“You’re right,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry.” She took a green marker and printed across the bottom of the whiteboard, ACCIDENT or MURDER?
“It might not have been either,” Mary Aaron suggested. “It could have been self-defense or maybe a struggle that . . . you know. Something else?”
Rachel considered that and then carefully erased or MURDER. “You’re right,” she agreed as she erased the question mark and put it immediately after ACCIDENT. And then, below the word, she wrote a single sentence.
Why a false confession?
Rachel looked back at Mary Aaron to see if she’d missed anything.
“Goot start.” Mary Aaron nodded. “But there were probably a lot of hunters and I don’t know of a single enemy, so maybe you should have given more room for the hunters.”
Rachel dropped the markers into the cup and stepped back to look at the board. “That’s what we’re going to find out. But first, I’m going to call a few attorneys.”
“You think the Studers can afford a lawyer?” Mary Aaron asked. “The community may not want to pay for one since Moses said that he did it. I know Dat wouldn’t. He said so this morning. He doesn’t believe in lawyers anyway. He said God will protect the innocent and punish the guilty.”
Rachel shrugged. “He wouldn’t want to pay for one anyway. You know that he wouldn’t accept one for himself. I love Uncle Aaron, and I know he’s your father, but he is set in his ways.”
“Ya,” Mary Aaron agreed. “That he is. And he’s influential with the community. You can’t count on financial help for Moses. They’ll pray for him, but I doubt they’ll open their wallets.”
“I know,” she answered. “I was thinking of asking Ell to help. Part of her inheritance from her father was that charitable fund for emergency assistance here in Stone Mill. I’d offer to pay for the attorney myself, but I have no idea how much we’re talking about. The will stipulated that the needs of the traditional communities were foremost. And I know they helped to pay for Eli Beiler’s son’s kidney transplant last year.”
“It might not cost anything if Moses tells a judge he’s guilty.”
“Even a guilty man needs a lawyer,” Rachel explained. “To be sure his sentencing is fair.”
“That makes sense.” Mary Aaron shrugged. “Maybe Ell would be willing to help. Unless his confession makes her believe he’s guilty. I don’t understand why he’d say he killed his brother-in-law if he didn’t.”
Rachel grabbed the red marker and drew a line under confessed on the board. “That’s a good question. I did some research on the Internet. I’m not sure what people did before so much information was so easy to find. Anyway, it happens more often than we realize. False confession. There are several reasons. The first is that many suspects are questioned over long periods of time by the authorities. They may be mentally unsound, frightened, or they simply want to please. Others confess for the attention they think it will bring them, or just to get away from the police because it’s suggested they’ll be released if they confess. Many suspects don’t understand the consequences.”
“Moses wasn’t . . .” Mary Aaron seemed to search for the English word. “Intimidated by the police, was he?”
“I don’t think so. He confessed right in front of us. The police’s response to him was based on his behavior. Tea?” Mary Aaron nodded, so Rachel switched on the electric teakettle. She had a small refrigerator where she kept milk and snacks for the times she didn’t want to walk down multiple flights of stairs for a cup of tea and a piece of fruit or some cheese and crackers. She felt as if they needed a cup of tea right now, to calm their minds and steady their thoughts. “More confessions than you’d think are false confessions, and a lot of people are behind bars who are innocent. I read that one of the primary groups DNA testing has helped is those convicted due to false confessions.”
“That’s awful.”
“It is. Evan didn’t really want to talk about the possibility of Moses being innocent, but I finally got him to open up a little. He said that once someone confesses to a crime, it’s difficult to get law enforcement or anyone in the judicial system to consider the suspect might be innocent. And it’s almost impossible to have a suspect released on bail once he’s confessed, even if he withdraws his statement. Everyone chalks it up to the criminal regretting telling the truth.”
“But if the wrong person goes to jail, the dangerous person is still out there. And the police aren’t even looking for him.”
“Exactly.” Rachel sighed. “The other reason a person might give a false confession is obvious to me: to protect someone else.”
“Right. Someone who Moses cares about more than himself? That makes sense to me.”
“It’s possible,” Rachel admitted, “but we can’t guess. We have to find solid facts if we want to convince the police and the judge that Moses was telling a lie when he confessed.”
“Do we know if there’s any evidence that proves Moses did it?” Mary Aaron asked. “Anything other than him telling the police he did it?”
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t know anything yet. As I said, Moses was sticking to his story yesterday when I saw him. But, guilty or innocent, he still deserves an attorney. So that will be my first task, to see that he gets one.”
“What can I help you with?”
“Maybe you could ask around, talk to anyone you can locate who was hunting on Blue Mountain that day.”
“I can ask my brothers. They were hunting with Dat. Not in that area, I don’t think, but they’ll know who was,” Mary Aaron said.
Rachel rubbed her cheek thoughtfully. “I’m not saying that the hunters are necessarily suspects, although they would all have had guns.
