Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  They stared at each other across the gulf created first by Crawl’s obvious lie, second, by the fact Crawl didn’t even care enough about Kieran to try to make up a believable story.

  “Too many things have already gone wrong,” Crawl said. “I can’t take any chances.”

  Kieran thought for a moment, then he turned and walked slowly to the door. His heart was hammering.

  “Where are you going?” Crawl asked sharply.

  Kieran turned to face him. “I don’t have a gun, Crawl,” he said. “I can’t watch the doctor without a gun, can I?”

  He turned again toward the door.

  “So where are you going?” Crawl demanded.

  Kieran stopped again, but this time he didn’t bother turning around. “First, to talk with Brenna,” he said. “I haven’t talked with her since all this started coming apart. I want to know what happened on that road back there.”

  “You don’t have to talk with her.”

  “We didn’t get the girl up here to pray with Michael yet, either, to see if she has any special powers because of the DNA in her.” He was in the doorway. He turned back to Crawl. “I’m going to get her up here. We lose nothing. Michael might gain a lot. She’s able to try it, right?”

  Crawl thought for several seconds, then nodded. “I tied her up with duct tape from the truck. You’ll have to cut her loose.”

  “Duct tape?”

  “Three times she’s run now. Make sure she doesn’t run on you.”

  Kieran found Marie bound with duct tape to a ladder-back chair just inside the archway leading from the living room to the dining room. The tape that covered her mouth was wound all the way around her head. Her hair and clothing were damp from the rain.

  Brenna, sitting in the chair behind the couch, jumped to her feet as Kieran rushed into the room.

  “Come with me,” he whispered sharply. “Gotta find the kitchen.”

  “What is it?” She stayed behind him with long strides.

  Marie turned her head and rolled her eyes to watch.

  “He’s going to kill her, Bren.”

  “What?”

  “He’s going to kill both of them. Michael’s up there dead, but Crawl doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Michael’s dead?” Brenna asked with a shrill whisper.

  In the kitchen, Kieran started rifling through drawers. “And Crawl will find out any second.”

  Brenna’s gaze bounced to a half-dozen different spots. “Well, what does that mean about getting our money?”

  “Bren, when he finds out, he’s going to kill this girl, that’s what it means. We’ve got to help her.”

  “He’s still getting the money, though, isn’t he?”

  Kieran paused, looking at her, squinting in disbelief. “He might if he tortures her, is that what you mean? But it’s not about the money now. Are you listening to me?” He had found the knife drawer he was looking for. He chose a thin boning knife with a serrated blade. When he turned again, he gripped Brenna’s shoulder. “It was over when the aunt died. Crawl knew it. We should have known it too.”

  “He’s not going to have to torture anybody,” she said, pulling away from him, whispering faster. “What are you talking about? You’re just doing one of your things again, getting all crazy and not letting me be part of whatever the hell it is you’re thinking.”

  “The reason the doctor wouldn’t identify us was that we’d put him in prison for the shroud if he turned us in. But that changed when the aunt died. He can’t hide that. He won’t try and hide that. He’s going to the police if he gets the chance, that’s all he can do. But Crawl won’t let him identify us as his sister’s killers, isn’t that obvious?”

  “No, that’s not true,” she said, clutching at his arm. “What good will identifying us do for him?”

  He shook his head and moved past her, the knife in his hand.

  She lunged after him, grabbing his arm, holding it hard, forcing him to stop. “It won’t bring his sister back, will it? He’ll tell them someone else must have killed her, but he won’t tell them it’s us.”

  “There’s no time for this, Bren. If he doesn’t kill them to keep them quiet, it’ll be to get even for Michael. Didn’t you hear what I said? Michael is dead.”

  “So what is the knife for? You’re going to let her go?”

  Kieran reached out to touch her cheek with his fingertips. “Listen to me,” he said. “You remember me saying about Crawl getting his dad killed?”

  “This is crazy,” she said, pushing his hand away. “Who cares about any of that?”

  “It’s his brother now, Bren. Don’t you understand what’s happening?”

  Brenna’s eyes were round and dazed and frightened. She was shaking her head. “It can’t be over, Kiero. It can’t be.”

  Kieran pulled away. He rushed to Marie’s side. “Now the girl will die, too,” he said. “Please understand. We have to save her.”

  Brenna’s lips twisted. She began to cry. “But it’s two and a half million dollars! It’s more than that now, isn’t it? Michael can’t take any.”

  Kieran was on one knee, cutting through the tape at Marie’s ankles.

  “What’s all this been for, then?” Brenna sobbed. She was crying hard. She said it again, this time loudly. “What’s all this been for then? It can’t be for nothing!”

  The tape was off Marie’s ankles. She raised one foot and leaned her face toward Kieran, making sounds, raising her chin.

  Brenna said, “We can talk him out of killing anybody, you and me together. But let’s do it after we get the money. Please, Kiero.” She grabbed his arm as he reached for the tape around Marie’s mouth, trying to hold him still. “You’re not in this alone!” she said. Her voice was angry and rising again to a fever pitch. “Damn you, you’re not in this alone!”

  Kieran jerked his arm free. “He took my gun.” He slipped the knife under the tape in back of Marie’s left ear, serrated edge out. “Otherwise we could face him. Took mine and yours both. He even took the doctor’s, the one I found.”

  Brenna backed away. Her fists were clenched.

  Kieran whispered to Marie, “Quiet, now,” and pulled away the tape that was wrapped around her head and across her mouth.

  Marie nodded twice as she opened her mouth wide and sucked in air with a gasp.

  From upstairs, a loud shout from Crawl: “Kieran!”

  Kieran’s heart jumped. Glancing around quickly to check the stairs, he called out, “I’m coming! We’ll be right there!”

  Kieran was sweating.

  “There’s no chance she doesn’t die, Bren,” he said. “I can’t let that happen and you can’t, either, and you know it. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  Marie whispered a quick, “Thank you.”

  Brenna exploded in a muted cry, “He’s not going to do that unless you take her and run, then he might. You’re just making everything worse!”

  Kieran cut through the tape holding Marie’s upper arms. He muttered, “This is taking too long.”

  “He’s going to come down,” Brenna insisted. She was wild-eyed. “He’ll catch us and kill us both.”

  Kieran spun to look at the stairs again, a quick and fearful check, but still no one coming. “No,” he said. “He won’t leave Michael alone with the doctor. Not as long as he thinks he’s alive.”

  Marie’s arms were free. Kieran tore at the last tape as she struggled to stand; a double wrap around her waist.

  Marie said in a whisper, “We can run to the house down the beach. Use their phone. There’s no key in the truck.” She sounded out of breath.

  “I won’t let you do this!” Brenna said. She took several steps backward, toward the stairs.

  Marie started to move, looking terrified, waving her hand, like a flag, urging Kieran to follow her. “We can get there quicker than him, the way he limps.”

  Kieran let his knife fall to the floor, but he didn’t move. He stared at Brenna, who was crying, her fists clenched
tight and her shoulders hunched like a fighter’s.

  She said, “You’re throwing away two and a half million dollars, and you don’t have to. I won’t let you do this to me!”

  Kieran’s eyes filled with tears. “Please come with me.”

  “You’re making this up because you’re afraid she’s got God in there.”

  “Bren, please.” He reached out his hand.

  “She’s got nothing in there. She’s got nobody.”

  “She’s got me, Bren. I have to do this.”

  Brenna’s eyes blazed. She twisted her lips and hissed with outrage, “She’s not your bloody sister!”

  Kieran looked as though he had been struck. “Scissors and guns and money,” he said, “and blood and more blood. Who the hell are you?”

  Brenna stared at him for nearly five silent seconds, then she turned to bolt up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Crawl!” she screamed. “He’s taking the girl!”

  The doctor had used as much time as he could.

  With Crawl studying his every movement and muttering increasingly graphic threats, he had swabbed Michael’s side for the second time, examined the scalpel and pretended to find it insufficient, searched for and found another, and carefully administered another few drops of the anesthetic into the mask covering Michael’s mouth and nose.

  Then, with no more credible ideas for eating up time, he wiped away the perspiration that was building on his forehead, gripped the scalpel hard, placed it against Michael’s side, and began in terrible slow motion to cut through Michael’s flesh.

  Crawl watched with his head tilted, not blinking, barely breathing.

  In the middle of the first incision, after the doctor had cut no more than three inches side-to-side, Crawl’s eyes narrowed.

  The doctor wiped away more perspiration.

  Crawl stretched his neck and tilted his head even more. He began inching closer to Michael, moving up the table on the side opposite the doctor.

  The doctor’s heart raced. He was painfully aware that very little of Michael’s blood was oozing to the surface where the skin had just been cut. Just a few drops. Not a flow. He pressed a pad of gauze over the incision and held it there, determined not to move it.

  Every second might help.

  He risked a glance at Crawl. He saw his eyes widen, his mouth twist, and watched him lay his gun hand on Michael’s chest, then reach to press the middle and index fingertips of his other hand into his brother’s neck.

  Crawl began to groan at the same moment that Brenna bounded up the stairs shouting, “Crawl! He’s taking the girl!”

  The doctor sprang with a cry of his own. In an instant, his left hand locked on the wrist of Crawl’s gun hand, pressing it tightly against Michael’s chest, while he drove the scalpel like a sword through the back of the hand.

  Crawl screamed just as Brenna rushed in, freezing her in the doorway.

  His fingers sprang open in an involuntary thrust for escape, loosening his hold on the gun. With his left hand, he tore the scalpel from his right.

  The doctor swept the gun off the table and onto the floor. Then he dove for it.

  Crawl had fallen back, against the wall. He shouted, “Get it!” to Brenna, but she was paralyzed with fear.

  The doctor had Crawl’s gun. He twisted to his feet and swung the weapon around in a half circle like the hammer of God, pointing it toward the man who had invaded his home.

  But Crawl had already pulled the automatic he’d taken from Kieran out from the back of his belt. He pointed Kieran’s weapon at the doctor’s heart and pulled the trigger.

  The force of the bullet knocked the doctor’s body back a full two yards. The gun swung helplessly on his index finger and tumbled to the floor. His left hand went slowly to his chest like a man making a pledge. His head, which had snapped forward with the explosion, rolled to his left shoulder.

  His eyes were closed before he hit the floor.

  Kieran realized that they were starting to slow down. It was hard to run in the sand and patches of mud at the water’s edge, especially with the rain, as light as it was, now coming at them nearly sideways in the wind and growing cold enough to sting.

  To their left, baby whitecaps pushed the black water toward the shore in choppy waves. To their right, the sand gave way to rocks made slippery by the rain.

  They weren’t even halfway there and he was already out of breath.

  Marie ran beside him, closer to the water’s edge, running in short, steady strides where the sand was soaked and a little more firm.

  Kieran could hear her breathing hard.

  “You doing okay?” he asked, out of breath himself.

  “Taking the road would have added. . . another three-quarters of a mile,” she said between breaths. “At least.”

  The shore twisted to their right. They followed it in an arc that swung back to their left again after taking them a hundred yards back, to the edge of the woods.

  They would call the state police when they reached the other house, Marie said.

  “They might have already been called,” Kieran said. “Guns going off. Wouldn’t somebody wonder about that?”

  “If somebody’s close,” Marie said. “Maybe. It’s hard to pinpoint guns up here. Hear them from two miles away. All the time.”

  They ran on, trying to run faster but gradually slowing down, instead.

  Kieran wondered what was happening to Brenna. He was wondering if she were wishing now that she had come with them, away from Crawl. He wished he had forced her, but how could he have done that? He even felt a sudden impulse to run back for her, but he shook it off. He had come only a half mile, it seemed, and he was already second-guessing himself.

  The rain was falling faster and getting colder. He found himself thinking, in the sudden and overwhelming grip of the fear, that he would never be going home again, that the ghost he had carried for so many years was familiar with this kind of rain.

  He thought of his mother. He thought about the way she smiled and the way she laughed, and he wanted so much to climb her stairs again, and knock on her door and watch her light up one more time over a tin of mints “like no other mints in the world, only better”. He thought about how she would take it if she knew what he had just done. She would bring down the sweet thunder on him, absolutely. And along the way, she’d say that they were all as dumb as ducks if they thought it was the blood and the bones that made Jesus, Jesus. He wanted to feel her hand again resting softly on his hair. He wanted to hear her voice again reciting her favorite prayer and wrapping it around him like a blanket. He wanted God to bless him and keep him and shine his face on him and give him peace.

  He thought about Brenna. He thought about Michael. He thought about Sherri and Michael’s little boy, and about home, and about a bomb, and about a kill zone.

  He thought, “God, I don’t want to be here!”

  He wanted to cry.

  He had also, without realizing it, slowed down to a weak trot.

  “What’s the matter?” Marie called, turning around and slowing down in front of him.

  “Nothing,” he said, speeding up again. “Are you still okay?”

  Maybe she nodded yes and maybe she didn’t. He couldn’t tell in the dark and the rain.

  She said, panting, “You came all the way from Ireland. . . to do this to my uncle and aunt and me?”

  He couldn’t believe it himself, hearing it put that way.

  “We never meant to hurt you,” he said. “Honest to God.” Then, realizing how pathetic that sounded, he added, “It started out. . . not to be like this. We’d take it back if we could. All of us. I know we would.”

  They ran without speaking for another hundred yards and more.

  Rocks took over the beach, jagged pieces, most of them angled and uneven.

  They held hands and worked their way across the rocks.

  The rocks gave way to more sand, and high, prickly weeds.

  “What will he do to my un
cle?”

  “He won’t hurt him now,” Kieran said, without believing it. “Not when he knows we’re getting help.”

  Their footsteps had slowed to a leaden jog and their breath was coming in sharper gasps, but they could see the house they were searching for clearly now—white and tall and dark. A large pontoon boat bobbed slowly in the wind-driven water straight ahead, beyond the house.

  Kieran said, “Still okay?”

  “You mean besides being scared?”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not any more. It’s all right now. I promise you.”

  From the darkness behind them, the muffled crack of Crawl’s gunfire in the doctor’s laboratory rolled down the lonely beach like the warning of a town crier.

  Crawl placed his bleeding hand on his dead brother’s chest.

  Brenna walked toward him on legs that felt like glass ready to break.

  Crawl’s other hand pressed lightly on Michael’s dark hair.

  “He’s dead, Bren,” he said quietly.

  He bent and kissed his brother’s cheek, and then, with long moans, he began to sob.

  Brenna took his right hand. “You’re bleeding bad,” she whispered.

  She looked at the bandages and tapes and other supplies scattered around the counters and across the floor. “They’ve gone to the house down the beach. They’ll be calling the police,” she said, sounding incredibly tired. “I’ll stop the bleeding.” She started around the table, still in a daze. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we can still just drive away. I don’t know.”

  Crawl wiped his face with his left hand. He said very quietly, “Every damn thing goes wrong.” He shook his head, staring at Michael, then looked at the doctor. “It’s not my fault,” he said, “but every damn thing. . .” He bit his lip, then muttered, “God, Michael,” and he began to cry again.

  “It’s hard to see a man cry,” Brenna whispered without emotion. She placed gauze bandages and tape on the table and took his wounded hand. “I’ve wondered why that is. I see a woman cry, I don’t seem to care. I see a man cry, and it tears my heart. I don’t know why that is.” She was winding the bandage very slowly. “A man crying is a grievous thing.” She paused and stared at Crawl. “I’m sorry about Michael.”