The Silence of Murder (2 page)

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.

“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, agreeing 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.”

“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.

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 state’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.”