Unspoken Fear

by Hunter Morgan

  She has a good point.

  Snowden picked up a folder full of documents his secretary had brought in for him to sign. He didn't look up at Delilah. "Have someone come for me when they arrive, Sergeant."

  * * *

  Noah forked straw from the back of the wagon into the aisle between the two rows of Delaware grape trellises. "See, Mattie, just like this. We put the straw between the rows and it keeps the weeds from growing." He stepped back, leaning on the handle of the pitchfork. "You try."

  Mattie stood beside him, holding the wooden handle of his pitchfork in a death grip, and stared at his sneakers.

  Mallory stood to the side, an orange plastic shovel in her hand. "Come on, Mattie," she encouraged brightly. "You can do it. Just like this." She scooped straw into her shovel and threw it down. "You try it."

  But Mattie just stood there.

  Noah exhaled, leaning the pitchfork handle against his leg and removing his ball cap to wipe the sweat off his brow.

  Mallory, wearing her pink tutu, a hand-crocheted green vest over shorts, and a Wiggles tee, imitated Noah by propping up her plastic shovel and removing the ball cap that was too big for her head. She even copied his unconscious sigh of exasperation. "He's afraid," she said, wiping her forehead.

  "Of what, hon?" Noah could barely hide his frustration.

  They'd moved Mattie into the house two nights ago, and so far it hadn't gone well. The first night he'd seemed okay when they'd carried his bed into the house, but when they had tried to move some of his Bibles, he'd ripped them out of Noah's and Rachel's hands and thrown them on the floor. Then they'd had to wait while he picked them all up and stacked them methodically in their places on the floor.

  Later, when they'd tried to settle Mattie in bed in the spare room where Noah had previously slept, he'd insisted on taking his pillow into the hallway and sleeping at the bottom of the stairs. All night, Noah and Rachel had taken turns leading him back to his room, which wasn't exactly the way Noah had envisioned his first night with her again. Ultimately, after too little sleep and too much frustration, they had given up and let him sleep on the floor, reminding him he couldn't go upstairs. Noah had barely slept.

  This morning, Noah and Rachel had actually discussed locking Mattie in his bedroom at night, but the fear of fire made them both hesitant to do so. Noah didn't know what was going on in Mattie's head but something was building inside him. His behavior showed it; his music certainly showed it. When he played the organ in the living room, he played heavy handed, choosing the strangest pieces—some he'd memorized, others he seemed to be composing. They all sounded so angry... so ominous, even to Noah's untrained ear.

  It had been Rachel's idea this morning that Mattie come with Noah to work on spreading the mulch. She had thought maybe some physical exercise might be good for him. It had been Mallory's idea that she tag along. She had told Noah that Mattie didn't like her to be too far away. That it made him scared.

  "Mallory, you have to tell me." He looked to Mattie. "One of you has to tell me. This is getting out of control and it's beginning to scare your mommy. Who is Mattie afraid of and why?"

  Mallory pulled her ball cap back on her head. "He doesn't know who it is. He just knows she's bad."

  "Who's—"

  Mattie suddenly stabbed at the straw in the back of the trailer and threw it down, making a strange, guttural sound. The deep timbre of his voice startled Noah into silence. He hadn't heard Mattie make any sounds like that since he was a kid.

  "That's right!" Mallory squealed with delight. "That's how you do it!" She dug her little shovel into the straw and threw some onto the ground.

  Mattie did it again, his movements jerky but accurate.

  "See, I knew you could do it," Mallory encouraged. "What a smart boy!"

  "Noah!"

  The sound of Rachel's voice caught Noah's attention, and he looked up in the direction of the house, shading his eyes with one hand.

  Rachel was hurrying up the dirt road that led to the Delaware field and the Pinot field beyond it.

  Something is wrong.

  "What a good job," Noah said, trying to keep his concern out of his voice. "You just keep doing that, Mattie. Mallory, you help him. I'll go see what Mommy wants." He leaned the pitchfork against the wheel of the tractor, well out of Mallory's reach, and hurried up the trellis row. He met Rachel at the edge of the field.

  "What's wrong?" He reached out, taking both her hands in his.

  She was out of breath. "Officer Lopez is here for you. He says you need to come with him to the station." Taking his hands in hers, she squeezed them. "Noah, he says I need to come down, too. To let them take my fingerprints."

  He glanced in Mallory and Mattie's direction and then back at Rachel, his mind turning. "Did he say why?"

  She shook her head. "He wanted to come get you himself. I told him I'd point him in the right direction, I just needed to run into the house and turn the iron off. I went out the back door."

  "You left him waiting for you on the front porch?" Noah asked incredulously. "Rachel, why did you do that? That makes it look like we have something to hide."

  "I... I don't know." Her voice rose and then fell in pitch as she struggled to hold herself together. She looked down at the ground and then up at him again. "I... I guess I wanted to warn you. I wanted to see you."

  Down the row of flourishing grapevine trellises, Noah could hear Mallory laughing. Her voice was so light and airy that it sounded like a bell tinkling in the wind.

  "Rachel, it's going to be all right." He fixed his gaze on her. "Snowden just wants it to be me."

  "That isn't true. He isn't like that."

  Noah remained calm. "No matter what Snowden thinks, he doesn't have the evidence to back it up and he knows it. Otherwise, he'd have arrested me before now."

  "I don't understand." She shook her head. "Surely you... you and I aren't the only people who knew these things about the victims. Surely the police realize that." She looked up at him. "I don't remember you ever saying that Ellen came in to talk to you. She was a judge, for God's sake. What sin could the killer possibly have accused her of?"

  "Probably homosexuality," he murmured.

  She bit down on her trembling lower lip. "Oh no, Noah. I had no—"

  "No, you didn't have any idea." He glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the house, then looked into her eyes again. "Now, I'm going to go in and see what they have to say. But you stay here. You don't have to give them your fingerprints, not without a court order."

  "But I want to. This is ridiculous. They can't keep—"

  "You stay here with Mattie and Mallory for a few minutes; let me go up to the house and go with the officer. Mallory and Mattie don't need to see me being taken off in a police car."

  "I'll come just as soon as I can get Mrs. Santori over here. I know she's home, she just—"

  "No, Rachel." He gripped her shoulders. "Do you hear me? I want you to stay home." A strange coldness came over him, and he glanced at the house again. Nothing seemed out of place. The sun was shining and it was hot; there was no way he could be cold. And yet he couldn't shake it, couldn't reason his way out of it.

  He gave her a quick kiss and released her hands, walking away. "I'll get someone to bring me home as soon as they're done with me."

  "Noah—"

  "I love you, Rachel," he interrupted. "Just wait for me, OK?"

  She started to speak and then didn't. Tears filled her eyes as he started down the road. "I love you," she called after him.

  He raised one hand and then turned to jog down the dirt road toward the uniformed officer striding in his direction.

  * * *

  "Snowden, Sergeant Swift and I have already been over this," Noah said, still trying to remain patient. He'd been at the station two hours and had somehow still managed to hold his temper. But the questions, the insinuations, were beginning to wear on him. "My prints were on the machete because I used it to cut down part of the hed
ge on the back of my property. I used it the day of the Maria's Place benefit picnic." He gestured with one hand. "Then, when you guys asked for it, it was gone."

  "And you didn't tell us it was missing the day we inquired because..."

  Noah groaned, shifting in the hard chair behind the desk where he'd been instructed to sit. "Help him out, will you, Sergeant?" he asked.

  The pretty blond cop was leaning against a wall. "According to Mr. Gibson, they didn't know until we asked for it that it was missing. He's guessing that Mrs. Gibson panicked when she didn't see it where it was supposed to be."

  "She wasn't trying to cover anything up," Noah told Snowden. "She just didn't know where it was, and frankly, she was a little pissed off that you'd come asking for it."

  "And the machete was never located?"

  "No. It was not."

  "And you or Rachel didn't come to us and give us this information because—"

  "You know very well why." Noah pressed his palms to the smooth table and leaned forward, making eye contact with the imposing black man. "Because you've already got it in your head that I have something to do with these murders because I counseled each of the victims or a family member."

  "So you do acknowledge that you knew secrets about the victims."

  "I acknowledge no such thing. I shouldn't even be acknowledging that I counseled them. It's none of your damned business."

  There was a knock on the door, and Sergeant Swift answered it. Someone spoke softly to her and she responded. They spoke for over a minute and then she glanced over her shoulder. "Mrs. Gibson is here."

  "Oh, Rachel," Noah whispered under his breath, slumping back in the chair. He should have known she wouldn't stay at home.

  Swift glanced at Noah and then at her boss. "You want me to talk to her or do you want to do it?"

  He hesitated long enough to make Noah nervous. Rachel told him she had dated Snowden, that she had liked him very much, but that she had known she could never love him. That was why she said she had broken up with him. She'd also said that Snowden had been very hurt when she stopped seeing him.

  "You go," Snowden said at last. "Noah and I will sit here and chat."

  He waited until the door shut behind her and then he walked to the table and took the only other chair, opposite Noah. When he spoke again, his adversarial tone was absent. "I wish you could help us out here."

  "I wish I could, too."

  "Governor's office is sending a task force down. I may be pumping gas to make my house payment shortly."

  "I'm sorry to hear that." Noah folded his arms over his chest. Snowden was so different than him that Noah couldn't fathom why Rachel would have been attracted to him. Maybe the fact that Snowden was so different had been his most endearing quality.

  Snowden studied Noah. Noah didn't look away.

  "You have to admit, the evidence is incriminating."

  "Not really. All you've got is that I know something about the victims that the murderer also knew."

  "Things no one else in this town knew," Snowden emphasized.

  "We don't know that for sure. I mean really, think about it." Noah leaned forward. "There are no real secrets, are there? Not in a town like this. We just like to pretend no one knows. I know that's how I was. I thought no one knew I was an alcoholic." He pointed at Snowden. "You knew."

  "I knew," Snowden conceded.

  "So did most of my congregation."

  "OK, I get your point. But you have no alibi for any of the nights these murders took place. You say you were asleep in your bed, but because you sleep alone, because you and Rachel are divorced you don't even have proof of that."

  Noah didn't know if he had meant it unkindly, but it hurt just the same. "You're not married. No girlfriend. You live alone. Where were you the night Ellen's throat was cut and she was nailed to that sign, accused of being a homosexual?"

  Snowden glared. "How the hell did you know how he left her? No mention has been made of the note."

  "As far as how he did it, again there are no secrets in a small town. Firemen, EMTs, neighbors. People talk. It doesn't matter who told me. And the note?" Noah said. "A guess. I know he left notes behind before. Bible verse, wasn't it? I could even guess which one and probably be very close if not correct. Still doesn't make me a murderer," Noah challenged.

  Snowden sat back in his chair, letting his gaze drift. "OK, for the sake of argument, let's say you didn't do this. Who could? Who would?"

  "I imagine a lot of people could do something like this," Noah thought aloud. "We don't like to consider the idea that we're capable of committing such awful transgressions and yet..."

  His mind went back to the night he got into the truck, went down the lane, turned onto the county road.... A moment before, if someone had asked him if he could kill someone, he would have said no. And yet he learned he was, indeed, capable of murder.

  Noah refocused his attention on Snowden. "Obviously the murders are tied into the sins these people committed. Adultery, theft, homosexuality. As for who knew about them, obviously more people than the victims or we realize."

  "If you were the only person the victims ever confessed to, who could have overheard?"

  Noah shrugged. "Anyone in the church who wanted to, I suppose. I mean, we make the assumption no one would listen under the crack of a priest's door, but do we know that for sure?" He let his mind drift back to the days when he had been St. Paul's priest, when he had served as a marriage counselor, a family counselor, a spiritual advisor. "I imagine there isn't a secret in this town that Miss Cora doesn't know."

  Snowden frowned. "The church secretary? Come on. She's sixty years old and overweight. She doesn't have the physical capabilities to have committed these murders."

  "Joshua Troyer did work at the church, but he wouldn't hurt a fly."

  "That right?" Snowden glanced up, arching an eyebrow. "I interviewed him after Skeeter Newton was killed. Joshua told Sergeant Swift and me that some people deserved to die for their sins, that if God told him to punish someone for their sins, he would do it."

  "Just talk."

  Snowden was quiet for a moment. "I know Jack McConnell and Mattie lived in the church basement after they had a fire at their place. Mattie would have been around most of the time." He looked up. "Could he have overheard conversations you had with your parishioners?"

  "Mattie?" Noah scowled. "I guess he could have overheard, but I don't know how much he would have understood."

  "I remember the way Jack was always preaching at him. Reading to him from the Bible, warning him against sin. Jack got a little crazy there in the end. A little obsessed."

  "Snowden, you know Mattie. He... he can't communicate."

  "He plays the pipe organ as well as anyone I've ever heard, and I understand he's never had any lessons."

  "He's an idiot savant. You know that. It's ancient history. But a very low-functioning savant." Noah shrugged. "He has a gift, that's all."

  "Could Mattie have taken your machete?"

  It wasn't until the words came out of Snowden's mouth that it occurred to Noah that Mattie's strange behavior possibly could have something to do with the murders in Stephen Kill. "No, he would never..." Noah let his sentence trail off into silence.

  Mattie's fear. His anger. Mallory's talk of a voice he heard.

  Noah's heart began to race. It wasn't possible....

  The car, the lawn tractor. The strange feeling that Noah and Rachel both kept getting at the house. Their nightmares.

  It wasn't possible, and yet...

  "What?" Snowden asked.

  Noah shook his head. He wasn't ready to say anything yet. If he did, Mattie would be in Sussex County Correctional Facility before morning. That was no place for Mattie. No place for any human being.

  "Couldn't be Mattie," Noah said firmly. "I've lived with him my whole life. So have you. So has Rachel. He can't speak, he can't read, he can't write. He can barely pour his own Cheerios." He looked at Snowden beseechingly,
as if saying the words could make them so. "Mattie couldn't have done this."

  A knock sounded at the door, and a nicely dressed young woman Noah didn't recognize poked her head through the door. "Got the governor's office on the line. I asked if you could return the call, but they weren't going for it."

  Snowden scowled. "All right. I'm coming." He rose from the chair, unfolding his long limbs. "Can I get you something? A soda, cup of coffee?"

  Noah shook his head. "What you can do is either arrest me or let me go. You and I both know this conversation isn't going anywhere and you haven't got enough to hold me legally."

  The police chief pushed his chair under the table. "Be back after I take this call." He closed the door behind him, and Noah heard the door lock.

  He shuddered at the sound of it and rose from his chair to pace, trying hard not to think about the years he had spent in prison, the years he had lost locked behind a door. The thought that he could actually end up being charged for these murders was so ludicrous, it was laughable. And yet, the possibility was beginning to scare him. There was no direct evidence pointing to him, and yet, he had to agree with Snowden, that from the outside looking in, he could see how someone would think he looked suspicious.

  But Noah knew he couldn't face the situation this way. Not with fear, fear that would eventually paralyze him. He couldn't just be defensive. He had to be offensive as well. And that meant trying to look beyond the evidence the police had.

  So if he wasn't the killer, then who was? Not Mattie. Not Joshua. And Snowden was right, no matter how much Cora knew, she was too old, too out of shape to have committed these crimes.

  As Noah paced, he kept glancing at the door. The tiny, white-walled room was beginning to make him claustrophobic. He could hear voices beyond the door, but he couldn't make out what anyone was saying.