Salem Falls Part 37

"I understand. That's why it's imperative that Duncan Pharmaceuticals be ruled out as the source of the substance we're investigating." Selena lowered her voice. "Look, Dr. Quince, I don't think you guys are responsible. But you find something like this in the halls of Salem Falls High ... in the same town where there's a pharmaceutical company ... well, to cover all of our own a.s.ses, if you'll excuse my language, we have to just make sure we're not talking about the same stuff." She turned her attention to the screen again. "How come that one has a star next to it?"

Arthur looked where she was pointing. "Duncan Pharmaceuticals is introducing a new homeopathic line-prescription drugs derived from all-natural sources instead of chemical ones. The atropine was one of the drugs in that focus group."

Selena hiked herself up on a stool beside him. "Natural sources? Where does it come from?"

"The belladonna plant."

"Belladonna?"

"That's right. You've probably heard of it. It's extremely poisonous."

"Can you overdose on it?"

Immediately, Arthur bristled. "Almost any drug on the market has adverse effects, Ms. Damascus."

"What would some of these adverse effects be?"

"Confusion. Agitation." Arthur sighed. "Delirium."

"Delirium? So it is is a hallucinogen." a hallucinogen."

At that moment, Amos Duncan entered the lab. Noticing Selena, he did a double take. He'd seen her around town, certainly, but because Selena had known better than to try to talk to Amos directly, there was no way he'd know she was there on Jordan's behalf. "Arthur," he boomed, walking toward them. "I need to speak to you."

"Ms. Damascus was just leaving," Arthur hurried to explain. "She's here gathering information for a drug case."

In spite of what Arthur had thought, this information didn't make Amos the least bit nervous, as if he knew how tight a ship he ran. "You work for Charlie Saxton? You've got my sympathy!" Amos said, but he was grinning. Selena grinned right back. If he wanted to mistakenly believe she was a local cop, she wasn't going to be the one to correct him.

No, he'd figure it out for himself when he saw her in the courtroom.

They wandered through the aisles of the music store, clicking their fingernails on CDs arranged neatly as teeth. Without any conscious effort, other eyes gravitated toward these girls, light to a black hole. And how couldn't you look? Such ripe beauty, bursting at the seams; such confidence, left behind them as sure as footprints.

Chelsea, Meg, and Whitney were oblivious to the power of their attraction. They shopped aimlessly, each of them as aware of their missing mate as a soldier with pain in a phantom limb.

Meg tripped and knocked over an entire display of CDs. "Oh, gosh. Let me help," she said in apology to the pimpled employee who came to clean up.

"f.u.c.king cow," he muttered.

Whitney turned, hands on her hips. "What did you say?"

Reddening, the boy didn't look up.

"Listen here, you little toad," Whitney whispered fiercely. "With a snap of my fingers, I could make your d.i.c.k curl up and rot."

The kid snorted. "Yeah, right."

"Maybe I'm bluffing. And then again, maybe I'm a witch." Whitney smiled sweetly. "You wanna stick around and take that chance?"

The employee scurried into the back room. "Whit," Meg chided. "I don't think you should have done that."

"Why not?" She shrugged. "He was p.i.s.sing me off. And besides, I could could do it, too, if I wanted." do it, too, if I wanted."

"You don't know that," Chelsea said. "And even if you could, you're not supposed to. Magick isn't about getting rid of everything blocking your path."

"Says who? Healing's boring. So is all that c.r.a.p about moon cycles. Now that we've figured out spells, we're supposed to just keep them all inside us?"

"It's safer that way." Chelsea shrugged. "Fewer people get hurt."

Whitney laughed. "That little a.s.shole made fun of Meg. Just like Hailey McCourt."

"She's better now," Meg pointed out. "And nicer."

"She learned a lesson, thanks to us." Whit stared in the direction the boy had fled. "The little weasel deserves to be humiliated."

"And what about Jack St. Bride?"

The question, which fell from Chelsea's mouth like a burning match, devoured the air between them. "Jesus," Whitney managed finally. "I don't think this is a public conversation, Chels."

But now that it had burst from her, Chelsea couldn't stop. She held her hand up over her mouth, and still the words bled through. "Don't you wonder, Whit? Don't you think about it all the time?"

"I do," Meg murmured. "I can't get it off my mind."

Chelsea stared at Whitney. "Gillian's not here now," she said. "She's never going to know what we talk about. And even if you won't admit it, Whit, you know that we shouldn't have-"

"-been discussing this," Whitney said firmly. She surrept.i.tiously slid a CD into her macrame purse and made her way out of the store, fully expecting her friends to follow her lead.

Charlie knew better. As a detective, the rules of evidence ... and the methods of their collection ... had been drilled into him for years. There had been recent cases where evidence was ruled inadmissible when taken without a teenager's consent from a room within his parents' house. Drug evidence.

"What are you doing?"

His wife's voice startled him out of his reverie, and he nearly stumbled out of Meg's closet. "Just looking," Charlie managed.

Barbara didn't bat an eyelash. "For a corduroy skirt?"

He looked at the hanger clutched in his hands. "For a shirt. One Meg borrowed."

"Oh," Barbara said. "Try the dresser. Third drawer down."

She left, and Charlie rested his head against the closet door. He didn't want Barbara to know what he was searching for. Didn't want to admit he was doubting his daughter.

He fingered a worn friendship bracelet tied around the k.n.o.b of the door-striped red and blue and green, it was one Meg had made her first summer at sleep-away camp. She'd called home crying every hour of the first two days, insisting that keeping her there was a form of child abuse. But by the time Charlie and Barbara had driven up to Maine to get her, Meggie had settled in, and she sheepishly told them to go on home.

Kneeling, Charlie rummaged through nearly untouched sports paraphernalia-it'd taken him nearly a decade to learn that his little girl was never going to be a willing athlete-and shoes several sizes too small. There was a teddy bear with an eye missing and a poster Meg had made for a school project about the New Hampshire state bird, the purple finch. There was an old pink ballet bag and an a.s.sortment of dolls she had outgrown but couldn't bear to give away. Charlie smiled and reached for one, a naked baby with yellow hair and one stuck gla.s.s eye. A girl who sentimentally saved things like this wouldn't hide drugs from her father, would she?

He had seen enough teen drug cases in Salem Falls to know they followed a pattern: Either the child and the parents had a complete lack of communication between them or the child was resentful of the parents or the parents were too self-absorbed to really see what their child had turned into. None of that fit the bill for himself and Meg-they'd always been closer than most parents and kids. This was something McAfee had misunderstood. Maybe his kid had heard wrong. Maybe Chelsea, for whatever reason, had been lying.

Satisfied, Charlie went to stuff Meg's mess back into the closet in as disorganized a fashion as possible, lest she realize someone had been snooping through her things. In went the teddy bear, the hockey stick, the Rollerblades. He lifted the ballet bag and felt his hand close around something cylindrical and firm.

Ballet clothes, ballet shoes, ballet tights-everything in that bag ought to be soft.

Charlie unzipped the pink bag. Reaching inside, he pulled out a length of silver ribbon, long and silky. He removed a small stack of plastic cups and a thermos.

The cups and the thermos were empty, except for what looked like a residue of white powder. Cocaine? Charlie sniffed it, then touched his pinky finger to the powder and lifted it up to his tongue to taste.

It was probably nothing.

Weary, he ran a hand down his face and rubbed his tired eyes. He would get it tested anyway, just to put his mind at ease. He had a buddy at the state lab who could run a tox screen-and who owed him a favor.

That was what Charlie was thinking moments later when his pupils became so dilated he could not see.

As the wiper blades on Addie's car whispered rumors to each other, she drove aimlessly through the streets of Salem Falls. She needed to go home and unpack; she needed to get back to the diner as quickly as possible. But she found herself standing instead in the narrow plastic coffin of a phone booth, scanning the tattered white pages of the phone book for the street address of Jordan McAfee.

A few minutes later, a black woman opened the door of the house at the address she'd found. "I-I'm sorry ..." Addie stammered. "I think I have the wrong address." She headed into the driving rain, only to be called back.

"Addie Peabody, isn't it?" When Addie nodded, the woman smiled. "My name's Selena, and no, I'm not the maid. Come on in and wait out the storm."

It wasn't until she stepped inside that Addie remembered where she'd seen her before. "You came to the diner," she said out loud. "You ordered hot water with lemon."

"d.a.m.n, that's impressive!" Selena said, taking Addie's slicker. "Jordan's due back soon. I know he'd like to talk to you. If you want, you're welcome to wait here with me."

Addie sat down on an overstuffed couch in the living room. "I'm here because of Jack St. Bride."

"I see."

"He didn't do it," Addie said.

Selena sat down on the edge of the coffee table. "Do you have an alibi for him?"

"No. It's just ... I know he's innocent." She sat forward, her hands twisted in her lap. "I went to find out about his previous conviction, up in Loyal. And that girl ... the one he supposedly seduced ... she was lying. She never had a relationship with Jack."

"Is she willing to testify to that?"

"No," Addie whispered.

Selena's eyes softened. Addie's feelings were written all over her, clear as permanent marker on her pale skin. "This may seem like I'm prying, Ms.-"

"Addie, please."

"Addie. Why didn't you come to us two weeks ago?"

For a long time, Addie didn't answer. Then, she quietly explained, "I needed to see for myself first if Jack was the man I made him out to be."

Selena thought of the morning she'd told Jordan that she would not marry him. And of every single morning since then, when she'd second-guessed herself. "I know you'd like to help, but without an alibi, there's not too much you can add to his case."

"That's not why I came," Addie said. "I was hoping that you you could help could help me." me."

"Saxton here."

"Hey, Charlie, it's me."

Charlie froze. There was only one reason Albert Ozmander would have been calling, and it directly involved the thermos Charlie had seized from his daughter's room. Not that Oz knew where the thermos came from. As far as the toxicologist was concerned, this was just a routine workup on some evidence in an unnamed case.

He felt his foot tapping so nervously beneath his desk that he had to physically restrain himself with his own hand. "Got a match for you," Oz said, "but it's a weird one. Don't ask me why the kids in your town aren't smoking pot or doing c.o.ke like the rest of the free world, Charlie, but this stuff tested positive for atropine sulfate."

"Never heard of it."

"Yeah, you have. It's a drug used to control digestive tract problems, among other things. You ever taken Lomotil?"

Once, G.o.d, yes, when he and Barbara had visited Mexico and got sick as dogs. Charlie squirmed just remembering it. "Why would kids try to get off on an antidiarrheal?"

"Because if you take enough of it, it'll make you high. I'm sending the results right now." The fax beeped on in the corner of Charlie's office; he watched the paper curl its way out and somersault into the wire bin beneath.

"Thanks, Oz," Charlie said, and hung up the phone. He sat at his desk, hands covering his face. Meg, who had never lied to her father in her life; Meg, for whom he would tilt the world on its axis ... Meg had somehow come to be in possession of this drug.

His heart sank so low that it changed his center of gravity, and Charlie had to fight his way upright so that he could reach the b.u.t.tons of his phone. "Matt," he said, when the prosecutor answered, "we have to talk."

Jack dragged himself through the gray halls, trailing the officer who led him to the conference room where Jordan was waiting. The trial was only days away; no doubt his attorney had come with the prosecution's plea. Not that Jack was going to accept. He would stand up and hear a guilty verdict read twenty times by the jury, but he wasn't giving up his own freedom like an extra piece of gum he'd never miss. If they wanted him, they'd get him ... kicking and screaming all the way to the appellate court.

"Save your breath," he said to Jordan, as the CO opened the door. "I'm not-" He stopped abruptly as he realized that Jordan was not the only one there. Sitting beside him, looking fragile and tired and so beautiful it made his stomach ache, was Addie.

Jordan stood up, sending ripples through Jack's shock. "How did you-"

"Happy birthday," Jordan said.

"It's not my birthday."

"I know," Jordan admitted, and he left the conference room.

Jack didn't know what to do. The last time he had seen Addie was during his arrest. He took a step toward her, his heart racing.

He had shamelessly used Addie during these weeks in jail, in solitary. She was the image his mind turned to for comfort. She was the reason he could survive in a cell-because presumably, one day, he would be able to get out and explain.

What if she had come to tell him she never wanted to speak to him again?

Addie turned away, and that stopped Jack in his tracks as effectively as any gate. "Don't." She closed her eyes and began to speak. "I'm so sorry, Jack. That morning when Charlie showed up and started saying things, I shouldn't have heard him. I shouldn't have heard him, because I was supposed to be too busy listening to you."

"Addie-"

"Let me finish. Please." She looked down at her hands. "I went to Loyal. I met Catherine. She ... she's a very pretty girl." Jack remained absolutely still. "I'm ashamed that I even had to go there. I wish I could have just looked up at Charlie that morning and told him he had the wrong man. I wish I could turn back time and do it all over again ... differently ... except for one thing." She looked up, smiling through her tears. "A very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future."

And then he was in her arms, burying his face in the sweet fall of her hair and holding tight to the only anchor he had. His lips moved over her skin, her sorrow tightening his own throat. He swallowed, then whispered, "Do you think I did it?"

Addie cupped his cheek. "How can you know so much and not know the answer to that?"

Jack had been a hero in so many walks of life-academically, physically, socially. He knew what it was like to be the one other heads turned to follow, and he understood how far a fall it was from such a pedestal. But until this moment, when Addie handed over her trust like the keys to a golden city, Jack had never felt such honor.

"I wish you didn't have to see me here. Like this."