The Silence of Murder

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Dandi Daley Mackall

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2011 by Ericka O’Rourke

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mackall, Dandi Daley.

  The silence of murder / Dandi Daley Mackall. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Hope must defend her developmentally disabled brother (who has not spoken a word since he was nine) when he is accused of murdering a beloved high school baseball coach.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89981-2

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. People with mental disabilities—Fiction. 3. Selective mutism—Fiction. 4. Trials (Murder)—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M1905Sk 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010035991

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To the memory of my dad,

  Frank R. Daley, MD, who taught me to love words,

  wit, and a good mystery. I have been blessed with

  two fantastic parents, who gave me

  a much better start to life than I deserved.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  The first time Jeremy heard God sing, we were in the old Ford, rocking back and forth with the wind. Snow pounded at the window to get inside, where it wasn’t much better than out there. I guess he was nine. I was seven, but I’ve always felt like the older sister, even though Jeremy was bigger.

  I snuggled closer under his arm while we waited for Rita. She made us call her ‘Rita’ and not ‘Mom’ or ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mother,’ and that was fine with Jeremy and me. Pretty much anything that was fine with Jeremy was fine with me.

  We’d been in the backseat long enough for frost to make a curtain on the car windshield and for Rita’s half-drunk paper cup of coffee to ice some in its holder up front.

  Jeremy had grown so still that I thought he might be asleep, or half frozen, either one being better than the teeth-chattering bone-chilling I had going on.

  Then came the sound.

  It filled the car. A single note that made it feel like all of the notes were put together in just the right way. I don’t remember wondering where that note came from because my whole head was full of it and the hope that it wouldn’t stop, not ever. And it went on so long I thought maybe I was getting my wish and that this was what people heard when they died, right before seeing that white tunnel light.

  The note didn’t so much end as it went into another note and then more of them. And there were words in the notes, but they were swallowed up in the meaning of that music-song so that I couldn’t tell and didn’t care which was which.

  Then I saw this song was coming from my brother, and I started bawling like a baby. And bawling wasn’t something you did in our house because Rita couldn’t abide crying and believed whacking you was the way to make it stop.

  Jeremy sang what must have been a whole entire song, because when he closed his mouth, it seemed right that the song was over.

  When I could get words out, I turned so I could see my brother. “Jeremy,” I whispered, “I never heard you sing before.”

  He smiled like someone had warmed him toasty all the way through and given him hot chocolate with marshmallows to top it off. “I never sang before.”

  “But that song? Where did you get it?”

  “God,” he answered, as simply as if he’d said, “Walmart.”

  I’d just heard that song, and even though it seemed to me that God made more sense than Walmart for an answer, I felt like I had to say otherwise. I was the “normal” sister, the one whose needs weren’t officially special.

  “Jeremy, God can’t give you a song,” I told him.

  Jeremy raised his eyebrows a little and swayed the way he does. “Hope,” he said, like he was older than Rita and I was just a little kid, “God didn’t give it to me. He sang it. I just copied.”

  The door to the trailer flew open, and a man named Billy stepped out. Rita was breaking up with Billy, but I don’t think he knew that. We’d stopped by his trailer on our way out of town so Rita could pick up her stuff, and maybe get some money off her ex-boyfriend, who didn’t realize he was an ex. Billy stood there in plaid boxers, his belly hanging over the elastic like a rotten potato somebody’d tried to put a rubber band around. If I hadn’t been so cold, I might have tried to get Jeremy to laugh.

  Rita squeezed up beside the potato man. She tried to slip past him and out the door. But he took hold of her bag and grabbed one more kiss. She laughed, like this was a big game. Then she stepped down out of the trailer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  I would have given everything I had, which I admit wasn’t so very much, just to hear Jeremy and God’s song again.

  The tall heels of Rita’s red knee-high patent-leather boots crunched the snow as she stepped to the car, arms out to her sides, like a tightrope walker trying to stay on the wire. She jerked open the driver’s door, slid into place, and slammed the door hard enough to shake the car worse than the wind.

  Without saying a word, she turned the key and pumped the pedal until the Ford caught. Then she stoked up the defrost and waited for the wipers to do their thing. I figured by the scowl on Rita’s face that Billy hadn’t forked over the “loan” she’d hoped for.

  Jeremy leaned forward, his knobby fingers on the back of the seat. “Rita,” he said, “I didn’t know God could sing.”

  She struck like a rattler, but without the warning. The slap echoed off Jeremy’s face, louder than the roar of the engine. “God don’t sing!” she screamed.

  That was the last time Jeremy ever spoke out loud.

  Sometimes I think if I could have moved quicker, put myself in between my brother’s sof
t cheek and Rita’s hard hand, the whole world might have spun out different.

  2

  “Your Honor, I object!”

  The prosecutor stands up so fast his chair screeches on the courtroom floor. He has on a silvery suit with a blue tie. If he weren’t trying to kill my brother, I’d probably think he’s handsome in a dull, paper-doll-cutout kind of way. Brown hair that doesn’t move, even when he bangs the state’s table. Brown eyes that make me think of bullets. I’m guessing that he’s not even ten years older than Jeremy, the one sitting behind the defense table, the one on trial for murdering Coach Johnson with a baseball bat, the one this prosecutor would like to execute before he reaches the age of nineteen.

  The prosecutor charges the witness box as if he’s coming to get me. His squinty bullet eyes make me scoot back in the chair. “The witness’s regrets about what she may or may not have done a decade ago are immaterial and irrelevant!” he shouts.

  “Sit down, Mr. Keller,” the judge says, like she’s tired of saying it because she’s already said it a thousand times this week.

  Maybe she has. This is my first day in her courtroom. Since I’m a witness in my brother’s trial, they wouldn’t let me attend until after I testified. So I can’t say the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what’s gone on in this courtroom without me.

  “I’ll allow it,” the judge says. “Go ahead, Miss Long.”

  I smile up at her, even though she’s not looking. I’m thinking there just might be a nice regular person under that black robe. I try to imagine what she has on under there and decide cutoffs and a T-shirt that reads GRATEFUL DEAD. That’s what I remember seeing on the black shirt of one of Rita’s girlfriends during her trial for solicitation, which is one fancy way of looking at that job. “Thank you, Judge,” I tell her.

  Raymond Munroe, attorney for the defense, smiles at me now, but it’s a half smile, the kind a ninety-pound weakling might risk if a bully decided to walk on by instead of pounding him into the sand. Poor Raymond, our court-appointed attorney, looks more out of place than I do in this courtroom. He looked out of place in our house when he made Rita and me practice our testimonies. And he looked out of place when he stood up next to my brother in the Wayne County Courthouse and helped Jeremy plead “not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.” Raymond’s voice cracked.

  I glance over at the table where Jeremy is sitting all by himself. He’s in a constant state of motion—like a hummingbird—his hands patting the table, his knees bouncing, his arms twitching. He’s not like this all the time, only when he gets upset. When Jeremy was little, his face was handsome. Then it took on angles, like his skull rebelled because it couldn’t hold on to the thoughts Jeremy kept inside.

  “Hope,” Raymond says, looking at the jury instead of me, “have you always suspected there was something … well, let’s say ‘wrong’ … with your brother?”

  My brother is staring hard at me, his mouth slightly open, showing too much gum on top. I know Jeremy’s waiting for me to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because that’s his way.

  But it’s not mine. And it hasn’t been for a long time.

  So even though I have never even once thought there was something “wrong” with my brother, I nod.

  “You’ll have to speak up,” the judge says, leaning over her desk. You can tell she’s not mad, though. “We can’t record gestures,” she explains. “Answer the question with words, please.” She leans back in her big chair and waits for words.

  “Sorry,” I say, making sure not to look at my brother again. “Jeremy’s always been different. I guess, like Raymond says, ‘wrong.’ ”

  I try to remember the way Raymond and I rehearsed this part of the testimony. This is not how it went. I remember that much.

  I have a good memory, but it doesn’t work with words. Just pictures. Like I can picture Raymond sitting at our sticky kitchen table, a pile of papers and a yellow pad in front of him. A full glass of Rita’s too-sweet ice tea is sweating a water ring to the side of Raymond’s notebook. Raymond’s trying to tell me how to support his strategy, which is to convince the jury that Jeremy’s too crazy to be killed by the State of Ohio just because he murdered Mr. Johnson. Raymond wants to make sure we understand that Ohio can give the death penalty to anybody eighteen or over, unless they’re really, really out of it.

  I can picture Raymond, Rita, and me at that table as if we were still there. Jeremy’s the same way. He notices details. He can tell when I’m getting a migraine headache even before I feel it, just by seeing the lines on my forehead change. Jeremy used to say God wired us alike, loaded us with the same film. That was before he stopped talking. Jeremy, I mean. But God too, I guess. At least to me.

  Raymond’s frowning at me, waiting for me to say what we practiced. I notice the shiny lining of his suit and his skinny black belt. I glimpse Jeremy swaying at his table, his skin drawn too tight over the angles and bones of his face. Two rows back sit three of my teachers from high school, not together but in a blur of other town faces, including T.J., a guy in my class and about the only friend I’ve got in this town. Behind T.J. a row of reporters lean into each other.

  And I see Chase, Sheriff Wells’s son, who stands out in this crowd, in any crowd. Even here, with life and death dangling from the courtroom rafters, his face—I notice every line in that face—makes it real hard for me to look back at Raymond.

  Raymond clears his throat and glances at the jury, then at me again. “Would you mind giving us an example of how your brother is different?”

  I do mind. I know exactly what Raymond wants me to say. He wants me to tell the jury about something that happened when Jeremy was ten. That’s what we rehearsed. Only I don’t want to tell this story. I know it will hurt Jer.

  But if I don’t tell it, Rita will. And she’ll get it all wrong, and Jeremy will hate that worse than having me tell it right.

  Besides, it’s important to tell it right. Because if I don’t, if the jury doesn’t understand Jeremy, then the State of Ohio will give my brother a shot that will put him to sleep forever. And even if they don’t do that, they’ll put him in a prison with grown men who will crush all the Jeremy out of him, or kill him trying.

  3

  “Hope, will you tell us about an incident that took place in Chicago when Jeremy was ten?” Raymond Attorney for the Defense asks. It’s the exact question he made me answer half a dozen times at the kitchen table.

  “I was eight, and Jeremy was ten,” I begin. I close my eyes and remember. I can see Rita’s hand reaching for something. I know it’s her hand because she’s wearing the big green ring she used to have. Jeremy’s behind her, and I’m behind Jer. I have straggly blond hair and big blue ghost eyes, and I’m bundled into a quilted ski jacket a size too small. Steam rises from a loaf of bread. Plastic forks are piled at one end of a long, skinny table with a yellow-and-green-checked tablecloth.

  “It was our first night in Chicago,” I continue. “Rita decided we needed a change of scenery from Minneapolis, although the snow looked the same to me. She told us she’d always wanted to see the Windy City. Plus, there was this guy named Slater who was looking for us, and Rita didn’t want him to find us. I kept thinking how Windy City was a real good name for this place because we could see snow blowing everywhere, like it wanted to get out of town fast as it could.

  “Jeremy and I held hands and trailed behind Rita.” I can see her in her pale pink wool coat and red high heels, but I don’t bother telling the jury that. “We’d ridden all night on a bus from Minneapolis. Rita had struck up a conversation with a man who said he was a salesman.”

  Raymond steps in closer to the witness box. He glances at the clock, then at the judge, and finally back to me. “Get to the part where the police were called in.”

  That makes the prosecutor bounce up again. “Your Honor! He’s leading the witness.”

  I can’t imagine Raymond leading anybody, but the judge nods, agreei
ng with Mr. Keller. “Sustained.” She turns to Raymond. “Just ask your question, Mr. Munroe.”

  I feel kind of sorry for Raymond because he looks like a kid who got his hand slapped for reaching where he shouldn’t have.

  “Would you tell us what happened when you arrived at the shelter?” Raymond asks.

  I tell myself I need to cut to the chase. But thinking this reminds me that Chase, the Chase, is sitting in this very room, listening to and watching … me. And I have to talk about going to a shelter to get a meal.

  I clear my throat. “There was a long line of people waiting to get their dinner for free. It was a good dinner too, with fresh bread and everything. Rita gave us plates and told us to fill them up. She and the salesman did the same thing. I think I forgot to tell that part, that the salesman came with us from the bus station. He was the one who knew about the free-dinner place.”

  My mind is jumping ahead, and I see Jeremy’s hand reaching for that bread. I remember being glad about that because my brother had started looking skinny as a shoelace.

  “Please go on,” Raymond urges.

  I take in a deep breath and let out the rest of the story without taking in another. “Jeremy kept piling bread onto his plate, even when Rita tossed him a dirty look not to. And there were drumsticks too, and he piled those up. Then, instead of eating his own food, like he should have done, he walked around that room and handed it out.”

  “Handed it out?” Raymond repeats.

  I nod, then remember about using words instead. “Yeah. He gave drumsticks to old men and little boys and other kids’ mothers. And he gave bread to people right off his own plate, even if they already had some. When his plate was empty, he went back and filled it up again and then handed out the food all over again. It was like he couldn’t stop giving it away.”

  “How did people react?” Raymond asks, right on cue.

  “At first, people took the food without saying anything, just giving him a funny look. Then they got into it. They hollered, ‘Over here! I can use some of that!’ And Jeremy kept it up until there wasn’t anything more to give out.”