The Silence of Murder

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  T.J.’s got a point. I have seen Chase at practice. Jeremy and I watched him at the batting cages too. Talk about intense.

  “I have to work hard,” Chase answers. “I don’t have your natural swing.”

  “I don’t know about that,” T.J. says, obviously pleased.

  “Do you play sports, Hope?” Chase asks.

  T.J. laughs. I glare at him. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t play sports. You’d probably be great, if you ever stuck with anything long enough.”

  It’s true, the part about not sticking with things. “So I’m a born quitter,” I admit.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Chase says.

  I stare over at him, wondering why he’d find that hard to believe.

  “And regardless,” he continues, “I still say I’m no different from you two, or anybody else in Grain.”

  I tilt my head, sizing him up. “I’ll bet you’re a morning showerer.”

  “I shower in the morning, after my run.”

  “But you’d shower in the morning even if you didn’t run,” I guess.

  “Yeah. Is that important?”

  “It is where we come from. Right, T.J.?” He nods, agreeing with me. “White-collar workers shower in the morning because they can,” I explain. “Blue-collars shower at night because they have to. They need to get the dirt and grime of the mine or factory off. I’m a night showerer by birth.”

  Chase narrows his eyes at me. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. “Hope Long, you may be the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

  I have nothing to say to that. Neither does T.J. Nobody has ever told me I was interesting, much less the most interesting person they’ve met. Maybe it’s a line he hands out. If it is, it’s a good one. Without thinking, I tug the rubber band out of my hair and free the ponytail Raymond wanted me to wear in court. My hair follicles tingle, thankful for the freedom.

  Mrs. Bowers shuffles into the kitchen, a giant purse over one arm. “I’m sorry I have to leave.” She sets her purse down in the middle of the floor and reaches into a cupboard. “You children have to try these.” She brings down a box of cookies and takes out a plate. “They just came off the line last week—Monster Nuts and Chips.” She dumps the whole box onto the plate and sets it in front of us.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Bowers.” I take one, even though I don’t like nuts. “That’s really nice of you.”

  “It is,” Chase agrees, taking a big bite. “It’s great.”

  T.J. keeps staring at the table. “Bye, Mom. Thanks. See you in the morning.” His voice is strained. His fingers clench and unclench.

  The second his mother leaves, T.J. springs to his feet, grabs the plate of cookies, and takes them to the counter, where he puts every cookie back into the box.

  “T.J.? Are you okay?” I’ve never seen him like this.

  For a second, he doesn’t answer. Then, without looking at me, he says, “I’m tired. It’s pretty late. I don’t think the TV van will still be at your house.”

  I glance at the clock, amazed it’s almost ten. “I didn’t realize it was so late.” I scoot out of the booth. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for letting us come over.”

  He nods, still not looking at me.

  “I’ll drop you off,” Chase says, moving for the door. “Bye, T.J.”

  T.J. doesn’t return the goodbye. Something’s going on, and I don’t know what.

  When we’re outside, I turn to Chase. “What was that back there?”

  He doesn’t answer until we’re in the car, pulling away. “I guess T.J. knows how to hold a grudge.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He didn’t tell you? It was stupid. At the last practice, Mrs. Bowers showed up with cookies—you know, from the factory? She said it was to get us ready for the big game with Wooster. People were bringing us all kinds of things, like we were headed for the Olympics. Anyway, soon as she left, one of the guys broke out laughing. We were all dead tired from practice. Before we knew it, we were all laughing—the cookies really are pretty bad. Then Coach said, ‘Let’s save the cookies and give them to the Wooster team. All’s fair in love and war.’ That did it. Everybody cut loose. I kind of thought T.J. joined in, but I guess I was wrong. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I feel bad for T.J. He loves his family, and so do I in a way. More than once, I’ve shown up on the Bowers’s doorstep after a bad fight with Rita. They always welcome me, feed me, and ask no questions. But I guess I’m not that surprised that T.J. didn’t tell me about what happened with his mom and the team. We’re both pretty private. We know what subjects to stay away from. We don’t talk about Rita. Or Jeremy, really. But T.J. is always there when I need him. And it’s just good to have somebody to eat lunch with at school and do homework with sometimes. T.J. gets A’s, and he deserves them. He works hard. I’m fine with B’s, but he’s always up for helping me if I want to shoot for more.

  Chase punches the radio on and station-hops until there’s loud music pouring out of the front and back speakers. I don’t know the songs, but I’m grateful to have music blaring in my head, drowning out thought. This is Rita’s kind of music. I’m not about to tell Chase, but my kind of music is way different. I love old songs from the forties, especially the ones written during the war, when people pined for each other—“I’ll Be Seeing You,” Billie Holiday’s “Lover Man.” The Andrews Sisters. I used to try to get Jeremy to jitterbug with me, but he was too stiff to jive.

  Chase’s phone rings.

  “Guess your cell really is okay,” I say.

  He glances at the number, then shuts it off. “I think Dad needs a cooling-off period.”

  “He’s really mad, isn’t he?”

  Chase shrugs. “He’ll get over it. He has to control everything. Guess it’s part of the package when you have a cop for a father.” He passes a semi, and I can see a little boy on the seat next to the driver.

  “At least you have a father.” I say this in my head, but it comes out in words too. My mind drifts back to my imaginary father. Every time things got tough with Rita, I’d imagine leaving with my dad. We’d take Jeremy and go live somewhere far away.

  “Where is your dad, Hope?” Chase asks. “Unless you don’t want to talk about him.”

  I never talk about him. There’s not much to talk about. “He died when I was three. Sometimes I think I remember him, his face, and his eyes. He was tall and thin. I can almost picture him wearing a red baseball cap. But I might have imagined the memory. I do that sometimes.”

  “How did he die?” Chase has slowed so much that the semi passes us back.

  “He was run over. He drove a truck for a living, and it was a truck that ran him over.” I have a picture of this in my mind, but I know I’ve imagined that one.

  “You think Jeremy remembers him?”

  “Maybe. But he wasn’t Jeremy’s father. We didn’t have the same dad. Rita used to tell Jeremy that he didn’t have a father. I guess it was true, in a way. We sure never saw him. But Jeremy believed her literally. He was so excited the first time somebody at church told him God was his father. He came right home and asked Rita where she and God met and fell in love.”

  “That could sure screw up a kid,” Chase observes.

  “Maybe. Jeremy would disagree, though.” For some reason, I think of that night when Jer and I sat in that old car and Jer’s song, or God’s song, filled the air.

  We ride in an easy quiet until we’re at my house. I thank him for the ride, then run up the sidewalk, wondering why I told him so much about me.

  The front door swings open and Rita steps out in her white slip, a beer in one hand. She’s the only person I know who wears slips, although I’ve never seen her wear them under anything.

  “Where in red-hot blazes have you been?”

  I glance back, willing Chase to be gone. The car pulls away from the curb and drives off.

  “Was that Chase Wells? Matt’s boy?” She downs the rest
of her beer, shaking the can to be sure she hasn’t missed a drop.

  “Don’t start, Rita.” I shove past her into the house.

  She trails in after me. “Mmm … mmm. He’s a lot better-looking than his old man, that’s for sure. What were you doing with him?”

  “Nothing. He just gave me a ride home.” I kick off my shoes. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Well, you can take it from your mama—you’d better do a little something with him if you want to keep him coming around.”

  Only Rita would be upset because I hadn’t done anything.

  I try to get to my room, but she’s not finished with me. She lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

  I pull out my cell and see that it’s turned off. “Sorry, Rita. You have to turn off cell phones in the courthouse. I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”

  “I guess I forgot to turn it back on,” she repeats, mocking me in the whine of a six-year-old. Her words slur into each other. “Don’t you lie to me!”

  I have to be careful around Rita when she’s like this. I need to get away from her. “All right.” I try to walk around her to get to my room, but she blocks me with her cigarette hand.

  “Did I say you could leave?” she cries.

  I stop, turn to face her, then wait. “What, Rita?”

  “The sheriff called here looking for you,” she says.

  “Sheriff Wells? Why?”

  “Looking for his boy.”

  I think about Chase heading home. Maybe I should call him, warn him.

  “Four times! That’s how much … how many … times he called.” Rita sniffs, then swipes her nose with the back of her cigarette hand. “He said you and his boy were together.”

  “Is that a crime now?”

  “Don’t get smart with me!” She takes a step forward. Automatically, I take a step back.

  She comes at me, but stumbles. Ashes break from her cigarette. “I’m still your mother, you know!”

  “I know,” I mutter.

  She squints as if trying to see through me. “What happened in court today?”

  “Why?”

  “Because Raymond called and said things went lousy.”

  A rush of guilt sweeps over me. My stomach feels like I swallowed lead. “What else did he say?”

  “He said I’m going to have to testify because you screwed up. What did you say anyway?”

  She’s gotten to me. Even though she’s drunk enough to pass out, Rita’s still got the upper hand. And once again, I feel like everything in the world is my fault. “I’m sorry. I tried, Rita. I really tried.”

  “Tried? All you had to do was tell them Jeremy’s insane. And you couldn’t even pull that one off?”

  “But he’s not insane!” I take another step back so I can lean on the couch, brace myself against it.

  “Not this again!” She slams against the end table. Something falls off, but neither of us makes a move to pick it up. “Get your head out of the clouds, girl! How do you explain that bloody bat in his closet? He was there! That McCray woman saw him running from the barn, swinging that—”

  “Maybe he was scared! Did you think of that?”

  “He was scared all right. Scared he’d go to jail and—”

  “No! Rita, listen to me. Anybody could have used Jeremy’s bat. He always left it right inside the barn door. Everybody knew that. Maybe somebody’s trying to frame him.”

  Rita lets out an ugly “Ha!” Then she takes a long puff on her cigarette stub and grinds it out on her beer can. “Framed? Right … just like in the movies. So, Sherlock Hopeless, whodunit? Who’s framing your poor, innocent brother?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody on his baseball team could have done it. Any one of them could have taken Jeremy’s bat. Or somebody from the stable? One of the boarders, maybe.”

  Rita’s shaking her head, but I don’t care. I’ve gone over this a million times. Nobody will listen to me. So even a falling-down-drunk Rita is better than nothing. “What about Coach’s wife? Mrs. Johnson might have—”

  “Are we talking about bedfast, cancer-stricken Caroline Johnson?” Rita asks.

  “Maybe she’s not as sick as she pretends. Did anybody think of that? She hated her husband.” Out of all the people I know who might have murdered Coach Johnson, his wife is the most likely. I saw her go off on Coach one time before a game. She was scarier than Rita. “Don’t they claim it’s almost always the spouse who does the murder?”

  These aren’t new thoughts for me. For the first month after Jeremy was arrested, I went over and over all of this with Raymond because Rita refused to talk to me about it. Well, now she’s too drunk to run away. She can just hear me out. “Jeremy didn’t murder anybody. If you knew him at all, you’d know that. You and Raymond aren’t even trying to prove somebody else could have done it!”

  Rita points at me, her lips curled into a snarl. “You listen to me!” Her finger stabs the air with each word. “Thanks to you, Raymond says he has to call me to testify now. I’m going to have to clean up the mess you made and get that jury back to believing Jeremy’s insanity plea.”

  “But he’s not—!”

  “Don’t say it!” Rita screams. “We are not proving that boy innocent, because he isn’t! You think I don’t know my own son? He probably didn’t know what he was doing, but he did it. And we’re proving he’s insane so they don’t execute him for what he did. You get that through your empty head, hear? So don’t be talking around town about how normal your brother is, because he isn’t and he never has been!”

  “You’re wrong, Rita. My brother is innocent, and I’m going to prove it.”

  “You?” Rita laughs. “You and T.J. and that sheriff’s boy, I suppose? That’s what the sheriff tried to tell me. And I told him he didn’t have to worry. You’d give up on your own sooner or later—sooner, most likely. I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath.”

  I can’t take any more of this. Rita knows exactly how to shut me down. I run past her to my room and slam the door. My whole life this is how it’s been. I hate the arguing. It’s so much easier just to let Rita have her way.

  Only not this time. For Jeremy’s sake, not this time.

  12

  I stay in my room until I hear Rita leave the house. The lingering toxic aroma of cheap perfume tells me she has a date and won’t be back until morning.

  Part of me wants to pray, to talk to God the way Jeremy does. Wouldn’t God know who killed Coach, if he’s keeping an eye on everybody? So I ask—not out loud but inside my head, the way Jer does it: God, who did it? Who really murdered Coach Johnson?

  Nothing.

  Okay. I’m not so sure how this works anymore.

  For a minute, my mind is a blank. Then, slowly, I remember a cozy night years ago. Jeremy and I are sitting on his bed, and I’m reading from a kids’ book of fairy tales. Only I’m too little to read the words, so I’m just telling the stories and Jeremy’s filling in the parts I forget. He could talk then. We look so normal, both of us in snowflake pj’s. This could be the best memory I have of childhood. Of Jeremy.

  This is the Jer I want back home. I can’t let them take him away. Not to prison. Not to a mental hospital. Home. Jeremy belongs at home, with me. I’m all he has. I have to find out who really killed Coach.

  Unsure where to start, I go to my closet to search for something to write on. A shoe box tumbles from the top shelf, and sea glass rains down on my head. I sit on the floor and put back each piece—a pale green chip from an old railroad insulator, a red piece from a railroad lantern, a chunk of orange carnival glass T.J. said came from one of Lake Erie’s famed shipwrecks. Each piece is smooth from over a hundred years of being knocked about in the waves.

  I put the box back and keep hunting through the closet until I find a notebook without much writing in it. It was my American history notebook, and I gave up taking notes after the midterm, when all the questions came directly from the book
. I still got a B-minus. I tear out my history notes, leaving paper pieces like tiny teeth on the left side of each page.

  I settle onto my bed with the notebook. At the top of the first page, I write: SUSPECTS. The blank paper staring at me is almost enough to make me shut the notebook and throw it back into my closet. But then I see Jeremy at the defense table, wringing his hands and looking up at the ceiling as if he could read the outcome of the trial there.

  A vagrant. That’s my first suspect, listed on the pale blue line of notebook paper. I don’t want the murderer to be anyone I know. Why couldn’t some crazy homeless guy have been sleeping in the barn when Coach walked in and surprised him? Maybe the man didn’t even know what he was doing until it was too late.

  The police said nobody had seen an unknown person hanging around the barn, but maybe they were wrong. When I asked Raymond about the possibility of a stranger being the murderer, he told me the police had ruled it out because Jeremy’s fingerprints were the only ones on the bat. Supposedly, the police canvassed the area for transients anyway and came up empty. In Grain, Ohio, a person who doesn’t belong gets spotted fast and turned over for gossip before the sun sets.

  I move on. I want a long list of suspects, especially since the prosecution has a short list. A list of one—my brother.

  The Panthers. Any boy on the team could have murdered Coach. They all knew where Jeremy parked his bat. They knew where Coach would be that early on a game day, especially that game day. Why aren’t they suspects? A little voice in my head answers: Because they weren’t spotted running from the scene of the crime with the murder weapon. I ignore the voice and write down as many names as I can remember:

  Austin—first baseman, a freshman

  Tyler—catcher, new to the team, nice to Jeremy

  Greg—second base, good hitter, quiet

  Kid on 3rd who yells at umpires—has a temper