Easy Innocence

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Now, her face illuminated by the theater lights, Lauren knew better. The mirror would never appear. People carried their mirrors on the in-side. They should. Most people were ugly. She raised the brush again and leaned toward the glass. She’d bought the mascara at Sephora last week for twenty-five dollars. It was good stuff. Everyone used it. She tried again to apply it, taking care there were no clumps or goop, but the tremor in her hand wouldn’t stop.

  She took a breath to steady herself. She couldn’t fall apart. Everything depended on her. Where was he? She’d called him an hour ago. He always called back. A chirp from the computer sounded, alerting her to an incoming e-mail. He did have a Treo. Maybe he was emailing.

  She went into her bedroom, a lavender and white kingdom with a huge four poster bed. The dainty print canopy matched the quilt which blended with the curtains and the carpet. A collection of teddy bears and other stuffed animals were piled in a corner. Her mother kept telling her to get rid of them, to give them to needy children. But Lauren couldn’t bear to part with them. She’d named them all.

  Next to the menagerie was an arrangement of shelves, drawers, and desk, holding her CD-DVD player, TV, and computer. She clicked on the e-mail. It wasn’t him. She read the message, made some notes, and typed a message back. Then she rummaged in her bag for her cell and made a call.

  When she finished, she popped in a CD and lay down on her bed. John Mayer’s mellow voice welled out of Bose speakers. She closed her eyes. What was the last thing Sara heard before she died?

  ***

  It was the beginning of junior year. The toughest year, everyone said. Term papers, ACTs, grades that counted. The powder puff football game in the Forest Preserve was the last frivolous activity before they knuckled down. Even so, Sara hadn’t wanted to go. Neither did Lauren, but she thought it was important to make an appearance. Sara wasn’t convinced until the night before when she called Lauren to say she’d come after all.

  “How come you changed your mind?” Lauren asked.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” Sara said.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I—I just want to talk.”

  Lauren and Sara had drifted apart recently. After being best friends for years, she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the way it had to be. Now Sara seemed to be opening the door again. At least a crack.

  “Okay,” Lauren replied. “We don’t have to stay long. We don’t even have to play.”

  The morning of the game was one of those late summer days that breaks your heart with its perfection. A warm sun, a soft, cloudless blue sky, the trees and bushes still plump and green. Lauren waited for Sara at the field. They’d be in and out in a flash, then head over to Starbucks.

  She hadn’t counted on the seniors. She didn’t know they were planning to haze them that day. When Heather and Claire ran up, breathlessly whispering what they’d overheard, Lauren scowled. How could her friends be so excited? They seemed almost hungry for the chance to be humiliated. Lauren wanted to leave right then. She should have.

  Two seniors sauntered over, both holding cans of beer. Lauren knew them; uninspiring girls whose interests were limited to boys, clothes, and cars. One of them twirled a lock of hair. They wanted Sara, they said.

  “Sara?” Lauren replied. “What for?”

  The girls exchanged glances. “She needs some attitude readjustment,” one said.

  Lauren crossed her arms.

  “She thinks she’s hot shit,” the other chimed in. “It’s time to teach her a lesson.”

  “Sara? Are you kidding? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You know.” The first girl threw her a meaningful look.

  An icicle of fear slid down Lauren’s spine. “No. I don’t.” Sara was beautiful. Every boy in school probably had wet dreams about her. But Sara didn’t flirt. Or lead them on. Lauren had seen her back off when some guy mustered up the courage to approach her. Still, that didn’t stop people from being jealous.

  “You ever heard about invasion of privacy?” The second girl took a swig of beer.

  So that was it. Lauren broke eye contact with her.

  “She’s got to stop messing around in everybody’s business. Trying to know it all,” the first girl said. “She’s not Diane Sawyer. Time for her to realize that.”

  Lauren shrugged, as if it couldn’t mean less to her. Except it did. Sara had been getting a reputation for asking personal questions. Trying to find out who was doing what with whom. She read other people’s notes, and someone even accused her of stealing their diary, although why anyone was dumb enough to bring a diary to school was another thing. Lauren thought she knew why Sara was doing it and warned her to tone it down. Sara countered that she wasn’t the only one. Heather, for example, was worse. But Heather wasn’t beautiful like Sara.

  Now Lauren steeled herself. “What are you going to do?”

  “Actually, you’re going to do it. You and her other little friends.”

  When they told her what they wanted her to do, Lauren didn’t like it. Still, if she didn’t go along, the seniors would make her life miserable. Sara’s too. That was something they didn’t need. So when Sara arrived, Lauren told her to be cool and just go with the program. Let them take her into the clearing and put the bucket on her head. Sara hesitated but finally agreed once Lauren promised it would be over in a few minutes and everyone would tell her what a good sport she’d been. Sara always wanted everyone to like her.

  Lauren was sure Sara would find her way back to the field. But then she heard the clang of the bat against the bucket. And what sounded like screams. Not just screams of surprise or annoyance. Lauren knew they were screams of pain. Unbearable, excruciating pain.

  ***

  Lauren turned the music up. Shake it off, she ordered herself. She went to her closet, threw open the door, and pulled out a pair of jeans and her Prada jacket. She glanced at the clock-radio on her nightstand. Almost seven. Her parents had strict rules about being home on school nights, even if she didn’t have any homework. Which was usually the case. Unless there was a paper, Lauren could get most of her work done during classes or study hall. Whoever said high school was hard must have been stupid. She slipped on her clothes, then shut down the computer.

  As she crept down the stairs, she stayed close to the banister. The stairs didn’t creak on that side. The wicked witch was talking on the phone in the kitchen. Lauren pictured her mother perched on a stool near the wall where the granite counter met the Mexican wall tiles. She’d have downed two glasses of wine by now, but her makeup and hair would still be perfect. So too, the body she spent hours sculpting at the gym, just so she could replicate what Lauren took for granted. Lauren couldn’t resist a smirk.

  The hard part was getting out the door. Usually she went out through the garage, but that meant walking through the kitchen. If she was quiet, she could probably duck out the front. The red alarm signal would blink, but with her mother on the phone, chances were she wouldn’t notice.

  She slunk past the Chagall in the hall. Her parents never tired of telling everyone it was an original, and if anyone had the gall to ask how much it cost—which was exactly what they wanted—they’d paste on a bland look and say, “Oh, that’s something we never discuss.”

  She got to the door and stopped. No warm, mouth-watering aromas drifted out from the kitchen. Only the antiseptic smell of cleaner and furniture polish. Homey smells were for company only. Her mother had taken to bringing things home from FoodStuffs. There was no reason to cook, her mother claimed. Lauren’s father rarely made it home for dinner, and he didn’t like to eat things that had been sitting out. The first part was true. Her father never came home before ten. But the “sitting out” part was bullshit. The meals her mother brought home from FoodStuffs had been “sitting out” in the store for hours, sometimes days.

  Lauren listened to her mother’s conversation. It was about Uncle Fred; how he died in the fire a couple of weeks a
go. Just when he was struggling to come back from the stroke. Lauren had loved Uncle Fred, and she cried when she heard the news. When she was younger and her parents were out of town, he’d take her out for dinner. Sometimes a movie. But then there was the stroke, and he wasn’t the same. Her mother thought that’s how the fire started. He probably turned on the stove to cook something and forgot all about it.

  Then Sara was killed by that creep a few days later, and Lauren cried again. Why did death take the people she loved? If this was what life had in store for her, she didn’t want any part of it.

  Now she pulled the door open, slipped out, and quietly closed it. She skipped down the three concrete pads over the goldfish pond. Her mother always corrected her. They were koi, not goldfish. How many other people had fishponds in their front yard? Then again, how many other people lived in a house like this?

  She opened the door to her Land Rover and got in. Keying the engine would give her away. Even her half-drunk mother couldn’t help but notice. She started the car anyway.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GEORGIA’S HEART pounded, her palms were sweaty, and it was only with a huge effort that she was able to put one foot in front of other. She had been inside Cook County jail before, but each time she went in, her chest tightened and she hyperventilated. The air seemed so much thinner inside. She couldn’t wait to get out. Thank God she could. She thought about the tenuous line that separated cops and criminals and shivered.

  This time, though, she’d asked to come down. She wanted to interview Cam Jordan. She arranged to meet his sister, Ruth, at the visitor’s entrance after she checked out the crime scene.

  She hadn’t seen much. The clearing in the Forest Preserve where Sara Long was killed was fifty yards from the field where the powder puff football game took place. The only hint it had been disturbed were bits of yellow crime scene tape twisted among the fallen leaves. They’d released it fast, O’Malley said. Then again, there wasn’t any reason not to. They had their man. The had their evidence.

  She trod carefully, dodging shafts of sunlight that penetrated the still dense, leafy ceiling. In heater cases, the village cops usually brought in techs from Nortaf or the Crime Lab rather than process the scene themselves. It was safer.

  The ground was matted with leaves, but underneath it was bone dry. No chance of footprints. Even if there were, they probably belonged to the girls who brought Sara here. The techs would have looked for hair, fibers, even skull fragments, anything that didn’t belong. She wished she knew what they’d bagged, apart from the baseball bat and Cam Jordan’s shirt. She sighed, missing the access and information that came with being a cop.

  An hour later, she met Ruth Jordan at 26th and California. They introduced themselves while the guards ran their ID’s and made them fill out three forms each.

  Cam’s sister was a small, slender woman with what Georgia called worry-hair: frizzy, mostly gray strands that looked like they had been scratched and pulled and chewed in frustration. An equally worried expression lined her face.

  “Cam’s fifteen years younger than me,” Ruth said as they sat on a bench. Her voice was quiet and sad, and Georgia had to lean forward to catch everything. “My parents waited a long time between kids. It must have been like having a grandson, so many years had passed.” She looked at Georgia. “You have kids?”

  “No.” It came out fast. Georgia avoided looking at the woman.

  “Me neither. I guess with Cam—well…” She ran her fingers across her forehead, wiping away nonexistent sweat.

  A burly guard called Ruth’s name, and they both stood up. After searching their bags, he gave them a sticker for their jackets and motioned them to follow him. As he led them outside and around to another building, Ruth added, “I’m not sure you’ll get much. He won’t talk. I can hardly get him to talk to me.”

  The guard took them inside a gloomy building, up a flight of stairs, and down a long hallway. Beneath Georgia’s shoes the floor felt sticky. The smell was part dumpster and part gym locker, overlaid with the stench of urine and stale smoke. She breathed through her mouth.

  She heard a few catcalls and whistles as she passed. Most of Cook County jail was divided into wards consisting of large, well-lit day rooms ringed by cells. Tables and benches were bolted to the floor, and a TV was mounted high on the wall. Prisoners spent most of their time lounging at the tables. A wire cage the size of a parking lot booth occupied the front of the room—it was there that guards kept watch on their prisoners. Georgia caught a glimpse of the bathrooms as she passed. Just a row of toilets. No stalls, no seats, no privacy.

  The guard stopped at a closed door off the central passageway. Georgia peered through a small window in the door. They’d moved Cam Jordan from his cell, and he sat hunched over a table, his legs shackled. She was surprised they’d brought him to an interview room; she’d been prepared for the dingy glass partitions of the visitors’ area. The ceiling of the room was full of exposed pipes covered with chipped beige paint. Everything in Cook County was beige, she thought. The walls, the floor, the uniforms, sometimes even the people.

  The guard opened the door. Cam started to rock back and forth. His brown hair was lank and greasy, and his beige jumpsuit hung on his frame. He might have been handsome, given the proper grooming and clothes, if not for his eyes. They were dark and glittering, fixed on some inner vision.

  Ruth walked over and gently squeezed his shoulder. Cam stared straight ahead. Ruth sat across from him. Georgia sat next to her. Ruth pressed her hands and feet together. She was holding herself together with effort.

  “How are you, Cammy?” She said.

  He stopped rocking and issued a series of raspy, phlegmy coughs.

  “He’s sick!” Ruth said sharply. She turned to the guard. “Please, can you do something for him?”

  “We got nursing personnel 24 hours a day. They’re aware of his—his condition,” the guard replied.

  Ruth shot Georgia a helpless look. The guard was referring to the medical staff in Division VIII, the ward where the mentals were housed. But the docs there were looking for things like schizophrenia, homicidal tendencies, and other psychotic compulsions. They’d probably just laugh at a cough.

  “Are you eating all your food, Cammy?” Ruth tried again.

  No answer.

  She bit her lip. “Isn’t there any way we can get him out of here?”

  “What was his bail?” Georgia asked.

  Ruth looked down at her hands as if she’d just noticed she’d folded them. “The judge set it at three million dollars.”

  Three million meant business. Big business. “Your lawyer could ask him to lower it.”

  “He said he’ll try, but not to expect much.”

  Georgia nodded. No one wanted the man who might have murdered a North Shore teenager walking around.

  Ruth turned to her brother. “Cammy, this lady is going to try and help you. Her name is Georgia. Just like the state. You remember the states, don’t you?”

  “Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland…”

  “That’s good, sweetie. Very good.”

  Cam’s expression didn’t change, but his rocking slowed.

  Ruth looked at Georgia. “Sometimes when he’s relaxed—and in his own environment, he’ll answer questions. And, once in a while, I catch him smiling. But here…” Her voice trailed off.

  “He lives with you?”

  She nodded. “In the basement. It’s finished, of course. Nice carpet, paneling on the walls. Soft lights. Quiet. He likes it there. It’s a big room, and he has his own bathroom. With a shower.” She emphasized the last fact like she was proud of it.

  “What does he do all day?”

  “When he’s home, he plays games. Board games for kids. You know, like Candyland, Chutes and Ladders. Connect Four. He loves them.”

  “By himself?”

  “Sometimes I play. He watches TV, too. And he’s trying to learn how to ride a bike. But
most of the time, he takes walks.”

  “Alone?”

  “Sometimes. He has a route he usually follows.”

  “Through the Forest Preserve?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They’re both gone. My father died about eight years ago. Mother went a year later.”

  “Run, hide.” Cam piped up. “Papa has the belt.”

  Georgia and Ruth exchanged looks. “My father refused to—well, he never really accepted Cam. He thought he could work it out of him—make him better.”

  “He beat him.”

  “And the beat goes on,” Cam chanted softly off-key. His voice was thin, sing-song, as high-pitched as a girl’s.

  “He uses songs to communicate sometimes,” Ruth explained.

  Georgia wondered if there was some way to use that.

  “Our father was—a strict disciplinarian. He was a born-again Christian.” Ruth looked at her hands, but Georgia heard the disdain. “I’m Catholic.”

  No wonder the kid was crazy. A religious nut for a father who tried to beat Cam’s mental illness out of him. Too bad it wasn’t the kind of thing that would sway a jury. Aloud she said, “I know Cam is a registered sex offender. How did that happen?”

  Cam’s rocking sped up again.

  Ruth shrank into her chair. “It was about six years ago. He was… I already told you. He liked to take walks in the Forest Preserve. I went with him sometimes, you know? And he was fine. We’d just walk along the path, pick up rocks, things like that. But one day—I wasn’t with him—we got a call from the police. He’d been well, masturbating behind a tree, and this couple saw him. A man and a woman. They were jogging. When they told him to fuck off, he didn’t do anything. Or go anywhere. Just finished what he was doing. The woman thought that was ‘aggressive.’”