Salem Falls Read online

  “So what am I, Melton? The ten percent that wins or the ten percent that loses?”

  “With you, the odds are more like five percent on either side, ninety in the middle. Rape trials, Jack . . . a lot of the time, it comes down to one person’s word against another’s. Conviction or acquittal could hang on whether the jury had a good breakfast that day.”

  “I’m not taking a plea,” Jack said. “I won’t admit to something I never did.”

  “Well, just hear me out, then, all right? Because my job description says I have to read it to you.” Melton handed him the fax. “They’re willing to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor sexual assault. Eight months in jail, no probation. It’s a good deal, Jack.”

  “It’s a good deal for someone who’s goddamned guilty!” Jack cried. “I never touched her, Melton. She’s lying.”

  “Do you think you can convince twelve jurors of that? Do you really want to play that kind of Russian roulette?” He lifted Jack’s mug and took his napkin from underneath it, then drew a line down the middle with his pen. At the top he wrote PRO and CON. “Let’s look at what happens if you go to trial. Best-case scenario? You get acquitted. Worst-case scenario? You get convicted of a class B felony. You get sent to the state penitentiary for seven years.”

  “I thought the sentence was three and a half years to seven.”

  “Only if you get paroled, Jack. And to get paroled, you’d have to complete the sex offender treatment program there.”

  Jack shrugged. “How hard could that be?”

  “You’re not going to make it through day one unless you’re very forthcoming about every aspect of your sex offense. Which means you have to walk in there and tell them you have a thing for little girls.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Jack said.

  “Not if you’re convicted. In the mind of the parole board, you’ve committed that offense. Period. And you don’t get paroled until you’re amenable to treatment.”

  Jack dug his thumbnail into a scar on the table. “The plea,” he managed to say. “What’s the pro?”

  “First, you’re serving eight months, period. If you spend every second screaming you’re innocent, they’re still going to release you after eight months. Second, you’re serving time at the county jail, the Farm. You’re outside, working. It’s a whole different ball of wax from the State Pen. You finish your sentence and you go on with your life.”

  “I’d still have a conviction on my record.”

  “A misdemeanor,” Melton pointed out. “You can get it annulled after ten years, like it never existed. A felony sexual assault charge-well, that’s with you for life.”

  To his horror, Jack felt tears climbing the ladder of his throat. “Eight months. That’s a hell of a long time.”

  “It’s a lot less than seven years.” When Jack looked away, the lawyer sighed. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you were the one who got his hand slapped.”

  Jack turned to him. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Eight months,” Melton said in response. “You’d be out before you know it.”

  The courtroom was claustrophobic. The walls were swaying in on Jack, and the air he drew in through his teeth sat like a block at the base of his stomach. He stood beside Melton Sprigg, his gaze square on Judge Ralph Greenlaw, a man whose daughter had been a goalie for Jack three years earlier. A nonpartisan trial? Not a chance. Every time the man met his eye, he could see him thinking of what might have happened if his own child instead of Catherine Marsh were sitting behind the prosecutor.

  The judge scanned the plea bargain, that wisp of paper that had Jack’s signature on it, just as sure as if he’d scrawled away his soul in blood. “Did you read this form before you signed it?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Has any pressure, force, or promise been made to you in an effort to get you to plead guilty to this offense?”

  Jack thought of the cocktail napkin, the pro and con list, that Melton had drawn up. He had saved it after their meeting. The next day, he’d flushed it down the toilet. “No.”

  “Do you understand the rights that you are giving up by pleading guilty and not going to trial?”

  Yes, Jack thought. The right to live my life the way I always imagined it would be. “I do,” he said.

  “Do you understand that you’re entitled to a lawyer?”

  “Do you understand that you’re entitled to a jury trial?”

  “Do you understand that the jurors’ vote would have to be unanimous in order to find you guilty?”

  “Has any evidence obtained illegally against you been used to secure this conviction?”

  He felt Melton hold his breath as the judge asked the next question.

  “Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?”

  Jack could not force a syllable from his throat.

  * * *

  Catherine couldn’t stand any of it-the weight of her father’s solid body pressed against hers, the stoic resignation of Jack sitting beside his attorney, the truth that she was the one who had set this cart in motion. And even after she’d tried to fix it, it had been too late. No matter how many times she insisted she’d made this all up, they didn’t want to hear. The prosecutor and her father and the psychiatrist he’d dragged her to for counseling all told her that it was perfectly normal for her to want to keep Jack out of jail but that he deserved to be punished for what he had done.

  Me, Catherine thought. I deserve to be punished.

  She wished with all her heart that this had happened differently, but she had learned that words were like eggs dropped from great heights: You could no more call them back than ignore the mess they left when they fell.

  She felt herself coming out of her seat, as if she’d swallowed helium. “Don’t do this to him!” she cried.

  “Sit down, Catherine.” Her father clamped an arm around her. The prosecutor and the judge didn’t stop the proceedings. It was like they’d expected her to say this.

  The judge nodded at the bailiff. “Please remove Ms. Marsh from the courtroom,” he said, and suddenly a burly man was gently leading her outside, where she wouldn’t have to bear witness to her own folly.

  It was as if Catherine had never spoken. “Mr. St. Bride,” the judge repeated, “do you admit that you knowingly had sexual contact with Catherine Marsh for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification?”

  Jack could feel the Reverend Marsh’s eyes on the back of his neck. He opened his mouth in denial, only to choke on words that had been lodged in the pit of his belly, fed to him by his own attorney: You finish your sentence, and then you go on with your life.

  Jack gagged until his eyes teared, until Melton pounded him on the back and asked for a moment so that his client could compose himself. He coughed and hemmed and hawed, but something still seemed to be caught, irritating as a bone. “Try this,” Melton whispered, passing Jack a glass of water, but he only shook his head. He could drink an ocean and never dissolve the pride that was stuck in his throat.

  “Mr. St. Bride,” the judge said, “do you admit to committing this offense?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Jack answered, in a voice that was still not his own. “I do.”

  Late April 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  Selena Damascus kicked the tire of her Jaguar so hard that pain shot up her leg. “Goddamn,” she yelled, so loudly that both Jordan and the mechanic jumped.

  “Feel better?” Jordan asked, leaning against a tool chest.

  “Shut up. Just shut up. Do you know how much money I put into that car?” Selena thundered. “Do you?”

  “Every lousy red cent I ever paid you.”

  She turned on the mechanic. “I could buy a Geo for the price you just quoted.”

  The man looked distinctly uncomfortable, but Jordan understood. Selena was formidable when she was in a good mood. In a temper, she was downright terrifying. “Um, there’s something else,” the mechanic
muttered.

  “Let me guess,” Selena said. “You don’t have someone qualified to service Jags.”

  “No, I can do that. But it’s gonna take a week or so to get the part.” A telephone rang in the service station, and the mechanic excused himself. “You make up your mind. This car ain’t going nowhere anyhow.”

  Selena turned to Jordan. “This isn’t happening to me. I’m just going to turn my life back twenty-four hours and when your son calls, I’m gonna let the phone keep on ringing.” She shook her head. “You know this guy has a monopoly going on in this town.”

  “Yes. The antitrust commission swung by last September to investigate.”

  “Zip it, will you, Jordan?”

  “You could get it towed,” he suggested. “You could rent a car.”

  Selena shrugged, considering this.

  “Or you could just stay with us for a while,” Jordan said, and the moment the words were out of his mouth, he wondered where they had come from. The last thing he wanted was Selena Damascus around, reminding him of what might have worked out in a different time and place.

  “You can barely stand to look at me. God, Jordan, you took your cereal bowl into your bedroom this morning to keep us from having to eat breakfast together.”

  He looked away.

  “Not to mention all that . . . history . . . between us.”

  She was asking him, Jordan realized, not telling him. He was very quiet for a moment, remembering how he had stayed up all night waiting to hear the tumblers in the lock announcing her return with Thomas, how he’d sat on the couch after putting away her blankets this morning and realized the scent of her was now a part of it, as much as its color and weave.

  “If I stayed, we’d just be asking for trouble,” Selena said.

  “It would be a stupid move,” Jordan agreed.

  “Stupid?” she snorted. “It would be one of the ten biggest mistakes in the history of the world.”

  He laughed along with her, both of them completely aware that they were already moving toward his car, inching in the direction of home.

  If Addie was surprised to discover that she liked sex, she was absolutely stunned to realize that she was addicted to the moments afterward.

  She would lie on her side, drawn into the shell of Jack’s body like a precious pearl. She could feel him the whole length of her, could taste herself on his fingers, could sense the moment his breathing evened into sleep. But most of all, while they were curled together, she knew that they were equals. No one was on top, no one was pleasing someone else, no one had the upper hand. It was just Addie, listening to Jack, who was listening to Addie.

  Where would you go if you could board a plane for anywhere?

  What’s the first thing you remember from your childhood?

  Would you want to live forever?

  These were the things they talked about while the night settled and bled into morning. His reticence to talk about the past had broken like a dam; now, he told her about his teaching days, about his arrest, about his time in jail. Sometimes, while Jack was asking her a question or answering one of hers, he’d slide his hand up to cover her breast. Sometimes his fingers would stroke her from the inside out, making it a challenge to listen. He did it so often, and so well, that she stopped jumping every time it happened.

  “You can ask me anything,” Jack said solemnly, “and I’ll answer.”

  Addie knew he was telling the truth. Which is why, sometimes, she bit down on the question she most wanted Jack to respond to: What would it take to make you run?

  Jack stood at his window in Roy Peabody’s guest room, grinning like a fool at the sight of Stuart Hollings walking his cow down Main Street once again. He felt, unbelievably, like whistling. Addie had done that to him. He opened the door and sauntered into the living room, humming under his breath. “Roy, it’s such a good morning I think I can stomach even you.”

  He stopped short at the sight of Addie, arguing with her father in heated whispers.

  “Jack,” she said, blushing. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he answered. He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  Roy looked from one to the other and threw up his hands. “For the love of God. You think I don’t know what you two are up to? Christ, Jack. You’ve barely been sleeping here enough, Jack, for me to charge you rent. Forget the false modesty and sit down next to her. Just don’t start pawing her until I’ve had a cup of coffee, all right? There’s only so much a man my age can take without a strong jolt of caffeine.”

  Addie smiled weakly at Jack. “So,” he said, feeling like a seventh grader beneath Roy’s hawkeyed regard. “What were you two talking about?”

  “Well-” Addie began, at the same minute that Roy said, “Nothing.”

  Then Jack noticed the bucket of soapy water beside Roy’s armchair. A sponge floated like seaweed on the top. “Planning on washing your car?”

  Roy scowled. “Kick a man while he’s down, why don’t you?”

  “He doesn’t have a car,” Addie said, sotto voce. “Those DUIs.”

  “Ah. Spring cleaning, then?”

  Roy and Addie exchanged a look. “Yeah,” he said, leaping on Jack’s explanation. “I’ve got to do these windows. It’s gotten so that when I look out ’em, I can barely tell Stuart from the cow.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jack said, getting to his feet.

  “No!” Addie and Roy said in unison.

  “It’s no trouble. And I promise I’ll be down to work on time. Matter of fact, now that I think of it, isn’t there a ladder in the storeroom downstairs I can use?” He sidestepped the bucket, strolled to the door, and opened it.

  The paint was still dripping, angry and red: GO HOME.

  Jack touched the words with one shaking finger. “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

  “Happened yesterday, too,” Roy admitted. “I got it off before you woke up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack rounded on Addie. “Or you?”

  “Jack . . . If you ignore whoever’s doing this, they’ll just go away.”

  “No,” he said. “If you ignore it, it steamrolls you.” Then he pushed out the door, bracing his hand on the wall, leaving behind a smudge of red paint like first blood drawn.

  Gillian dreamed that the doorbell was ringing. She was in bed, so sick she could barely lift her eyelids, but whoever it was wouldn’t go away. After eons she managed to swing her legs over the side of the bed. She stumbled down the stairs and yanked open the door. Standing there was her father, holding a gun. “Gilly,” he said, and then he shot her in the heart.

  She woke with a start, sweating, and pushed back the comforter on her bed. It was still early-barely 6:30 in the morning-but she could hear voices rising from downstairs.

  Moments later, she inched toward the kitchen. “All I’m saying, Tom, is that I live here for a reason,” her father said.

  He was talking to Whitney’s dad. Peeking in, Gilly saw Ed Abrams, too, and Jimmy from the pharmaceutical plant. “I don’t see how we can do anything about it,” Tom answered. “Noticed you didn’t invite Charlie Saxton to this tête-à-tête, either.”

  “Charlie’s welcome to join me anytime, so long as he checks his gold shield at the door.”

  Ed shook his head. “I don’t know, Amos. It’s not like he’s made a move.”

  “Who?” Gilly said, coming out of her hiding spot and entering the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee with the aplomb of a woman twice her age, then slid beneath her father’s arm. “Morning, Daddy,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Hi, Mr. Abrams. Mr. O’Neill. Jimmy.” The men muttered greetings, turning their eyes away from her pajamas: a babydoll T-shirt and a pair of her dad’s boxers. A thin line of powder-pink skin showed between the sagging waistband and the hem of her shirt. “Who hasn’t made a move?”

  “This,” Amos said suddenly. “This is why we have to take the first step.” He grabbed the edge of his daughter’s T-shirt, wrinkling it in his hand, so that it pu
lled tight across the buds of her breasts. Gilly froze, caught somewhere between absolute humiliation and the strange power she had knowing her body could keep these men in thrall.

  Tom O’Neill stood up. “Count me in.”

  Ed Abrams nodded, and so did Jimmy.

  Amos walked the men out, talking quietly in a voice Gilly was not meant to hear. Something had happened, though, something she meant to find out. She waited for her father to return. “Daddy, aren’t you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Amos stared at her for a moment before finding his voice. “Let’s get you dressed,” he said simply, and he took her hand and led her upstairs.

  Charlie jumped as the door to his office burst open. Standing on the threshold, fuming, was his resident registered sexual offender, Jack St. Bride. A step behind, his secretary shrugged. “Sorry, boss. I tried to get him to wait, but-”

  “I’ll take it from here. Mr. St. Bride? You want to come in for a minute?” He gestured at the chair opposite his desk as if St. Bride were any visitor, instead of a man so angry Charlie could nearly see steam rising from his skin. “Now. What can I do for you?”

  “Everyone knows,” St. Bride said tightly.

  Charlie did not pretend to misunderstand him. “The list of registered offenders is public. If a resident comes in requesting it, I have no choice but to hand it over.”

  “How many?”

  “How many what?” Charlie repeated.

  “How many people have asked to see the list since my name’s been on it?”

  “I’m not at liberty to-”

  “Just tell me. Please.”

  Charlie pursed his lips and stared at the ceiling, at a crack that marched across it like a panoramic peak of mountains. “None that I know of.”

  “That’s right. No one would know I was on that list at all if it weren’t for one of your own officers.”

  The detective rubbed the bridge of his nose. Goddamn Wes, anyway. “We have protocols at the department, Mr. St. Bride, and it’s always a disappointment to hear that a staff member hasn’t followed them.”