The Silence of Murder (14 page)

He shrugs. “I hung out there sometimes. And I like horses, sort of.”

“Yeah. Right,” I say. I know he doesn’t like horses. If I had to guess, I’d bet he hung out at the barn to be around Coach, not horses.

“Why are you making such a big deal out of it?” T.J. asks.

“You’re right. No big deal,” Chase says. “I just saw you there a few times when I was on my run, so I thought I’d ask.”

“Wait. You run out there?” I’ve pictured Chase running through the streets of Grain every morning, not out in the country.

“Every day except game day,” Chase says. “You know what Coach says—said—about saving your energy for the field.”

“Too bad,” T.J. says. “You might have seen the killer that day.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” Chase says.

Me too. If I’d gone to the barn with Jer that morning, or if T.J. had wandered over there, or if Chase had run past … “We need to focus on what we can do
now
.” I get to my feet and try to think.
Means, motive, opportunity
. “You know, anybody could have been there. The jury
should
doubt. It’s crazy
not
to have reasonable doubt.” Brushing grass and leaves from
my pants, I stare down at T.J. and Chase. “It only took a second to kill Coach. One swing of the bat, one moment where somebody lost control.
Anybody
could have done it, don’t you think?”

Neither of them says anything for a minute. T.J. won’t look at me. Chase looks like he’s going to throw up. I wonder if we’re all picturing the same thing—that one swing of the bat. “Okay, then,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel. “Let’s show the jury. Let’s make them doubt. And I think we have the best shot at getting that doubt if we go with Coach’s wife. If we can prove she can walk, that she’s not as sick as everybody thinks she is, that would be enough for doubt, don’t you think? Raymond could get the jury to have reasonable doubt with that.” I spot a gum wrapper on the other side of the tree, and I dash over to get it. Then I see a crumpled beer can, and I pick that up and throw it all into the rusty trash can. The words
reasonable doubt
swirl in my head. I really think we’re onto something.

When I come back to the tree, Chase is grinning. T.J. has his nose in his notebook.

“What?” I ask.

“Does she always do that?” Chase asks T.J.

“Hmm?” T.J. doesn’t look up.

“What?” I ask, confused. “Do what?”

“Hope,” Chase explains, “in the middle of all this, you still pick up other people’s trash. And you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”

I glance down at my hands, but I’ve already thrown whatever it was away.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen you pick up litter,” he
continues, still grinning. “And candy wrappers, and even cigarette butts.”

“Really?” I never even thought about it. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be.”

We’re staring at each other, neither of us looking away.

“Man!” T.J. springs into action. “I’ve got to run.”

“Want me to drive you?” Chase volunteers. I feel a twinge of sadness that my driving lesson must be over.

T.J. walks backward toward the school building. “No. I’m good. Hope, you working tonight?”

“Yeah!” I shout because he’s halfway to the school.

“I’ll stop by the Colonial if I get done in time!” T.J. pivots and takes off running.

For some reason, Chase’s keys are in my hand. “How about one more time around?”

“You’re on.”

I’m about to shift the car into drive when I spot something white creeping along Chestnut, the street that runs beside the high school. It’s a pickup truck, and it’s about a block away. “Chase! There it is!” I scream.

“There
what
is?”

Then, without thinking, I slam the car into gear and hit the gas.

All I can think about
is catching up with that white pickup truck. The car lunges forward. The truck turns the corner.

“Hope!” Chase screams. “Brake! Hit the—!”

A branch slaps the windshield. I see the pointy green edges of leaves, the crooked knots on the branch.

Thump! Scritch!
There’s a whine of bark on metal. Then the car shoots across the grass and rolls to a stop.

“You want to tell me what that was about?” Chase shouts.

“I can’t believe I let him get away,” I mutter, as out of breath as if I chased him on foot.

“Who?” Chase demands.

“The white pickup truck.” I’m a little dizzy. A wave of nausea floats through me.

“What pickup truck? Where was it?”

“Didn’t you see it?” I point across the lot to the empty street. “It was right there.”

“But why chase it?”

I start at the beginning and tell him about the truck following him and not turning on its lights. About Rita seeing somebody watching the house from a pickup parked on our street. “I think it’s the same person who’s been calling the house.”

He looks away, where the truck was only minutes earlier. “There are a lot of trucks around here. Are you sure—?”

“How can I be sure? That’s why I wanted to follow it.” I should have known he wouldn’t believe me.

“Okay. Calm down. Maybe you scared him off.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “You sure scared
me
.”

“I’m sorry.” Then I remember the thud. The scrape. “Chase, what did I do to your car?” I pop open the door and struggle to get out of the driver’s seat. At first, I don’t see anything. Then I take a step back. “Oh man!” On the roof of the car is a scratch at least a foot long. “Look what I did! I’ll … I’ll get it fixed. I’ll buy you a new one.”
With what?
I can’t believe I did this to his car, to his dad’s car, the sheriff’s car.

Chase walks up and puts his hand on my head. “Settle down. It’s okay. Really, it is.”

I throw off his hand and stand on tiptoes to inspect the scratch. It’s worse than I thought. The cut is wider, a crooked silver snake across the top of this beautiful blue car. “Your dad already hates me.”

“No he doesn’t.”

“He told you not to hang out with me. He’ll probably put us both in jail.”

“Hey, at least we’ll go down together, right?”

Warm tears press against my throat, choking off air. I’m as close to crying as I get. “This isn’t funny.”

Chase’s lips twist in a feeble attempt to kill his grin. “Okay. It isn’t funny. But it isn’t tragic either. Come on. It’s just the roof. And it’s just paint … mostly.” He walks over to the car. He’s so tall he can reach the roof easily. His finger runs along the scrape, as if he’s petting the snake. “I can fix this.”

“No you can’t. Can you?” A spark of hope rises, and I snuff it out. “You’re just saying that.”

He leans against the car. “I mean it. I’ve even got the right color paint.”

“How—?”

“Last summer I scratched the rear door.” He moves to the passenger-side back door. “Bet you never noticed this.”

I follow him, but I can’t see anything from where I’m standing. “Are you telling me the truth?”

“I scraped a stop sign making a turn after a party and a six-pack. I knew my dad would kill me—I already had one DUI—so I got the right paint and fixed it before he noticed. Your scratch isn’t even as deep as that one was.”

My heart pounds a little softer. I’m not crazy about taking driving lessons from a guy with DUIs, but still. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“We can fix it right now, before Dad has a chance to see it, if you want to. He won’t be home.” Chase opens the driver’s door. “Only, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll drive.”

A few minutes later, Chase pulls the car into the garage behind his dad’s house. It’s a small garage, with barely enough
room for one car. We get out, and I look around. Shelves are loaded with paints and stains, all neatly arranged by color and size.

“Found it!” Chase hollers from the back of the garage.

“I’m not surprised. Everything is so neat and orderly in here.” There’s not a single tool on the ground or slung onto a bench. Hammers hang with hammers, all according to size. Shovels and rakes line one wall.

Chase pulls out brushes and rags from a wooden worktable. It’s obvious he’s done this before. “Sheriff Matthew Wells is big on organization.”

I watch him fill the scratch and begin the paint process, but the fumes make me cough.

“Go on in,” Chase says. “The back door’s unlocked.”

“I’m okay,” I say, but I cough between the words.

“Go. The garage is really too small for paint jobs. I’ll be in pretty soon. Make yourself at home. Water and soda in the fridge, all arranged alphabetically. Just kidding. Sort of.”

“You sure it’s okay?” I’m wheezing a little now. A doctor once told me I might have asthma, but that was before we moved to Ohio. Still, I wouldn’t mind getting out of here.

“I mean it, Hope. Go!”

I feel funny letting myself in through the back door of the sheriff’s house. It’s a neat brick ranch, with white shutters.

Inside, it smells like evergreen. The off-white carpet is totally clean. No newspapers or magazines strewn on this couch. Not even a jacket folded over the back of a chair. The giant brick fireplace takes up one whole wall, and there’s not a speck of ash to be seen. On the entry wall is a picture of
the Andover baseball team. I pick out Chase right away, the cutest guy on the team.

Crossing the kitchen to find a drink, I can’t get past the refrigerator magnets. Our fridge has one magnet that holds one of Jeremy’s color-wheel pictures because I put it up there myself. This fridge has magnets with ball-game schedules and chore responsibilities, plus Chase’s past achievements. On one side are report cards, all of them with A’s or A-pluses. On the other side, blue ribbons from baseball and track events.

Would Rita have kept things like this if I’d won first prizes and gotten all A’s? I remember one time in second grade—no, third grade—when a math team I was on won a prize. Our mothers got to come to our classroom and sit in the front row. Rita came. She got there late, but she was there. I’d totally forgotten about that.

I peek outside. Chase is still hovering over the car.

I shouldn’t, but I’m dying to see Chase’s bedroom. What posters would he have on his walls? What books? What bedspread? Maybe he has pictures of Boston girls on his dresser.

I wander down the hall and see three doors feeding into the hallway. I pass one room, the bathroom. The next room has white walls and a big bed in the center. There’s nothing on either dresser, and the shades are pulled down. This has to be Sheriff Wells’s room.

I tiptoe into the only other room in sight and know instantly that it belongs to Chase. It’s almost as tidy as his dad’s room—bed made, clothes picked up, shades drawn even, but at half-mast, not all the way. On the nightstand is a framed picture of a beautiful woman with blond hair and
Chase’s eyes, green as emeralds. His mother. Except for some loose change, the photograph is the only thing on the little table.

I glance around the room, taking in an autographed baseball in a plastic holder on his dresser, a phone charger, and a paperback book I can’t make out. There aren’t any posters on his walls, but there are photographs of the Cleveland Indians and a team picture of the Red Sox.

I should leave. On the way out of Chase’s room, I take one more peek into his dad’s. The only halfway messy thing is the built-in desk. File folders line the back of the desktop, and even those stand at attention, like books on a library shelf.

I wonder if Jeremy’s case file is in there. I check the window that faces the garage and see Chase with some kind of blow-dryer thing still hard at work on the car.

I have to see Jeremy’s file, if there is one. I go back to the line of folders that stretches from one edge of the pine desk to the other. I don’t have time to go through all of them.

I’m willing to bet that these files are arranged alphabetically. I thumb through, and I’m right. But there’s no “L.” No “Jeremy Long.”

Then I get another idea. The victim.

It only takes a second to find the file labeled “Johnson.” Quickly, I pull out the folder and open it. There are piles of court documents, copies of arrest and search warrants, forms and petitions.

And then I see the photos, lots more crime scene photos than I saw at Raymond’s house, maybe four or five times more. I wonder if Raymond has more pictures than the ones I saw.

The photo on top is the same one I saw at Raymond’s—Coach Johnson, bloody and curled into a ball on the floor of the stable. Or maybe it’s not exactly the same photo. I go to the next photo in the file, and it’s also like the one I saw at Raymond’s, only different too. More complete somehow. But I can’t put my finger on it. In a dozen photos, Coach is lying in the exact same spot. Junk from his pockets mixes with the straw and sawdust—cell phone, a receipt or something wedged under one shoulder, a ticket or stub.

A door slams.

I shut the folder and cram it back with the others, hoping I have it in the right place. “I’m coming, Chase! Right out!”

I tear out of the bedroom, straightening my shirt and trying to look normal. “Sorry, I—”

I stop. It’s not Chase standing there, frowning at me, looking like he’d shoot me if he had a gun handy. It’s Sheriff Matthew Wells. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Sheriff Wells is even bigger
in his own house. “I said, what are you doing here?”

I open my mouth, but only a squeak comes out. All I can think of is what Chase said about the famous Wells temper. I try again. “I … The back door was open.”

“So you just came on in?” He takes a step toward me. “What were you looking for? Answer me!”

“Hope?” Chase appears from the kitchen. His gaze darts from me to his dad. “Dad? What are you doing home already?”

“All right, what’s going on here?” Sheriff Wells turns on his son. “You tell me right now what you two are doing snooping around—!”

“Snooping around?” Chase glances over at me. I shrug. Then he smiles at his dad. “Come on, Dad. Snooping around? We were just getting something to drink.” As if to prove it, he walks to the fridge and gets two bottles of spring water. Then he comes over to me and hands me one.