Maybe Raymond is right. Maybe that really is something to thank God for. I haven’t done much thanking lately. I have a feeling that even in jail, Jeremy isn’t forgetting to thank God. I can almost hear him: God, thanks for these bars that make cool shadows. And thanks for my roommate, Bubba, and the pretty tattoos on his arms… and legs, and shoulders, and head.
“Hope, did you hear me?”
“What?”
“I said, I’m going to issue a subpoena to have Caroline Johnson testify in person. If there’s an objection, the judge will have to rule. We could establish motive. And that’s more than Keller has done with Jeremy. They haven’t even suggested a motive.”
“Yes! Raymond, would it help if you had two people who’ve seen Mrs. Johnson standing on her own and staring out her window?”
“Not if those circumstances would put the two people in prison for breaking and entering.”
“Got it. It will be so great to watch her squirm on the witness stand, though.” Sometime during our conversation, the phone cord got wrapped around my arm. I work on unwrapping it now. “Don’t forget to ask her if she can get out of the wheelchair on her own. And ask about money. And the loans. And those canceled checks to Rita.”
“Easy, Hope,” he interrupts. “I don’t even know if the court will allow this. And if they do, we could be too late. Trial is winding down, whether we want it to or not. My witness list isn’t that long.”
“What about Rita? What about her testimony? Are you still going to make her tell all those stories about Jeremy, the ones that make him sound crazy?” I hate those stories. Rita tells them to strangers in bars and grocery stores: about the winter Jeremy wandered off without his shoes or coat and ended up with frostbite; about the time he walked up to the screen at the movie theater and punched a hole in it; or the day he grabbed a kid in his stroller and ran and ran until the police stopped him-Jeremy had seen the mother hit the little boy, slap him on the cheek.
“I’ll put Rita on hold and see if we still need her,” Raymond says.
“Great!” I’m glad Rita’s not testifying.
“There are a lot of variables here, Hope. I might not get permission to bring in Mrs. Johnson. And if I do put her on the stand, she may not be a good witness for us.”
“I know. Chase told me she’s not a big fan of my brother.”
“Chase? Chase Wells?”
“Y-yeah.” I shouldn’t have brought him into it either.
“Well, it’s true. Mrs. Johnson did some damage,” Raymond admits.
“Why would she say she was scared of Jeremy? People ignore my brother. They don’t understand him. They’re uneasy around him. But they’re not afraid of him.”
“Maybe she’s not scared of him,” Raymond says. “Maybe she just wants the jury to be scared of him.”
All right, Raymond! It’s the first time I’ve felt that Raymond believes Jer might be innocent. “You have to get the jury to see through that woman,” I tell him. I think about her dark figure watching T.J. and me leave the barn. “Um… you know those two people who saw her standing at her window?”
“I do. I know one of them rather well.” Raymond’s voice has a little smile to it.
“Well, they saw her tonight… And I’m pretty sure she saw them too.”
“Hope!”
“Plus, if Mrs. Johnson owns a white pickup truck, or knows somebody who has one, it would explain a lot of things.”
“Do I want to know about this pickup truck?” Raymond asks.
Whether he wants to know or not, I tell him. And I tell him about the phone calls.
“I don’t like this,” Raymond says. I’ve been so afraid he wouldn’t believe me. Instead, I’m pretty sure he sounds… worried. “Have you told anybody about this?”
“I told Sheriff Wells, and he said he’d drive by the house at night, even though I know he didn’t take me seriously.”
“You need to call him, or dial 911, if anything like that happens again. I mean it, Hope. Or call me.”
I like having Raymond worry about me. A giant yawn comes up from nowhere, making me exhale into the phone.
“See if you can get some sleep,” Raymond says. “I need to get going on that petition to the court.”
“Good luck, Raymond.” I yawn again.
Before I can hang up, Raymond shouts, “Hope! You be careful, okay?”
In spite of everything, I feel myself smile. “Thanks, Raymond.”
24
“The defense would like to call Andrew Petersen.”
“Andrew Petersen!”
Chase, T.J., and I are in the back row of the courtroom. Raymond said it’s ok for me to be here now that I’ve testified, as long as the prosecutor doesn’t object, which he hasn’t yet, and which is why I’m lying low. On the drive over here, I sat in the front with Chase, leaving nowhere for T.J. except the backseat. Since T.J. didn’t say more than two words to either one of us the whole drive, I figure he doesn’t like riding in the backseat by himself. But I don’t have the energy to make sure everybody’s happy. I have to focus on the trial.
The problem is, I don’t understand how trials work because I slept through most of eighth-grade civics and government classes. Leaning toward Chase, I whisper, “Who’s Petersen and why is Raymond making him testify?”
“Petersen testified for the prosecution and claimed he saw Jeremy twice that morning-once galloping through the fields on that spotted horse.”
“Sugar.”
“Right,” T.J. throws in. “I was here for that part of the prosecution’s case too.”
I watch Petersen stroll across the courtroom. He’s tall, balding, and maybe fifty or sixty years old, wearing glasses and a black suit with a red tie. “So why would Raymond want him testifying again?”
T.J. and Chase exchange weird looks. Then Chase whispers, “Petersen claims he saw Jeremy carrying a bat and running away from the barn.”
I look over at Jeremy. He’s sitting up straight, his gaze on the judge.
I make myself listen to every word of the testimony as Raymond leads Mr. Petersen through the events of his morning, including what he ate for breakfast-instant oatmeal, wheat toast with fake butter, OJ, and coffee. He tells us where he found his morning paper-in the bushes-how loud the neighbors’ dogs are, and when he saw Jeremy. He’s a horrible storyteller, wasting time trying to recall details nobody on earth could care about.
“I’ve called that newspaper office to complain,” he drones, “seven times. Or was it eight? I remember the sixth time clearly because it was after the Fourth of July and those kids down the street were still shooting off their firecrackers. Then I found my newspaper on the roof, saw it right up there when-”
Finally, Raymond retakes control and interrupts the winding, windy trail of Mr. Petersen’s thoughts. “Mr. Petersen, how do you know Jeremy Long, the defendant?”
“Everybody knows the Batter,” he answers. That’s the horrible name the Cleveland Plain Dealer gave to Coach Johnson’s murderer. CNN picked it up.
Raymond moves closer to the jury. “I meant before everybody became familiar with the defendant. When did you first come to know Jeremy?”
Petersen’s face wrinkles, and he looks like he’s pouting or about to cry. “I don’t understand.”
“Let me clarify,” Raymond says, smiling. But I’m thinking Raymond may be a better lawyer than he looks. “When did you and the defendant first meet?”
Petersen frowns. “I… I never met him.”
“No?” Raymond looks surprised. “But you’d seen him around? You knew what he looked like? Before the murder?”
“No,” Mr. Petersen admits.
Raymond looks puzzled and turns to the jury for his next question. “Then how did you know that the boy you saw running with a bat was Jeremy Long?”
“I didn’t. Not at first, leastwise.”
“So what you saw was a boy running with a bat and a boy riding a horse?” Raymond keeps going, leading Petersen on a trail that ends up with the man admitting he didn’t know who Jeremy was until the newspapers told him. And he hadn’t been wearing his glasses.