The Outcast Son

by Jacobo Priegue

  “You need to stop now!” he interrupted me. “This is madness! You’re insane, Laura, you truly are! You’re broken! Your brain is damaged, and you imagine things! But I still want to help you, I really do!”

  “So, you don’t like the conversation anymore, do you?” I said. “I listened to you and your Andrew McFucking Whatever, so you’ll listen to me now.” He shut his mouth and stared at me with an expression very similar to disgust. “You hated Jaime. I’ve always suspected it, but now I see it clearly. He was always an inconvenience for you. You never loved him. Ever. You’ve always believed there was something wrong with him.” My voice was louder and louder. “You are just like them! You are like the heartless bastards who abandoned him! You still believe he was a wizard! Or a warlock or a mage or whatever your troubled mind thinks he was! He was a child! He was only a child, dammit! A child! Scared and alone and craving for love!” The teardrops blurred my vision.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Laura,” he said, pretending to be offended. “I loved him. I loved Jaime. But you’re not well. I see it now. You’re blaming me for your own failures.”

  “Get out!” I shouted. “Get the fuck out!” And he left.

  He was lying. I couldn’t know if he had killed Jaime just yet, but I was sure he was lying. He had never loved Jaime. I thought he had, or I wanted to believe so, but I was wrong, and I was now realising that my own enthusiasm had made me blind to Mark’s true feelings towards our son. I was so excited about adopting him, about becoming his mum, about rescuing him from death, that I couldn’t see beyond Mark’s smiley face. He was scared of him. From the beginning. From the very moment we learned what the people in the slum thought about the boy. Mark was too embarrassed to admit it. He wanted to impress me back then, and he knew his seduction game would be over if he told me he believed in those tales.

  I couldn’t shake off the cloud of uncertainty and doubt that seemed to be blinding me, but one thing was clear: it had been either him or me, and Detective Hassan seemed to agree. She came to visit me a day later, when I was still trying to put all the pieces together. I repeated in my mind my conversation with Mark a thousand times, looking for a lapse, an incoherence, a misplaced word or any unusual expressions in his eyes, anything that could elucidate why he was lying and what he was trying to hide, but I found nothing.

  I hadn’t slept that night. My eyes ached. My head felt as if it were about to implode as a melon under too much pressure. I know I looked terrible because Detective Hassan couldn’t hide her shock when she saw my face.

  “Are you all right, Mrs Johnson?” she asked. “Are they treating you well?”

  “I’m not too bad, considering,” I answered, “but thanks for asking.”

  “I came to catch up with you, but if this is not a good moment, I can come back.”

  “No!” I interrupted. “The moment couldn’t be better!”

  “I had an interesting conversation with your husband,” she said.

  I wasn’t surprised, but I asked nevertheless, “Really? And why was it so interesting?”

  “We were talking about your last trip to Peru,” she said. “When you told me about the people you saw at the airport, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find out much about it. I can’t go to Peru to investigate this only with your testimony, and I don’t have much to say to the police there to help me either. I mean, I can’t just call and tell them I’m looking for a family of four who was pointing at a tourist at the airport, can I?”

  “I wonder what Mark had to say about them.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s the interesting part. He told me he didn’t see anybody pointing at you.”

  “What? Why would he lie about this?”

  “That’s exactly the question I want to ask you,” she said.

  “Oh, so now you don’t believe me? I saw those people! And so did Mark! I actually stopped him from approaching them because they were scaring Jaime!”

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I’m just trying to understand this mess. There’s no doubt one of you is lying about this – and most likely about what happened to Jaime too – and I need to find out why.” She looked at me, tilting her head almost imperceptibly, but just enough to show a gesture of stubborn curiosity. It wasn’t just her job: when she said she’d get to the bottom of this, she actually meant it.

  “My husband is lying,” I said. “I don’t know why or how much or about what, but I do know he’s lying.”

  “I know he is,” she confessed. “I’m going to be honest with you, Mrs Johnson. I’m more eager to believe you than him, but your version has important lapses I can’t ignore.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there. As you know, I passed out. I’ve told you all I know.”

  “Yes, but your story doesn’t match with what I saw. You were awake when I got to the scene. You were unwell, but you were conscious.”

  “I know you said that, but I can’t remember any of it. It’s just as if it were wiped away from my memory.”

  “Do you think you’d remember if I took you there?”

  “Can you do that?” I asked.

  “I can get permission, yes.”

  “I’m not sure I want to come back there. He was my child, you know? I’m not recovered.”

  “I understand, Mrs Johnson, but you need to remember. You’re the only one who can unveil the truth, if it’s other than what I’ve heard from your husband’s mouth, that is.”

  “When would that be?” I asked.

  “Soon. As soon as I get the permissions and the paperwork done.”

  “Am I seeing…? Do you think I’d be able to…?”

  “I’m afraid you won’t. They don’t live there anymore. The house is on the market now.”

  “Is he selling it?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Let him sell it. I don’t think I could continue living there anyway. Not after what happened. But I wonder if we could ask Mark to bring the baby.”

  “That won’t be possible,” she interrupted me. “They could interfere with the investigation.”

  “He could bring him here, then! I need to see him!”

  “Your husband has been advised to keep your baby away from you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “They think you could harm the baby.”

  The pain of my nails poking into the palm of my hand made me realise I was clenching my fists too hard. “Who thinks that?” I shouted.

  “Mark’s lawyer.”

  “Lawyer?” I can’t say I was surprised. “What does he need a lawyer for? Has he been charged?”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Detective Hassan answered. “He’s just receiving legal advice.”

  “Why? If he’s so sure he’s innocent, why should he?”

  “Well, it’s not only Jaime’s death he worries about, if I’m guessing right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re still married, and you have a son in common.”

  “Are you suggesting Mark wants to take my baby from me?”

  “He might try to become his only legal guardian if you go to prison.”

  “No, that can’t be,” I said. “He’s not that mean. He can be selfish sometimes, but he wouldn’t do that.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t discard the possibility,” she said. “It’ll save you the shock when it finally happens.”

  “You need to help me!” I said. “Please!”

  “Don’t beg. You better save that for the jury. I’m taking no sides here. I just want the truth. I’m not here to judge you or your husband or anybody.”

  “But you believe me!”

  “I believe what evidence says, and the evidence we’ve got at the moment points at you.”

  “But why me? Why not Mark?”

  “I told you,” she said. “We’ve got a witness, and the evidence matches his version.”

  Chapter 26

  The scene

  The night
was long and restless. Even Jane seemed to be having a bad dream, although she wouldn’t wake up. I couldn’t sleep. Jaime’s face chased me in the dark. I envisioned his absent eyes staring at me from the corner, hiding amongst the long shadows of the bars in the window. “Jaime,” I whispered. But the night swallowed his name as if my son had never happened.

  To visit the house. Our house. Our home. The idea would keep me awake picturing all the situations my brain could imagine. “Jaime.” His name was cold and heavy in my mouth. It was hard to pronounce. It was as if my ears didn’t want to hear it. Too sad to be mentioned. Sometimes a dim drowsiness brought me the start of dreams too ephemeral to be remembered, and in the short lapse of the distress, I still hoped for my boy to be alive. But a ruthless reminiscence of my hand on his face and the cold blade of the knife in my belly brought me back to reality. He was gone. Forever. And in a few hours I would visit the house where I had seen him grow for six years, as soon as the morning light burned away the night shadows.

  They handcuffed me and put me in a car.

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked.

  Detective Hassan shrugged. She was accompanied by two other people I had never seen before. It looked very official. Very professional. Everything I saw made me believe they were following a strict protocol. I was safe in the car. It was a long, mute trip, almost peaceful after a night of insomnia and bad dreams. There was only the monotonous noise of the engine and the wheels rolling over the asphalt.

  I was exhausted. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, and when I opened them again I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was in Cusco with Marcus and Jaime. It was sunny but not too hot, and a faint breeze caressed our skin. Jaime smiled. He looked so happy and full of life. He reached with his hands to hold his beloved little brother, and I nodded. I could feel my smile covering my entire face. It was lovely to see the two of them together.

  Then Jaime changed his face. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was grim. He held Marcus by his little neck. I couldn’t move. “No!” I tried to shout, but my voice was stuck in my throat. Jaime pulled something from his pocket. Something shiny. A blade. “Jaime, stop!” Words jammed in my lungs unable to come out, rotting and polluting the very oxygen in all my cells. Jaime raised the knife in his right hand.

  “Stop!” My desperate scream woke me up.

  “Mrs Johnson!” Detective Hassan said. “Are you all right?”

  “Jaime!” I shouted as I looked around. “Where’s Jaime?” Nobody answered. “What’s happening? Where am I?”

  “You’re in a police car,” Detective Hassan said. “We’re going to your house.”

  “And Jaime?” I said. Detective Hassan and the other two people looked at each other in silence, my question silently answered. There wasn’t any Jaime.

  “Here,” Detective Hassan said. “Pull over.”

  The car slowed down, and they parked it right at the door. A notice at the tiny front garden emerged amongst the weeds and the abandoned grass. It read For sale.

  “Mrs Johnson,” Detective Hassan said, “please get out of the car.”

  I did as she said. The driver had the keys of my house in his hands. We followed.

  “I want you to think about that evening, Mrs Johnson,” Detective Hassan said. “Anything you remember could be of paramount importance. Any detail, even if you think it’s meaningless.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I couldn’t stop looking at the notice. He was selling it. I had spent my last six years in this house. Some of the happiest memories in my life were locked there, in front of me, behind the wooden door separating the garden from the hallway. I wouldn’t be able to think about what had happened on that evening if I couldn’t put aside those good moments, so I thought about our arguments. It was unpleasant to try to remember things I wanted to forget. Some of them seemed already forgotten, but they sprouted from every corner of my mind, and the happy life I thought I had vanished as a veil of innocence.

  Perhaps I’d be able to remember. Images of arguments came to my mind. It hadn’t been easy to raise Jaime. He did seem to have a monster inside, a wild fuel feeding him when he thought something or someone could hurt him. But the only monsters were the adults he stumbled across: his biological parents; his neighbours in Peru; his school teachers; and the worst of all of them, the ones he trusted the most, Mark and I.

  The door opened. It took me a while to recognise my own house. The floor was covered by an expensive new carpet, and there was a strong smell of paint. The walls were stainless white, and the original Victorian glass had at last been replaced by double-glazed windows. Even the lampshades and the curtains were new and very different from the ones we used to have.

  It’d be difficult to remember anything in a house I didn’t feel as mine anymore. But as I walked through the hallway and got to the living room, ephemeral flashes came to my mind. At first, it was just the same memories I could already recall when in my cell, but they seemed neater and clearer in their actual background. My brain only had to change the colour of the carpet, the disposition of the furniture and add a few stains to the walls and some toys here and there to take me to the very moment everything happened. But it was still the same memory. Still my hand holding Jaime’s face and pushing him away from Marcus, the dry crack on the wooden table and the cold blade soaking my flesh and slashing my skin open.

  Something else came to my mind, though. It wasn’t a memory, but a feeling. At the moment I thought that it was impossible, that Jaime would be unconscious or dead after such a blow. I thought I heard the bones of his neck breaking with the impact. But now I knew it was real. Jaime had survived the impact. He’d moved his head before I fainted. That made sense. He was still alive and able to move. I walked towards the exact spot where I had fallen on to the floor and summoned the whole scene once and again. It wasn’t working. It was useless.

  Detective Hassan remained quiet, watching me and examining all my movements from a close distance, and I was about to tell her we’d better go when I heard the ring of the doorbell. Mark hadn’t changed it. It was the same sound I’d heard that day. It had woken me up. I was in pain. Bleeding. Mark would open the door and let somebody in. It was Detective Hassan.

  “I remember you!” I said to her.

  “Pardon?”

  “When you rang the doorbell! I remember you entering the house!”

  “That’s great, Mrs Johnson. What else do you remember?”

  “I was unconscious,” I said, “and the sound of the doorbell woke me up.” Detective Hassan stared at me, her half-closed eyes focused as if she were trying to activate her X-ray vision.

  “I remember Mark opened the door and you came in,” I carried on. “I was confused. My hands were covered in blood. My own blood. I remember the pain and your voice and Mark taking you to the place where Jaime was.”

  “Mrs Johnson,” Detective Hassan interrupted, “I know that part, I was here. I’m more interested in what happened before I arrived.”

  “Don’t you understand?” I asked. “I remember having woken up! That proves I was unconscious before you rang the doorbell!”

  “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t prove anything,” she said. “It’s only a memory, I’m afraid, and even if you could prove it actually happened as you said, it wouldn’t be enough to exonerate you.”

  “But it would! If I wasn’t conscious when my son was murdered!”

  “In any case, there’s no way you can prove you weren’t conscious.”

  I stood quiet. It proved it to me. Or so I thought. Jaime had been killed after I had passed out. I had to be innocent. I remembered when I talked to the detective. That was the only lapse in my story, the only incoherence between my version and the scene Detective Hassan had found when she arrived, and now it had been sorted out.

  “Mrs Johnson,” she said, “there must be something else you remember. Before you fainted. A detail, a comment, a noise, a feeling. Anything.”

  “I told you everything,”
I said, “and in as much detail as I could.”

  “Yes!” she said. “But now you’re in your house again. You need to think. There must be something else!” Detective Hassan’s face reddened, and her gestures were quick and awkward.

  “Well,” I said. “I’ve got these flashes. It might be nothing.”

  “Just tell me!” she shouted.

  “When I woke up in the hospital and tried to recall everything, I had this feeling. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a memory, it was just a flash of incoherent pictures, but I saw Jaime’s head being smashed on the table several times, or one time in repeated images. Never mind, it was just my mind fighting the shock, most likely.”

  “Where were you in those flashes? Were you next to Jaime?”

  “I don’t know. It felt like seeing the same blow from many different perspectives,” I said. “But I don’t think my hand was holding Jaime’s head in any of these flashes.”

  “It’s not much,” she said. She believed in me. I could’ve told her I actually saw Mark killing Jaime, and I’d chosen not to. She empathised with me. I was a good woman, and I just wanted to find out the truth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Chapter 27

  The trial

  “…her son was unconscious, lying helpless on the floor, and the defendant, wounded as she was, leaped on his fragile little body, grabbed him by the neck, and hit his face – his innocent boy’s face – on the table. Not only once, but again, and again, and again. She lost her nerve because she had been stabbed, so she killed her own boy purposely and savagely. That’s the kind of woman Mrs Johnson is. She killed the boy she was bound to protect, the boy she had capriciously taken from his motherland to – according to her – ‘save him and provide him with a better life,’ with the consequences we all know just too well.”

  The jury looked at me, and so did the judge. All of them at the same time. They frowned. Their faces serious. Their eyes half-closed. They were inspecting me, scanning and analysing my face in search of any sign of doubt, regret or madness.