Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  “Does DNA get old? How do you know about that?”

  “Hell, love, I don’t know if it gets old.” She shook her head with irritation and rose to cross the room and open the door. “It has to grow old. Isn’t it alive?” She stood in the doorway, very still, looking out at the gold and orange beginning of the sunset, the sun just starting to slip into the tops of the mountains. “I do know it’s not going to be Jesus, though, Kiero. Give the doctor credit for being a raging genius, but it’s still not going to be Jesus. You don’t have to be Saint Peter to know that the thing about Jesus that made him whatever he is wasn’t in his DNA. Even if she makes it to delivery, which she won’t, that’s what she’s going to get: a baby that won’t be the Jesus that lived before any more than I am, or you are, or Crawl. So. . . let’s just grow the hell up.”

  Kieran stared at her, waiting for her to turn and face him.

  “There’s only two big parts to this,” she said, raising her voice but still not turning around. “And neither of them is really hard. One, we stop an old lady and a teenage kid. And two, we borrow the kid for about twenty-four hours. Probably not even that.”

  “I know,” Kieran said. He rose to his feet. “I know it’ll be okay.” He moved toward her. “I’m not going to stay awake worrying about teenage Jesus, Bren.”

  “So what are you worried about?” she said, turning, at last, to face him. “You’re thinking something.”

  He stopped. His fingertips slipped into the pockets of his jeans. She said, “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I’m thinking I’m surprised at how much you’re enjoying this. I’m surprised at how much you enjoy having that gun in your hand. I’m thinking this started out to be not a big thing, now it’s kidnapping, and you don’t seem real bothered with that. Nobody does. Everybody’s enjoying it as though we’re still back talking about knocking off something that’s barely a crime.”

  “Enjoying what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes, raising her voice. “Enjoying finally getting the chance of ten million lifetimes? Enjoying getting a chance that gives us as good a lock as anybody will ever have on an easy two and a half million U.S. dollars?” Her hands swept the air in frustration. “Enjoying getting that money for us, for you and me? Money for our future? Money to let you help your mother? Get her a beautiful place to live? Get her well again? Money to say, ‘You never have to worry about anything again,’ for God’s sake! Is that what I shouldn’t be enjoying?”

  “No,” he said. “I can see all that. We’re just thinking about different things now, you and me. Maybe that’s it. You’re thinking about the money and slapping the chamber of that gun open like it was a toy. I’m thinking about kidnapping a pregnant teenager in the U.S. at gunpoint and stealing millions of dollars. It’s all changed so much, and somebody should take it serious, so I am.”

  “Stealing from who? Stealing from a thief who’s richer than God, the kind of person who’d do that to a sixteen-year-old kid? Not just a kid, but his own niece? Hell, Kieran, what if he did that to your sister, Colleen? She was sixteen, wasn’t she? So that’s not hard to imagine. What if he made her pregnant from a test tube, would that clear it up for you, what kind of bastard he is? Him and her aunt, too, because they’ve got to be in it together.”

  Kieran’s face was flushed. He didn’t speak.

  “Just remember, sixteen. Like Colleen, right?”

  He still didn’t speak.

  She stared at him with her mouth slightly open for a long moment, then she nodded once, rubbed her eyes with her fingertips and said, very quietly, “What do you remember most in your whole life, Kiero? What’s the strongest memory you have, from your whole life?”

  He shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  Kieran inhaled, thought about it, shrugged again and said softly, “Things at home, I guess.”

  “Colleen dying? I know that was bad for you. Would that be the strongest for you?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  She inhaled another long breath, paused to think, then said, “I remember two things most of all. I remember the smell of snow melting on my winter coat and my rubber boots. I don’t know why that’s so strong with me, but I can smell that when I think about it, even standing here.” She paused for nearly ten seconds. Her eyes turned dull. Her voice lowered to a heavy, dreamy cadence. “The thing I remember most, though, is finding my bed on the sidewalk. In Wexford. My bed outside on the sidewalk. That was in the wet snow, too. I think that’s why I remember the smell so much. My bed, outside in the street and the snow. All my things.”

  She tilted her head, as though trying to see the snow again, somewhere over Kieran’s shoulder. “I was eight years old.” She shivered. “I came home from school. It was raining and snowing at the same time. Mostly snowing. There was my little bed. Out on the sidewalk. In front of our flat. Part of it sticking into the street. The headboard with flowers on it right out in the street. All my clothes on it, not even in boxes.” She bit her lower lip. Her eyes were moist. “My dolls, I had two dolls, they were on it. Everything I had. All of a sudden it’s trash. Everything my mother owned too, put into the damned street. We’re trash. My mother sitting on her kitchen chair, looking lost. She was lost. Sitting outside in the snow on her kitchen chair. She looked up—saw me—cried like hell.”

  She leaned against the frame of the open door. “My father had been gone for two years. My mother couldn’t pay the bills.”

  Kieran closed his eyes, inhaled, opened his eyes slowly.

  Brenna blinked and stood upright.

  “God told the world to find a way to break my heart, Kiero. And yours, too. And the world has to do what God tells it. But we can step up this time and say no. This time, we have to step up and say no.”

  Kieran moved slowly toward her.

  “I will not let this chance get away from us, Kiero.” Two tears traced down her cheeks. “I will not be put into the street again. Not me, not any children I’ll ever have, not fifty years from now, not ever. And this is the only chance I’ll ever have to nail a guarantee on that. Nail it down and put it away, certain. This has to be it. No matter what.”

  Kieran reached for her hands.

  She lowered her head. “No matter what,” she whispered again.

  He whispered, “It’ll work out.”

  She raised her head. Her eyes, still moist, looked very soft. “I swear I won’t shoot anybody,” she said.

  “I know you won’t.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “I know that.”

  “And the girl,” she murmured, drawing nearer, “I swear I’ll take good care of her. That will be my part of it.” Kieran nodded.

  “I’ll make sure she gets the mother kind of treatment she deserves, okay? Even if she’s sick.”

  “It’s okay, Bren.” His right arm circled her waist, urging her to press against him.

  She said in a whisper, “I’ll know how to be a good mother, if that’s what she needs.” Her hands slid under his arms and circled his back. She drew her lips close to his. “I’ll make a good mother, Kiero. I promise I will.”

  Kieran looked at her, loving her. He loved her flashing, green eyes. He loved her full lips and soft skin. He loved her deep red hair, how it curled in waves and wrapped past her shoulders and was haloed now by the fierce orange glow of the setting sun.

  She looked like a woman on fire.

  13

  Crawl eased the blue Malibu past the dirt entrance road that led to the doctor’s house at 6:30 P.M. He drove another three hundred yards up Ridge Road before he turned the car around and shut off the engine to wait. Kieran sat beside him. Neither of them had spoken for twenty minutes.

  The sun, already sinking toward the horizon, was hidden behind a long bank of clouds inching toward them from across the lake.

  Kieran pulled his automatic from under his untucked green-and-blue plaid shirt and stared at it.

  They had made the p
ass-by early in the morning. They stayed on the state road; they didn’t go down the entrance road to look at the house. The only other vehicle they saw was an old van with a sixty-something couple in it. They looked dark skinned, maybe they were Native American, and they were three miles from the house and heading the other way.

  Other than Michael’s pointing out the spot where they would take the girl and the entrance road leading to the doctor’s house, and Brenna’s making a few “if the kid is really Jesus” remarks, they didn’t talk much. She said maybe they should all look and see if there were any angels hanging around. Might be a thousand or two of them, she said, coming down from the clouds. She said she would like that, and she chuckled about it.

  Kieran had said, no, that was the last thing she wanted to see. Then he dropped it, and she did too.

  Crawl glanced at him and asked, speaking casually, “How come your knee’s not pumpin’ up and down?”

  “What?”

  “Nothin’. Just, your knee’s usually pumping up and down. Now it’s not.”

  “So?”

  “I said. Nothin’.”

  Those were the only words either of them spoke as they sat and watched the empty road and the sun glimpsing at them off and on from behind the dark clouds as it sank behind the lower Rocky Mountains.

  They waited in silence, alone with their thoughts, until 7:05, when Crawl’s two-way radio crackled with Michael’s voice.

  Crawl sat up straight and answered with a simple, “Talk.”

  Michael said, “They’re on the way,” and clicked off his connection without waiting for an answer.

  “Okay,” Crawl whispered to Kieran, inhaling deeply. “Let’s do it right.”

  He started the engine and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Malibu spun viciously to the left, kicking up a cloud of dust and pebbles, then lurched forward and swerved hard into the entrance road. As they approached the house, Crawl slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel sharply to the left, skidding to a stop in light gravel thirty feet from the doctor’s front door.

  “What’s the hurry?” Kieran asked.

  “I’m excited,” Crawl said. His eyes were laughing. “What the hell’s the difference?”

  Inside the house, the doctor heard the roar of an engine as he passed the shaded floor-to-ceiling window at the top of the stairs. He looked out and saw the Malibu skid to a stop.

  Crawl was the first one out of the car.

  The doctor recognized him immediately. The blood drained from his face. He blinked and stared, his heart racing. He recognized Kieran, too, but didn’t focus on him. He turned and dashed, whispering, into his bedroom, where he flung open the door of the mahogany wardrobe cabinet that stood in the corner a few feet from his bed. He unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off and threw it onto the bed. From inside the cabinet, he withdrew a powder-gray bulletproof vest, state-of-the-art, just five-sixteenths of an inch thick, very lightweight, very strong. He also reached for the ten-round .40 caliber Smith & Wesson that was in a holster hanging on the inside of the cabinet over the middle of the door, where it was out of immediate sight.

  The doorbell rang once.

  He tossed the S&W on the bed and raced to put on the vest and slip his shirt over it. He was still whispering, willing his fingers not to miss a button.

  There was a loud knock at the door, another ring of the doorbell.

  The doctor yanked a tie from the cabinet and ran it under his collar. He tied it in six seconds, threw on a charcoal gray blazer, grabbed the automatic and rushed down the stairs.

  More knocks on the door. This time, four heavy ones. Again, the doorbell rang. Once.

  “I’m coming,” the doctor called as he passed through the front hallway.

  Moving as quickly and silently as he could, he placed the automatic behind a ten-volume set of books—The Art of War: From Agincourt to Vietnam—that stood propped among several dozen other books on top of a bookcase in the living room, halfway between the entrance hall and the archway to the dining room. The rest of the books on top of the case, as well as most that lined the first of three shelves, were also about military campaigns.

  “Just a moment!”

  He checked his shirt buttons, inhaled deeply, made sure the shirt was tucked in, and buttoned his blazer. After inhaling one more time, he opened the door.

  Crawl was grinning. His hands were held out wide in a gesture of surprise, greeting and friendship all mixed into one. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “Look who lives here, Kieran! Of all people!” He turned to Kieran briefly, amazement beaming from his face.

  Kieran smiled back at him, nodding.

  Crawl turned back to the doctor. “Isn’t God good? We were just in the neighborhood and saw this place, and look who the hell we find. And here we are, the three of us, back together again.”

  The doctor stood as motionless as a painting. There was neither surprise nor greeting in his expression.

  Brenna saw them coming from two hundred yards away. Her heart hammered, but it felt good. Everything would begin now: the girl, the money, a whole new life with Kieran, all the security she ever wanted, all coming toward her and kicking up dust in a white Lexus sedan. The Chevy pickup, with Michael pressed down in the front passenger seat, well out of sight, was at her side, its hood raised, the driver’s door hanging partly open.

  She began to wave her arms and move out into the road, blocking Leah’s path, then forward toward the oncoming car. She waved again and pressed her right hand theatrically against her chest as she smiled with a sigh of relief.

  Her automatic, tucked into her belt in the small of her back, pressed against her as she walked.

  She was glad to feel it there. Glad it was all happening, but anxious to get it over with. Her heart slammed in her chest even harder than before.

  She could clearly see now that it was just the girl and the aunt; the aunt driving, the girl in the passenger seat beside her.

  Everything perfect.

  Less than fifty yards now.

  She walked toward them, being careful to keep the open lane in the road blocked.

  Thirty yards. Twenty yards. The Lexus, going very slowly, pulled over to the side and stopped a few yards behind Michael’s truck.

  Brenna smiled at the girl and the old lady. Her hair blew free in the rising wind. The smell of the lake was in the air. A bird screeched in the trees behind her. She was surprised at the wave of exhilaration she felt. It was so immense that she almost felt sick with it. She was feeling more excitement and more danger than she had ever felt before. The wave was elating and terrifying her at the same time.

  Leah had slipped the car into neutral and lowered her driver’s window four inches, no more.

  Brenna said through the open window, with a smile and a distinct Irish lilt, “I thank you so much for stopping, ma’am.”

  Marie leaned forward to see the stranger with the Irish accent a little more clearly, her dark eyes smiling.

  “It’s no trouble,” Leah said. “Is it something you’ll need roadside assistance with? We can call for help just a few miles from here.”

  “Well, let me tell you what I’m doin’ out here, then you decide,” Brenna said cheerfully, leaning down to speak more directly into the open window.

  Leah started to ask, “And what would that be?”, but the sentence died in her throat. She had noticed movement from the corner of her eye. She turned and saw Michael getting out of the driver’s side of the pickup, grinning. She breathed a startled, “Oh,” and dropped her hand onto the gearshift.

  Furious that Michael hadn’t stayed hidden longer and had panicked the woman, Brenna jerked her automatic from the back of her belt and thrust its barrel awkwardly through the open window. “Turn off the engine or I’ll shoot the girl!”

  Marie grabbed Leah by the upper arm.

  Leah sucked in her breath and froze. Even her lips were pale.

  Michael snapped at Brenna, “What the hell are you doing?”

 
; At the same time, Leah spoke to Brenna, too, demanding in a thick and frightened voice, “What do you people want?”

  Brenna leaned forward, struggling to hide her sense of panic. She said in a voice that sounded forced and uneven, “Well, we didn’t come out here to hurt the girl’s new baby, now, did we?”

  Leah’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes were suddenly wild with rage.

  Brenna realized she had made a terrible mistake. She stood straight, yanking the weapon from the window.

  Michael charged across the front of the Lexus. “Damn it, girl!” He pulled out his automatic and, in a single sweep of his arm, pointed it directly at Marie in the front seat. “Out of the car, you!”

  With a sudden guttural sound, Leah dropped the gearshift into drive and slammed the accelerator to the floor.

  Brenna screamed.

  Marie screamed.

  Michael opened his mouth without making a sound. He froze for a single fateful second as a cry rose from his mouth and he pulled the trigger. The car’s front bumper snapped him backward. The grille drove hard into his chest, crushing his back into the rear of the pickup truck.

  His single bullet had entered Leah’s forehead just above the right eye a split second before the air bag exploded into her ashen face.

  The doctor hadn’t said a word. Not, “What are you doing here?” or “What do you want?” or “How did you find me?” Nothing.

  So Crawl did the talking. But not without producing his automatic and holding it casually at his side.

  “Actually, we knew you lived here. We can’t fool a clever man like you, can we?” The weapon waved clear directions for the doctor to back into the house.

  Crawl and Kieran followed him inside.

  Kieran closed the door behind them.

  “The thing is, we need some money,” Kieran said.

  Crawl said, “Five hundred dollars.”

  He and Kieran both laughed. “Cash,” Kieran said.

  Another laugh.

  “And if we don’t get it, we’re going to burn your tapes.”