Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  He got to his feet and opened the truck’s tailgate, moving fast. He was sweating. “The doctor was an internist first, before everything else,” he said. “You told us that, Michael. You did everything really good.” On his knees again, he slipped his arm under his brother’s neck and shoulder, then he moaned loudly and lifted. “He’ll save you. He’s got all the stuff he needs right at his house, remember?”

  Straining with the weight, he lifted Michael to the lowered tailgate.

  Then, climbing up into the bed, he pulled his brother gently forward, away from the tailgate. He took off the black shirt that hung open over his white T-shirt and slipped it under Michael’s head, bunching it into a pillow.

  Jumping back down to the road, he slammed the tailgate shut and turned to see Brenna pulling the teenager across the roadside ditch and back to the truck, her strong fist knotted in the girl’s short black hair.

  Crawl said, “I’m taking her and Michael to the house. You get in with the old lady and drive her car into the marsh down the road, back toward the house, on this side. Take it way back in, as far as it can go.”

  Brenna’s eyes widened but she didn’t object.

  The wind began to swirl, blowing up small clouds of dust. Crawl winced in the dust and rubbed his left eye with his fingertips. Then he grabbed Marie by the arm and pushed her toward the cab of the truck. “Run again and I’ll kill you.”

  She hunched her head against the gusting wind and climbed into the pickup.

  Crawl said to Brenna, “Get it behind some trees if you can. Far enough, no one will see it from the road.” He tossed her the keys to the Malibu. “Then come back and drive this one back to the house.” Checking on Marie, he stepped closer to Brenna. He hovered just an inch from her left ear. “And bury Michael’s gun. Don’t just throw it away. Bury it where no one will find it. Wipe it down first. And the car. No fingerprints. They’ll hang you if you leave any.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Crawl looked closely at Michael one more time, whispered an angry, “God Almighty,” and jumped into the driver’s seat beside Marie, who was pressed tight against the passenger-side door, watching him. Then he started the pickup and pulled away, but at a slow, even pace.

  Whatever else happened, he didn’t want to jar the broken body of the one person left in all the world who really mattered to him.

  Kieran stared at the doctor. He felt his nostrils flare and his face flush. He pointed the barrel of his H&K at the doctor’s chest.

  “You also have a temper you’ll want to control,” the doctor said.

  Kieran didn’t move.

  The doctor inhaled and leaned forward. “Kieran,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m going to make it incredibly right and easy for you to have everything you’ve ever dreamed of. More than you’ve ever dreamed of. More than you could ever have imagined.”

  Kieran didn’t move.

  The doctor rose to his feet in slow motion. His eyes glistened with a dark, new fire. “I’m asking you to understand what is happening in that young girl out there. I’m asking you to understand what is happening on this sacred ground.” He inched closer. “I want you to understand that what we are bringing about in this place is the most longed-for event in all of human history.” He took another slow step. His hands opened and spread, palms out, like a curtain. “Listen with all your mind now. Listen with all your heart and soul. What is happening, and what I am here and now inviting you to become a full partner to, with wealth beyond your highest hopes and a glory which will be yours for all eternity, is the ultimate and final fusion of science and spirituality.” He paused. His voice dropped to a triumphant whisper. “Kieran,” he said. “What we are bringing about, in fact what is already upon us, is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!”

  “Who are you people?” Marie had pressed herself against the door of the speeding truck, as far from Crawl as she could squeeze. Her arms were crossed. She had stopped crying and was insisting to herself that she not start again. All she would show would be anger, not fear.

  “Just hope my brother doesn’t die,” Crawl said without looking at her. “You’ll find out more than you ever wanted to know if he dies.”

  “What the hell does that mean? He killed my aunt!”

  Crawl nodded slightly as he said in a menacing tone, “You’re going to have to watch your language from now on, too, darlin’. The baby and all that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Crawl grinned humorlessly. “I thought you didn’t know.”

  “About what? What baby?”

  “I’ll tell you what baby. Your uncle won’t tell you because all he wants to do is use you. But I’ll tell you.”

  Kieran stepped backward. He felt his heart speed up.

  The doctor’s scar twisted slowly as he smiled a hard and unexpected smile. “I know you’ve heard about Jesus coming again, haven’t you? Did you ever think you could be a part of making it happen?”

  “I know it doesn’t say it’ll happen in an upstairs lab.”

  “No. It actually says on the clouds. Seen suddenly by everyone, from east to west, like a flash of lightning.”

  “Frankenstein,” Kieran said coldly. “That’s closer to what’s going on here.”

  “The Bible uses so much figurative language.” The doctor tilted his head. “But you see, what actually happens is that God works through us. It was God that caused the sciences of DNA and cloning to develop in me, wasn’t it? And that happened for a reason. Can you see that? All of that special knowledge I’ve acquired, that’s all in God’s plan. That’s why it’s happened.”

  Kieran slid to the side. He didn’t lower his gun, he didn’t divert his stare. He said, “God’s plan is for you to give us seven and a half million dollars and we go away and never look back. That’s what I know about God’s plan.”

  The doctor moved again. Two small, slow steps toward Kieran. “Think with me what it will mean to a world gone mad,” he said. “All the killing you’ve seen, stopped. All the hunger, stopped. All the breathtaking, entirely unnecessary pain, all of it stopped.”

  “You gonna tell him what to do? How to do it?”

  “Alive again, here in the flesh, bringing us, finally, all the peace we’ve always wanted but have never, never, never gotten to fully experience!”

  “People runnin’ things will just kill him all over again,” Kieran said. “How’s that for a theory?”

  “I want you to listen to me, now, please,” the doctor said, speaking even more softly.

  “And I want you to show me your lab. Show me where you decided to be God for awhile. Show me where you thought all this up, and show me your computer, too, where you’ll be transferring my money.”

  “You want the money, you can have the money. You can have all seven and a half million dollars, all to yourself. I swear it’s true. Just help me!”

  “But you’re a liar,” Kieran said, quietly but firmly. “A liar. And a thief. And a son of a bitch. Did the girl know what you were doing to her?”

  “I’m not lying to you about what I can give you. I swear it on my soul. And I would not risk my soul for anything, you must know that.”

  “So I get all seven and a half million dollars, and then I just walk away?”

  “I trust you because I know so much about you. But your friend out there, Crawl, and whoever else is out there with him right now, no, him I will not trust. But you can join me, Kieran. Join us. Just help us to be free from them. You’re concerned about the girl, help me keep the girl free from them.”

  “And how would I do that?”

  “Let me arm myself. When they come back, disarm them with me. You don’t have to hurt them, just leave them with me. We’ll bind them, then I’ll transfer your money. You keep your weapon. You can stay until the money settles and transfer it again, yourself, in private, so it’s entirely your own. I know you must have arranged to do that. Then you can leave, breathtakingly wealthy and free as the wind. More t
han that, you’ll leave profoundly right with God. You’ll live your whole life knowing that, and God will know it too.”

  “And you’ll kill them after I leave?”

  The doctor blinked.

  Kieran raised his weapon again, pointing it first at the doctor’s waist, then at his chest. “I know you will,” he said. “And more, I know I’d be dead as soon as they are. We both know that.”

  The doctor shook his head. His eyes blazed. “You’re wrong! How can you think I’d lie and kill at the risk of my soul?”

  “And after we’re all out of the way,” Kieran said, “will you make a dozen or so more of Jesus? Maybe a few extra to keep the grounds up around your house, say the miracle words for you, keep the place painted, keep your grass cut? Or will you go for a whole committee full of Jesuses, send them to run the UN, maybe? Or, hell, you’ve got enough DNA, why not make a whole city full? Jesus runnin’ the hardware store. Jesus runnin’ the auto repair. Half a dozen Jesuses runnin’ the healing salon down on the corner.”

  He paused. He inhaled, still staring at the doctor. “Yeah, I do know somethin’ about the Bible,” he said. “You think you’re sailin’ into the last book, don’t you, where all the glory is going to come down? But you’re back at Square One. You’re back at, ‘Hey, let me play God!’ Makin’ new people, for God’s sake, all by yourself. Makin’ Jesus, for God’s sake!”

  The doctor’s lips were sealed tight. His nostrils were flared. His eyes were narrowed to slits. But his rage still showed through.

  “You’re back in the Garden,” Kieran said, suddenly speaking calmly, and suddenly feeling exhausted. “You just set if off again, is what you’ve done.” He studied the doctor for a full ten seconds in silence. Then he said, slowly and sadly, barely above a whisper, “Booooom.”

  Crawl said to Marie, “Have you ever heard, in that pretty school of yours, about something called the Shroud of Turin?”

  Marie tilted her head. She could feel her stomach tightening. She didn’t answer.

  “You know what it is, the shroud? You know whose blood is supposed to be on it?”

  Her arms tightened across her chest.

  “You know what microbiologists can do with DNA these days, don’t you? Hell, you live with one of the best. So can you imagine what one of the best, who knows DNA really well, might try to do if he got hold of some DNA from the blood of the Shroud of Turin? Especially if he had an egg and a healthy young woman for an incubator.”

  Five seconds went by before Marie, suddenly pale, whispered, barely moving her lips, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But you know about cloning. And you know how they do it, don’t you? Taking some DNA, oh, from some blood or something, and then putting that DNA into an egg and the egg into a mother. You ever heard about Dolly the sheep? Well, the next step is to try it with humans.”

  Marie’s mouth hung open. A wave of nausea swept through her. “You’re a murderer,” she said. “You’ll never get away with this.”

  Even with the sun setting, Crawl could see that the color had drained from her face. He grinned. “Let me put it this way, young lady. Have you missed any school lately?”

  Marie’s body seemed to collapse in on itself. Another five seconds passed in silence before she breathed a weak, “What do you want with me?”

  “Not me, girl,” he said. “It’s what your lovin’ uncle wants with you. Or maybe I should say, from you. And you really weren’t in on it, were you?”

  Marie didn’t say anything. She was having trouble breathing.

  Tears threatened, but again she stifled them, determined not to break.

  “Weren’t you just out of school for a few days, just a short time back?” Crawl asked. “Were you sick? Is that what they told you? The day you said, ‘Hey, how’d it get so late?’ Or, ‘How’d it get to be Wednesday’, or whatever it was? You sayin’ to your dear aunt, who was in on the whole thing, ‘What happened to Wednesday?’ Your uncle standin’ there saying, ‘Well, you were really sick there, weren’t you? I’m sure glad I got you well again.’ Any of that sound familiar?”

  Tears rose and trailed down Marie’s cheeks. She thought about the afternoons that had passed without her even realizing it because of what her uncle had called her “flu” and her “necessary sleep”. She thought about her uncle’s almost getting a Nobel Prize, he knew so much about DNA. And she thought about these men and the woman with them. They sounded as though they might be from Ireland, but why were they here, unless they were after something? Unless they knew something about her and her uncle, and about Leah?

  Then, with a rising terror that sucked the air from her lungs, she thought about her uncle being right next to her ear and whispering what he had never said before, and in a way he had never spoken to her before, when she was sick and he had just given her milk that tasted like peaches: “I love you more than anything in the world.”

  What had he done to her?

  Crawl noticed the tears. He noticed her mouth hanging wide open. He noticed the color all gone from her pretty white face, and the deadness taking over her eyes. He grinned again, but only with his mouth.

  The entrance road to the house came into view on their right.

  Dark clouds had covered the setting sun, moving fast, east to west. The trees were losing their long shadows in the falling darkness.

  Marie’s mouth closed, and she swallowed hard. She whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’re dear old Uncle John’s sixteen-year-old Virgin Mary,” Crawl said softly as he eased the pickup into the entrance road to the house. “We broke into the shroud with him and got the DNA for him, that’s how we know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She tightened her arms around her waist, squeezing hard against the nausea that rose and fell and the dizziness that rose and fell with it.

  Crawl turned and glared at her. “Yes, you do.”

  The house appeared through the trees, large and silent and gray in the low light.

  Marie was shaking her head in slight, slow movements. A moan escaped. She turned her face and pressed it against the glass of the window.

  “Problem is, they don’t really know whose blood is on that shroud,” Crawl said, glancing back to check on Michael, who hadn’t moved.

  Marie forced herself not to listen. She thought, instead, about Terry.

  “Could be some monkey-faced killer, is the problem,” he said, practically growling.

  She wondered what Terry would say if any of it would turn out to be true. She wondered if he would want to help her or if he would want to run in the opposite direction, as if she had some horrible, contagious disease.

  “Cause they don’t really know, do they?” Crawl said. “Just seeing what’ll happen. Let’s try Marie, why don’t we? See if we can get us a Jesus.”

  As he approached the house he hammered suddenly on the horn with the heel of his fist; five short blasts and then three long ones, held down until he pulled sharply to the left, braked hard, and backed the truck toward the house, positioning the tailgate just ten feet outside the front door.

  “Move quick!”

  He killed the engine, pocketing the keys, and jumped out.

  Marie stared after him with dead red eyes.

  15

  The doctor came out of the house first, moving quickly.

  Crawl was at the truck’s tailgate, grasping at the handle with one hand and stuffing his automatic into his belt with the other. He yelled, “Help me!”

  But the doctor saw Marie in the passenger seat and ignored Crawl’s panic. He started to rush toward his niece, but stopped as he saw Michael’s body in the back of the pickup, his legs twisted like a rag doll’s, his blood pooling in the slim, metal gutters of the truck bed.

  Kieran was out of the house, automatic in hand.

  Crawl slammed open the tailgate.

  Kieran staggered as if he’d been hit in the gut. He uttered a breathless, “Oh, my God.”


  The doctor blinked against the sight of Michael, then turned with wide and wild eyes to Marie, who still had not opened her door.

  Kieran moved to the tailgate, his empty hand out like a sleepwalker’s. He breathed it twice more: “My God. My God.”

  “Help me!” Crawl shouted. He reached for Michael’s arm and tried to pull him toward the tailgate. “Get him to where we can grab him!”

  Kieran gasped, “What happened?” as he squeezed his weapon into his belt. Then he looked around wildly, “Where’s Brenna?”

  “She’s coming,” Crawl said. He inched Michael’s large frame forward.

  Kieran reached for Michael’s other arm and pulled. He looked frantic. “Is she okay? Was she shot?”

  “She’s coming. Take his legs. Get his weight on the tailgate.”

  The doctor had opened Marie’s door, but the girl had not turned to greet him. She just sat there, still and staring.

  The doctor laid his hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right, Marie?”

  “How can she be all right?” Crawl shouted. “She’s pregnant. You expect her to be all right?”

  The doctor’s eyes bulged.

  “She knows all about it,” Crawl shouted even louder. He was wrestling Michael’s hip closer to the tailgate. His hands were covered with blood. “She knows all about it!”

  Marie shook her head slowly. Her wide eyes filled with tears. She pressed her palms to her ears. A muted squeal escaped her pale lips.

  The doctor held his breath. He didn’t move. His hand hovered over Marie’s shoulder without touching it. In a strained whisper, he spoke her name.

  Marie turned slowly and stepped out of the truck, moving like a robot. She looked at her uncle as if he were covered with blood.

  “Help us carry him!” Crawl shouted.

  Michael’s hip was on the open tailgate. His left arm was hanging toward the ground.

  The doctor rose to attention like a startled deer. He spun to face Crawl. “Where’s my sister?” he demanded. Then, loudly and quickly, to Marie: “Where’s Leah, Marie? What’s happened to her?”

  Kieran let go of Michael and pulled his automatic from his belt. He stepped back from the truck, watching the doctor.