The Pact by Jodi Picoult

  "What's that?"

  "Fusion." He smiled at the jury. "Just like the physicists. It means that two personalities have bonded together so strongly that a whole new personality is created, and the separate ones cease to exist."

  Jordan raised his eyebrows. "Could you run that by me again?"

  "In plain English," Dr. Karpagian said, "it means that Chris and Emily's minds and personalities were so connected there really was no distinction between them. They grew up so close that they couldn't function without each other. Anything that happened to one of those kids was going to affect the other. And in the case of the death of one of them, the other one literally would not be able to go on living." He looked at Jordan. "Does that make more sense?"

  "It's more clear," Jordan said, "but it's hard to accept."

  Dr. Karpagian smiled. "Congratulations, Mr. McAfee. That simply means you're mentally healthy."

  Jordan grinned. "Don't know that Ms. Delaney would agree, sir, but I thank you." The jury tittered behind him. "So in your expert opinion, Dr. Karpagian, did you come to any conclusions about Chris Harte and Emily Gold?"

  "Yes. I see Emily as being the one who was suicidal for whatever reason. And--it's important to note this--we may never know what that reason was. But something made her depressed and death seemed a way out. She turned to Chris because he was the person closest to her by far, and she told him she was going to commit suicide. But once she confided in Chris, he realized that if Emily was dead, there would be no reason for him to be alive."

  Jordan stared at the jury. "So what you're saying is that whatever made Emily suicidal was not the same thing that made Chris suicidal?"

  "No. It was most likely the simple fact that Emily was going to kill herself that made Chris agree to a suicide pact."

  Jordan closed his eyes briefly. To him, that was the biggest hurdle in his defense--getting the jury even to believe that two kids could have come up with this awful idea together. The good doctor, thank God--or Selena, who'd found him--had made it seem possible. "One more thing," Jordan said. "Emily purchased a very expensive gift for someone several months before her suicide. What would you say about that kind of behavior?"

  "Oh, that would be a giveaway," Dr. Karpagian said. "Something she was planning to leave behind for someone, to make sure she was remembered."

  "So Emily bought this gift to let the world know she was planning on killing herself?"

  "Objection," Barrie called. "Leading."

  "Your Honor, this is very important," Jordan countered.

  "Then rephrase, Mr. McAfee."

  Jordan turned back to Dr. Karpagian. "In your expert opinion, why would Emily purchase an expensive gift like that watch, if she was indeed suicidal?"

  "I'd say," the psychologist mused, "that Emily bought the watch before she decided to kill herself and involve Chris in a suicide pact. And it may indeed have been expensive, but that didn't matter." He smiled sadly at the attorney. "When you're going to kill yourself, the last thing on your mind is getting a refund."

  "Thank you," Jordan said, and sat down.

  BARRIE'S HEAD WAS SPINNING. She had to make an expert look like an idiot, and she had absolutely no grounding in his field. "Okay, Doctor," she said gamely, "you looked at Emily's profile. And you mentioned a lot of characteristics that teenagers sometimes exhibit when they're suicidal." She picked up her legal pad, covered with notes. "Sleeplessness is one?"

  "Yes."

  "And did you see that in Emily's profile?"

  "No."

  "Did you find unexplained changes in eating behavior in the profile?"

  "No."

  "Did Emily act rebellious?"

  "Not that I could see, no."

  "How about running away?"

  "No."

  "Was she preoccupied with death?"

  "Not overtly."

  "Did she appear to be bored, or have difficulty concentrating?"

  "No."

  "Was she abusing alcohol or drugs?"

  "No."

  "Was she failing any classes?"

  "No."

  "Was she neglecting her appearance?"

  "No."

  "Was she complaining of psychosomatic illnesses?"

  "No."

  "Did she joke about suicide?"

  "Apparently not."

  "So the only characteristics that led you to believe Emily might have been suicidal were that she was slightly withdrawn and out of sorts. Isn't that fairly normal for ninety-nine percent of women at least once a month?"

  Dr. Karpagian smiled. "I have it on authority that that's true," he said.

  "So isn't it possible that since Emily didn't exhibit most of these traits, she was not suicidal?"

  "It is possible," the psychologist said.

  "The few signs Emily did exhibit, would you say they are normal behaviors for a teenager?"

  "Yes, often."

  "All right. Now, you worked from a profile of Emily, is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Who made up this profile?"

  "I understand the defense's investigator, Ms. Damascus, collated it. They were a series of interviews done by herself or by the State, with friends and families of the teenager in question."

  "By your own testimony, Chris Harte was the closest person to Emily Gold. Were his observations part of her profile?"

  "Well, no. He wasn't asked."

  "But he was the one Emily turned to the most during those last weeks?"

  "Yes."

  "So he may have been able to tell you whether or not she had any of those characteristics we just listed. He probably would have seen more than anyone else."

  "Yes."

  "Yet you didn't speak to him when he was obviously your best source?"

  "We were trying to make a judgment without Chris's input to keep it completely unbiased."

  "That wasn't the question, Doctor. The question was, Did you interview Chris Harte?"

  "No, I did not."

  "You did not interview Chris Harte. He was alive and available and yet never even consulted, even though he was the best witness you had on Emily's behavior prior to her death. Short of Emily herself, that is." Barrie pinned the witness with her gaze. "And you couldn't interview Emily, could you?"

  KIM KENLY APPEARED FOR her brief sojourn in court wearing a tie-dyed caftan, stamped with a hundred small handprints. "Isn't this great," she said to the bailiff escorting her to the stand. "The kindergartners gave it to me."

  Jordan established her credentials and then asked how Ms. Kenly knew Emily Gold. "I taught her art throughout high school," she said. "Emily was incredibly talented. You have to understand, as a specials teacher, I see five hundred kids a day. Most of them just parade through the art room and leave a mess. There are a handful who stick with it, and have a true affinity for the subject. Maybe one or two of them even has talent. Well, Emily was the rarest of jewels. They come along once every ten years, I figure: a student who not only loves art but knows how to use her abilities to their best advantage."

  "She sounds very special."

  "Talented," Kim said. "And dedicated. She spent all her free time in the art room. She even had her own easel stand in the back."

  Jordan lifted a series of canvases that the bailiff had brought in along with Ms. Kenly. "I have here several paintings to enter into evidence," he said, waiting until they were examined by Barrie and duly tagged by the clerk. "Can you walk us through these paintings?"

  "Sure. The boy with the lollipop is one she did in ninth grade. The tenth-grade picture--the mother and child--is more developed, you see, in the facial structure? More lifelike? The subjects are also more three dimensional. This third painting, well, it's clear that Chris was the subject."

  "Chris Harte?"

  Kim Kenly smiled. "Mr. McAfee," she said, "can't you tell?"

  "I can," he assured her. "But the court record can't."

  "Well, then, yes. Chris Harte. Anyway, Emily captured the expression on the subj
ect's face, as well as the realism of the features. As a matter of fact, Emily's work always reminded me a little of Mary Cassatt."

  "Okay," Jordan said. "Now you've lost me. Who's Mary Cassatt?"

  "A nineteenth-century painter who often used mothers and children as subjects. Emily did too, and she also showed the same attention to detail and emotion."

  "Thank you," Jordan said. "So Emily's paintings developed fairly logically as she went through high school?"

  "Technically, yes. There was a lot of heart there from day one, but as she progressed from ninth grade to twelfth grade, I stopped seeing what she was thinking of her subjects, and saw instead what the subject was thinking of being a subject. That's something you rarely see in amateur painters, Mr. McAfee. It's a measure of real refinement."

  "Did you notice any changes in Emily's style?"

  "Well, as a matter of fact I did. Last fall she was working on a painting that was so dramatically different from her usual work, it really surprised me."

  Jordan drew out the final painting to enter into evidence. The free-form skull, with its storm-clouded eye sockets and lolling tongue, caught the jury's attention. One woman covered her hand with her mouth, and said, "Oh, my."

  "That's what I thought, too," Kim Kenly said, nodding at the juror. "As you can see, this isn't realism anymore. It's surrealism."

  "Surrealism," Jordan said. "Can you explain that to us?"

  "Everyone's seen surrealist paintings. Dali, Magritte." At Jordan's blank look, she sighed. "Dali. The guy who painted the dripping clocks?"

  "Oh, that's right." He glanced swiftly at the jury. Like any random group from Grafton County, its makeup was a study in contradictions. A Dartmouth economics professor was seated beside a man Jordan would bet had never in his life left his Orford dairy farm. The Dartmouth professor looked bored, and probably had known who Dali was the whole time. The farmer was scribbling on his note pad. "Ms. Kenly, when did Emily paint this?"

  "She began at the end of September. She wasn't completely finished when she ... died."

  "No? But it's signed."

  "Yes," the art teacher said, frowning. "And titled. She obviously thought she was rather close to finishing."

  "Can you tell us what Emily titled this picture?"

  Kim Kenly's long red fingernail hovered over the line of the skull, across the wide tongue and the roiling clouds in the eye sockets, coming to rest on the words beside the artist's signature. "Right here," she pointed. "Self-portrait."

  FOR A MINUTE BARRIE DELANEY STARED at the painting, her chin resting in her hand. Then she sighed and stood up. "Well, I can't make much sense of it," she admitted to Kim Kenly. "Can you?"

  "I'm no expert ... " Kim began.

  "No," Barrie interrupted. "But rest assured, the defense has found one. I wonder, though, as Emily's art teacher, if you asked her why she was painting something so disturbing."

  "I did mention that it looked very different from her usual stuff. And she said that it was what she felt like painting at the time."

  Barrie began to pace back and forth in front of the witness stand. "Is it unusual for painters to try different mediums, and styles?"

  "Well, no."

  "Did Emily ever try her hand at sculpting?"

  "Once, briefly, in tenth grade."

  "How about throwing pottery?"

  "A bit."

  Barrie nodded, encouraging. "What about watercolors?"

  "Yes, but she preferred oils."

  "But occasionally Emily would do a painting that was out of character?"

  "Sure."

  Barrie slowly walked toward the portrait of the skull. "Ms. Kenly, when Emily first tried watercolors, did you notice anything different about her demeanor?"

  "No."

  "The time she attempted sculpting, did you notice any change in her behavior?"

  "No."

  Barrie lifted the skull portrait. "At the time she painted this painting, Ms. Kenly, was she acting markedly different from the way she usually did?"

  "No."

  "Nothing further," Barrie said, and she placed the painting on the exhibit table again, face down.

  IN THE LOBBY OF THE COURTHOUSE was a large swath of chairs, set like a joint between the two courtrooms. On any given day the chairs were filled with harried attorneys, people awaiting arraignments, and witnesses who'd been warned not to speak to each other. The previous two days, Michael had been seated at one end of the lobby with Melanie; Gus had been seated at the other. But today was the first day Melanie would be allowed into the trial, having given her testimony. Gus had taken her customary seat, trying desperately to read the newspaper and not notice the moment Michael came in.

  As he sat down next to her, she folded the paper. "You shouldn't," she said.

  "Shouldn't what?"

  "Sit here."

  "Why? As long as we say nothing that has bearing on the case, it's okay."

  Gus closed her eyes. "Michael, the two of us breathing the same air in this room has bearing on the case. Just the fact that you're you, and I'm me."

  "Have you seen Chris?"

  "No, I'm going tonight." Gus turned, an afterthought. "Are you?"

  "I don't think it would be right," he said. "Especially if I testify today."

  Gus smiled faintly. "You have a strange notion of morality."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing. It's just that you're already testifying for the defense. Chris would want to thank you personally for that."

  "Exactly. I'm testifying for the defense. And tonight I'll probably go out and get drunk so I can forget I did it."

  Gus turned in her seat. "Don't," she said, laying her hand on his arm.

  They both looked down at it, radiating heat. Michael covered her hand with his own. "Will you come out with me instead?" he asked.

  Gus shook her head. "I have to go to the jail," she said gently. "For Chris."

  Michael glanced away. "You're right," he said evenly. "You should always do what's right for your child." And he stood up and walked down the hall.

  "MS. VERNON," JORDAN SAID, "you're an art therapist."

  "That's right."

  "Can you tell me what that is?" He smiled engagingly. "We don't get a lot of art therapists here in New Hampshire."

  In fact, Sandra Vernon had been flown in from Berkeley. She had a California tan, short platinum hair, and a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA. "Well, we work in the mental health field. Usually we're called in and we issue directives where we ask the client to draw something specific, like a house or a tree or a person. And based on what they draw and the style in which they complete the drawing, we can tell things about their psychological health."

  "That's incredible," Jordan said, truly amazed. "You can look at stick figures and see what's going on in someone's mind?"

  "Absolutely. With very young children, who don't have the words to tell us things, we can discover whether they're being sexually or physically abused, things like that."

  "Have you worked with teens?"

  "On occasion, yes."

  Jordan moved behind Chris, quite intentionally placing his hand on Chris's shoulder. "Have you worked with deeply depressed and suicidal teens?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you look at an adolescent's drawing and find suggestions of sexual abuse or suicidal tendencies?"

  "Yes," Sandra said. "Pictures can sometimes depict unconscious feelings that are being repressed, too raw to come to the surface in any other way."

  "So you may meet a child who is not acting out, but then look at one of her pictures and see there is a huge disturbance in her life."

  "Certainly."

  Jordan walked to the exhibit table and picked up the painting that Emily had done of a mother and child in tenth grade. "Could you tell me the frame of mind of the person who painted this picture?"

  Sandra pulled a pair of cat's-eye glasses from her pocket and settled them on her nose. "Well, this looks like the work of a st
able, well-adjusted person. You can see that the face and hands are all well-proportioned; that there's a strong element of realism; that nothing seems to be truly out of the ordinary or exaggerated; there are bright colors used."

  "Okay." Jordan lifted the portrait of the skull. "How about this one?"

  Sandra Vernon raised her brows. "Well," she said. "This is very different."

  "Can you tell us what you see in it?"

  "Sure. First off, there's a skull. That would immediately say to me that there's a possible preoccupation with death going on here. But even more telling is the way the colors red and black are juxtaposed in the background--that's a documented hint about suicide, in many art therapy studies. Also, there's a cloudy sky. Often we see paintings of clouds or rain when people are depressed and/or suicidal ... but what's even more disturbing is the way the artist put the clouds inside the space where the eyes should have been. The eyes are symbolic of a person's thoughts. I'd say that the artist's choice here of putting a gathering downpour in the eye sockets strongly suggests there are thoughts of suicide going on in his or her own head."

  She leaned over the railing of the witness box. "Could I ... could you bring it closer?" Jordan walked the painting over and propped it between Sandra and the judge. "What's really disturbing, too, are some of the details in the picture. It's in the surreal style--"

  "Does that make a difference?"

  "Not really, no. But the way the items are put together in this picture does. You can see here that although it is a bony skull, there are also long developed eyelashes, and a highly realistic tongue coming out of the mouth. Those things send off warning signals in me about sexual abuse."

  "Sexual abuse?"

  "Yes. Victims of abuse fixate on tongues, eyelashes, and wedge-shaped objects. Also belts." She squinted at the painting, considering. "And the skull is floating in the sky. Usually when we see someone who draws a floating image of a body with no hands or a detached head, it indicates that they don't have a feeling of control in their life. Their feet aren't on the ground, so to speak, so they can't walk away from whatever is bothering them."

  Jordan set the painting back on the exhibit table. "Ms. Vernon, if you saw this painting in a professional capacity, what would be your clinical recommendation for the artist?"

  Sandra Vernon shook her head. "I'd be very concerned about the mental state of the artist, with regard to issues of depression and even suicide," she said. "I'd suggest seeing a therapist."