I take T.J.’s elbow to pull him up, but he stays planted on the step. “You want to go to the barn? Now?” he asks.
“Now’s the perfect time!” I insist. “Nobody will be there. We can look around.”
“For what?”
I’m starting to get irritated. “Clues, evidence, whatever.”
“Hope, it’s been months. They don’t even keep horses there now. We’re not going to discover anything the police didn’t already find and take away.”
Of course he’s right. But something inside me is telling me that I have to go there. “Please, T.J.? I need more before I can bring Raymond in on all this. There’s got to be something everybody’s missing. Not a clue, maybe. But something.” I make myself picture the crime scene photos I saw at Raymond’s and at the sheriff’s house-Coach curled on the ground, shadowed in blood. But it doesn’t feel real, more like something I saw in a bad movie. “I have to see the real scene of the crime, and I need you to take me there.”
T.J. stares up at me, hard. “Me, not Chase?”
“You.” The truth is, Chase would probably say no. And even if he agreed to go, there’s his dad to think about. “Just you.”
A minute later we’re jostling in T.J.’s dad’s old Chevy on our way to the barn, my mind bouncing worse than the Chevy’s worn tires. “Wouldn’t it be great if we caught Mrs. Johnson running around out there when nobody’s looking? We should have a camera. ’Cause if she really is faking, don’t you think that would be enough for people to believe she might have gone to the barn that day? That she might have gotten angry enough at her husband to kill him, even if she hadn’t planned on it?”
“Maybe.” T.J. doesn’t sound convinced.
“What do you mean maybe? I told you how she blew up at the park that day. She’s got a temper. I’ll swear to that. If she’d had a gun that morning, I think she might have used it.”
“I’m not saying she doesn’t have a temper. I had her in class, remember? She could be scary.”
“So?” I know T.J. well enough to sense he’s still holding back on making Caroline Johnson our prime suspect. I know he thinks Jer did it.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Her fingerprints weren’t on the bat, for one thing. Just Jeremy’s.”
“So…” I’m thinking out loud now. “Maybe she wore gloves.” Soon as I say it, something clicks in my brain. “That’s it! She wore gloves.”
“Okay.”
“Why hasn’t anybody talked about that? Maybe there weren’t any fingerprints except Jeremy’s because the killer wore gloves.”
“It’s possible,” T.J. admits. “But aren’t we going for spur-of-the-moment? Like she lost her temper and struck him? So she wouldn’t have had her gloves with her.”
“What about Jeremy’s batting gloves? Why couldn’t she have grabbed those when she grabbed the bat?”
T.J. looks confused. “Did Jeremy have his gloves at the barn?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Jeremy carried that bat everywhere,” T.J. says, glancing in the rearview, “but I don’t remember him wearing his gloves that much.”
Once again, I feel this slim hope slipping away from me. “Okay. So I can’t swear he had the batting gloves at the barn, but I haven’t seen them around the house either. And I don’t remember the police taking them.”
“You could be right, Hope. But we can’t sound like we’re guessing. Keep it simple. Logical. Otherwise, you won’t even get past Jeremy’s lawyer. Like you said, he’s the first one we have to convince.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay. How about this? Caroline Johnson may have murdered her husband. She’s not as sick as she lets on. She has a bad temper. She would have used Jeremy’s bat. She would have worn gloves-we don’t say which gloves because we don’t have to. That should be enough to plant doubt in the jury’s mind.” He turns to me. “So maybe we don’t need to see the crime scene?”
I don’t answer.
“Hope, do you have to put yourself through this?”
Do I? Do I really want to see where Coach was murdered? I know how my mind works. My brain will soak in dozens of images I’ll never be able to erase. Part of me wants to tell T.J. to turn around. What could we get out of the crime scene so long after the crime anyway?
But another part of me knows I have to go there. Nothing will make sense until I do. “I have to see it for myself, T.J.”
He shakes his head and keeps driving. We stop before we reach the barn. He pulls the car off the gravel road, but keeps the engine running. We’re about half a mile from the barn and house. “This isn’t a good idea, Hope. It’s too dangerous.”
“Nobody’s there, remember?”
“What about Caroline Johnson? If you’re right and she did murder her husband, she’s not going to want us snooping around.”
“She’s not going to know. But you don’t have to come. I mean it.” I unbuckle my seat belt. I don’t need a partner. I don’t need anybody. It’s Jeremy and me, the way it’s always been, and that’s fine with me. “Thanks for driving me out here. I’ll just walk home when I’m done.”
I get out of the car and start walking toward the barn.
Behind me, I hear the engine shut off and a car door open and close. Then T.J. calls up, “Will you wait until I get the flashlights?”
Purple clouds race across the sky now, making shadows dance on the path. We walk past an Amish pasture, where hay is stacked in crisscrossed bundles, lined in straight rows like nature’s soldiers ready to attack. The only sound is the crunch, crunch of gravel under our feet.
When the path dips, we run straight into a cloud of tiny bugs. As if they’ve been waiting all night for us, they swarm, landing on our heads, arms, and legs. I swat wildly at them, smashing a few on my arms, brushing them off my face.
T.J. grabs my hand and takes off. “Run!”
I run. I’m an arm’s length behind him, trying to catch up. His grip is tight. The bug cloud thins and finally drifts away behind us.
We slow down. I take my hand back and stop to catch my breath. My side aches.
“Are you okay?” T.J. asks, circling back for me.
“What was that back there?” My voice comes in spurts.
“Bugs. I’ve seen them like that a couple of times out here in the mornings. Once I saw Chase running like he was on fire, with a cloud of those things after him. There’s a bog down that hill, where the bugs hang out. They’re the same kind of bugs that helped the Cleveland Indians beat the Yankees in a play-off game a few years ago. It was all over the news.”
“They’re wicked.”
He brushes my hair with his hand. I don’t want to think that he’s brushing out bugs. If I were going to give up this crime scene trip and go home to bed, this would be the moment to do it.
We start walking again. “So why do you come by the barn?” I don’t think he ever answered that. “Or why did you?”
“I wanted to get used to horses. I don’t like being afraid of things.” He pauses a minute. “And I guess I used to like to talk to Coach.”
It’s what I thought. “Chase mentioned something about you and Coach having problems, something about your mom and the cookies?”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” he says, but it comes out too quickly. “It was mostly the guys. But Coach shouldn’t have laughed. They took their cue from him. Anyway, it’s over. Forget it.”
We’re at the last stand of sheltering trees. The barn is out in the open about a hundred feet away, with the house another hundred feet beyond that.
“Let’s do it,” I whisper.
We run, crouched like we’re dodging bullets. When we reach the entrance to the barn, we both just stand there, looking in.
T.J. breaks the spell. “Last chance to turn back.”
I stare into the barn, toward the stalls, the place where they found Coach’s body. There’s no crime scene tape anywhere, no chalk-line drawing of the body. “I’m sorry, T.J. You don’t have to come in. Really. But I do. I have to try to understand. I have to do that much for Jeremy.”
“All right. But we better get going before the sun comes up. There’s a light on in the Johnson house. For all we know, that woman could be calling the police right now.”
I glance behind us toward the house. He’s right. I see the light through the window. But I can’t worry about that now. I take a few steps into the barn. My eyes adjust to the dark, and I point to a spot just inside the door where a stall forms a right angle with the wall. “That’s where Jeremy put his bat when he came to the barn. If he’d brought his gloves, he would have dropped those there too.”
“Keep going.”
I stare at the exact spot where Jeremy would have left his bat. “He parked his bat there because it scared the horses. Then he’d get down to business and haul manure or groom the horses. He loved it here.” I’m picturing everything in my mind as I talk. “He even loved cleaning out the stalls. Coach taught him how to brush the horses, and Jer was really good with them.” I smile over at T.J. and can tell he’s listening. “Coach paid him a salary. Jeremy was so proud of that, even though Rita got all the checks.”
I take a few steps deeper inside the barn and inhale the scents of sawdust, manure, and horse. The smells are strong, even after so much time, but mold and must are mixed in with them. “Did you know Coach taught Jeremy how to ride?”
T.J. nods.
“He learned fast too.” I can almost see Jeremy riding Sugar, Mrs. McCray’s old pinto, bareback. Jeremy’s mouth is open, probably catching all kinds of bugs. His green backpack of empty jars bounces on his back. It was a miracle none of his jars ever broke that way.
I feel myself getting choked up. I have to stop it. This isn’t why I came here.
We move toward the last stall, the one Coach was found lying outside of. The whole barn feels eerie, as if ghost horses have taken the place of the former boarders.
“Whose horse was in that stall the morning…?” T.J.’s voice fades.
“Lancer, Mrs. McCray’s show horse. She boarded two horses here-Sugar, the old pinto Jeremy rode, and Lancer, a bay gelding she rode for dressage.”
We’re standing in front of the stall. For all I know, my feet are in the exact place where Coach was lying. I should have come sooner, when things were fresh, when I might have seen something. I turn on my flashlight and shine it on the floor.
“What are you looking for, Hope?”
I point the beam of light on the sawdust. There are feces now-mice, rats. I can almost hear the squeals of frightened horses, the thump of the bat, Coach’s cry.
“Hope, are you okay?” T.J. grabs me by the shoulders. “You look like you’re going to faint.”
“I’m okay,” I whisper. I try to focus on Jeremy again. “Jeremy would have been so excited-that’s why he got up early that morning. He put on his Panther uniform, like he did every game day, and wore it to the barn, even though he knew he’d be mucking out stalls. He’d have his backpack of jars too.”
“You need to hurry, Hope.” T.J. glances over his shoulder.
“I know. But I have to think it through, the whole thing. Because I can feel it. I’m missing something.” I turn back and stare at the sawdust beneath my feet. I can see the shadow of blood there, but I know it’s in my head. “Jeremy would have looked around for Coach. They said he rode Sugar that morning. Maybe when he didn’t see Coach, he decided to go for a ride.” I look over at T.J. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
I keep going. “Normally, Jer would never ride before he finished chores. I guess he might have wanted to ride so bad that he went ahead. Coach wouldn’t have minded.” This part of my story is shaky, and I know it. Why would he ride that morning, on a game day? Why would he ride without doing his chores? “Maybe Coach told Jeremy to go riding, and he’d clean the stalls himself.”
“Okay. Move on, Hope,” T.J. urges.
“And that’s when Caroline saw her opening,” I continue, visualizing her hobbling to the stable. “Opportunity. Means. She sees Jeremy take off on Sugar, and that is her cue. So she comes to the barn, brings her own gloves or puts on Jeremy’s, picks up the bat, and-”
“Can we go now, Hope? Please?”
But the images are running through my mind. “She hits him. She hits him with the bat. His knees buckle, and he goes down.”
“Stop it, Hope.”
But I can’t stop. Because I can see it. I can see Coach. The blood. Stuff flying from his pockets. The life going out of him.
“Please-!” T.J. begs, shaking me by the shoulders. I barely feel it.
“She drops the bat. Maybe she’s horrified at what she did. One instant. That’s all it took. And everything changed. She gets back to her house and climbs in bed, pulling the covers over her head, and shutting her eyes to block out what she’s done. Jeremy finishes his ride and returns to the barn. He looks for Coach, because he doesn’t speak so he can’t call for him. When he sees his boss, his coach, his friend, lying in a pool of blood, Jeremy runs to him. He cradles him and rocks him. But Jeremy knows he’s dead. Maybe he knows he’ll be blamed. Maybe not. Maybe he’s so shocked he picks up the bat and holds on to it until he gets home. Or maybe he sees the killer and, scared to death, runs for home. But that’s when he bumps into Sarah McCray.” I can picture all of these things as if they’re in my memory instead of my imagination.
Only why now? This is the question that pounds in my head. “Why would Caroline Johnson choose that morning to kill her husband? What happened? Did she find out something about him? Did they argue? What about? If we knew that-”
T.J. takes hold of my hand. “Hope,” he whispers, “you have to stop this.” He leads me away, up the stallway. I let him. But I can’t get the crime scene photos out of my head.
I spin around to face him. “What did Coach have on him?”
He frowns. “I-I don’t know.”
“But you heard some of the testimony. Things fell out of his pockets. What? What was lying on the ground beside him? Surely they showed that stuff in court. It’s evidence, right?”
He scratches his head. “A cell phone, I think. Keys maybe? A stub of something, like a ticket maybe?”
“A ticket to what?”
“How should I know? What are you getting at, Hope?”
“I don’t know, not yet. Just tell me. What else?”
“Gum? Or gum wrappers? What does it matter?”
I can’t answer that, but I know it matters. I just know it. I want Raymond’s picture side by side with the ones I saw at Sheriff Wells’s. Something was in one of those photos that wasn’t in the other ones. But what? What was it and where did it go?
“Come on,” T.J. says. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Not until I find what I’m looking for.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not leaving here until I find it.” Near the door, where T.J. has practically dragged me, there’s a little room with a glass window. I was in there once when I was looking for Jeremy. “That’s Coach’s office, isn’t it?”
“I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“T.J., we have to search that office.”