Chapter 56
It hadn’t been an easy decision. Jojo’d agonized over it.
It would mean opening up the old wound and re-experiencing the worst emotional pain of her life. At least, it had been at the time. There’d been pain since that was just as severe, but she kept that walled off and pretended it didn’t exist. She’d talked about the decision ad nauseam with Ali.
“I’m no good at advice,” Ali had told her. “Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?”
This morning, her best friend had given Jojo the bum’s rush out of Coffa Cupee, told her not to come back until she’d “had the conversation” with Conor.
Jojo knew Ali had a massive crush on Conor, one she’d have denied if you pulled out all her fingernails. But she always sent Conor a specially brewed coffee, and Jojo considered warning him that it could be laced with love potion.
“I treasure my every memory of my brother. We were Amish, so there are no photographs of us growing up.” She struggled to keep the quaver out of her voice.
Conor shook his head. “I hadn’t considered that. So you have no?—”
“Just from the military, the picture they took of him at basic training, bald and looking scared. His official Navy photo, pictures of the SEAL pinning ceremony. Just a handful.” She drew in a breath that felt ragged.
“But no pictures of the two of us together. No pictures of sitting on the porch swing while he told me stories or … Nothing like that.”
“I thought you knew what happened to your brother, Liam. He died. He …”
“Go ahead, say it.”
“He committed suicide.”
“But you see, he didn’t. That’s the thing.
I’ve always believed he didn’t and now I’m certain of it.
” She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at her fingers in her lap.
“Let me tell you about that day. I’ve never said this to anyone.
I don’t talk about it.” She lifted her head.
“Do you know I stopped talking after …?”
“How old were you?”
“Nine. And after they … found me, I didn’t tell anybody what had happened. I refused to talk, didn’t say a word for almost two years.”
Conor got up from behind his desk, came around it and sat down in the chair next to Jojo’s. “You don’t owe me an explanation,” he said and the tenderness in his voice broke her heart. “If you need my help, you’ve got it. I don’t have to know why?—”
She lifted her head to look at him, tried to smile but couldn’t. “I need to say this.”
He settled back in the chair. “I’m listening.”
She grabbed hold of her composure and her voice was strong and unwavering. Only the huskiness gave away the roiling emotions inside.
“He came home on leave and something was wrong. I don’t know what it was, but something had happened on that mission that upset him.
He wasn’t himself. He was brooding and angry, even brusque with me.
He had a car, and he would leave and be gone all day with no explanation.
I was a little girl, and I asked, ‘What’s wrong?
Where did you go? Why don’t you ever laugh anymore? ’ Nothing.”
She took another deep breath, stood on the precipice of opening up the wound. Until this moment, she hadn’t understood how difficult it would be just to tack words on the images in her head.
Jojo runs through the night, through the dark, just runs. It’s almost two miles from her house to the meeting house and she runs the whole way without stopping.
She has to find out what’s going on with Liam, what’s wrong with him. She knows he was going to the meeting house. That’s what she heard him say on his phone, angrily, that he would meet somebody at the meeting house. Jojo wants to know who he was talking to.
After she climbs a small hill and cuts through a grove of trees, she can see the meeting house. The front door is open, and lights are shining out through all the windows. Liam’s truck is parked in front so he’s there. But there is no other car.
She doesn’t run the last hundred yards. She walks.
And the closer she gets to the meeting house, the more afraid she becomes.
It seems as if the building that looked so inviting with the bright yellow lantern lights shining out through the windows doesn’t look inviting anymore.
As she approaches, it gets darker and darker.
And somehow what comes from the windows isn’t light anymore.
It’s not bright yellow and happy light. It’s darkness.
It’s night all around, but what comes from the windows is darker than night, an ugly blackness that pours out of the meeting house like tar.
Jojo walks very slowly up the porch steps and into the greeting area in the front of the meeting house where people stand around after services and talk.
The doors from there into the main meeting room are closed.
She crosses the greeting area and puts her small hands on them, swinging doors that swing inward.
And she begins to push her way into the meeting room where the darkness is.
She looks at the floor as she steps through the swinging doors and she’s afraid to lift her eyes, but she doesn’t know why.
If Liam’s here, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Liam can protect her from any bad thing.
And what bad thing could there be in the meeting house, a house of God?
She stops just inside the main room, her eyes on the floor, refusing to look up, wondering why Liam has not called out to her, has not greeted her.
He’s in here somewhere. He has to be. His truck’s parked out front.
But there is no loving voice, there is only silence and the rumbling roar of her own heartbeats in her ears.
Then she sees the paint.
A single drip of red paint on the floor.
She takes another step and there are more drips.
Who would bring red paint into the meeting room? Jojo knows this isn’t red paint, but she won’t let herself know what it really is.
Beyond the drips is a puddle of red.
And then she lets her eyes move up and what she sees freezes her chest and she can’t breathe. She can’t think. She can’t … be.
It’s Liam, but he’s …
She focuses on his eyes, and it seems that’s the source of the darkness that came out through the windows. The darkness is spreading out from Liam’s eyes to extinguish all light in the whole world.
And she starts to scream. She just stands there and screams. Screams and screams and screams. At some point, she realizes she’s not making a sound anymore. She has screamed until she has no voice, but she stands there anyway and keeps screaming.
She doesn’t hear a buggy pull up. She only knows that someone has come up behind her and put their hands on her shoulders. Then they pick her up and she lets them because she’s limp. She can’t fight off anything.
All she can do is scream with no voice. Her mouth open like a fish out of water. Screaming with no voice. Screaming and screaming.
Afterward, she doesn’t talk, doesn’t want to talk … has nothing to say.
“You were nine years old, and you found your brother … dead?” Conor asked. He said the words softly and kindly.
Jojo could only nod. It felt like if she tried to speak, she’d have no voice, like she’d screamed it away and could make no sound.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss, Jojo.”
She sniffed then and realized she’d been crying, that tears were running down her cheeks. Then she looked into Conor’s kind face and said what she came here to say.
“My brother did not kill himself. I never did believe that, but there seemed to be no other explanation. Now, I’m certain.
” She paused, considering how to make him understand.
“After … what happened to me in that silo, I get it now. I have no proof, no evidence, but that doesn’t matter anymore because I know …
I know with absolute certainty that the man who taught me how to hold my breath for four minutes, would never have given up.
There was no quit in Liam. And suicide is the ultimate surrender. ”
“You’re saying your brother was murdered?”
“I’m saying he didn’t kill himself, so yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.” That explanation had never been an option because it was always followed by “he was a Navy SEAL. How could somebody have overcome him, forced him to …?”
“I don’t know how or why, but somebody murdered my brother. What I came here to ask you, Conor, is will you help me investigate my brother’s murder? It was more than twenty years ago. And I don’t know if there was any police investigation at all. I don’t know?—”
Conor stopped her before she could go on. “I’ll help you, Jojo. We’ll find out … whatever there is to find out.”
“Thank you,” Jojo said and stood abruptly. “I mean that. Thank you.”
Then she turned and didn’t run out of his office but left in the purposeful way that says don’t come with me, don’t follow me. She went out the front door of the courthouse and down the steps with Trident at her side and walked slowly through the chilled air to her pickup.
Opening the driver’s side door with a practiced jerk, she stepped aside and told Trident to jump in.
Then she got in behind him. Her eyes were still blurred with tears, and she swiped at the ones on her cheeks like a little kid wiping them away.
Putting the key in the ignition, she switched on the headlights.
And that’s when she saw it dangling from her rearview mirror.
It was a piece of twine, just basic twine you could buy at any hardware store.
But someone had formed it into a hangman’s noose.
THE END