The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

Peter stared at him. “Perfectly,” he said, sullen. But Jordan was looking at his client’s hands.

  They were shaking.

  * * *

  From the log of items removed from the bedroom of Peter Houghton:

  1. Dell laptop computer.

  2. Gaming CDs: Doom 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

  3. Three posters from gun manufacturers.

  4. Assorted lengths of pipe.

  5. Books: The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger; On War, Clausewitz; graphic novels by Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman.

  6. DVD—Bowling for Columbine.

  7. Yearbook from Sterling Middle School, various faces circled in black marker. One circled face x’d out with words LET LIVE beneath picture. Girl identified in caption as Josie Cormier.

  * * *

  The girl spoke so softly that the microphone, hanging on a boom over her head like a piñata, had trouble picking up the unraveled threads of her voice. “Mrs. Edgar’s classroom is right next to Mr. McCabe’s, and sometimes we could hear them moving their chairs around or shouting out answers,” she said. “But this time we heard screaming. Mrs. Edgar, she took her desk and shoved it up against the door and told us all to go to the far end of the classroom, near the windows, and sit on the floor. The gunshots, they sounded like popcorn. And then . . .” She stopped and wiped her eyes. “And then there wasn’t any more screaming.”

  * * *

  Diana Leven hadn’t expected the gunman to look so young. Peter Houghton was shackled and chained, wearing his orange jumpsuit and bulletproof vest, but he still had the apple cheeks of a boy who hadn’t come through the far side of puberty yet, and she would have bet money he didn’t have to shave. The glasses, too, upset her. The defense would play that to the hilt, she was certain, claiming some myopia that would have made sharpshooting an impossibility.

  The four cameras that the district court judge had agreed on to represent the networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN—hummed to life like a barbershop quartet as soon as the defendant was led into the room. Since it had gotten so quiet in the room that you could hear the sound of your own doubts, Peter turned immediately toward them. Diana realized that his eyes were not all that different from those of the cameras: dark, blind, empty behind the lenses.

  Jordan McAfee—a lawyer Diana didn’t like very much on a personal level but grudgingly admitted was damn good at his job—leaned toward his client the moment Peter reached the defense table. The bailiff stood. “All rise,” he bellowed, “the Honorable Charles Albert presiding.”

  Judge Albert hustled into the courtroom, his robes whispering. “Be seated,” he said. “Peter Houghton,” he began, turning to the defendant.

  Jordan McAfee stood. “Your Honor, we waive the reading of the charges. We’d like to enter not-guilty pleas for all of them, and we request that a probable cause hearing be scheduled in ten days.”

  This wasn’t a surprise to Diana—why would Jordan want the whole world to hear his client being indicted on ten separate counts of first-degree murder? The judge turned to her. “Ms. Leven, the statute requires that a defendant charged with first-degree murder—multiple counts, at that—be held without bail. I assume you have no problem with this.”

  Diana hid a smile. Judge Albert, God bless him, had managed to slip in the charges anyway. “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  The judge nodded. “Well then, Mr. Houghton. You’re remanded back into custody.”

  The whole procedure had taken less than five minutes, and the public wouldn’t be happy. They wanted blood; they wanted revenge. Diana watched Peter Houghton stumble between the hold of two sheriff’s deputies and turn back to his lawyer one last time with a question on his lips that he didn’t utter. Then the door closed behind him, and Diana gathered her briefcase and walked out of the courtroom to the cameras.

  She stood in front of a thrust of microphones. “Peter Houghton was just arraigned on ten counts of first-degree murder and nineteen counts of attempted first-degree murder, and various accompanying charges involving illegal possession of explosives and firearms in this recent tragedy. The rules of professional responsibility prevent us from commenting on the evidence at this point, but the community can rest assured that we are prosecuting this case vigorously, that we have been working around the clock with our investigators to make sure that the evidence is collected, preserved, and appropriately handled so that this unspeakable tragedy will not go unanswered.” She opened her mouth to continue but realized that there was another voice speaking, just across the hallway, and that reporters were defecting from her impromptu press conference to hear Jordan McAfee instead.

  He stood sober and penitent, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, as he stared right at Diana. “I grieve with the community for its losses, and will represent my client to the fullest. Peter Houghton is a seventeen-year-old boy; he’s very scared. And I ask you to please have respect for his family and to remember that this is a matter to be determined in court.” Jordan hesitated, ever the showman, and then made eye contact with the crowd. “I ask you to remember that what you see is not always all it seems to be.”

  Diana smirked. The reporters—and the people all over the world who would be listening to Jordan’s careful speech—would hear his little salvo at the end and believe that he had some fabulous truth up his sleeve—something that would prove his client was not a monster. Diana, however, knew better. She could translate legalese, because she spoke it fluently. When an attorney spun mysterious rhetoric like that, it was because he had nothing else he could use to defend his client.

  * * *

  At noon, the governor of New Hampshire held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol building in Concord. On his lapel he was wearing a loop of maroon and white ribbon, the school colors of Sterling High, which had sprouted up at gas station cash registers and Wal-Mart counters and were being sold for $1 each, the proceeds going to support the Sterling Victims Fund. One of his minions had driven twenty-seven miles to get one, because the governor planned to throw his hat into the Democratic primary in 2008 and knew this was a perfect media moment during which he could portray compassion at its strongest. Yes, he felt for the citizens of Sterling, and especially those poor parents of the dead, but there was also a calculated part of him that knew a man who could shepherd a state through one of the most tragic school shooting incidents in America would be seen as a strong leader. “Today, all of this country grieves with New Hampshire,” he said. “Today, all of us feel the pain that Sterling feels. They are all our children.”

  He glanced up. “I’ve been up to Sterling, and I’ve spoken to the investigators who are working hard, round the clock, to understand what happened yesterday. I’ve spent time with some of the families of the victims, and at the hospital with the brave survivors. Part of our past and part of our future disappeared in this tragedy,” the governor said as he looked solemnly into the cameras. “What we all need, now, is to focus on the future.”

  * * *

  It took Josie less than a morning to learn the magic words: when she wanted her mother to leave her alone, when she was sick of her mother watching her like a hawk, all she had to do was say that she needed a nap. Then, her mother would back off, completely unaware of the fact that her whole face relaxed the minute Josie let her off the hook, and that only then could Josie recognize her.

  Upstairs, in her room, Josie sat in the dark with her shades drawn and her hands folded in her lap. It was broad daylight, but you’d never know it. People had figured out all sorts of ways to make things seem different than they truly were. A room could be turned into an artificial night. Botox transformed people’s faces into something they weren’t. TiVo let you think you could freeze time, or at least reorder it to your own liking. An arraignment at a courthouse fit like a Band-Aid over a wound that really needed a tourniquet.

  Fumbling in the dark, Josie reached underneath the frame of her bed for the plastic bag she’d stashed—her supply of sleeping pills. She was no be