The Little Brother

by Victoria Patterson

  He waited for us to laugh with him, but no one did. “You and Tove had consensual intercourse. Then you attempted to penetrate her anally but she denied your repeated requests, orally copulating with you instead. Correct?”

  Gabe was silent, his face red.

  “Gabe,” Cavari said, “I know this is difficult for you, but stay with me.”

  Gabe nodded.

  “Are you sure she didn’t consent to anal sex?”

  Gabe said nothing.

  “Think about it,” Cavari continued. “She’s a liar. You might be remembering wrong. It certainly would help you if you did have anal sex, because that’s the kind of slut that she is.”

  Gabe barely nodded.

  “She left your bedroom. She then had consensual sex with Nixon in the living room, and she orally copulated with him as well. Correct?”

  Gabe was done. His head was down and he was done.

  “Let’s move on to something else,” Cavari suggested. He closed the folder and picked up the manila file with Tove’s name on it. “Aha!” he said, flipping a page. “Listen to this from the police report.”

  He lifted the page and cleared his throat. “When confronted by her parents, Tove Kagan admitted to them,” he read in a deadpan voice, “that she had consensual sex with Gabriel Hyde, but withheld the fact that she had sex with Kent Nixon. She relayed the events from the night of the third as if they’d taken place on the night of the Fourth of July, because she had no memory of the Fourth. She said that she didn’t want to disappoint her parents any further, and she felt that they would be less disappointed if she told them about Hyde.” He paused to roll his eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said bitterly, “because the Hydes are rich and the Nixons aren’t,” and then he continued reading in an expressionless voice: “When she admitted to the police and her parents that she knew of the videotaped events occurring on the evening of the Fourth of July, she thought the police were referring to a videotape Nixon had recorded of her and Nixon having sex in late June. She assumed she was being confronted with evidence from this tape.”

  He paused again, taking on the voice of a girl: “Oh, no! I would never let anyone videotape me having sex! Oh, no! I would never have sex with more than one boy in a night. That’s bad!”

  He shook his head in disgust, and then he continued to read: “The night of the third, Kagan had sex with Hyde and Nixon. Before that, she claims that she was intoxicated in the pool, and that her friends had taken off her pants. Kevin Stewart swam to her and tried to initiate sex. He pressed against her and she could feel that he was erect, but she pushed him away.

  “Yet Crystal Douglas and Melissa Stroh claim that they saw Stewart and Kagan having sex in the pool, and that after, Kagan spoke to them and said to not let her have sex with anyone but Nixon, because he was her boyfriend.” He snorted derisively.

  “So,” he concluded, “she says it’s only two boys, but we all know she had sex with all three of these boys the night before, and then she comes back—alone, without her friends—the next night for more. This girl is insatiable! She’s insatiable! But when her parents find out, when her porno surfaces, she decides to call it rape.”

  He paused to give any of us an opportunity to respond, and when no one did, he continued to read: “Kagan woke up the next morning, on the Fourth, feeling sick to her stomach, extremely tired, and with a headache. She and her friends left the Hyde house in her car, and during the drive, she denied having sex with Hyde since Douglas was present and was Hyde’s girlfriend.

  “But as soon as Douglas got out of the car, she told Stroh that while having sex with Hyde, she thought only about how wealthy her children would be if she got pregnant.

  “After dropping off Stroh, she stopped at a McDonald’s and ate part of a cheeseburger and a few fries. Then she slept in her car in the McDonald’s parking lot for several hours before going to work for her 2 to 7 PM shift at Marie Callender’s restaurant.

  “Hyde and Stewart called Kagan at work, inviting her and her friends to return to Hyde’s house that evening. Stroh and Douglas could not go. Kagan initially declined, saying that she still felt tired and queasy. They begged her. She said only if her friends came, but after they continued to plead, she agreed. She said that she wanted to prove her loyalty to Nixon, and that she only wanted to be with him, not with his friends.

  “She again lied to her parents. When she arrived at Hyde’s, Nixon and Stewart and Hyde were playing pool in the garage. She drank a beer, then asked for hard liquor, stating that she wanted something that would get her drunk.

  “Stewart left for about ten minutes and returned with a Styrofoam cup. She asked what it was and he told her that it was a ‘Bombay.’” Cavari paused to take a drink from his Scotch.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, setting his glass down. “The prosecutors are going to say that Stewart drugged her, and that’s why he was gone for ten minutes. But we’re going to say that he didn’t, and that the drink contained 8.5 ounces of 94-proof gin, and that Tove gulped it down. She also took a hit of marijuana from a pipe being passed around.”

  He went back to reading in his flat voice: “She began to feel dizzy and sick when she tried to stand up.

  “Her last memories of the evening were of Stewart sitting down on the couch next to her and Nixon standing at the pool table talking to her. She momentarily awoke later when she hit her head on the side of the couch. She also remembered vomiting into her hand. The vomit spilled all over, soiling her clothes and hair.

  “Her next memory was of Nixon waking her in the morning for a ride home and asking her where she put her keys. She didn’t remember getting into the car. Next she found herself in the passenger seat in front of Nixon’s home. Nixon had left for his job at the Shell gas station. She was dressed, her car was hot, and the windows were cracked.

  “Nixon’s mom came outside and gave her a bottled water. Kagan could smell the vomit and urine on her body. She called Douglas and asked if she could clean up at her house before going home.

  “At Douglas’s house, Kagan undressed to take a shower and, when her bra fell out of her pants, she realized for the first time that something must have happened. She felt sore in her pelvic area when she went to the bathroom. And then she saw the blood. She was afraid to look or examine further, knowing that something was ‘very wrong.’

  “After her shower, she talked on her cell phone with Stewart and asked him what happened the previous night. Stewart laughed and responded, ‘Why? Are you sore?’

  “Kagan’s parents discovered she’d lied about her plans that Fourth of July weekend. To locate her, they contacted her friends and eventually found her car parked outside of Douglas’s house.

  “Kagan refused to leave the house until her father threatened to call the police. She admitted to her parents that she’d lied about spending the night at Douglas’s house that weekend. She did not tell her parents she had no memory of the night of the Fourth.”

  Cavari closed the file, heaved a sigh, and stacked it on top of the folder. “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “I’m a victim. Let me destroy these boys’ lives so that my parents don’t know that I’m a lying, alcoholic slut.”

  Dad held the cigar between his fingers, as if he’d forgotten about it, the ash about an inch long.

  Gabe passed a trembling hand through his hair. Everyone, it seemed—except for Cavari—was embarrassed.

  Dad seemed to startle to consciousness, tapping his ash and setting the cigar in the ashtray. “What do we do?” he asked.

  “I’m glad that you asked,” Cavari said. “We tell the jury that this is a lying, alcoholic slut. That these rape allegations are a travesty. Just like the Kobe Bryant case. That girl consented, and this girl did, too. Kobe’s not going to jail, he’s no rapist, and this terrific young man sitting right here is not a rapist, either.”

  Dad’s face had gone red.

  Gabe said, “What if I admit that I was wrong? What if I say I’m sorry?
I’m a juvenile. So I won’t go to jail, right? Maybe I could apologize, and that would be good.”

  Cavari took a puff on his cigar and nodded. “That’s a nice thought, Gabe,” he said. “I’ll bet that you’d like this to go away, to be over with. But that, my friend, is not the way the world works.” He looked at Dad, as if to say, Tell him.

  “He’s right, Gabe,” Dad said. “That’s not the way the world works. We’ve got to fight.”

  “Look, Gabe,” said Cavari, with a measure of severity, “I know that you want to make things better. I know that you feel bad. But I don’t see how ruining your life makes anything better. I don’t see how that serves anyone’s interests.”

  I’d broken into a sweat without realizing it, and my shirt was clammy against my back. For some reason I said, “How do you know that Kobe Bryant isn’t guilty?”

  Cavari ignored me. He didn’t even look at me. He said, “The most damning piece of evidence is the video. First, we’re going to try to block admissibility by claiming that law enforcement doctored the images. It’s a long shot, and if it doesn’t work, then we need to convince the jurors that although Tove looks unconscious, she willingly had sex with these boys.”

  “What are our chances?” asked Dad.

  “Good,” Cavari said without hesitation. “Very good. With a little pressure, the Kagans might drop their case. I mean, they might come to their senses and see that it’s futile to go forward.

  “If not, we can convince a jury that this was nothing more than a teenage sexcapade, a case of sex that got a little bit out of hand.”

  He reached for Tove’s file, opened it, and thumbed through the pages. “We’ve found out from our investigators,” he said, closing the file, “that Tove’s parents sought medical and psychological help for her, because of her rebellion. She repeatedly left the house without telling them where she went, got in trouble, and lied compulsively. Too bad she’s a straight-A student, but we can work around that. Her relationship with her father is very strained. Very bad. They don’t get along at all. Her friends are already turning on her. We’ve got them in our pocket. They’ll say that she’s a liar and a slut, and that she consented. She claimed that she wanted to be a porn star, so of course she agreed to make a video with these boys.”

  He closed the file and gave us a triumphant smile. “We’ll win,” he said. “I know it.”

  23.

  NOT LONG AFTER the meeting with Cavari, I began to spend more time at Mike’s house, eating dinner there at least twice a week. Then school started in September, and I came over after school almost every afternoon, even if Mike wasn’t home (he had some sort of athletic practice going on all the time). I never did find out how much Mike told his parents about my involvement in my brother’s case.

  The Woods had a separate, windowless room with a sliding glass door near the garage, where Mike’s mom kept her sewing machine collection (unused for years) and other stuff. It took about a month, but she emptied it out and sold most of it at a garage sale. Mike’s dad put a futon, an old desk, a standing lamp from Target, and a chair inside. The room had a small bathroom with a standing shower and a tiny sink and toilet.

  “Yours,” Mike’s dad told me, with an arm slung around my shoulder, as we stood outside the room one afternoon. “As soon as we get it fixed up.” The Santa Ana winds whipped and flapped the curtains against the open sliding glass door, along with a clanking cord.

  “You’ve got a lot going on at home,” he said, “and this can be a safe place.”

  Jerry Wood is an ordinary-looking man with thick silver hair that he keeps groomed in a close cut, and his eyes seem almost always wet with emotion—the only way I can think to describe them.

  “Whenever you want,” Lori Wood added, “it’s here. We’ll get you a key.” She held her billowing skirt down with her hand, her hair whipping around her head. She, like Jerry, is ordinary-looking, but to me, beautiful, her eyes weighted with kindness.

  I thanked them, calling them Mom and Dad. Light flashed through my head so that I couldn’t see for a second, from gratitude.

  I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but the Wood family and their generosity helped save my life.

  But I had to wait for them to fix up the room for me, and during that time, Cavari came to Dad’s house often to talk strategy. He hired focus groups to test trial strategies and a public relations expert and private investigators, all with Dad’s approval and financial backing. He explained over and over that Tove—or the Alcoholic, Lying Slut, as she came to be known in Dad’s house—was a whore who loved giving blow jobs and enjoyed doggy-style sex and anal intercourse, so that these things became like facts. She dreamed of becoming a porn star, he said, craved group sex, and liked to give road head and swallow. Everyone knew that she’d faked unconsciousness as a porn technique. Some people were into that—snuff-like porn. Not only had she been an enthusiastic participant in the video, she’d been its initiator and director, Cavari said.

  Remember that ridiculous speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier? When Bush said, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” all the while standing beneath a festive MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner? Remember how beforehand, for the photo ops, Bush swaggered around the carrier in his high-tech flight suit?

  One afternoon, Cavari, in his loud, didactic voice, said of his attempts to get Tove and her family to drop the case, “Soon, my friends, I’ll be saying ‘mission accomplished,’ I’m sure of it.”

  Later that same afternoon, Sara and I got into this weird fight on the phone. She asked me, genuinely concerned, “How are you feeling?” and I told her, “There’s only one question I hate more than ‘What are you thinking?’ and that’s ‘How are you feeling?’”

  She said I was trying to be a dickhead, but that I couldn’t be one, because I wasn’t one, and I told her that maybe she didn’t know a dickhead when she saw one.

  After that, we stopped speaking for a long time. Looking back, what she said about my dad and my connection to him bothered me, and that she’d put me in this predicament.

  No matter what she claimed, I also believed that I was too close to the source, too similar to my brother and father for her.

  NANCY CAME OVER to Dad’s one afternoon with about six or seven other women from her Bible study, in efficient pantsuits and chunky gold jewelry, to engage in a group prayer for our family. To me, the fact that Dad agreed to it revealed how far he’d gone off the deep end.

  “I don’t want to,” I told him.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said.

  So I joined Dad and Gabe and the women.

  We stood in a circle in the living room, our heads bent, our eyes closed, arms around each other’s shoulders and waists. But I kept my eyes open. Nancy’s heavy perfume clashed with some of the others’. I had to stifle a sneeze.

  They took turns praying out loud for our family’s suffering, for us to endure, for Jesus to be with us. “Jesus, Father,” Nancy said, “keep Gabe and his family strong,” accompanied by murmurs of “Yes, Father, Jesus, be with Gabe and his family. Let them feel your strength.”

  But it wasn’t until they started praying for Tove’s soul that I got hot and uncomfortable. “Jesus, Father, we pray that Tove will drop the charges, and that she will admit her lies. Let Tove come to you for forgiveness.”

  The air was so heavy with bullshit I didn’t think I could take it much longer. A few hot tears slid down my face, but I stayed silent and waited for the prayer circle to end.

  The next morning, I packed a bag with some of my clothes and left it in my locker at school, so that I wouldn’t have to come home.

  After that, I pretty much lived at the Wood’s house and slept on the sofa in the living room until the other room—the one they’d emptied and furnished for me—was ready for me a week or so later.

  When I got the key—and the room was mine—it was so wonderfully quiet and private. I spent enormous amounts of time i
n there: reading, napping, doing my homework, listening to music, and being alone.

  Dad didn’t take it personally, since he was preoccupied with Gabe, of course. He attributed my absence to the stress of the upcoming trial, and I couldn’t go live with Mom, since I went to school in Newport.

  I made sure to make an appearance now and then, so that Dad wouldn’t make me come back.

  Dad insisted on sending a check to the Wood family each month for the expense of feeding and caring for me (I don’t know the amount, but knowing Dad, it was substantial).

  One Saturday afternoon, I stopped by the house to pick up a few things that I’d forgotten—my electric toothbrush and a T-shirt that I liked—using the key hidden beneath a rock. Dad wasn’t home, and Gabe’s truck wasn’t out front.

  In Dad’s office, looking for scissors to open a tightly sealed package of almonds, I came across a file from Cavari titled VIDEO EVIDENCE. I sat at Dad’s desk and read:

  The purpose of this document is to depict the events in the videotape recorded on the evening of July 4th through the eyes of potential experts for the prosecution and the defense.

  PROSECUTION:

  The first scene depicted Gabriel Hyde trying to remove Tove Kagan’s jeans as she held a can in her hand. Dr. Patrick Fuentes, certified in neurology and sleep medicine, interpreted the events depicted. Fuentes focused on symptoms Kagan displayed to support his conclusion that she was unconscious throughout the events shown in the video.

  Fuentes found particularly noteworthy Kagan’s comment at the beginning of the video, declaring, “I’m so fucked up.” These were the only words Kagan spoke. Fuentes explained that Kagan’s silence during the events depicted over a period of 20 to 29 minutes demonstrated a “certain loss of higher brain function as a result of her intoxication.”

  Fuentes pointed out that although the recording lasts 14 minutes, the elapsed time is closer to 20 to 29 minutes because the tape was paused at different times so that Kagan could be repositioned.

  After a pause on the videotape, the next scene depicted Kagan nude on her knees with her head in the lap of Kevin Stewart, who is seated on a couch, with Hyde kneeling and entering Kagan from behind as she orally copulates with Stewart.