The Silence of Murder Read online

  “And then what?” Raymond asks.

  “And then he took off his shoes.”

  “His shoes?” Raymond looks all surprised when he turns to the jury. But he knows what’s coming, which is why he wanted me to tell this story.

  “He took off his brand-new snow boots, and he gave them to a kid who wore beat-up tennis shoes. Then he took off his socks, and he gave those away too.”

  “Where was your mother during all this?” Raymond asks. As if he doesn’t know.

  “Rita was yelling at him to stop. She kept saying she paid good money for those boots, although it was really Slater who did, and I’m not so sure the money was all that good.”

  “And what did your brother do when your mother yelled for him to stop?” Raymond asks.

  I answer just like we practiced. “It was like Jeremy didn’t hear her. He gave his coat to a red-haired girl with a long braid down her back. He unbuttoned his shirt. Rita took hold of his hand, but he kept going, unbuttoning with his other hand. So she smacked him.”

  “Smacked him?” Raymond says, like he’s never heard of such a thing in his whole life.

  “Just the back of his head,” I explain. “But it didn’t stop him. He gave the shirt off his back. And he kept going. He was down to his boxers when security got him. I don’t like to think what might have happened next if they hadn’t stopped him when they did.” I deliver that line exactly like Raymond and I practiced it.

  But I feel like a traitor bringing up this story this way. I can’t look at Jeremy, but I can imagine the look he’s giving me. I’ve seen it enough to know. Not mad. Disappointed. Like he thought I’d understood that day and now he sees I didn’t and it’s too bad—for me, not for him—that I don’t.

  The truth is, when the security officers stopped him, Jeremy didn’t look crazy. I don’t think a single person in that room thought he was crazy. They’d all grown quiet by then. All except me. I shouted for them to get their hands off my brother.

  Then this little boy walked up to Jeremy and held out his own jacket for Jer to put on, and Jeremy did. And then a very large woman took something out of a grocery bag, and it turned out to be shoes exactly Jeremy’s size. And not only did she give him those shoes, she put them on his feet. But not before a little girl ran up and gave my brother her own white socks that had little yarn balls on the back of them so they wouldn’t fall down. Somebody else came up with a pair of jeans for my brother. One of the security people helped Jeremy get those jeans over his new shoes because by then guards had his arms behind his back.

  When we left that place, people said goodbye and waved. And Jeremy was better off than when we’d come in.

  We all were.

  I feel sick inside my bones. My whole life I’ve fought anybody who said Jeremy was crazy, or treated him like there was something wrong with him. And now I’ve done that and worse, here in front of everybody and after swearing about it with my hand on the Bible.

  “It’s getting late,” the judge says. “We’ll adjourn until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” She turns to the jury and gives them orders not to talk to each other or anyone else about this case. Then she bangs her gavel on her desk. We all stand up to go home.

  Only not Jeremy.

  4

  I stumble down from the witness box because I have to get to Jeremy fast. He and Raymond are standing up at the defense table, and an officer is heading for Jer. I don’t know what the rules are here, but I need to talk to my brother.

  “Jeremy?” I rush over to him before anybody can stop me, but the table is between us. I can’t touch him. I want to hug him, to feel his stiff arms fold around me, to have his chin on my head. “I’m sorry. I had to tell it that way.” I want to shout to Jer that I don’t believe he’s crazy, but I can’t. Raymond told me I can’t ever say that to anybody, especially not in court.

  “You need to leave, Hope,” Raymond says. He’s tossing papers and files into his briefcase.

  I ignore him. It’s Jeremy I want. “Jeremy, you have to tell them you didn’t do it. Write it out. Please? Just write down what happened.” He can write. Until this … until Coach died … Jeremy wrote notes all the time, in beautiful, pointy, swirling letters, his own brand of calligraphy.

  Jeremy turns and gives me a sad, disappointed smile filled with forgiveness. Bile spouts from my belly to my throat, but I gulp it back down. His eyes widen as the officer slaps on handcuffs. His wrists are bruised, and his forearms have blue-and-yellow fingerprints. I’d be horrified if I didn’t know firsthand how easily my brother bruises. It was Rita’s curse when Jeremy was young because the world could see her temper spelled out on Jeremy’s skin in purple and blue. She made him wear sweatshirts and jeans, even in Oklahoma summers. Most of the bruises came from Jeremy’s clumsiness, though. I used to call them nature’s decorations.

  “Wait!” I beg. “Please let me talk to him.”

  I watch my brother’s hands, his long, knotted fingers twisting frantically in the cuffs.

  “Settle down, son,” says the officer of the court, a burly man with tiny wire-rimmed glasses. Except for his soft eyes, he looks like the bald bouncer Rita fell for in Arizona, right after she quit her waitress job. “Come along now.”

  Jeremy’s wrists spin faster and wilder. The metal cuffs clink together. He stares over his shoulder at me, intense, desperate.

  “Take it easy, Jer,” I urge, angry at myself for making him worse, for upsetting him, for calling him crazy in front of God and everybody.

  Then I get it. He’s not trying to wrestle out of the cuffs. He’s doing charades, mimicking the motion of turning a lid on a jar. Jeremy wants one of his jars. He collects empty jars, and he wants—needs—one now.

  “I’ll try, Jeremy. I promise. And I’ll take good care of your jars. Okay?”

  His hands stop twisting. His body goes limp.

  The officer takes him by one arm. “There’s a good boy,” he says, leading him away. “Time to go.”

  I stare after Jeremy for a solid minute after he disappears behind a side door. I don’t want to think what’s on the other side, where Jeremy will spend one more night.

  I wheel on Raymond. “This is wrong, Raymond. He didn’t do it.”

  Raymond doesn’t look up from his overstuffed briefcase. “Hope, we’ve been all through this. Your mother and I settled on a trial strategy.”

  “But you pled not guilty by reason of insanity and not guilty?” I sat through as many of Raymond and Rita’s trial talks as they’d let me. I’d wanted them to come out and say Jeremy didn’t do it, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Rita is convinced Jeremy did it but didn’t mean to, so she was all about the insanity plea. Then Raymond told us that in Ohio, you can plead both things, “not guilty” and “not guilty by reason of insanity.” So that’s what we did. He said it was like covering your bases, like telling the jury: “My client didn’t do it, but if he did, he was insane and didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Raymond sighs like he’s losing patience with me. “Yes. We pled NG and NGRI, not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. At the insanity hearing, Jeremy was deemed capable of standing trial and helping in his own defense. Hope, I thought you understood that.”

  “I did! But if they’ve already said he’s not insane in that insanity hearing, why are you trying to make out like he’s crazy now?”

  “One has nothing to do with the other,” Raymond explains. “That hearing was separate from this trial. The jury wasn’t there. Here, in this court, we can still go for not guilty by reason of insanity.”

  “But what about proving he didn’t do it? Period! Why aren’t you doing that?” I’m shouting now, but I can’t help it.

  Raymond glances around, then whispers, “Because there’s no evidence for that.”

  That shuts me up. No evidence, except the evidence piling up against my brother. I haven’t been allowed in the courtroom before now because I had to testify, but I’ve read the newspaper articles about the sta
te’s witnesses, who claim they saw Jeremy running from the barn with a bloody bat, his bloody bat.

  I sense someone behind me before he speaks. “I’m sorry. You need to clear the courtroom.” Sheriff Matthew Wells has the gravelly voice of an old-time Wild West sheriff.

  I turn to face him. He’s about Rita’s age, tall with a beer gut. The sleeves of his light brown shirt are rolled up to the elbow, showing a purple tattoo of a star, or maybe a badge. His black hair has a circular dent where his hat must belong when he’s not in court. There’s a gun in his holster. “Need to move along, folks.”

  “Of course,” Raymond says. “Sorry, Sheriff.” He snaps his briefcase shut and looks over at me. “Hope, I’ll see you tonight, all right?”

  I nod. But that sick feeling in my stomach comes back. Raymond wants to prepare me for tomorrow. More testimony, including the prosecutor’s cross-examination. How do you rehearse for that?

  “Miss?” Sheriff Wells touches my arm, and I automatically pull away. “You really do need to leave now.”

  I hear footsteps and wonder if he’s called in reinforcements. A posse? A SWAT team?

  But it’s only T.J., coming to my rescue. “She was just trying to talk to her brother’s lawyer, Sheriff.” Thomas James Bowers is a couple of inches shorter than I am, about half the size of the sheriff. Everything else about T.J. is too long—his nose, his jaw, his hair, which flops over sturdy rectangular glasses. He swore he’d stick with me through this whole trial, and he has.

  “She can talk to her brother’s lawyer outside the courtroom,” Sheriff Wells snaps.

  Shouts flood the courtroom as the main doors open and Raymond exits. He’s swarmed by reporters. Before the doors close again, I see Raymond duck, like he’s dodging tomatoes.

  “Let’s go, Hope,” T.J. says. “I got us a ride home.”

  I nod, grateful. Rita dropped us off this morning, but she’s not coming back for us. I don’t feel much like walking seven blocks to the station to catch a bus back to Grain, especially since buses don’t leave that often.

  Following T.J. to the big doors that swallowed up Raymond, I feel Sheriff Wells’s gaze on my back. It’s the same invisible shove Rita uses to make sure I do what she tells me to.

  As soon as I step out into the hall, cameras click. I keep my head down and rush through the courthouse. Half a dozen reporters follow me, shouting questions: “Hope, why won’t your brother speak?” “Did you know he did it?” “What did he—?”

  I try to block out their voices and focus on the clatter of our footsteps on the hard floors, the echo that reaches the high ceiling and bounces off marble walls. I make it to the front doors and am amazed how dark it is outside. And the temperature must have dropped twenty degrees. August should be dry-bones hot, and usually is around here, but the gray clouds and west winds are promising rain.

  I stop on the top step of the courthouse and glance around for T.J. He must have gotten lost in the crowd of reporters. A couple of them close in on me. One has beautiful red hair, which she pushes behind her shoulders while signaling to the cameraman beside her. “Hope, Mo Pento, WTSN. Can you tell us if you think—?”

  I push past her. My head feels like it’s floating off my shoulders. I think I might vomit. How’d you like that, WTSN?

  A horn honks. A blue Stratus is parked at the foot of the steps. A window lowers, and Chase Wells peers out. Green eyes, sun-blond hair. He doesn’t look a thing like his dad. Everything about him screams East Coast, from his khaki pants to his navy polo shirt. Chase is not just cute; he’s beautiful.

  I feel a hand on my back. “Sorry.” T.J. guides me down a step or two. “They had me trapped back there. You okay?”

  “Where are we going, T.J.?” I shout because it’s too loud out here. Reporters are crowding in again. I smell sweat and perfume and cigarettes.

  “There he is!” T.J. exclaims, pushing too hard from behind. I have to struggle to keep from falling down the steps.

  “There who is?” I know he’s trying to help—he always tries to help. But I think I should have made a run for it on my own. I could have been at the bus station by now.

  Chase’s car is still at the bottom of the steps. He honks his horn again and shoves the back door open. T.J. waves at him and keeps pushing toward the car.

  I stop short on the bottom step. “Wait. Who did you—?”

  “I—uh—I talked Chase into giving us a ride back to Grain.” He takes the last two steps down, but I don’t follow him. “Hope?”

  I shake my head.

  T.J. tosses a smile to Chase and whispers up to me, “You know Chase. He plays ball with me.” He lowers his voice. “His dad’s the sheriff?”

  Do I know Chase Wells? I’ve watched him for two summers and thought about him in between.

  “Hope?” That reporter with the hair sticks a microphone in my face. “Can you tell us why your brother—?”

  I reach for T.J.’s hand. We make a dash for the car, dive into the backseat, and shut the door as Chase Wells takes off, tires squealing like they’re in pain.

  5

  The second Chase pulls away from the courthouse, I know I’ve made a big mistake. I have to get out of this car. “Listen, we … I can walk to the bus station from here. Thanks.”

  T.J. elbows me and makes a face. We’re in the backseat, being chauffeured.

  Chase doesn’t slow down. “That’s okay. I’m headed to Grain anyhow. I can drop you guys off.”

  “Thanks again, man. I didn’t know who else to ask. Dad’s stuck at work.” T.J. fastens his seat belt and nudges me to do the same.

  “I really want to walk,” I insist. There’s an edge to my voice, like metal on metal. I reach for the door handle.

  “You want to walk fifteen miles?” T.J. says, trying to make a joke of it.

  “I get it,” Chase says. He lets up on the gas. “Sorry about that.”

  But it’s not speed that terrifies me. It’s definitely not his driving, which could never be worse than Rita’s after half a bottle of vodka. It’s him. Chase Wells. The guy I’ve worshipped from afar—or at least watched from behind my bedroom curtains—as he’s jogged by every summer morning, regular as sunrise.

  “My dad’s always on me about driving too fast,” he admits.

  Dad. As in Sheriff Dad. I didn’t hear the sheriff testify, but Raymond said he did a lot of damage to our side. So what am I doing in a car with his son? What was T.J. thinking?

  “Pretty sure you two know each other from Panther games,” T.J. says, reaching across me to fasten my seat belt. I let him. His voice is thin, with that tinny laugh he gets when he’s nervous. “Hope, Chase. Chase, Hope.”

  I’m thinking Chase knows my name. He just heard me swear on a Bible that I’m Hope Leslie Long.

  As for him, there’s not a human being in Grain who doesn’t know who Chase Wells is. I’ve sneaked peeks at him while waiting for Jeremy to collect bats and balls for Coach Johnson at games and practices. Chase was hard to miss, with Bree Daniels hanging all over him, and guys like Steve and Michael and half a dozen of their crowd cheering him on.

  Chase glances at us in the rearview mirror. Smiles. His eyes are framed, deep-set, the color of green sea glass, like the smooth, translucent chunks in my desk drawer at home.

  I collect sea glass, or at least I used to. It’s how I met T.J.

  I stare out my window and remember a rainy day just like this one, when T.J. and I first got together. It was about three years ago, a month after I’d started school at Grain. T.J. brought in some pieces of sea glass he’d found by Lake Erie, near Cleveland. He used them for a science project. I knew all about sea glass because Jeremy and I used to walk the Chicago shoreline hunting for it. We called the pieces mermaid tears. T.J. had reds that came from the lanterns of old shipwrecks. And pink from Depression-era glass. Broken pieces of history worn smooth by years of violent waves and rough sand. I had to gather all my courage to go up to T.J. after class and ask him about his collection
. When I told him I made jewelry out of sea glass, he wanted to see it. Before long, he started bringing me pieces to work with. He still brings me some now and then, even though I’ve stopped making jewelry.

  “Seriously, man,” T.J. calls up to the rearview mirror, “we appreciate the rescue. That was pretty crazy back there. I actually used to want to be a reporter. Not now. Huh-uh.” He elbows me again.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I settle into the seat and stare out the window again. Tiny drops of rain speckle the windshield, but Chase hasn’t turned on his wipers. A splat of rain trickles down the glass, shaking and splitting into streaks. The car smells like oranges, unless that’s the way Chase Wells smells.

  “Not a problem,” Chase mumbles.

  “So, now I guess we’re even,” T.J. says.

  I frown over at him because I don’t understand.

  “I told you how I convinced Coach to give Chase a shot pitching the Lodi game, didn’t I?” T.J. explains. He lets out his tin chuckle again. “If it hadn’t been for me, Chase would still be stuck on second base. Right, Chase?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Chase answers, without a glance in the mirror.

  I want T.J. to stop talking. I’m still not sure why he pushed Coach into letting Chase pitch that game. It’s not like he and Chase are buddies or anything. I used to think it was because T.J. thought Chase might be his ticket to the “cool guys.” If that was it, it hasn’t worked out.

  I tune in to the whir and whistle of the wheels on blacktop, the steady splatter and patter of rain picking up.

  “Hope?” Chase says, breaking our silence with my name. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that I’m sorry for what you’re going through—you and Jeremy. Your family.”

  He’s sorry? What am I supposed to do with that? I shrug.

  “I know my dad—well, he’s not the most sensitive law enforcement officer in the world.”

  I can think of a million comebacks. If it weren’t for Sheriff Wells, Jeremy might not be where he is right now, behind bars, on trial for murder. I’ll never forget the way the sheriff barged into our house and arrested my brother.