclusions.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, the baby had been born alive. For another, the umbilical cord had been cut by scissors—which made me think of the scissors Aaron Fisher said were missing; scissors from which we might have lifted a print. The newborn had died of asphyxia, but the medical examiner found fibers deep in the baby’s mouth that matched the shirt it had been wrapped in, suggesting that he had been smothered. That was when I realized that the defendant was a potential suspect.”

  Lizzie took a sip of water from a glass perched beside the witness stand. “After that, I interviewed everyone close to the defendant, and the defendant herself. The defendant’s mother confirmed that a younger child had died many years ago, and that she had no idea her daughter was pregnant—nor any reason to think so. The father wouldn’t speak to me at all. I also interviewed Samuel Stoltzfus, one of the hired hands and coincidentally the defendant’s boyfriend. From him I learned that he’d planned to marry the defendant this fall. He also told me that the defendant had never had sexual intercourse with him.”

  “What did that lead you to believe?”

  Lizzie raised her brows. “At first I wondered if he’d found out that Katie Fisher had two-timed him—and if he’d smothered the baby out of revenge. But Samuel Stoltzfus lives ten miles from the Fisher farm with his parents, who confirmed that he was sleeping there during the window of time the medical examiner said death occurred. Then I began to think that maybe I had it backward—that the information pointed to the defendant, instead. I mean, here was a motive: Amish girl, Amish parents, Amish boyfriend—and she gets pregnant by someone else? That’s an excuse to hide the birth, maybe even get rid of it.”

  “Did you interview anyone else?”

  “Yes, Levi Esch, the second hired hand on the farm. He said that the defendant had been sneaking to Penn State for the past six years to meet with her brother. Jacob Fisher did not live like the Amish anymore, but like any other college student.”

  “Why was that relevant?”

  Lizzie smiled. “It’s a lot easier to meet a guy other than your Amish boyfriend when a whole new world is at your fingertips—one with booze and frat parties and Maybelline.”

  “Did you speak to Jacob Fisher, too?”

  “Yes, I did. He confirmed the defendant’s secret visits and said he had not known of his sister’s pregnancy. He also told me that the reason the defendant had to visit him behind her father’s back was because he was no longer welcome at home.”

  George feigned confusion. “How come?”

  “The Amish don’t attend school past eighth grade, but Jacob had wanted to continue his education. Breaking that rule got him excommunicated from the Amish church. Aaron Fisher took the punishment one step further, and disowned Jacob. Sarah Fisher followed her husband’s wishes, but sent her daughter to visit Jacob covertly.”

  “How did this affect your thinking about the case?”

  “All of a sudden,” Lizzie said, “things became more clear. If I were the defendant, and I knew that my own brother had been exiled for something as simple as studying, I’d be very careful not to break any rules. Call me crazy, but having a baby out of wedlock is a more severe infraction than reading Shakespeare on the side. That means if she didn’t find a way to hide what had happened, she was going to be tossed out of her home and her family, not to mention her church. So she concealed the pregnancy for seven months. Then she had the baby—and concealed that, too.”

  “Did you determine the identity of the father?”

  “We did not.”

  “Did you consider any other suspects, beside the defendant?”

  Lizzie sighed. “You know, I tried to. But too much didn’t add up. The birth occurred two and a half months early, in a place with no phone and no electricity—which means no one could have been called, or have known about it, unless they were living at the farm and heard the defendant’s labor. As for a stranger coming by, what’s the chance of someone dropping in unannounced at two A.M. on an Amish farm? And if a stranger did show up, why kill the baby? And why wouldn’t the defendant have mentioned this?

  “So that left me with family members. But only one of them had lied about the pregnancy and birth to my face. For only one of them were the stakes frighteningly high should news of this baby get out. And for only one of them did we have evidence placing her at the scene of the crime.” Lizzie glanced at the defendant’s table. “In my opinion, the facts clearly show that Katie Fisher smothered her newborn.”

  * * *

  When Ellie Hathaway stood up to do her cross-examination, Lizzie squared her shoulders. She tried to remember what George had said about the attorney’s ruthlessness, her ability to worm answers out of the most stubborn witnesses. From the looks of her, Lizzie didn’t doubt it a bit. Lizzie could hold her own with the boys in the department, but Ellie Hathaway’s cropped hair and angular suit made it seem as if any of the softer edges of her personality had long been hacked away.

  Which is why Lizzie nearly fell over in her seat when the attorney approached her with a genuine, friendly smile. �€