A Very Simple Crime (6 page)

“The caverns were first discovered in 1822 and were later used by deserters of both the Union and Confederate armies. On the rock shelf to your left, you can see the remains of a campfire the deserters built to ward off the constant cold and dark.”

We all turn to look. The combined breath of our group hovers above us in a ghostly condensation.

“If you’ll walk over here, you can see our underground stream. The trout that swim in this water are unlike any other freshwater fish on earth.”

She shines her flashlight into the stream.

“They’re blind. Thousands of generations of living without light has caused them to no longer rely on eyesight to hunt.”

I peer over into the stream. A fine sweat, despite the cold, has formed on my forehead and under my arms. The fish I see are cumbersome and preternaturally pale. Bulbous, opaque tumors grow in the place of eyes.

“Right now we are standing under a mile of solid rock. This cavern exists in total darkness—a darkness so pure, they say a human being would go blind if subjected to it for any length of time.”

I look uncertainly at the surrounding rock walls. They seem to be crouching imperceptibly inward, wanting to consume me with their dark secrets. The tour guide reaches out and places her hand on a toggle switch bolted into the rock. Heavy-gauge electrical wiring runs to the switch. Inwardly, I flinch.

“Okay, this is the part of the tour where we turn off the lights. If anybody has any small children who are afraid of the dark, or for whatever reason, we can skip this part. Anybody?”

Her words chill me. They echo my wedding ceremony to Rachel.
Should anyone here have cause why this man and woman should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.
But no one spoke up. I was given to the dark.
Oh, please, please let some small child cry out in fear. Don’t let them plunge me into the darkness. I’ve only just escaped the dark. Don’t let it take me again. I may not come back.

“Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to experience something few humans ever experience in their lifetimes.”

Sweat trickles from my armpits and slides icily down my sides. I reach out for Violet’s hand, but she pulls away from me. I am alone.

“You are going to experience absolute darkness. The total absence of light.”

The tour guide throws the light switch, plunges the cavern into blackness. And I am transported. I am the boy once again. The boy stumbling in the dark who grew into the man stumbling in the dark. The lost boy who grew into the lost man. And I wait and I pray. I pray, yes, but for whom? Who else? Who have I always prayed for? Prayed to? I pray to Monty. I pray for Monty to save me yet again. To set me free of the dark. But I am free. I set myself free. Yes, I set myself free. I know this. I cannot be here again. I cannot. I will not. I will not. I am free.

The lights come on. And yes, it is true. I am free.

I put my key in the lock. It clicks along the familiar path and opens the door. The sun is setting behind me. I walk through the front door of my house.

Albert sits in a corner, alone. He rocks methodically back and forth. He chants to himself.

“Albert did bad wrong. Albert did bad wrong. Albert did bad wrong.”

The smell affronts my nostrils. I know immediately what it is. Excrement and urine, dried and days old, but also something underneath these smells. The smell of death.

Rachel’s body lies prone on the living room carpet. The ornate crystal ashtray lies beside her. A bit of her scalp, the hairs still attached, is stuck in a crevice of the crystal. The gash in her head is unthinkably deep and profane, like a flower trying to bloom. But bloom it shall not. The blood, coagulated in the carpet beneath her head, has dried into a blackened crust. Lethargic autumn flies buzz around her open eyes.

I can think of nothing else to do. I call Monty. He tells me to remain calm. But I am calm, I tell him. He tells me to hang up the phone and call an ambulance and then the police, and then to call him back. I do. When I call Monty back, he tells me he knows a man in the prosecutor’s office. He will help me. I thank him and hang up.

I look over at Albert. He continues to rock and chant. And I know, the play has begun. I look over to Rachel. Her body has already started to bloat. And yes, it is true. The play has begun.

That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.

—JAMES M. CAIN,
DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Leo Hewitt sat behind his small desk in his small cubicle in the very large criminal courts building, his mostly bald head bent over a furniture catalog. The rest of the cubicles, a small warren of them, were deserted now, the other workers having left hours ago. A small lamp cast a dim light on the catalog spread out before him. He turned the page and smiled wistfully at a photo of an impracticably huge and impracticably priced mahogany executive’s desk. He rubbed a stubby finger respectfully over the photo in an attempt to feel the grain of what looked to be deeply stained, highly polished wood. He felt only paper. Beside him, a cigar, stubby and thick like his fingers, smoldered in a cracked glass ashtray. He kept the ashtray hidden in his desk for times like these when he was alone in the office. He reached for the cigar, but his hand passed over it and grabbed instead a felt-tip pen. He uncapped the pen and circled the photo of the mahogany desk. He also circled a photograph of an elegant leather desk chair on the opposite page. The pen jerked and made an imperfect circle when the phone squawked at him in an inelegant electronic simile of a bell. He answered the phone before the first ring was over. His gaze never left the catalog.

“Leo Hewitt. Mr. Lee, how are you? Okay, Monty. How are you, Monty? Oh, I’m sorry to . . . Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, no problem. That’s not a . . . Sure.”

Leo switched the phone to his other ear. He pushed the catalog aside and picked absently at a piece of laminate peeling away from the surface of the pressboard desk.

“Peachtree Battle, yeah, I know where that’s at. It would be my pleasure. I’m happy to help out. Especially at . . . Really. Anytime. That’s what I’m here for. Okay.”

Leo hung up the phone. He scratched his head and was again surprised at its smoothness. He was only thirty-nine and had lost the majority of his hair to male-pattern baldness in a span of just under six months. It had fallen out so quickly that he’d gone to see a doctor, scared it was a symptom of some underlying medical problem. Something malignant. It wasn’t. The doctor had told him to try Rogaine if he was concerned about his physical appearance. Leo went to the drugstore and priced Rogaine. He could afford to go bald, but he couldn’t afford to grow the hair back. And now when he looked in the mirror, a stranger, an old-looking stranger, looked back at him.

He was only thirty-nine in a philosophical sense. But in a professional, business sense, he had been thirty-nine for quite some time. He was thirty-nine years old and had done damn little with his life. The junior deputy prosecutor of the district attorney’s office. They’d made the fucking title up just for him. Didn’t know what else to do with him, he supposed. Oh well, he was happy to have a job. Happy to be everyone’s errand boy. Happy to be the simpleton who had fucked up, but hey, let’s keep him around the office for old times’ sake, what the fuck. Happy to say “How high?” when Monty Lee, the biggest ambulance chaser in Atlanta, told him to jump.
Yes, Mr. Lee, No, Mr. Lee. Could I lick your sphincter for you, Mr. Lee?
Yes, he was damn happy to be Leo Hewitt.
Call you Monty? Why yes, Mr. Lee, of course, Mr. Lee. Your brother’s wife has been murdered? Why, Mr. Lee, what on earth are we gonna do? Lawsy, lawsy me. No, no, no, no, you stay home cozy and snug. I’ll be happy to drive out there. What are friends for, Mr. Lee?

And what truly sucked was that he really was going to drive out there. On the possibility that the favor might be remembered. On the possibility that Monty Lee might think of him when an associate’s position opened at Lee’s law firm. On the chance that he might be able to start fresh, to make a new name for himself, to get out of here, to get out of this fucking cubicle.

Leo picked up his cigar from the cracked ashtray and puffed it back to life. He thumbed through the catalog one last time, retrieved the felt-tip pen and circled a picture of an ornate crystal ashtray. Lalique. $479.00.

He closed the catalog and hid it, and the ashtray, away in his desk.

 

 

Leo liked to cruise the more exclusive Atlanta neighborhoods on his days off, and as always, when he turned onto Peachtree Battle Road, he was in awe of the houses. They quietly screamed money, and not just money, but old money. The land the houses sat on would by itself be worth over a million for each lot. Leo lived in a one-room flat off Ponce de Leon Avenue with the prostitutes, drug addicts, and male hustlers. He craned his head to look around at the old houses bought with old money; nope, no crack whores in this neighborhood.

The house was easy to find. Two police cruisers and an ambulance were parked in front, their lights throbbing red and blue in the quiet October night. Leo parked his rust-flecked Nissan pickup truck behind Adam Lee’s shiny black BMW.

The coroner, Travis Vedder, looked on as two attendants loaded a white PEVA body bag into the back of the ambulance. As it was loaded onto the meat wagon, Vedder patted the shape under the heavy-gauge plastic material. A patrolman handed Vedder a clipboard. Vedder spat a healthy stream of tobacco juice into a foam cup that was nestled into his shirt pocket, then took the clipboard from the patrolman and signed off on it. Leo walked up behind Vedder and slapped him on the back. “Travis! All your staff call in sick?”

“Monty Lee called. Asked me to see to this one personally.”

“Same here.”

Vedder cocked an eyebrow over his steel-rimmed glasses. The blue and red flashing lights were reflected in the round lenses and Leo couldn’t see the man’s eyes, only the lone eyebrow that was arched disdainfully over them. Vedder grunted unintelligibly and spat another rivulet of brown juice into his foam cup.

“Hey, you ever hear of mouth cancer?”

Vedder spat again. This time on Leo’s shoes.

“Okay, okay. You made your point.”

Leo took out one of his fat cigars and bit off the tip.

He spat it on the coroner’s shoe. He began to search his pockets for a light, but when he looked up, Vedder was holding out a match that flared up in Leo’s face.

From inside the house, Adam Lee watched the short bald man accept the light the coroner offered him. He watched as the coroner slid his wife’s body out of the back of the ambulance. He watched as the coroner unzipped the bag and pointed out something to the man with the cigar. The man with the cigar took two steps backward, away from the body. Then the coroner pointed to the house and back to the body. The man with the cigar nodded his head and set off for the house.

“Mr. Lee?”

“Yes?”

“Oh, wait a second.”

Leo ducked back out the door and ditched his cigar in a bed of azalea bushes.

“Sorry ’bout that. Leo Hewitt.”

Adam stood and offered his hand to Leo. Leo began to reach out to shake, but realized that something was wrong. He hesitated a moment, retracted his hand, then offered his left hand instead.

“You’re a southpaw?”

“Yes, sometimes I forget.”

“Not a problem. Anyway, I’m the assistant deputy prosecutor with the DA’s office. Fulton County. Your brother called me. Said to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t be here. Asked me to take care of you.”

Leo took a look around the house. Old money or new, it was damn impressive. His eyes took in a Queen Anne dining room set to the left, a monstrously opulent Tiffany dragonfly lamp scuttled to one corner of the living room, a teakwood breakfront, original abstract paintings on the walls, all the creature comforts. On the black leather couch, looking out of place, sat Albert Lee. Drool slicked his heavy chin.

“Is this Albert?”

Adam nodded and watched as Leo squatted down in front of his adult son.

“How ya doin’, Albert?”

“Albert did bad wrong.”

“What happened? What did you do?”

“Albert did bad wrong.”

Leo stood up and turned to Adam.

“Does he understand?”

“No, not really. He’s hurt her before. Never anything like . . . I mean . . . I just don’t know what to say. How to react.”

“You’re in shock. It’s understandable. I can’t say how sorry I am. For your loss.”

Adam stared at the floor. His eyes were drawn to the dark stain hardening in the carpet. He spoke to the stain, not to Leo. “Thank you.”

“We’ll need to get Albert somewhere where he can be safe and accounted for.”

“Of course.”