A Very Simple Crime

by Grant Jerkins

  The lights come on. And yes, it is true. I am free.

  NINETEEN

  I put my key in the lock. It clicks along the familiar path and opens the door. The sun is setting behind me. I walk through the front door of my house.

  Albert sits in a corner, alone. He rocks methodically back and forth. He chants to himself.

  “Albert did bad wrong. Albert did bad wrong. Albert did bad wrong.”

  The smell affronts my nostrils. I know immediately what it is. Excrement and urine, dried and days old, but also something underneath these smells. The smell of death.

  Rachel’s body lies prone on the living room carpet. The ornate crystal ashtray lies beside her. A bit of her scalp, the hairs still attached, is stuck in a crevice of the crystal. The gash in her head is unthinkably deep and profane, like a flower trying to bloom. But bloom it shall not. The blood, coagulated in the carpet beneath her head, has dried into a blackened crust. Lethargic autumn flies buzz around her open eyes.

  I can think of nothing else to do. I call Monty. He tells me to remain calm. But I am calm, I tell him. He tells me to hang up the phone and call an ambulance and then the police, and then to call him back. I do. When I call Monty back, he tells me he knows a man in the prosecutor’s office. He will help me. I thank him and hang up.

  I look over at Albert. He continues to rock and chant. And I know, the play has begun. I look over to Rachel. Her body has already started to bloat. And yes, it is true. The play has begun.

  PART TWO

  That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.

  —JAMES M. CAIN,

  DOUBLE INDEMNITY

  TWENTY

  Leo Hewitt sat behind his small desk in his small cubicle in the very large criminal courts building, his mostly bald head bent over a furniture catalog. The rest of the cubicles, a small warren of them, were deserted now, the other workers having left hours ago. A small lamp cast a dim light on the catalog spread out before him. He turned the page and smiled wistfully at a photo of an impracticably huge and impracticably priced mahogany executive’s desk. He rubbed a stubby finger respectfully over the photo in an attempt to feel the grain of what looked to be deeply stained, highly polished wood. He felt only paper. Beside him, a cigar, stubby and thick like his fingers, smoldered in a cracked glass ashtray. He kept the ashtray hidden in his desk for times like these when he was alone in the office. He reached for the cigar, but his hand passed over it and grabbed instead a felt-tip pen. He uncapped the pen and circled the photo of the mahogany desk. He also circled a photograph of an elegant leather desk chair on the opposite page. The pen jerked and made an imperfect circle when the phone squawked at him in an inelegant electronic simile of a bell. He answered the phone before the first ring was over. His gaze never left the catalog.

  “Leo Hewitt. Mr. Lee, how are you? Okay, Monty. How are you, Monty? Oh, I’m sorry to . . . Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, no problem. That’s not a . . . Sure.”

  Leo switched the phone to his other ear. He pushed the catalog aside and picked absently at a piece of laminate peeling away from the surface of the pressboard desk.

  “Peachtree Battle, yeah, I know where that’s at. It would be my pleasure. I’m happy to help out. Especially at . . . Really. Anytime. That’s what I’m here for. Okay.”

  Leo hung up the phone. He scratched his head and was again surprised at its smoothness. He was only thirty-nine and had lost the majority of his hair to male-pattern baldness in a span of just under six months. It had fallen out so quickly that he’d gone to see a doctor, scared it was a symptom of some underlying medical problem. Something malignant. It wasn’t. The doctor had told him to try Rogaine if he was concerned about his physical appearance. Leo went to the drugstore and priced Rogaine. He could afford to go bald, but he couldn’t afford to grow the hair back. And now when he looked in the mirror, a stranger, an old-looking stranger, looked back at him.

  He was only thirty-nine in a philosophical sense. But in a professional, business sense, he had been thirty-nine for quite some time. He was thirty-nine years old and had done damn little with his life. The junior deputy prosecutor of the district attorney’s office. They’d made the fucking title up just for him. Didn’t know what else to do with him, he supposed. Oh well, he was happy to have a job. Happy to be everyone’s errand boy. Happy to be the simpleton who had fucked up, but hey, let’s keep him around the office for old times’ sake, what the fuck. Happy to say “How high?” when Monty Lee, the biggest ambulance chaser in Atlanta, told him to jump. Yes, Mr. Lee, No, Mr. Lee. Could I lick your sphincter for you, Mr. Lee? Yes, he was damn happy to be Leo Hewitt. Call you Monty? Why yes, Mr. Lee, of course, Mr. Lee. Your brother’s wife has been murdered? Why, Mr. Lee, what on earth are we gonna do? Lawsy, lawsy me. No, no, no, no, you stay home cozy and snug. I’ll be happy to drive out there. What are friends for, Mr. Lee?

  And what truly sucked was that he really was going to drive out there. On the possibility that the favor might be remembered. On the possibility that Monty Lee might think of him when an associate’s position opened at Lee’s law firm. On the chance that he might be able to start fresh, to make a new name for himself, to get out of here, to get out of this fucking cubicle.

  Leo picked up his cigar from the cracked ashtray and puffed it back to life. He thumbed through the catalog one last time, retrieved the felt-tip pen and circled a picture of an ornate crystal ashtray. Lalique. $479.00.

  He closed the catalog and hid it, and the ashtray, away in his desk.

  Leo liked to cruise the more exclusive Atlanta neighborhoods on his days off, and as always, when he turned onto Peachtree Battle Road, he was in awe of the houses. They quietly screamed money, and not just money, but old money. The land the houses sat on would by itself be worth over a million for each lot. Leo lived in a one-room flat off Ponce de Leon Avenue with the prostitutes, drug addicts, and male hustlers. He craned his head to look around at the old houses bought with old money; nope, no crack whores in this neighborhood.

  The house was easy to find. Two police cruisers and an ambulance were parked in front, their lights throbbing red and blue in the quiet October night. Leo parked his rust-flecked Nissan pickup truck behind Adam Lee’s shiny black BMW.

  The coroner, Travis Vedder, looked on as two attendants loaded a white PEVA body bag into the back of the ambulance. As it was loaded onto the meat wagon, Vedder patted the shape under the heavy-gauge plastic material. A patrolman handed Vedder a clipboard. Vedder spat a healthy stream of tobacco juice into a foam cup that was nestled into his shirt pocket, then took the clipboard from the patrolman and signed off on it. Leo walked up behind Vedder and slapped him on the back. “Travis! All your staff call in sick?”

  “Monty Lee called. Asked me to see to this one personally.”

  “Same here.”

  Vedder cocked an eyebrow over his steel-rimmed glasses. The blue and red flashing lights were reflected in the round lenses and Leo couldn’t see the man’s eyes, only the lone eyebrow that was arched disdainfully over them. Vedder grunted unintelligibly and spat another rivulet of brown juice into his foam cup.

  “Hey, you ever hear of mouth cancer?”

  Vedder spat again. This time on Leo’s shoes.

  “Okay, okay. You made your point.”

  Leo took out one of his fat cigars and bit off the tip.

  He spat it on the coroner’s shoe. He began to search his pockets for a light, but when he looked up, Vedder was holding out a match that flared up in Leo’s face.

  From inside the house, Adam Lee watched the short bald man accept the light the coroner offered him. He watched as the coroner slid his wife’s body out of the back of the ambulance. He watched as the coroner unzipped the bag and pointed out something to the man with the cigar. The man with the cigar took two steps backward, away from the body. Then the coroner pointed to the house and back to the body. The man with the cigar nodded his head and set off for the house.

  “Mr. L
ee?”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, wait a second.”

  Leo ducked back out the door and ditched his cigar in a bed of azalea bushes.

  “Sorry ’bout that. Leo Hewitt.”

  Adam stood and offered his hand to Leo. Leo began to reach out to shake, but realized that something was wrong. He hesitated a moment, retracted his hand, then offered his left hand instead.

  “You’re a southpaw?”

  “Yes, sometimes I forget.”

  “Not a problem. Anyway, I’m the assistant deputy prosecutor with the DA’s office. Fulton County. Your brother called me. Said to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t be here. Asked me to take care of you.”

  Leo took a look around the house. Old money or new, it was damn impressive. His eyes took in a Queen Anne dining room set to the left, a monstrously opulent Tiffany dragonfly lamp scuttled to one corner of the living room, a teakwood breakfront, original abstract paintings on the walls, all the creature comforts. On the black leather couch, looking out of place, sat Albert Lee. Drool slicked his heavy chin.

  “Is this Albert?”

  Adam nodded and watched as Leo squatted down in front of his adult son.

  “How ya doin’, Albert?”

  “Albert did bad wrong.”

  “What happened? What did you do?”

  “Albert did bad wrong.”

  Leo stood up and turned to Adam.

  “Does he understand?”

  “No, not really. He’s hurt her before. Never anything like . . . I mean . . . I just don’t know what to say. How to react.”

  “You’re in shock. It’s understandable. I can’t say how sorry I am. For your loss.”

  Adam stared at the floor. His eyes were drawn to the dark stain hardening in the carpet. He spoke to the stain, not to Leo. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll need to get Albert somewhere where he can be safe and accounted for.”

  “Of course.”

  Leo looked at Adam, waiting for the man to look up, but he didn’t.

  “Is there anything else, Mr. Lee?”

  Adam stared at the floor and shook his head. “No, no.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Adam didn’t respond.

  “I understand you were away when . . . the incident occurred.”

  “Yes, I went away for the weekend.”

  Leo rubbed his hand lightly over his bald head, again surprised at its smoothness.

  “With a friend?”

  Adam finally looked up, stared into Leo’s eyes, and suddenly Leo could feel the syndrome and everything changed. The syndrome where they try to tell you with their eyes. Where they try to get their eyes to convey what their mouths will not. But what could this guy need to get off his chest?

  “Yes. With a friend.”

  And it hit him. A cheater. The guy was a cheater. And now the poor schmuck thought this was his punishment for cheating on his wife.

  “Maybe you should tell me her name.”

  And the eyes told him he was right. The eyes said Thank you even as the mouth turned defensive.

  “Violet Perkins. Does it matter?”

  “Probably not. Here, I don’t have any cards, but let me give you my number.” He scribbled on a scrap of paper and handed it to Adam. “Look, why don’t you have Ms. Perkins call me. She can confirm your story and we can put it to rest, just between us.”

  “I would appreciate that. I loved my wife.”

  Maybe you did, but your eyes didn’t love her.

  “I know. I know you did, Mr. Lee.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The coolness was the first thing that hit him when Leo walked into the basement of the coroner’s office. That and the death smell. A lump rose in his throat even before the smell registered. He knew it was just his imagination, but Leo believed that he could actually taste the decay in the air. He walked through several swinging doors deeper and deeper into the morgue, until he found Vedder in the last autopsy room. Vedder stood hunched over the body of an elderly man. Leo couldn’t help but notice that the cadaver suffered from the same male-pattern baldness as he did, only the top of the cadaver’s bald skull was separated from the rest of him. He watched as Vedder pulled a dripping organ from the gaping hole in the cadaver’s chest and plopped it into the grooved scale that hung over the examining table. Leo felt the lump in his throat move up an inch or two. The scale always bothered him. It reminded him of the one in the butcher shop his mother used to drag him to when she did her Saturday shopping. In the butcher’s case, Leo would stare horrified at the tripe and cow’s tongue offered for sale. Occasionally, the butcher would have pig brains for sale behind the cold glass. And speaking of brains, it looked like that was what was going on Vedder’s scale next. Leo had to massage his throat to keep the gorge down.

  “Hey, Travis, anything unusual on the Lee woman?”

  Vedder put down his scalpel and picked up a foam cup with his bloody, gloved hand. He peeked out at Leo over the rims of his glasses and spat into the cup.

  “Unusual? No.”

  “What were your findings.”

  “You can’t read?”

  “Yes, despite the rumors, I can read. But I like hearing it from your smiling face.”

  “It must really suck.”

  “How’s that, Travis?”

  “To have been the big man. And now you’re the little man. They won’t even let you read the autopsy reports. That must really suck.”

  “Yeah, you know what, Travis? It does suck. It sucks like you wouldn’t believe. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, and by the way, fuck you.”

  Leo turned to leave, his nausea momentarily eclipsed by his anger.

  “Wait.”

  Leo turned back to Vedder and followed the stoop-shouldered man to a wall of cadaver drawers. Vedder pulled out one of the drawers and unzipped the plastic body bag that held Rachel Lee’s corpse.

  “So whadda ya wanna know?”

  Leo looked down at the body. He could feel the coldness radiating off it. The absence of life.

  “I want to know what happened.”

  “She got hit on the head.”

  “No kidding. I thought maybe she had a heart attack.”

  Vedder spit into his cup and wiped a spidery thread of tobacco juice from his chin. Leo thought, I wonder if it’ll fuck up my image if I faint?

  “Nope, impact to skull resulting in depressed fracture. Traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage.”

  Vedder pulled a huge magnifying glass from his pocket and positioned it over the wound in Rachel Lee’s head.

  “See this?”

  Leo worked to steady his voice. “Yeah. It’s a great big gash in her head. So?”

  “Look closer. Around the edges of the wound.”

  Leo, very much against his better judgment, leaned in closer, and then, under the magnifying glass, he thought he could see faint threads of what could only be tiny shards of glass. “It’s glass. So?”

  “Not glass, crystal. Very expensive crystal.”

  “The kid hit her with a crystal ashtray. I know that already.”

  “How am I supposed to know what you know and what you don’t know?”

  “Well, what else can you tell me? Is there anything unusual? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Generally speaking, I would say that being killed by a crystal ashtray is out of the ordinary.”

  “Well, surely to God there’s more you can tell me than that.”

  “Actually, there is. Stand back a little. Look at the wound as a whole.”

  Leo did just that, but all he got for his efforts was a little sicker to his stomach. “What?”

  “The angle, the degree, the location. What does it tell you?”

  “That she got hit hard.”

  “That whoever hit her, hit her from behind, was taller than she was, and was probably left-handed.”

  “That’s not exactly a bloody glove.”

  Vedder shrugged and spit into his cup. “If it doesn’t
fit, you must acquit.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Leo stood outside the door for a minute. The lettering on the door read PAULA MANNING, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY . Three years ago, he remembered, it had been his name on the door. Three years ago Paula Manning had been a deputy prosecutor working under Leo Hewitt’s supervision. Three years ago things had been a lot different. Three years ago he had been the assistant district attorney and a likely candidate for becoming the youngest district attorney in the county’s history. But that was three years ago. That was before the Guaraldi case.

  Leo knocked on the door.

  “Open!”

  He stuck his head into the office and saw Paula Manning reclining in her desk chair, her stockinged feet kicked up on her desk, a hamburger and fries resting in her lap.

  “Hey, got a minute?”

  “Leo, my loyal and trusty servant, come in.”

  Just as he was often shocked at his own sudden hair loss, Leo found himself taken aback at the changes the last few years had wrought on Paula. She had once been very pretty, and he supposed she still was, but now Paula’s features had an angular sharpness to them that hadn’t been there even a year ago. She was the same old Paula, maybe fifteen pounds lighter and with lines setting in around her tight mouth and open brown eyes. The weight loss and stress lines had given her a hardness that had never been there before. At least on the surface.

  “So, Paula, how they hangin’?”

  Paula pretended to adjust her crotch. “A little to the left, actually. What can I do for you, Leo?”

  “Well, actually, I was wondering what the status is on that Lee thing.”

  “Lee . . . Lee . . . Lee. Oh, yeah, the retard did it. Did the same thing five years ago. The family doesn’t want formal charges, neither do we. Right now he’s on the locked floor at the Hendrix Institute pending a judge’s order for placement at the state forensic facility. Maximum security. Seems pretty cut-and-dried.”