The Pact

  MELANIE SHIFTED IN her seat. It was the first day she'd been allowed to hear testimony, since her own stint as a witness was over. And of all the testimonies she wanted to hear, this woman from Berkeley had to be the most upsetting. Tongues. Eyelashes. Wedge-shaped objects.

  Warning signals; sexual abuse.

  Her hands clenched in her lap, and she clearly remembered the feel of Emily's journal, the one that she'd found tucked behind the rotted panel of the closet. The one she'd fed to the fire.

  The one she'd read through to the end.

  Melanie pushed past the other people in her row and stumbled out of the courtroom, past Gus Harte and her husband and a hundred other people, until she reached the ladies' room and was sick all over the floor.

  "MS. VERNON, DID YOU GO to art school?"

  "Yes," Sandra said, grinning at the prosecutor. "Back when the dinosaurs were still around."

  Barrie did not crack a smile. "Isn't it true that you need to gather fifteen to twenty slides of your artwork to send to an art school with your application?"

  "Yes."

  "Could this painting be illustrating an alternative style to that art school, to exhibit the artist's range?"

  "Actually, schools prefer to know that an artist is fairly consistent."

  "But it is possible, Ms. Vernon?"

  "Yes."

  Barrie walked over and extracted two small plastic squares from her briefcase. "I'd like to enter these into evidence," she said, placing the two compact discs on the exhibit table to be tagged. "Ms. Vernon, these are CDs taken from Emily Gold's bedroom. Can you describe them to us?"

  The art therapist took the discs from the prosecutor's outstretched hand. "One's a Grateful Dead CD," she said. "A mighty good one, I should add."

  "What do you see on the cover?"

  "A skull, floating on a psychedelic background."

  "And what about the other one?" Barrie asked.

  "The Rolling Stones. With the cover art of a mouth, and a long tongue."

  "Have you ever known teenagers to reproduce artwork that is important to them, Ms. Vernon?"

  "Yes, we see that quite often. It's part of adolescence."

  "So it is entirely possible that the artist who painted the skull might only have been copying elements from the cover art of some favorite CDs?"

  "That's definitely possible."

  "Thank you," Barrie said, taking back the music. "You also mentioned that you were disturbed by certain elements that you saw in the painting. Can you cite a specific source for me that says that clouds mean suicide?"

  "Well, no. It's not one specific source, it's the result of studies of many directives issued to children."

  "Can you give us the name of a study, then, that says a tongue coming out of the mouth indicates sexual abuse?"

  "Again, it was a compilation of different cases."

  "So you couldn't really say with any specificity that because there is red and black in a painting, this person is going to kill herself."

  "Well, no. But in ninety out of one hundred paintings where there is red and black like that, we have found that the artists felt suicidal."

  Barrie smiled. "How interesting that you should say that." She pulled out a poster, and held it up for Jordan.

  "Objection," he said immediately, walking up to the bench. "What the hell is that?" he asked Barrie. "And what does it have to do with this case?"

  "Come on, Jordan. It's a Magritte. I know you're a cretin when it comes to culture, but even you can see where I'm going to go with this."

  Jordan turned to the judge. "If I knew she was going to put a goddamn Magritte up there, I would have done some research on the subject."

  "Oh, give it up," Barrie said. "This just came to me last night. Let me have a little leeway."

  "If you put that thing up on the stand," Jordan said, "then I want leeway too. I want time to find out whatever I can about Magritte."

  Barrie smiled sweetly. "With your knowledge of art, by then your client could be seventy."

  "I want time to research Magritte," Jordan repeated. "He was probably seeing frigging Freud."

  "I'm going to allow it," Puckett said.

  "What?" Barrie and Jordan spoke in unison.

  "I'm going to allow it," he said. "You're the one who brought in an art expert, Jordan. Let Barrie give her something to cut her teeth on."

  As Jordan stalked back to his table, Barrie entered the Magritte poster into evidence. "Do you recognize this painting?"

  "Of course. It's a Magritte."

  "Magritte?"

  "He was a Belgian painter," Sandra explained. "He did a number of variations on that particular work." She gestured toward the image of a silhouetted man, his conservative bowler filled with clouds.

  "Can you see similarities between this poster and the painting Mr. McAfee asked you to examine?"

  "Sure. There are clouds, although Magritte's aren't quite as stormy, which fill not only the eyes but the entire head." Sandra smiled. "You've gotta love Magritte."

  "Someone does," Jordan muttered.

  "Was Magritte in therapy?" Barrie asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Did he receive therapy after painting this?"

  "No idea."

  "Was he depressed when he painted this?"

  "I couldn't say."

  Barrie turned toward the jury quizzically. "What you're telling me, then, is that art therapy is not conclusive. You can't look at a painting and say, without a doubt, that if someone paints a realistic tongue, therefore she was sexually abused. Or if someone paints a storm where her eyes should be, therefore she is suicidal. Isn't that true, Ms. Vernon?"

  "Yes," the therapist conceded.

  "I have another question for you," Barrie said. "In art therapy, you issue a directive to a child or teenager, correct?"

  "Yes. We ask them to draw a house, a person, or a scene of some kind."

  "Are most of the studies that have been done in art therapy based on directives?"

  "Yes."

  "Why are you supposed to issue a directive?"

  "Part of art therapy," Sandra explained, "involves watching the person create. That's just as important as the finished product for divining what's troubling them."

  "Can you give us an example?"

  "Sure. A girl who is asked to draw a picture of her family and who hesitates drawing the father or completely skips drawing his lower half is possibly indicating signs of sexual abuse."

  "Ms. Vernon, did you see Emily Gold painting that portrait of a skull?"

  "No."

  "Had you issued her a directive, to draw a self-portrait?"

  "No."

  "So the fact that you are being presented with this picture now, for the first time, might change the level of certainty with which you can make assumptions about this painting?"

  "I'd have to say yes."

  "Could it be possible, then, that Emily Gold was not suicidal when she did this painting, and that she was not sexually abused, and that ... perhaps like Mr. Magritte over there ... she was only having a bad day?"

  "It is possible," Sandra said. "But then again, this was a painting that was produced over a series of a couple of months, I'd wager. That's a heck of a lot of consecutive bad days."

  Barrie's mouth tightened at the unintended verbal slap. "Your witness."

  "I'll redirect," Jordan said. He stood up, walking toward the art therapist. "You told Ms. Delaney that you cannot say conclusively that any one of the disturbing things in Emily's painting proves that there's been sexual abuse or suicidal thoughts. This could be just another style she was attempting in order to get into the Sorbonne. But in your expert opinion, what's the likelihood of that?"

  "Pretty slim. There's a lot of strange stuff going on in that picture. If it was just one or two things," Sandra said, "like a melting clock, or an apple in the middle of the face--I'd say she was trying surrealism on for size. But there's a way to show off your range without throwing in a ha
ndful of different things that raise the hackles on an art therapist's neck."

  Jordan nodded, then walked toward the exhibit table and gingerly lifted the Magritte poster by his fingertips. "Now, I think if anything's been proven in this trial, it's my own absolute dearth of knowledge when it comes to art." The therapist smiled at him. "So you've definitely got me at a disadvantage here. But I'll take your word ... and Ms. Delaney's ... that this is a Magritte."

  "Yes. He was a wonderful painter."

  Jordan scratched his head. "I don't know. I wouldn't hang it in my house." He turned to the jury, holding the poster up for their perusal. "Now, even I know that van Gogh cut his ear off, and Picasso's faces didn't match up, and that as a group, artists are often very emotional people. Do you know if Mr. Magritte was seeing a psychologist?"

  "No."

  "So he might have been mentally disturbed."

  "I suppose so."

  "Might he have been sexually abused?"

  "It's possible," Sandra said.

  "Unfortunately," Jordan continued, "I haven't had any time to do any research on Magritte, but what you're saying here is that Magritte looks, to an art therapist, like he might have had some emotional problems. Right?"

  Sandra laughed. "Sure."

  "You also told Ms. Delaney that most of your studies deal with directives. Is that to say you never look at random pictures to see if there might be a problem for a particular child?"

  "No, we do that every now and then."

  "A parent who's concerned might bring in a piece of artwork done by a child?"

  "Yes."

  "And can you determine from those pieces of artwork if a child has a problem?"

  "Often, yes."

  "When you look at non-directive-issued artwork, how often do you diagnose problems and later discover the artist did in fact need help?"

  "Oh, nine out of ten times," Sandra said. "We're pretty discerning."

  "Unfortunately," Jordan said, "Emily is not here for you to give a directive to. Maybe if she was, you could have helped her. But in lieu of that, and having seen this piece of artwork, would you as a certified art therapist have been concerned about Emily's mental health?"

  "Yes, I would have."

  "Nothing further." Jordan sat down, smiling at Chris.

  "I'd like to recross, Your Honor." Barrie stepped in front of Sandra Vernon. "You just told Mr. McAfee that you occasionally do preliminary assessments from art that isn't directive-issued."

  "Yes."

  "And you said that nine out of ten pictures which have disturbing elements wind up pointing to someone with mental problems that need to be resolved."

  "Yes."

  "What about the other one?"

  "Well," Sandra said. "He or she is usually just fine."

  Barrie smiled. "Thank you," she said.

  JOAN BERTRAND WAS A PLAIN, middle-aged woman whose dreamy green eyes spoke of hours spent recasting herself in the world's greatest novels or even, perhaps, with her favorite male students. Within moments of taking the stand for the defense, Chris's English teacher managed to convey that he was not only a beloved pupil, but quite possibly--in her opinion--one of the next great minds of the twentieth century. Jordan gritted his teeth around a smile. Off the stand, when her only props were a chalkboard and rows of student desks, Bertrand hadn't been quite the zealot she appeared to be in a courtroom.

  "What kind of student is Chris?"

  Joan Bertrand clasped her hands to her heart. "Oh, excellent. I don't think I've ever given him less than an A. He was the sort of student the faculty discussed in the teacher's lounge--you know, 'Who's got Chris Harte for social studies this term?' and things like that."

  "Was he in your class last fall?"

  "Yes, for three months."

  "Mrs. Bertrand, do you recognize this?" Jordan held up a neatly typed essay.

  "Yes," she said. "Chris wrote this for Advanced Placement English. It was handed in the last week of October."

  "What was the assignment?"

  "To craft an argumentative essay. I told the students to take a confrontational issue, a very hot topic, and to come down on one side of it using their own personal beliefs. They were required to state a thesis, find support for it, disprove the antithesis, and come to a conclusion."

  Jordan cleared his throat. "I did almost as poorly in English as I did in art," he said, full of sheepish charm. "Could you run that by me again?"

  Mrs. Bertrand simpered. "They had to take an issue, state the pros and cons, and come to a conclusion."

  "Ah," Jordan said. "I understand that much better."

  "Most college sophomores couldn't do this. Yet Chris did a wonderful job."

  "Could you tell us what Chris's essay was about, Mrs. Bertrand?"

  "Abortion."

  "And what side did he favor?"

  "He was very impassioned about being pro-life."

  "Were the students required to actually believe in the issues they wrote about?"

  "Yes. Some of them didn't, of course, but we met several times during writing conferences, and I can tell you from speaking to Chris that he was quite strong in his convictions."

  "Could you read, Mrs. Bertrand, the part that's marked off on the bottom of page four?"

  The teacher held the paper at arm's length, squinting. "'There is not really an issue about choice at all. It is against the law to cut short someone's life, and that law must apply universally. To say that a fetus is not a life is to split hairs, since most bodily systems are in place at the time most abortions are undertaken. To say that it is a woman's right to choose is also unclear, because it is not only her body but another's as well.'" She glanced up, waiting.

  "You're right; that is pretty clear. In your opinion, Mrs. Bertrand, would Chris Harte have killed his girlfriend because he found out she was pregnant?"

  "Objection," Barrie said. "She's an English teacher, not a mind reader."

  "I'll allow it," Puckett answered.

  Jordan glanced at Barrie. "Would you like me to repeat that question, Mrs. Bertrand? In your opinion, would Chris Harte have killed his girlfriend because he found out she was pregnant?"

  "No. He never would have done that."

  Jordan flashed his dimples. "Thanks," he said.

  Joan Bertrand stared after him. "No problem," she sighed.

  BARRIE STOOD UP IMMEDIATELY. "Unlike Mr. McAfee," she said, "I used to love English. It sounds like Chris did, too. And that he was certainly one of your favorite students."

  "Oh, yes."

  "You can't imagine him doing something as horrible as committing murder."

  "Absolutely not."

  "And, of course, based on that very impressive essay, you can't imagine him taking a baby's life, or shooting his girlfriend in cold blood?"

  "No, I can't imagine him killing anyone."

  "Not even himself?"

  "Oh," Mrs. Bertrand shook her head vigorously. "Certainly not."

  "Well. Let me just recap, then." Barrie began counting off on her fingers. "He wouldn't have taken a life. He wouldn't have taken Emily's life, he wouldn't have let Emily take her own life, and he certainly wouldn't have killed himself. But on the other hand, we have a dead body; we have a confession from Chris saying that Emily was going to kill herself and then he was going to do the same thing; and we have all sorts of evidence placing Chris at the scene of the crime." She tipped her head to the side. "So, Mrs. Bertrand. What's your theory?"

  "Objection!" Jordan roared.

  "Withdrawn," Barrie said.

  DURING LUNCH, CHRIS WAS TAKEN downstairs to the sheriff's office. Jordan brought him a turkey sandwich and ate his own on a folding chair outside the cell. "I felt bad for her," Chris said, his mouth full. "Mrs. Bertrand."

  "She's a nice lady."

  "Yeah. Unlike the prosecutor."

  Jordan shrugged. "Different jobs call for different styles," he said. "I was just as cutthroat as she was when I was an AG."

  Chris smiled
faintly. "You mean, as opposed to now, when you've gone all soft."

  "Hey," Jordan said, holding his hand up to the bars of the lockup. "You're not starting to doubt me, are you?" When Chris didn't answer, Jordan snorted. "O ye of little faith."

  At that, Chris looked up, quite serious. "I have faith," he said, "I'm just not sure in what." He set his unfinished sandwich into the foil and balled it up, discarded. "What happens," he asked, "if I'm found guilty?"

  Jordan met his gaze. "You'll have a sentencing hearing," he said. "And based on that, you'll be transported down to Concord."

  Chris nodded. "And that's it."

  "No. We'll appeal the decision."

  "Which could take forever, and go nowhere."

  Jordan looked down at his sandwich, which suddenly tasted like sawdust, and did not say anything.

  "You know, it's funny," Chris said. "You don't want honesty from me. And all I want is honesty from you." He turned away, running his thumbnail over the bars of the cell. "But I don't think either of us is all too damn happy with what we're getting."

  "Chris," Jordan said, "I'm not giving out false hope. But your two best witnesses are still to come."

  "And then what, Jordan?"

  His attorney stared at him, face perfectly blank. "I don't know."

  THERE WAS A SLIGHT HUBBUB in the afternoon when Stephanie Newell took the stand, and someone sitting in the back row of the courtroom threw a rotten tomato that landed square on her blouse, yelling, "Murderer!" before he ran out the door. Following a minor recess, during which Stephanie was given a clean shirt and the police were called in to deal with the small-scale anti-abortion display, the court reconvened. By the time Stephanie Newell actually got on the witness stand and stated her credentials, most of the jury had already deduced that Emily Gold had come to Planned Parenthood looking for an abortion.

  "I was the counselor," she said, "assigned to Emily's case."

  "Do you have a file on her?" Jordan asked.

  "Yes."

  "When did you meet with Emily?"

  "I first met with her on October second."

  "What did you do at that meeting?"

  "I held a preliminary interview with Emily, and explained the results of the positive pregnancy test and her options."

  "When was your next meeting?"

  "October tenth. We require a pre-abortion counseling session, and the abortion is paid for at that time. We also ask if someone will be there to help the woman through the procedure."

  "Like the father of the child?"

  "Exactly. Or, in the case of a teen, her parents. But Emily indicated that her parents were not supportive, that she hadn't told the father about the baby, and that she didn't want to."