The Silence of Murder

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  He’s hanging over the steering wheel as if his bones have dissolved from his body. He knows something. When we drove away from the Johnson place, I sensed something wasn’t right with him. “Chase,” I whisper, “you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  Finally, he looks at me. “I think my dad is the stalker.”

  “What? That’s crazy! Your dad is the sheriff! Why would he stalk me?”

  Chase is shaking his head. “He’s not. He didn’t. Not really. Not stalk. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you, Hope. He just wanted to scare you.”

  “Well, he did that all right! But it doesn’t make sense.

  Why would he—?”

  “He wanted us to stop investigating. Dad’s a control freak, Hope. I knew he didn’t like me blowing him off and seeing you anyway. But I didn’t start figuring things out until this afternoon, after we saw him at Caroline Johnson’s. I’ve never seen him that desperate. There was something in his eyes.” He puts his hand on my head and strokes my hair. “He’s not a stalker, Hope. He probably just didn’t know what else to do—and I’m not defending him. Believe me, if I’d known he was the one calling you, I would have made him stop. He kept telling me to leave it alone, and—”

  “That’s it! Leave it alone!” Those words have been circling like a tornado in my brain. “Chase, that’s what the stalker said on the phone, and it’s what your dad said this afternoon.” The pieces click together. I should have figured it out before now. “Could your dad get a pickup from that police impound?”

  Chase nods. “He can drive anything on that lot, and nobody knows or cares.”

  I don’t know whether to be relieved that the stalker is the sheriff … or terrified that the sheriff is the stalker. “So why did he want me to show up at the school lot tonight?”

  Chase’s lips tighten. He sticks the key into the ignition. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

  Chase drives through the fast-food parking lot to come in behind the school. He stops just inside the fence, too far away for us to see much. “I know he’s out there, watching.”

  I scan the field, imagining myself walking across the parking lot, calling Chase’s name, no answer but the wind, a warm August breeze. I’d get closer and closer to the tree. Maybe I’d sit there, waiting. And then what? What would he have done?

  A flash of white shines from behind the big oak, the one I scraped. “Chase, there! Behind the tree.”

  “I see him.” He swears under his breath. His eyes narrow to black slits. “I’ve spent half my life trying to be like him, trying to be who he wanted me to be. Perfect son. Perfect student. Perfect pitcher. Not anymore.”

  “Chase? What are you going to do? Chase!”

  He doesn’t answer me. He backs the car up, then eases it all the way around the lot until the truck is in full view. Without a glance at me, he floors the accelerator. The car squeals and shoots forward, back tires skidding, then righting to aim us directly at the pickup.

  I scream. We’re going to ram into that truck. “Chase!”

  Inches away, he slams the brakes. I catch myself, hands braced on the dashboard. The car swerves. I feel a thunk. I open my eyes and see that we’ve bashed in the door of the white pickup truck, pinning it to the tree.

  Sheriff Wells swears so loud I hear the words, the hate, through our closed windows. Chase jumps out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open. He waits, legs spread, hands on hips, while his dad struggles to get out of the truck. But the driver’s door is blocked by our car, and the passenger’s door is smashed against the tree. He kneels at his window and lets out a string of cussing.

  Midway through cursing the day Chase was born, the sheriff stops. I think he notices me in the car for the first time. His glare raises the tiny hairs at the base of my neck. Nobody has ever looked at me with so much hate before. I want to curl up in a ball on the floor of the car.

  “Are you done?” Chase asks his father. He takes the ground between them in three strides until he’s face to face with his dad, still trapped inside the cab. My Chase is strong and fearless, and he’s not backing down a single step.

  I want to be with him. He’s standing up to his dad for me. I open the car door and start to get out, but my seat belt yanks me back. Fumbling with it, I manage to get free and step outside. Without glancing at the sheriff, I walk around the car to stand beside Chase. He and his dad are inches apart, locked in a stare-down.

  “I asked you if you’re finished.” Chase’s voice is hard, controlled.

  “Finished?” Sheriff says, shifting his weight from one knee to the other, still caged inside the truck. His head has to bow to keep from hitting the ceiling. He rolls down the truck’s window, but it won’t go past halfway.

  “Finished stalking Hope?” Chase says.

  “I wasn’t stalking anybody.” Sheriff Wells turns to me. “I was just trying to get you to stop nosing around in things you had no business in. You should have left it alone. Then I wouldn’t have had to—”

  “Stalk me?” I finish his sentence. “How could you do that? You’re supposed to be … I don’t know … a protector. Not a stalker.” I feel Chase’s hand wrap around mine.

  “You’re really something, Dad,” Chase says.

  “You don’t understand. You’re just kids! You are nothing but a child, Chase!” Sheriff Wells shouts. He turns to me. “Look. I know you want to get your brother off, but you’re out of your league. You’re just going to make the jury send Jeremy to prison, instead of a mental hospital, where he belongs.”

  “You have no right to say where my brother belongs!” I shout. “You don’t know Jeremy. And you don’t know me.”

  “What were you going to do if I hadn’t shown up, Dad?” Chase demands. “What would have happened tonight if Hope had come here alone, like you planned? Huh? Answer me!”

  “Quit yelling!” Sheriff Wells shouts back. “Don’t talk crazy. I’d never do anything to the girl. I figured she’d show and you wouldn’t, and that would be the end of it. She’d think you stood her up, that you were done with her for good, which is what you should be.”

  “I’m done, all right,” Chase says. “Only not with her. With you.”

  32

  Rita is sound asleep when I get back home. I want to wake her up and tell her what happened. I want her to know that it wasn’t just kids trying to scare me. It was Sheriff Matthew Wells, someone who should be looking out for kids like me, for kids like Jeremy.

  I open her bedroom door and start to go in when I realize I’m about to wake up my mother for a mother-daughter talk. It’s ridiculous. I can’t explain why I want to talk to Rita after so many years of not talking to her.

  I shake off the notion, step back out of her room, and close the door. I need sleep. So does she. I want her to be the best witness for Jeremy she can be tomorrow.

  In the morning, Rita tries on every outfit in her closet as if she’s going for an audition. She settles on a peach blouse and a straight black skirt that’s a little small for her, but not too bad. This is definitely the most courtworthy outfit in her closet. After trying her hair up, then down, she compromises, pulling the top part back and letting the rest hang in bright yellow waves. She looks pretty good … until she adds giant hoop earrings I can’t talk her out of wearing.

  “How about you let me wear one of those necklaces you used to make?” Rita asks. “The ones with those little stones from the lake?”

  I’m amazed she even knows about my mermaid tears. “Sure, Rita. Hang on.” I find a necklace with a piece of sea glass a little darker than Rita’s blouse, and I put it on her.

  Rita fingers the necklace. “That’s real nice. Real nice, Hope.”

  I ride with her to the courthouse. She checks herself out in the rearview mirror at least a dozen times, nearly ramming into the back of a police car at the courthouse intersection. “Good luck, Rita,” I tell her as she steps out of the car.

  “Don’t you worry none, Hopeless. Rita ha
s everything under control.”

  Chase is already there. I slide in next to him, in the seat I’ve sat in ever since I testified. I can’t believe it could all be over today, except for the closing arguments from the lawyers. Rita takes a seat in the first row, behind the defense table. Jeremy is already restless, his hands flying over the table’s imaginary keyboard. It’s too early for him to be this nervous.

  I watch as Jeremy takes something from his pocket. The aspirin bottle? I can’t believe they let him keep it. But it’s not the same bottle I gave him. It’s bigger, a different shape. Somebody has given my brother an empty bottle. I’m so grateful that I thank God for every drop of kindness left in the world, this being one of those drops.

  Rita swears on the Bible, her voice loud and dramatic, like she’s kicking off her audition. She takes her seat and crosses her legs.

  Jerking his tie to one side, Raymond gets up from his seat behind the defense table. He walks right up to the witness box. “Good morning, Mrs. Long,” Raymond says.

  Rita gives him her biggest, fakest smile, but maybe the jury won’t know it’s fake. “Good morning, Mr. Munroe,” she says.

  Raymond starts out kind of slow … and dull and boring. He walks Rita through her life, or parts of it, growing up in Grain and then moving back here with me and Jeremy three years ago. She tells the court about her parents being dead and about how she works at the Colonial Café. To hear Rita tell this, you’d think she was one of those heroic and stoic single mothers who fight off the world in order to raise their children.

  Then Raymond zeroes in on Jeremy.

  RAYMOND: When did you first notice there was something, well, wrong with your son?

  RITA: I knew right away. A mother knows these things. He just wasn’t right, that’s all.

  RAYMOND: Go on.

  RITA: Well, the older he got, the more insane-like he got. When he went to school, them teachers didn’t know what to do with him. I’d get these phone calls from the principal that Jeremy wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t talk. He didn’t get on with the other kids. Well, it hasn’t been easy raising two kids anyhow, all by myself. And then I get this one, who’s messed up in his head.

  RAYMOND: How old was Jeremy when he quit talking?

  RITA: Six or seven, I guess. Or maybe more like nine. I’m not sure. But that ought to tell you all you need to know about Jeremy. The boy can talk—all the doctors agree on that one. He just won’t talk.

  I want to stand up and scream at both of them. Raymond and I agreed to stop making my brother out as insane and start showing he wasn’t the only one who could have killed Coach. Raymond is supposed to be creating doubt, the reasonable kind of doubt, like that Caroline Johnson might have done it.

  Clearly, Raymond and Rita have been plotting strategy without me. They’ve shut me out, just like before. And it’s not fair. Rita conspires with Bob, with Coach Johnson, with Raymond—with everybody except me.

  Furious, I whisper to Chase, “Why are they doing this? They’re trying to make Jeremy look crazy again.”

  He whispers back, “I think they have to, Hope. Raymond probably didn’t like Caroline Johnson’s testimony. Maybe he’s afraid she made Jeremy look too guilty. I think he’s just covering all his bases.”

  I don’t want Chase to be right.

  I listen to a couple more Crazy Jeremy stories that I can tell Rita and Raymond have cooked up together. And then Rita, sounding too confident, launches off on her own. I cringe when I hear her start the next story, and I’m pretty sure Raymond has no idea what’s coming.

  RITA: Okay. Here’s another one. Jeremy has always been real big on God and church—not that that makes you crazy necessarily, if you know what I mean. Even as a baby, he loved those hymns and them big brick churches.

  RAYMOND: Uh-huh.

  RITA: I’ve never been much of a churchgoer, so the church bus would come by for the kids on a Sunday morning. This was when we were living in Chicago, I think. Yeah, that’s it. Well, anyways, Jeremy came home from one of those Sunday school meetings all excited. He still wouldn’t talk, but he wrote in great big letters on his notebook paper: “How did you and God meet?” “What?” I asked him. He wrote again: “How did you and God meet and fall in love?” Well, come to find out, their lesson that day was on God the Father. Some teacher had told him God was his father. I’ve always told the boy he don’t have no father. Well, it’s easier that way for him. So that kid was all excited thinking he’d found out who his father was. God! And he wanted to know how I met his father. That boy. Another time, he—

  RAYMOND: Mrs. Long, let’s get back to Jeremy and the deceased. Did Jeremy like John Johnson?

  RITA: He liked him fine. He loved going to ball games. He even loved shoveling sh—uh, manure out of them stalls. You’d have thought he had the most important job in the world.

  RAYMOND: And you can’t think of a single logical reason why Jeremy would want John Johnson dead?

  RITA: Of course not.

  RAYMOND: Thank you.

  Rita starts to get up, but Prosecutor Keller is on his feet and heading straight for her. I shiver remembering the look on Keller’s face the second I realized he’d led me right into his trap. I pray Rita doesn’t have a trap waiting for her.

  KELLER: Good day, Ms. Long. I won’t keep you, I promise. Just a few questions to clear up a couple of matters.

  RITA: You go right ahead.

  KELLER: Let me see if I have this straight. You told your son that he didn’t have a father?

  RITA: It was easier than going through the whole story with him, you know? He wouldn’t have understood.

  KELLER: But, of course, Jeremy does have a father?

  RITA: Sure. I’m no Virgin Mary, if that’s what you mean. But he might as well not have had one, for all the good it did him.

  KELLER: I’d like to explore that a bit. Tell me about Jeremy’s father, if you—

  RAYMOND: I object! Jeremy’s heritage is irrelevant and immaterial.

  JUDGE: Mr. Keller?

  KELLER: I believe I can prove it is highly relevant, Your Honor. If you’ll allow me to make the connection, I’m confident the court will agree. Besides, the witness has opened the door. She brought up the subject of Jeremy’s father.

  RITA: I did no such thing!

  JUDGE: The witness will refrain from comments unless directed to answer. Mr. Munroe, I’m afraid Mr. Keller has a point. Your witness opened the door. But, Mr. Keller, make your point quickly and move along, understood? Now, Mrs. Long, please answer the question.

  RITA: What question? I can’t remember the question.

  KELLER: That’s all right. Let me rephrase. In fact, let’s back up just a bit. You said you went to high school in Grain, isn’t that right?

  RITA: Part of high school.

  KELLER: Why did you leave?

  RITA: I felt like it.

  KELLER: I see. You left in the middle of your sophomore year. Is that correct?

  RITA: I suppose.

  KELLER: Either you did or you didn’t. Which is it, Ms. Long?

  RITA: Fine. I left during my sophomore year. Are you happy?

  KELLER: Were you dating anyone at the time?

  RITA: Do I have to answer this?

  RAYMOND: I object to this line of questioning!

  JUDGE: Mr. Keller, the court asked you to move along with this line of questioning. Move along. I’ll overrule the objection, but the clock is ticking, Mr. Keller. Mrs. Long, answer the question.

  RITA: Yeah, I was dating. So what? Maybe you didn’t date in high school, but the rest of us did. And last time I looked, it wasn’t a crime.

  KELLER: You and John Johnson were in high school at the same time, isn’t that true?

  RITA: So were a lot of other people in this town.

  KELLER: But John—I think you called him Jay Jay—and you, you liked each other. You dated, went steady, whatever they were calling it then?

  I am in the middle of a train wreck. I’m tied to t
he railroad tracks, and the train is coming fast. Rita feels it too. She’s acting all cocky, but I see through that act to her fear. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her scared, and this is one of those times. I glance over at Jeremy and see that he’s full-on watching this happen. His empty bottle sits on the defense table, as if he’s forgotten about it. He is watching Rita, and he’s not breathing.

  Something bad, very bad, is coming.

  33

  KELLER: Ms. Long, I’ll ask you again. Were you and John Johnson in an exclusive dating relationship in high school?

  RITA: Yeah. So what? That was a long time ago, in case you don’t know that. I dated a lot.

  KELLER: But that year, were you in an exclusive relationship with the deceased, John Johnson? Or did you sleep around?

  RAYMOND: I object!

  RITA: So do I!

  JUDGE: Overruled. But, Mr. Keller, I’m pulling in your chain. Get to it.

  KELLER: I’m sorry, Your Honor. Ms. Long, I don’t know how else to ask this. And I apologize if the question embarrasses you. Were you Jay Jay’s girlfriend? Did you sleep with him?

  RITA: Yes. Okay. Yes, I was his girlfriend. And I did sleep with him, but I didn’t sleep around. Just him. You can ask anybody.

  KELLER: Thank you. I have. Let’s change the subject for a minute.

  RITA: Good idea.

  KELLER: You ran away from Grain how long ago?

  RITA: About twenty years. I couldn’t take it here anymore.

  KELLER: And yet, here you are. You came back. Why was that?

  I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach. I think I know where this is going. How could I have been stupid enough not to guess it before now?

  Rita is rattling on, like she does when she gets nervous. Raymond has to have told her what he told me: Keep your answers short. Stay on point. Don’t offer up information not asked for. But she won’t stop talking, and I know where it’s going to get her, to get Jeremy.

  “I think my parents were too old to be parents, God rest their souls.” Rita crosses herself, but she’s never been Catholic. I think she does it wrong. “They’re both dead now, so I suppose that’s why I came back. I could still have a fresh start here. I figured I could get a job waitressing.”