The Silence of Murder

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  Life is as miserable out of court as it is in court. Rita and I aren’t speaking, which isn’t such a big loss. I’ve tried to put myself in her shoes and imagine what it might do to a person to see her husband crushed by a truck. She’s apologized for blurting out something she kept to herself all these years. In her own way, I guess, Rita has tried to take back what she said about me killing my father.

  But T.J. was right. Some things you can’t take back.

  And sometimes you can’t go back to the way things were. I saw T.J. again. He was standing on the sidewalk outside my house when I left for work Saturday morning. We stared at each other for a minute or two. He didn’t scare me this time, but I still found nothing to say to him. Finally, I kept walking, passing him without looking back.

  “Hope?”

  I stopped but I didn’t turn around. I waited, wanting him to say more. I yearned to hear the old T.J. and know he was still there. But he didn’t say anything else. So, after a few seconds, I walked off again. I didn’t stop until I got all the way to the Colonial. And when I looked back, I saw that T.J. hadn’t followed me.

  But the worst is that something’s happening between Chase and me, and I don’t know what it is, unless he can sense that I killed my own father. Of course I haven’t told him. When he’s dropped me off after court, I haven’t asked him to stay, and he hasn’t asked me to go with him. Maybe we’re both just too tired.

  I’ve thought about my father and what happened the day he was killed. I’ve gone over and over it enough to be as depressed as I’ve ever been. Then I started writing about everything to Jeremy. I wrote for him too, still in my chicken-scratch penmanship, pretending I was writing his fancy, swirling letters. We argued. “Jeremy,” I said, “I killed my own father!” And Jer said back, “You were three, Hope.” And I said, “But if I hadn’t run into the road, he wouldn’t have run after me. It was my fault!” “You were three,” Jeremy replied. “How much fault could you have had in you? You didn’t mean to hurt anybody.” We argued more, and finally Jeremy got in the last word: “Fault, schmalt. You’re forgiven because God says so. He’s got your back. He’s your father too, you know.” So even though he wasn’t really there, my brother got me through the worst of it.

  Still, it’s not something I want to tell Chase. Could that explain the distance I feel growing between us?

  Chase and I text at night—he’s positive Rita isn’t the murderer. I think he’s wrong, but I don’t want to fight him. I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to risk arguing. So we guard our words. We’re careful with each other. If I’ve moved away from Chase, he’s moved away from me, too. Maybe it’s just that we both know the trial is almost over and things will never be the same.

  More than anything, I want to talk to Jeremy. I want to tell him about my father, about what I remember. I want to talk to Jer about Coach. My brother lost his father, and he’s had to grieve all by himself.

  The night before Raymond’s closing, I can’t sleep. As I pace the living room, an August moon pushes its way inside the house so I don’t need to turn on lights. I miss Jeremy so much that it hurts my chest, my arms, my throat. I didn’t know missing could do that.

  I wander into Jeremy’s room. The moonlight is even brighter here when I open the curtains all the way. I gaze around the room. This is the room of a little boy—baseball curtains, comic books, and his jars. The only poster is pinned to his door, one he made himself. It says: BEYOND HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS. Jeremy told me that’s what mapmakers used to write on unknown spaces on maps so travelers would know where they shouldn’t go.

  Jeremy has been gone from this room for so long, but it still smells like him, like late-season grass and cherry Kool-Aid. I crumple to the floor, then lie on my back and peer up at his shelves of jars. Tomorrow that jury may decide whether or not my brother will ever come home. I want to pray. I know that’s what Jeremy’s doing. Only he never calls it praying. He just talks to God in his head. He doesn’t have to write. Maybe that makes it easier for him to talk to God than to talk to people.

  It’s not that easy for me, but I close my eyes and try:

  Dear God, this is me, Hope, talking to you in my head like Jeremy does. I guess I’ve clammed up on you like Jer has with the rest of us. Maybe we both got slapped somewhere along the way. You know he didn’t do this. You must have seen who actually did. If it’s Rita, then I don’t know what to say about that. Look, I know Jeremy hears you—you loaned him your song that once. I’m not asking for a whole song—but maybe just a note or two would be good. Thank you. Love, Hope.

  Feeling a little better, I sit up too fast and bang my head on Jeremy’s bottom shelf. I spin around in time to see Jeremy’s glass jars wobble. One jar tips in slow motion and topples off the shelf before I can catch it.

  Crash! The jar shatters into pieces that skid across the wood floor. I’m horrified. Jeremy would freak out if he saw this.

  I drop to all fours and scramble to pick up the lid. It’s rimmed with broken glass, and my finger slices across it, mingling blood with jagged shards. The bottom of the jar lies upside down at my feet. I can make out writing there, something scrawled on the glass in black marker. Carefully, I examine the bottom of the jar. It says: 9:23 a.m., May 4. The date is there too, faded and harder to read. But I make it out—it’s three years ago, about the time Rita moved us to Ohio.

  I’m stumped. Was Jeremy dating the time he got his jars? I guess it makes as much sense as anything else in this room. I think I may have seen him scribbling on the bottom of a jar a couple of times. Since he’s always been so private about his collection, I never paid much attention.

  I start to clean up the mess when I see a piece of paper wedged underneath the lid of the broken jar. I pull it out and unfold it, careful not to drip blood from my cut finger onto the paper. The writing is Jeremy’s tight, controlled calligraphy, the only thing controlled in his life. I hold the slip of paper up to the moonlight. It says: Air on the day Rita smiled and Yellow Cat purred.

  Yellow Cat. The old yellow cat that was living in this house before we rented it, the cat Rita made us turn over to the animal control people.

  Why would Jeremy write that?

  I pick up another jar, a tall, skinny one that once held olives for Rita’s martinis. I remember the night—about a year ago?—when Rita caught Jeremy dumping out an almost full jar of olives. He needed a jar, and we were all out of empties. If Rita hadn’t been so drunk, I think she would have killed him. I hid him under my bed until she got over it.

  My mind is already flashing images at the speed of light. Jeremy, his arms raised above his head, like thin branches against a black sky. While his bony fingers clasp a lid in one hand, an empty jar in the other, he sweeps the sky like he’s catching fireflies … or maybe stars. Then, with angel eyes and a devilish grin, he twists the lid on tight, like the earth might stop spinning if he didn’t do it right.

  On the bottom of this olive jar is a date, close to a year and a half ago, and the time: 10:22 p.m. I open the jar and turn over the lid. I knew it. There’s a piece of paper stuck there, under the lid. I can’t unfold it fast enough. It reads: Air on a perfect starry night, sprinkled with Hope’s laughter.

  Air? That’s it. Air. My brother didn’t collect empty jars. He collected air. Did this jar contain the air from one of our stargazing nights a year and a half ago? Had Jeremy trapped that night in an olive jar, saved that moment? I can almost feel a chill in the air and those stars loosed in his room, mingling with atoms of Kool-Aid and grass.

  I look around at the dozens and dozens and dozens of glass jars filled with Jeremy’s collectible moments. Air. My mind is a slide show on speed: Jeremy, his jar sweeping air above his head as he rides that pinto around the pasture; air captured as the church choir sings “Amazing Grace”; air gathered from the top of a slide when I took him to the park. Jeremy taking a canning jar from a store in Salina, Kansas, and running straight to the middle of a wheat field. Did he capture the scent of
grain and the feel of dust and sunshine? In Chicago, Jeremy grabbing jars from the fridge and dumping their contents on the floor … to fill the jars with memories.

  How long has he been collecting air? When did he start? I try to remember.

  There’s a system to the jars. If I know my brother at all, he’s ordered this world of glass and air. Where I’m standing, the jars are three years old. I want to know when he started. I follow the shelf all the way back to the door. First shelf, first jar, a peanut butter jar. I turn it over and check the bottom. It’s hard to make out, but I can read the month, February, and the year—a decade ago, the year my brother stopped talking. I remember we came home to our shack in Minneapolis, and Jeremy scooped out the last drop of peanut butter, eating it right from the jar and not giving me any. I thought he was mad on account of Rita hitting him for no reason.

  I know I shouldn’t open this jar. I have no right. Jeremy has saved the air of that day for over ten years. He wouldn’t want that day to show up in his room now. But I can’t help myself. I can’t keep my fingers from turning the lid, from lifting it off, from stripping the yellowed paper away from the lid, from unfolding the secret message: Air from the day Jeremy Long stopped talking.

  “Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.” I hug the jar and slide to the floor, where I rock back and forth. Tears blur the air swirling in Jeremy’s bedroom. How could I have missed it? I should have known the jars meant more than empty glass.

  I survey the walls of shelves, all full except for one, the bottom shelf across the room, where half a dozen jars have started a new row. The last row? My heart speeds up. Jeremy was collecting jars, collecting air, right up to the day of the murder. He always had his pack with him and empty jars in the pack. Did he collect air that morning?

  I get to my feet so fast that I almost drop the jar I’m holding. I set the peanut butter jar back down, right where it was. Then I hurry to the other side of the room, to the shelf farthest away from the beginning shelf. I want the end, the last jar.

  There are four jars dated the morning of the murder. I want to rip off the lids to the jars right now and see what Jeremy collected that morning. Did he save air when he learned Coach was his father? He would have. He wouldn’t have let that moment escape. Did he keep collecting air as things kept happening? He couldn’t stop the events, but he could capture them. Four jars. Four jars with the date of the murder, and the last one has a dark smear on the side of the lid. A smear of dried blood.

  I have to know. I put one hand on the first lid. I am set, ready to turn, to release that air and see what he wrote.

  But I can’t. What if this is evidence now? It might prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jeremy knew Coach Johnson was his father. It might prove he was there. What if this is bad evidence, incriminating evidence?

  Slowly, I let go of the lid. I know Jeremy didn’t murder Coach. I know it without a shadow of a doubt. But I think he saw it happen. And I believe what he saw might be captured in these jars of air. Did he see who murdered his father?

  Was it his mother?

  I am holding living witnesses, air particles that were there the day of the murder. These jars could prove that my brother is innocent.

  I don’t remember Raymond’s number, so I have to look it up in the phone book. It’s past midnight.

  Mrs. Munroe answers. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to call so late, but it’s an emergency. Could I speak to Raymond, please?”

  “Just a minute, Hope. I’ll get him.”

  It’s way more than a minute before I hear Raymond on the phone. “Hope, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up, but—”

  “You didn’t,” Raymond says. “I’ve been working on my closing argument. I think we’re going to have to stick with the insanity plea.”

  “No!”

  “I know you don’t want to go that way, but you heard Keller’s closing, didn’t you? I’m afraid your mother gave them the missing piece, motive. Coach was Jeremy’s father, a father who refused to acknowledge him. No, I’m sorry, Hope, but—”

  “But I have something to show you, Raymond! Something the jury has to see. I think it will prove Jeremy didn’t kill Coach, and I think it will prove who did.”

  “Hope, it’s too late to—”

  “Just hear me out, Raymond. Please?” I can tell he thinks I’m making it up. There’s a silence over the phone. Then Raymond sighs. “Okay. But make it fast, Hope. I have to close tomorrow, no matter what.”

  I tell Raymond about the jars, the air, the dates, everything. I read him the notes from the three jars I opened, one accidentally, two on purpose. And I tell him about the four jars, the murder jars.

  He doesn’t say anything until I’m done. Finally, he says, so soft-like that I barely hear him, “Imagine that boy collecting air like that, seeing moments and saving them.”

  I’m proud of Jer for that. “I know.”

  Then Raymond’s tone changes, from awe to something else. Fear? “Hope, what do the jars from the murder date say? Read me the notes.”

  “I didn’t open them, Raymond. I don’t think I should. Do you? Won’t Keller say that I did it myself? That I made it up to save Jeremy? This way, I can prove I didn’t write the notes. I didn’t even know what was in them. And the jars, they could do tests on them, right? They could tell they haven’t been opened?”

  “Wait. Hope. You haven’t opened the jars?”

  “Not the ones from that day.”

  “Hope, what if one of the jars, the jar with the blood, says: The day I killed my dad? Did you think about that?”

  I swallow hard. I know Raymond doesn’t mean to hurt me. If Jeremy killed his dad, that’s exactly how he’d have labeled that jar. “It won’t say that. He didn’t do it, Raymond. It will be okay. I know Jeremy didn’t do it.” What I don’t want to add is that I think I know who did. I can almost see Rita’s name on that note: The day Rita killed my dad. Rita’s done a lot of bad in her life, but she’s the only mother I’ve ever had.

  “Hope, even if those jars clear your brother, I can’t use them. I don’t even know if I could get any of this before the judge. Trial practice precludes introduction of new and unsubstantiated evidence in a closing argument.”

  “Raymond, you’re smart. You’re smart enough to get these jars in. You have to give Jeremy’s jars a chance to save him.

  Please?”

  “I don’t know.…” But I can tell he’s thinking.

  “You can do it, Raymond. I have faith in you.”

  There’s a long silence, but I can hear Raymond breathing, thinking. “Maybe I can’t introduce the jars,” Raymond says slowly, “… but maybe you can.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why not? The prosecutors took two days for their show-and-tell. Keller brought in half his office for their closing. Why couldn’t the judge let me have my one assistant?”

  “Raymond, do you think it would work? I’m not that great talking, even just to one person, you know? And I’m horrible when I have to speak in front of my class at school.” I close my eyes and try to imagine standing up in that courtroom and talking to the jury in front of all those people. It’s horrifying.

  But Jeremy’s in that courtroom. And Jer needs me more than he’s ever needed anybody. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it.”

  “Good. I’ll give it a shot if you will,” Raymond says.

  Raymond and I stay on the phone and talk about the best way to show the jars to the jury and to re-create the crime with them. I scribble notes and ask Raymond questions until I can’t think of any more.

  Finally, Raymond says, “Hope, we better hang up now. I have a closing to finish, and you have a demonstration to prepare. So, see you in court?”

  “See you in court.”

  I stay up the rest of the night, working on what I’m going to say to the jury. Pulling out my old school note cards, I write something for each jar. I try saying everything out loud over and ove
r.

  When I notice the moonlight has switched to sunlight, I jump into the shower and smile to myself, remembering what I told Chase about morning versus night showerers. I guess this shower counts for both.

  Rita’s still out cold, so I’m on my own for wardrobe selection. I end up picking out the gray skirt and white blouse I wore the first day I testified in court, but adding a wide black belt and my favorite sea glass necklace. The glass is green, shaped like a tear.

  When I check myself in the mirror, I still don’t look much like a lawyer’s assistant, but I’ll have to do. I’m all Jeremy’s got.

  36

  I wait until the last minute to wake Rita. She stumbles out of her bedroom, looking like death warmed over. She’s sober, but that’s about all I can say in her favor. We don’t speak to each other, except for me trying to hurry her up. I put ten jars into my backpack, wrapping them in towels. She doesn’t even ask what I’m doing, or why I’m taking a backpack to court. Would she try to stop me if she knew?

  It takes me twenty minutes to pass through the courthouse turnstile because the guard insists on searching my pack. It isn’t easy to convince her that the jars don’t have anything deadly in them. Rita doesn’t wait for me.

  “Where’ve you been?” Raymond asks as soon as he sees me. He must have been pacing because he’s worked up a sweat.

  We only have ten minutes to iron out our plan, and Raymond spends most of it on how to convince the judge that the jars are our way of re-creating the crime scene. That’s his “legal premise” for bringing in the jars and me.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Raymond says as we enter the courtroom. His feeling is contagious. The room smells like stale pond water and cigars, although it’s against the law to smoke in here. Heads turn when Raymond and I walk by the rows. We set off low conversations, tiny buzzes, like bumblebees in our wake.