A Very Simple Crime

by Grant Jerkins

  “No. Not Adam. He’s too young.”

  I protested, but only halfheartedly, partly because Monty had spoken and I could never break his resolve, but mostly because I wanted nothing to do with this. At the same time, I also hated the fact that they were sharing a secret without me. Now I was the weaker. The uninitiated. How proud she must feel, having insinuated herself between us, having gotten through to Monty, being allowed to bask in his glow, exist within his magnetic field.

  Denise took another swallow and passed the bottle back to Monty. They drank in a solemn silence like cultists administering a lethal poison. At other times they would both erupt in gales of laughter without a word having been exchanged, as though a joke had passed between them by telepathy. They drank until there was only a few inches of liquid left in the bottle. When Monty reached again for the gin, she held it away from him.

  “No, it’s not free anymore,” she said, and giggled.

  “Whadda ya mean, not free?” Monty’s speech was slurred, and it scared me. The liquor had changed him. I believed that then, that it was the alcohol at fault. Later, I would believe that the liquor had not so much changed him as intensified him. Given us a glimpse of the Monty to come.

  “I mean you have to pay for it,” Denise said.

  “Pay for it? How much?”

  “Not money.”

  “What?”

  “A dare.”

  “Fine.”

  “You have to touch my leg. To prove it’s normal.”

  “You’re fuckin’ crazy. I’m not touchin’ your fucked-up leg.”

  “Okay. I guess you don’t want a drink then.”

  Monty thought it over. As he thought, his upper body weaved like a bowling pin about to topple over. Then a smile came to his lips. “Okay. I’ll touch your leg.”

  They both grew quiet. Even drunk, they both knew this was a monumental thing. I did too. It seemed as though they had forgotten about my being in the room with them. But I knew Monty had not forgotten me, and even if he had, he had not forgotten himself. This was a trick. I knew it. It had to be. My brother, drunk or not, would never, never ever, give in so easily to such blatant manipulation. He had something planned. He would touch her leg and then fall to the floor in mock agony. He would hold on to his arm and say she had infected it with her disability. He would simply snatch the gin bottle from her hand and laugh at her with contempt.

  Monty reached out and tentatively placed his fingertips on her shin. Roughly he cupped his hand around her smooth calf and fumbled his hand under her knee and continued his caress jerkily up the inside her thigh.

  “You’re right. It’s normal.”

  I waited for the trick, the insult, but I was disappointed. There was no joke. Worse still, Monty’s voice was different. It was thick, husky, and I knew that it was not from the alcohol. And that alarmed me even more. Where was the punch line to this awful, awful joke?

  “I told you. It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Now gimme.” Monty took the bottle and drank from it. When he finished, he held the bottle back out to Denise, and when she reached for it, he jerked it back.

  “Hey!”

  “It’s not free anymore.”

  “Okay. What do you want?”

  “I dare you. I dare you to take off your shirt and let me see your tits.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I would.”

  Denise needed no time to think it over. This was what she wanted, what she had planned all along, I believed. “Okay, I don’t care. I have a good body.” She pulled off her top, and then her bra without his asking. Monty reached out and grabbed one of her budding breasts. He held it with a rough awkwardness, kneading it with callous curiosity.

  “You see. I have a good body. You wanna see more?” Denise asked.

  “Sure.”

  She pulled off her shorts and her pink panties. I stared, but I didn’t see her. I didn’t want to see her.

  Naked, she turned to Monty. “Now you.” And Monty did. He pulled off his shirt, pants, and socks. He stood before her, allowing her to look at his body. His underwear bulged out in front with his excitement. He pulled off the briefs. His penis was engorged and huge. It seemed an enraged exclamation, an appendage of anger. The thick swatch of pubic hair that engulfed it alarmed me. A dense, profuse tangle that stood out in coarse contrast to his other, sun-bleached hair. It looked obscene.

  Her genitals were nearly hairless. Faint dark curls were only beginning to sprout in a discernible triangle shape. The lips of her vagina were smooth and discreet and somehow alien. My head began to hum and buzz, but not in the pleasant fashion of my romantic daydreams, but in an unpleasant, sickening throb. Denise lay on the floor and parted her legs as Monty approached, and I could see the pink flesh inside her. My head ached like a rotten tooth and wanted to crack open with the wasplike hum deafening me from the inside out. And yet, for all that, there was still a perverse excitement, and, I was ashamed to discover, a stiffening in my pants. I watched as my brother took her. The first girl to capture my romantic interest and to stir my burgeoning sexual desire. I watched as my brother took all of that away from me. He was rough, awkward, and there was blood. She bit back her pain and closed her eyes in grim determination. She was going to let this happen, no matter what the cost. She was going to let this golden boy have her. She was going to savor his wanting of her, his clumsy passion for her, yes, this passion directed at her. Tears streamed from her eyes and I could not tell if it was from happiness or pain, but I knew it was one of the two. She was wanted. And like the cruel taunts and teasing, any pain was bearable to be wanted. And to be wanted by such a boy as my brother.

  Monty was quick. I watched as his back convulsed and he thrust spasmodically into her. He collapsed on top of her, resting his spent body on hers. And I saw her smile. He climbed off her, his penis still swollen and swinging lazily. Blood dripped from it. I could see more blood encrusted blackly in his pubic hair. He smiled at me and began to pull on his underwear, and all I could think was what would our mother say when she saw the bloodstains on his white briefs. He winked at me and said, “Wanna give her a try?” And the throbbing returned to my head and a flush heated my skin. I looked at Denise. She lay prone and naked in front of me. She stared back at me. Beyond her, through her bedroom door, I could see her braces scattered on the floor like the remnants of a metal cocoon. She smiled at me and reached between her legs. She parted her legs even further in a vile and drunken gesture of welcome. Blood was smeared between her white thighs like a violent inkblot.

  I ran. I ran as fast and as hard as I could. And behind me I could hear them laughing. The two of them, laughing at me. The sex act had changed everything. It had changed the status quo. Now they shared a secret knowledge that I was no part of. It was a reversal. A damn good one. Perhaps it was here that my love of the dramatic reversal was borne. It’s as an audience member that the future playwright grows to admire the pureness of the drama. And I had been set up, sucker punched, left reeling. It should have been me and Monty laughing at her.

  Our parents never found out. The effects of the gin had worn off by the time they returned late that evening, and if Monty and Denise had seemed a touch hungover the next morning, no one commented on it. Denise’s puppy love for my brother escalated after that episode, only, it wasn’t puppy love anymore, was it? They had shared a secret, an adult act. There had been no love involved, no sense of intimacy. It had been an act of drunken obscenity. Yet I knew that in her mind it had been intimate, it had been loving, and now she expected something more from my brother, and why wouldn’t she? In her mind it was a natural progression. But in Monty’s mind, nothing had changed. He continued his campaign of cruelty and, if anything, his taunts reached a new apogee in their ferociousness. He wanted nothing to do with the girl, but he couldn’t shut her out completely. After all, she might tell. She might tell how the young man entrusted to watch after
her safety had drunk liquor with her. How he had taken her virginity, taken her innocence.

  Monty had only one sanctuary from Denise’s ever-increasing need to be in his presence. The water. The lake was verboten for Denise. Her mother harbored a very vocal fear that Denise might slip and fall in the water and, unable to maneuver her metal-weighted legs, drown. Her mother was so adamant and never wavering about this fear that it had crossed over to Denise. It was second nature to her. She simply would not go near the water.

  A raft anchored near the middle of the lake was Monty’s refuge. When Denise’s presence became overwhelming, he dove into the lake and swam out to the raft. It was made of weathered gray wood and was big enough for Monty to stretch out comfortably. As the summer wore on, most of Monty’s days were spent on the raft, in isolation, where he was drenched in sun and grew ever more golden. The raft was so far out that my still-skinny body could not carry me to it. I simply lacked the strength and stamina. I sat on the shore longing for Monty’s company and hating Denise, for she was the one who had driven him away from both of us. When I did see him, he smelled of his isolation. He smelled of the lake: dank, mossy, and earthen. It was a dark smell, and it did not suit him. It seemed more appropriate for me.

  I don’t know what he thought would happen. How it would end. We’ve never spoken of it, not of the ending. Did he really think Denise would tolerate losing him? She was, after all, a smart girl. She had captured him in the first place, had she not? Did he really think she would concede so easily? I knew she would not. I would not have in her position. She played her trump card. She threatened to tell. This, for Monty, was unacceptable. In our parents’ eyes, Monty was unblemished. He was, after all, the immaculate child of beauty that they had created. They believed, as did we all, that he was sheer perfection, and he wanted them to go on believing just that. Anything less would not be tolerable.

  This much I either witnessed firsthand or learned from Denise. The rest is sketchy. When he left our bedroom that late night, sneaking out through the window over the porch, there was no doubt in my mind that he was going to meet Denise. I could not prove this, but, as I say, there is no doubt in my mind. I assumed that she had finally coerced him into repeating their secret act. He was gone so long that my body betrayed me and I drifted off to sleep. My image of him when he returned is dreamy, sleep clouded. He shucked off his clothes and climbed into his bed. He whispered my name, but I did not respond. I sensed that that was what he wanted, for me to be asleep.

  Her mother found her. It must have been the ultimate horror for her. Her greatest fear played out before her pathetic eyes. The screams awoke everybody but Monty, who had, after all, had a late night. Denise was at the water’s edge, face down, unmoving. Her leg braces were embedded in the mud and silt that shored the lake. The jet-black hair that I had once longed to touch was hanging, matted and lifeless, from her skull. There were no secret rainbows in that hair. There was only death. We were drawn by her mother’s screams, and I glimpsed the body before my mother covered my eyes and sent me back to the cabin. As I left, I heard my mother whisper to my father, “Thank God Monty didn’t see.”

  Monty was in his bed, sleeping soundly, the covers pulled over his head. At the foot of his bed, I saw his shorts and T-shirt balled up on the floor. I picked them up and unwadded them. They were still damp. I smelled them. They smelled of the lake: dank, mossy, and earthen.

  And I looked down at my sleeping brother. And I knew that I would let nothing deny me the pleasure of basking in his golden light.

  I loved him. Brighter than the sun burned, I loved him.

  FORTY-ONE

  We meet in the interview room. She is much younger than I would have suspected. Quite attractive. From her name, Anne Hunter, I somehow expected her to look, well, primitive. She places a digital voice recorder on the table between us. I stare at it. Watch the green LED blink its approval.

  “So, Adam, why do you want to do an interview?”

  I have not asked her to call me Adam; she has taken the liberty on her own. It is mildly annoying.

  “I want to tell my side of the story, but I also want something from you.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Turn off the recorder.”

  “There’s no point to an interview if I can’t document what you’re saying.”

  “Turn it off,” I say. And she does. After all, I am a probable murderer telling her to do so. “I’ve read your coverage of my trial. It’s been quite good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You were right, by the way.”

  “About what? I always like to know when I’m right about something.”

  “About Leo Hewitt. He is involved in my case. He was there when I was arrested.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Leo Hewitt put together the case against me; he seemed to take a personal interest in it.”

  “That would be because he’s sick of working traffic court.”

  “Why would the prosecutors deny his involvement with the case?”

  “Because he’s an embarrassment to them.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No. Tell me. Tell me everything you know about Leo Hewitt.”

  And she did. And after a while, she reached over and turned on her recorder and we began the interview in earnest. She asked her first question, and I knew what it would be. And I knew what my answer would be.

  “Did you kill your wife?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I loved my wife.”

  FORTY-TWO

  The other cubicles were deserted. The wan light from his lamp gave Leo’s single cubicle a lonesome glow. He had his cigar smoldering away in the chipped ashtray, and the furniture catalog spread out in front of him, but he did not see the yards of red leather and planes of teak, the massive executive desks and expansive breakfronts. Instead, Leo saw the courtroom. In the theater of his mind, the trial played itself out before him. But the parts had been recast. For tonight’s performance, the part of the assistant district attorney will be played by Leo Hewitt. And at the end of the third act, when the curtain fell, it would be Leo from whom the audience demanded a curtain call.

  A uniformed cop approached Leo’s cubicle. He peered over the side, his thick eyebrows raised in amusement, and watched Leo daydream.

  “Hey, Leo, you still here? Did you ever get that promotion?”

  Leo, despite this unpleasant interruption, retrieved his cigar and managed a thin smile. “Not yet, Donny.”

  “Well, don’t forget ...”

  Leo puffed the cigar back to life and played along with the old joke. “Don’t worry, on my meteoric rise to the top, I’ll take you with me.”

  “Just so you don’t forget. Say, listen, you got a message from a Mister . . . Adam Lee. Says he wants to meet with ya.”

  Leo cocked an eyebrow at Donny. “Oh yeah?”

  In the interview room, Adam sat at the bare table. A guard opened the door and let Leo in. Leo entered quietly. He took the chair across from Adam and looked at him expectantly, waiting for Adam to explain why he’d called him here. Although Leo thought he had a pretty good idea. The case was going badly for them. Still, it was damn odd that Adam would contact him and not Monty. Especially when you took into consideration that Leo officially had nothing to do with the case. But curiosity got the better of him, and here he was sitting in silence with the accused, knowing that if Bob or Paula found out, his ass would be gone for good this time. So why didn’t the motherfucker speak? Some pathetic mind game to see who would blink first? Leo decided he didn’t play that game and started out on the offensive.

  “Look, Mr. Lee, if you’re ready to cut a deal, you really oughta have your lawyer here. And besides that, we’re not gonna cut you a deal. Mr. Lee, we got you.”

  “I read the papers, Mr. Hewitt. They kicked you off the case. To put it bluntly, you couldn’t cut a deal with a chain-saw. That is, unless I were trying to beat a jaywalking
ticket.”

  “You know, we haven’t decided yet whether we’re gonna push for the death penalty. Do you know what form of execution this state practices? Lethal injection. But I bet you knew that already. And for some reason, I kind of think it doesn’t worry you too much. Now, if it were something unrefined—death by electrocution, say—I think that would bother you. Dying that way. Because it’s not elegant. It’s not refined. I think you would find it . . . pedestrian, beneath you. Of course, you’re just as dead either way. And I gotta tell you, for an act of murder as cold-blooded and premeditated as yours, we’re leaning more and more toward that every day.” Leo wasn’t sure he had used the word pedestrian the right way. He knew it meant someone who was walking, but he was pretty sure it meant “ordinary” or “common,” too. He wanted to show Adam that he wasn’t the only one who knew a couple of two-dollar words, and if he had fucked it up, Lee wasn’t letting on.

  “There is no we, Mr. Hewitt. There is only you. And regardless of the form it might take, the death penalty does not scare me. I’m innocent.”

  Leo got up to leave and said, “You called me down here for this? This is the news flash? Suspect claims he’s innocent?”

  Leo motioned for the guard to open the door.

  “How would you describe yourself, Leo?” Leo waited for the guard, ignoring Adam. “What kind of man are you?”

  “Gimme a break.”

  “Hungry? I think I would describe you as hungry. You put this whole case together, didn’t you?”

  “It was teamwork.”

  “You don’t sound very convincing. Would you describe yourself as ambitious? Anxious to prove yourself?”

  “Sure, whatever you say.”

  “Looking for that one case, that one opportunity to put yourself over the top. To prove yourself.”

  Leo motioned the guard away and turned back to Adam. “You got a point?”

  “Yes, I have a point. Monty Lee is one of the most successful and highly respected trial lawyers in this state. He’s connected. He plays golf with the governor. And the best he could do for his own brother at that critical moment was the errand boy at the DA’s office?”