Testimony

by Anita Shreve

  Yeah, I think about Rob and J. Dot and Silas. I try not to, not that I shouldn’t. It’s just that it’s all part of putting this behind me. I think we should probably leave. I’ve got a class in ten minutes. I wish Silas hadn’t been there, hadn’t been part of it, but they were all together, and he was just kind of there, and maybe he didn’t exactly know what was going down, not that I knew what was going down, either. I thought probably he and Noelle had broken up or something, and he was way out of line and really acting out. Maybe she broke up with him and he was messed up, and I never did find out. So I feel bad, even though he did it, he definitely did it. But it was, like, I have to say, it wasn’t Silas. I know it was him, and it was his body, but he was long gone, really wasted, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if when he woke up the next morning, he didn’t even remember what happened. I’ve had blackouts, I know what they’re like. You can remember bits and pieces, but you can’t put it all together, you know what I mean? And if it hadn’t been for the tape, well.

  Do you have, like, extensions or something? Because your hair is really thick and pretty. I guess that’s a rude question. But everyone’s getting them now. I’ve been thinking about it. I think I could talk my mother into it. I could use a water right now. A bottled water. Are you going right back to Vermont tonight? You just came all this way to interview me in person? ’Cause, you know, we could have done this through e-mail. I’m amazed they gave you the money for the plane fare here. It must be a big study you’re doing. Or the University of Vermont must have a lot of money. I won’t be applying to college there. I’ll never set foot in Vermont again, and besides, UVM has, no offense, a terrible reputation as a party school.

  Noelle

  On Sunday, I call Silas. His mother says he is sick and can’t come to the phone. She says he came home late and he was drunk, and do I know anything about it? There is no scolding in her voice, which surprises me a little bit. Wouldn’t she be mad that Silas came home drunk? Instead, she seems almost sad, and if I knew her better, I would ask her why.

  He’s been throwing up, she says, and I think, Good.

  Silas doesn’t come to school on Monday, which I attribute to a monster hangover and a nice mother.

  On Monday night, I pass an open door in my dorm. Three girls I know are sitting around a computer. The one standing girl has her hand covering her mouth, as if she wants to shout out but doesn’t. One girl is sitting in front of the computer, and another is crouched beside her. The crouching girl sees me and nearly slams her fist into the arm of the girl in front of the computer, and whatever was on the screen goes off. A home movie, I am almost positive.

  The crouching girl looks at me and in an exaggerated manner slowly stands and stretches. She yawns. Her name is Krystal.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  Krystal says nothing, as if stretching makes her deaf. She seems to be stretching to the moon. The girl in the desk chair turns to look at me in the door. I have come from the practice room and am carrying my violin. I have my flannel pajama bottoms on, a knit hat on my head.

  “Hey, Noelle,” the girl says. The girl who had her hand over her mouth puts it in her pocket, but she doesn’t turn around. No one answers my question.

  There is a long silence while I try to think of another question to ask.

  “You guys watching a movie?”

  “Just something stupid on the Internet,” Krystal says too quickly. “You’ve been practicing?”

  I am suddenly wet with heat under my parka. I pull off my knit hat.

  “Yes,” I say.

  When I see Silas on Tuesday, he is across the quad and he doesn’t even acknowledge me. I leave five messages on his phone and text him twice. Even though he is at school, he must be skipping classes, because both Cynthia and Molly say Silas wasn’t in class. I wonder if he is going to go to practice, even though he has been suspended for four games. The coach must be beside himself, because no one can get to the basket like Silas, and no one is better at threes.

  Early Wednesday morning, I hear that Silas is at the gym. I skip my eight o’clock class and head down there. When I see Silas emerge from the boys’ locker room, I stop him.

  “We have to talk,” I say.

  His face is pasty white, and his eyes are red-rimmed. There is an odd smell coming off him, though maybe it’s just the smell of unwashed gym clothes.

  “I can’t,” he says.

  “I have to do this now,” I say.

  “I have to get to class. I’m already late.”

  I stand my ground. I study him.

  He moves around the corner. I follow him down a corridor and into a stairwell that almost no one ever uses.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  Silas’s eyes begin to fill. I am gutted and afraid. I have never seen Silas cry, and it is a terrible thing. He turns away from me.

  I know right then that it is all over.

  He knows it, too, which is why he is crying.

  I wind my arms around my stomach. I want to sit down, but I’m afraid to move. Everything — everything — inside me is praying that I am wrong. That Silas, idiotically, is somehow worried about his basketball career. That maybe someone died that he was close to. I can’t believe I am wishing for that, but I am.

  Silas takes hold of the metal stair railings and bends his head. He wipes his nose and eyes on his arm. He still has his back to me.

  “Are we over?” I ask, begging him to whip around and say no, no, it’s not that. And I will take him in my arms and help him. But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t move.

  “Silas?” I ask.

  He raises his head and stares at the ceiling.

  A teacher opens the door above us and skirts us on the steps. He’s maybe a squash coach, I think.

  “Everything OK?” he asks.

  I nod, needing him to leave.

  He must think we are having a lovers’ quarrel. But it is more than that. Much more.

  “We have to be,” Silas says when the coach is gone.

  “We have to be what?” I ask. He still has his back to me.

  “Over,” he says.

  “Over?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer me.

  “This is it?” I ask, panic closing my throat.

  Again, Silas is silent.

  “Silas, look at me.”

  He turns. He doesn’t need to say a word. It is all in his face.

  “Did I do something?” I ask, my whole body shaking.

  “No,” he says. “I did something.”

  “What?” I ask.

  What could he have done that means it is all over? I think about the blond girl he was dancing with.

  “You’ve met someone else?”

  He pounds his fists against his thighs. He does this again and again. I reach out to stop him from hurting himself, but he jerks away from my touch.

  He grits his teeth. His face is a stone mask. He starts to speak and then closes his mouth.

  “You will never . . .” he says.

  “I’ll never what?” I ask. I am all panic and nothing else.

  He wipes his hands over his face. He turns and takes the stairs two at a time. Before I can even call his name, Silas is out the door.

  Gary

  On the evening of Wednesday, January 25, I returned to the Quinney household to speak to both Owen and Anna Quinney about where their son might possibly be. I gave them to understand that my need to speak with Silas was urgent.

  Mrs. Quinney was extremely confused and upset but tried hard to think of where Silas might be. The boy was not answering his cell phone. His car was not in the driveway. Owen Quinney got into the cruiser with me, and we made a quick tour of the town and then drove through the Avery gates. It was in a school parking lot near the gym that Silas’s car was located. By this time, it had begun to snow lightly. It had been snowing off and on for days. Owen did not have a key, but I was able to gain entry to the car. In it we found various items of clothing, includin
g a pair of gym shorts and a practice jersey. We also found his cell phone.

  Mr. Quinney suggested that we contact Silas’s girlfriend, Noelle, since she was, in his opinion, closest to Silas. She might know where he was. Owen Quinney waited in the cruiser while I entered Foster Hall, where Noelle resides. I was directed to her room, where I found her in a distraught state. She was with a friend who was trying to calm her. She said that the last time she had seen Silas was at approximately eight o’clock that morning, and that he had left the gym by the side entrance near the parking lot. He was wearing his gym clothes, she said. I asked her why she was so distressed, and her roommate answered that Silas had broken up with Noelle that morning. I asked Noelle to let me know as soon as she heard from or saw Silas again.

  I returned to the cruiser and informed Mr. Quinney of what I had learned. He tried to think of another place Silas might have gone. Using the numbers logged in Silas’s cell phone, we called several of his friends on the team, one of whom gave the same answer as Noelle: Silas had been in the gym early in the morning. No one seemed to have seen him after that.

  Mr. Quinney and I returned to his house. Although Anna Quinney understood that Silas would be arrested if located, she appeared to be as eager to find him as we were. The snow was thickening, and we knew that the temperature would be below freezing that night. Mrs. Quinney was concerned that without a vehicle, Silas might try to walk home from wherever he was. I then left the Quinney residence with assurances that they would contact me as soon as they had any word from their son.

  I made the rounds of the town, stopping at the general store and the Qwik Stop to ascertain if Silas had been seen anywhere near there that afternoon. I drove to Avery Academy and asked security to conduct a thorough search of the school to find the boy. Following that, I returned to the station, where Rob Leicht and James Robles were in lockup. At 8:30 p.m., Mrs. Ellen Leicht posted bail, and her son was released to her custody. At 9:10 p.m., Matthew Robles appeared at the station and posted bail for his son, and James was released to his custody pending further review of the case. Matthew Robles was particularly upset that a confession had been signed without benefit of legal counsel.

  Before I went home for the night, Avery Academy security called to say that a thorough search had been conducted, and they had not found Silas Quinney.

  At approximately three o’clock in the morning of Thursday, January 26, Anna Quinney called my house in a state of mild hysteria. She still had not heard from Silas, she said. She had made an inventory of his clothing and had noted that he had taken his parka with him to school that day. He had, however, left his gloves at home. I told her that I would organize a search party at first light.

  At 6:30 a.m. I was able to assemble ten men and women from the town who were willing to aid in the search for Silas Quinney. Because Silas had left his car in the gymnasium parking lot, we initiated the search on the grounds immediately adjacent to the gymnasium and spread eastward from there. During the night, we had had nearly four inches of snow. The snow would continue through that day and into the evening.

  By three o’clock, we had had no success with our search for Silas. I received a phone call from Owen Quinney saying that he thought we should look around the Quinney farm, in case Silas was on the property somewhere. I selected four volunteers, and we headed over to the Quinney farm. Anna had to be forcibly detained from joining us on the search party. Owen told her she had to stay by the phone in case Silas called. I think it was at this point that Owen, out of the hearing of his wife, asked me about the possibility of foul play. I told him I thought it highly unlikely.

  Using snowshoes for the job, since there were now nearly ten inches of new snow on the ground, we fanned out from the house, trying to locate the boy. After about half an hour, one of the Quinneys’ dogs bounded up a hill approximately nine hundred yards from the house and started barking. Owen and I set up the hill, following the dog’s tracks.

  Owen

  This was a path that Owen knew well. He and Silas had often hiked it together — when Silas was a little boy, carrying a branch for a rifle, and then later with a real gun when Owen had taught the boy how to shoot. Owen couldn’t see that there was much of a reason for hiking the path otherwise, unless it was to take the dogs for a walk. He was trying to puzzle out why Silas would have come this way. Yes, there had been that barking, but that might have been just dog memory. Owen hated the idea that he and Gary might be losing valuable time looking in the wrong place.

  Why would Silas, who knew better, have come up this path while it was snowing? Owen understood his son’s desire to get away, but wouldn’t he have taken his car instead? Gary had told Owen and Anna that Silas, if found, would be arrested for sexual assault. Owen had been struck dumb when Gary had said that, and he thought that Silas had done the awful thing he had done because of what his mother had done. He wondered if Anna understood that, too. He glanced in her direction, and one look at her told Owen everything he needed to know about that.

  He explained to Gary as they trudged up the hill that Silas would know how to survive a snowstorm. He reminded Gary about the Eagle Scouts, and Gary had nodded, keeping to himself. Who knew what Gary was thinking? Over the years, Gary had described some awful scenes that he’d had to come upon, and Owen didn’t know if Gary was picturing one of them right now.

  The dog turned and bounded back down the hill, leaving Gary and Owen a good quarter mile up the path. Why had the mutt gone down? Could he no longer find a scent? Had he seen a squirrel and started to chase it? Owen knelt and gently brushed away the day’s accumulation of snow. He felt something and asked Gary to feel with him. Owen took his gloves off. He could detect the faint outline of a bootprint that had been made in a previous snowfall — maybe yesterday’s snowfall — and had crusted over. Gary felt it, too. And Owen knew exactly what the man was thinking when he asked Owen if he would like him to go on alone while Owen waited back at the house. Owen told him no. That’s all. No.

  Owen estimated that they had probably an hour before it would be too dark to see their way down. Gary said they would go one half hour longer and then turn around. Owen pretended to agree. He had no intention of leaving that path until he had found his boy.

  The urgency Owen had felt before increased the farther up the hill they went. He knew the temperature the night before had gone no higher than seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. Though he and Gary didn’t speak about it, Owen guessed that Gary had that in mind, too. While Silas could have survived those temperatures overnight by burying himself in whatever he could find, the fact that he hadn’t come down made Owen think his son might be injured. Or impaired in some way. Not right in the head.

  Owen didn’t know how much longer they climbed. He couldn’t remember if they’d passed the half-hour limit they’d agreed upon earlier.

  Owen understood at once that the blot of orange against the forest floor was a piece of Silas’s parka. As he started his dead run up the hill, Owen prayed that Silas had simply left his jacket in the woods but had gone elsewhere. Or that Silas was there, but he was sleeping. Or that even if Silas was freezing, Owen and Gary could immediately make him warm. Owen didn’t like the fact that only a patch of the parka was visible, but when he got closer, he was certain he would see the rest of the jacket and Silas, alive, in it. Owen had all these thoughts in an instant. When he reached the patch of orange, he fell forward, as if that might help him to get to his son faster.

  He whipped the snow from Silas’s face and from all the stiff crevices of Silas’s jacket. Owen had seen frozen things in the woods before — birds and foxes and squirrels — and the stiffness was always a shock. He cried Silas’s name and held him to his chest to keep him warm. He rocked back and forth. By the time Gary reached him, Owen was kissing his son’s face and weeping. Gary, radio in his hand, knelt beside the body.

  Owen’s son. His only child, gone. Just yesterday morning, Silas had been alive, eating his breakfast at the kitchen table. If only Owe
n had thought to look for bootprints yesterday when Gary first came over, Owen would have found Silas and brought him down.

  “Why?” Owen bellowed into the woods.

  Slung between Owen and Gary, Silas weighed a thousand pounds. Owen had lost the strength in his legs. It was as though they walked in slow motion. Even the slipping and sliding seemed strange and unreal. This can’t be happening, Owen kept saying to himself. Over and over. This just can’t be happening.

  Owen and Gary went down the path carrying Silas. Owen’s eyes went to the window in the kitchen, and he could see Anna. Her hands were over her mouth, but the scream was leaking out anyway. Owen had hold of his son, so he couldn’t go to his wife. But she came running out in her stocking feet in the snow, her arms outstretched, and she was pumping in the snow to get to them, and Owen and Gary were still slipping and sliding down the steep part of the path at the end. Owen was praying to God to strike him dead right there, because he was only seconds away from seeing his wife’s face when she looked at her son.