The Silence of Murder (26 page)

He’s hanging over the steering wheel as if his bones have dissolved from his body. He knows something. When we drove away from the Johnson place, I sensed something wasn’t right with him. “Chase,” I whisper, “you have to tell me what’s going on.”

Finally, he looks at me. “I think my dad is the stalker.”

“What? That’s crazy! Your dad is the sheriff! Why would he stalk me?”

Chase is shaking his head. “He’s not. He didn’t. Not really. Not
stalk
. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you, Hope. He just wanted to scare you.”

“Well, he did that all right! But it doesn’t make sense.

Why would he—?”

“He wanted us to stop investigating. Dad’s a control freak,
Hope. I knew he didn’t like me blowing him off and seeing you anyway. But I didn’t start figuring things out until this afternoon, after we saw him at Caroline Johnson’s. I’ve never seen him that desperate. There was something in his eyes.” He puts his hand on my head and strokes my hair. “He’s not a stalker, Hope. He probably just didn’t know what else to do—and I’m not defending him. Believe me, if I’d known he was the one calling you, I would have made him stop. He kept telling me to leave it alone, and—”

“That’s it!
Leave it alone!
” Those words have been circling like a tornado in my brain. “Chase, that’s what the stalker said on the phone, and it’s what your dad said this afternoon.” The pieces click together. I should have figured it out before now. “Could your dad get a pickup from that police impound?”

Chase nods. “He can drive anything on that lot, and nobody knows or cares.”

I don’t know whether to be relieved that the stalker is the sheriff … or terrified that the sheriff is the stalker. “So why did he want me to show up at the school lot tonight?”

Chase’s lips tighten. He sticks the key into the ignition. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

Chase drives through the fast-food parking lot to come in behind the school. He stops just inside the fence, too far away for us to see much. “I know he’s out there, watching.”

I scan the field, imagining myself walking across the parking lot, calling Chase’s name, no answer but the wind, a warm August breeze. I’d get closer and closer to the tree. Maybe I’d sit there, waiting. And then what? What would he have done?

A flash of white shines from behind the big oak, the one I scraped. “Chase, there! Behind the tree.”

“I see him.” He swears under his breath. His eyes narrow to black slits. “I’ve spent half my life trying to be like him, trying to be who he wanted me to be. Perfect son. Perfect student. Perfect pitcher. Not anymore.”

“Chase? What are you going to do? Chase!”

He doesn’t answer me. He backs the car up, then eases it all the way around the lot until the truck is in full view. Without a glance at me, he floors the accelerator. The car squeals and shoots forward, back tires skidding, then righting to aim us directly at the pickup.

I scream. We’re going to ram into that truck. “Chase!”

Inches away, he slams the brakes. I catch myself, hands braced on the dashboard. The car swerves. I feel a
thunk
. I open my eyes and see that we’ve bashed in the door of the white pickup truck, pinning it to the tree.

Sheriff Wells swears so loud I hear the words, the hate, through our closed windows. Chase jumps out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open. He waits, legs spread, hands on hips, while his dad struggles to get out of the truck. But the driver’s door is blocked by our car, and the passenger’s door is smashed against the tree. He kneels at his window and lets out a string of cussing.

Midway through cursing the day Chase was born, the sheriff stops. I think he notices me in the car for the first time. His glare raises the tiny hairs at the base of my neck. Nobody has ever looked at me with so much hate before. I want to curl up in a ball on the floor of the car.

“Are you done?” Chase asks his father. He takes the ground between them in three strides until he’s face to face with his dad, still trapped inside the cab. My Chase is strong and fearless, and he’s not backing down a single step.

I want to be with him. He’s standing up to his dad for me. I open the car door and start to get out, but my seat belt yanks me back. Fumbling with it, I manage to get free and step outside. Without glancing at the sheriff, I walk around the car to stand beside Chase. He and his dad are inches apart, locked in a stare-down.

“I asked you if you’re finished.” Chase’s voice is hard, controlled.

“Finished?” Sheriff says, shifting his weight from one knee to the other, still caged inside the truck. His head has to bow to keep from hitting the ceiling. He rolls down the truck’s window, but it won’t go past halfway.

“Finished stalking Hope?” Chase says.

“I wasn’t stalking anybody.” Sheriff Wells turns to me. “I was just trying to get you to stop nosing around in things you had no business in. You should have left it alone. Then I wouldn’t have had to—”

“Stalk me?” I finish his sentence. “How could you do that? You’re supposed to be … I don’t know … a protector. Not a stalker.” I feel Chase’s hand wrap around mine.

“You’re really something, Dad,” Chase says.

“You don’t understand. You’re just kids! You are nothing but a child, Chase!” Sheriff Wells shouts. He turns to me. “Look. I know you want to get your brother off, but you’re out of your league. You’re just going to make the jury send Jeremy to prison, instead of a mental hospital, where he belongs.”

“You have no right to say where my brother belongs!” I shout. “You don’t know Jeremy. And you don’t know me.”

“What were you going to do if I hadn’t shown up, Dad?” Chase demands. “What would have happened tonight if Hope had come here alone, like you planned? Huh? Answer me!”

“Quit yelling!” Sheriff Wells shouts back. “Don’t talk crazy. I’d never do anything to the girl. I figured she’d show and you wouldn’t, and that would be the end of it. She’d think you stood her up, that you were done with her for good, which is what you should be.”

“I’m done, all right,” Chase says. “Only not with her. With you.”

Rita is sound asleep
when I get back home. I want to wake her up and tell her what happened. I want her to know that it wasn’t just kids trying to scare me. It was Sheriff Matthew Wells, someone who should be looking out for kids like me, for kids like Jeremy.

I open her bedroom door and start to go in when I realize I’m about to wake up my mother for a mother-daughter talk. It’s ridiculous. I can’t explain why I want to talk to Rita after so many years of not talking to her.

I shake off the notion, step back out of her room, and close the door. I need sleep. So does she. I want her to be the best witness for Jeremy she can be tomorrow.

In the morning, Rita tries on every outfit in her closet as if she’s going for an audition. She settles on a peach blouse and a straight black skirt that’s a little small for her, but not too bad. This is definitely the most courtworthy outfit in her closet. After trying her hair up, then down, she compromises,
pulling the top part back and letting the rest hang in bright yellow waves. She looks pretty good … until she adds giant hoop earrings I can’t talk her out of wearing.

“How about you let me wear one of those necklaces you used to make?” Rita asks. “The ones with those little stones from the lake?”

I’m amazed she even knows about my mermaid tears. “Sure, Rita. Hang on.” I find a necklace with a piece of sea glass a little darker than Rita’s blouse, and I put it on her.

Rita fingers the necklace. “That’s real nice. Real nice, Hope.”

I ride with her to the courthouse. She checks herself out in the rearview mirror at least a dozen times, nearly ramming into the back of a police car at the courthouse intersection. “Good luck, Rita,” I tell her as she steps out of the car.

“Don’t you worry none, Hopeless. Rita has everything under control.”

Chase is already there. I slide in next to him, in the seat I’ve sat in ever since I testified. I can’t believe it could all be over today, except for the closing arguments from the lawyers. Rita takes a seat in the first row, behind the defense table. Jeremy is already restless, his hands flying over the table’s imaginary keyboard. It’s too early for him to be this nervous.

I watch as Jeremy takes something from his pocket. The aspirin bottle? I can’t believe they let him keep it. But it’s not the same bottle I gave him. It’s bigger, a different shape. Somebody has given my brother an empty bottle. I’m so grateful that I thank God for every drop of kindness left in the world, this being one of those drops.

Rita swears on the Bible, her voice loud and dramatic, like
she’s kicking off her audition. She takes her seat and crosses her legs.

Jerking his tie to one side, Raymond gets up from his seat behind the defense table. He walks right up to the witness box. “Good morning, Mrs. Long,” Raymond says.

Rita gives him her biggest, fakest smile, but maybe the jury won’t know it’s fake. “Good morning, Mr. Munroe,” she says.

Raymond starts out kind of slow … and dull and boring. He walks Rita through her life, or parts of it, growing up in Grain and then moving back here with me and Jeremy three years ago. She tells the court about her parents being dead and about how she works at the Colonial Café. To hear Rita tell this, you’d think she was one of those heroic and stoic single mothers who fight off the world in order to raise their children.

Then Raymond zeroes in on Jeremy.

I want to stand up and scream at both of them. Raymond and I agreed to stop making my brother out as insane and start showing he wasn’t the only one who could have killed Coach. Raymond is supposed to be creating doubt, the reasonable kind of doubt, like that Caroline Johnson might have done it.

Clearly, Raymond and Rita have been plotting strategy without me. They’ve shut me out, just like before. And it’s not fair. Rita conspires with Bob, with Coach Johnson, with Raymond—with everybody except me.

Furious, I whisper to Chase, “Why are they doing this? They’re trying to make Jeremy look crazy again.”

He whispers back, “I think they have to, Hope. Raymond probably didn’t like Caroline Johnson’s testimony. Maybe he’s afraid she made Jeremy look too guilty. I think he’s just covering all his bases.”

I don’t want Chase to be right.

I listen to a couple more Crazy Jeremy stories that I can tell Rita and Raymond have cooked up together. And then Rita, sounding too confident, launches off on her own. I cringe when I hear her start the next story, and I’m pretty sure Raymond has no idea what’s coming.

Rita starts to get up, but Prosecutor Keller is on his feet and heading straight for her. I shiver remembering the look on
Keller’s face the second I realized he’d led me right into his trap. I pray Rita doesn’t have a trap waiting for her.