The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  That’s when they had moved to the backyard. They sat on the porch swing, surrounded by a thicket of bare branches and melting snow. Lewis sat perfectly still, his fingers and lips numb from cold, from shock.

  “Do you think,” Lacy whispered, “it’s our fault?”

  He stared at her, amazed at her bravery: she’d put into words what he hadn’t allowed himself to even think. But what else was left to say between them? The shootings had happened; their son was involved. You couldn’t argue the facts; you could only change the lens through which you looked at them.

  Lewis bent his head. “I don’t know.” Where did you even begin to look at those statistics? Had it happened because Lacy had picked Peter up too much as a baby? Or because Lewis had pretended to laugh when Peter took a tumble, hoping that the toddler wouldn’t cry if he didn’t think there was anything to cry about? Should they have monitored more closely what he read, watched, listened to . . . or would smothering him have led to the same outcome? Or maybe it was the combination of Lacy and Lewis together. If a couple’s children counted as a track record, then they had failed miserably.

  Twice.

  Lacy stared down at the intricate brickwork between her shoes. Lewis remembered laying this patio; he’d leveled the sand and set the brick himself. Peter had wanted to help, but Lewis hadn’t let him. The bricks were too heavy. You could get hurt, he’d said.

  If Lewis had been less protective—if Peter had felt true pain, might he have been less likely to inflict it?

  “What was the name of Hitler’s mother?” Lacy asked.

  Lewis blinked at her. “What?”

  “Was she awful?”

  He put his arm around Lacy. “Don’t do this to yourself,” he murmured.

  She buried her face in his shoulder. “Everyone else will.”

  For just a moment, Lewis let himself believe that everyone was mistaken—that Peter couldn’t have been the shooter today. In a way, this was true—although there had been hundreds of witnesses, the boy they’d seen was not the same one Lewis had talked to last night before he went to bed. They’d had a conversation about Peter’s car.

  You know you have to get it inspected by the end of the month, Lewis had said.

  Yeah, Peter had replied. I already made an appointment.

  Had he been lying about that, too?

  “The lawyer—”

  “He said he’ll call us,” Lewis answered.

  “Did you tell him Peter’s allergic to shellfish? If they feed him any—”

  “I told him,” Lewis said, although he hadn’t. He pictured Peter, sitting alone in a cell at a jail he’d driven by every summer, en route to the Haverhill Fairgrounds. He thought of Peter, calling home on the second night of sleepaway camp, begging to be picked up. He thought of his son, who was still his son, even if he had done something so horrible that Lewis could not close his eyes without imagining the worst; and then his ribs felt too tight and he couldn’t draw in enough air.

  “Lewis?” Lacy said, pulling away as he gasped. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, smiled, but he was choking on the truth.

  “Mr. Houghton?”

  They both glanced up to find a police officer standing in front of them.

  “Sir, could you come with me for a second?”

  Lacy stood up beside him, but he held her off with one hand. He didn’t know where this cop was taking him, what he was about to be shown. He didn’t want Lacy to see it if she didn’t have to.

  He followed the policeman into his own house, arrested for a moment by the white-gloved officers combing through his kitchen, his closet. As soon as they reached the basement door, he started to sweat. He knew where they were headed; it was something he had studiously avoided thinking about since he’d first gotten Lacy’s call.

  Another officer was standing in the basement, blocking Lewis’s view. It was ten degrees colder down here, and yet Lewis was sweating. He mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “These rifles,” the officer said. “They belong to you?”

  Lewis swallowed. “Yes. I hunt.”

  “Can you tell us, Mr. Houghton, if all your firearms are here?” The officer stepped aside to reveal the glass-fronted gun cabinet.

  Lewis felt his knees buckle. Three of his five hunting rifles were nestled inside the gun cabinet, like wallflowers at a dance. Two were missing.

  Until this moment, he had not allowed himself to believe this horrible thing about Peter. Until this moment, it had been a devastating accident.

  Now, Lewis started blaming himself.

  He faced the officer, looking the man in the eye without giving any of his feelings away. An expression, Lewis realized, he’d learned from his own son. “No,” he said. “They’re not.”

  * * *

  The first unwritten rule of defense law was to act like you knew everything, when in fact you knew absolutely nothing at all. You were facing an unknown client who may or may not have had a chance in hell of acquittal; the trick, however, was to remain simultaneously impassive and impressive. You had to immediately set the parameters of the relationship: I am boss; you tell me only what I need to hear.

  Jordan had been in this situation a hundred times before—waiting, in a private conference room at this very jail, for his next meal ticket to arrive—and he truly believed he had seen it all, which is why he was stunned to find that Peter Houghton had the ability to surprise him. Given the magnitude of the shooting and the damage wrought, the terror on the faces Jordan had seen on the television screen—well, this skinny, freckled, four-eyed kid hardly seemed capable of such an act.

  This was his first thought. His second was: That’ll work to my advantage.

  “Peter,” he said. “I’m Jordan McAfee, and I’m a lawyer. I’ve been retained by your parents to represent you.”

  He waited for a response. “Have a seat,” he said, but the boy remained standing. “Or don’t,” Jordan added. He put on his business mask and looked up at Peter. “You’ll be arraigned tomorrow. You’re not going to get bail. We’ll have a chance to go over the charges in the morning, before you go into court.” He gave Peter a moment to digest this information. “From here on in, you’re not going through this alone. You’ve got me.”

  Was it Jordan’s imagination, or had something flashed in Peter’s eyes when he’d said those words? As quickly as it might have happened, it was gone; Peter stared down at the ground, expressionless.

  “Well,” Jordan said, getting to his feet. “Any questions?”

  As he expected, there wasn’t any response. Hell, for all of Peter’s involvement in this little discussion, Jordan might as well have been chatting up one of the less fortunate victims of the shooting.

  Maybe you are, he thought, and the voice in his head sounded too damn much like his wife’s.

  “All right, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He knocked on the door, summoning the correctional officer who would take Peter back to his cell, when suddenly the boy spoke.

  “How many did I get?”

  Jordan hesitated, his hand on the knob. He did not turn to face his client. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he repeated.

  * * *

  Dr. Ervin Peabody lived across the river in Norwich, Vermont, and worked part-time at Sterling College’s psychology program. Six years ago he had been one of seven coauthors of a published paper about school violence—an academic exercise he barely remembered. And yet, he’d been called by the NBC affiliate out of Burlington—a morning news show he sometimes watched over a bowl of cereal for the sheer glee of seeing how often the inept newscasters screwed up. We’re looking for someone who can talk about the shooting from a psychological standpoint, the producer had said, and Ervin had replied, I’m your man.

  “Warning signals,” he said in response to the anchor’s question. “Well, these young men pull away from others. They tend to be loners. They talk about hurting themselves, or others. They can’t function in school, or are subjected to discipline there. They