Killer's Cousin (7 page)

Then I recovered. I glared at her. “Yes,” I said. “I'm sure.”

She stared gravely back at me. Then, incongruously, the corner of her mouth twitched. She put her hand over her mouth and laughed outright, once, in a short bark. And then the laughter seemed to seize her body and take possession; it rocked her frame and escaped from her mouth in great peals that somehow did not sound amused. She laughed as if it hurt; as if she would never stop.

Then, abruptly, she did stop. And looked at me, her eyes still filled with that …
something
.

I couldn't bear it. I turned. I left. I walked.

I did not run.

T
hat evening, I turned on my computer and went online for hours, reading alt.tv.x-files, downloading software, surfing the Web. But in the end I could no longer avoid thinking. Lily's frightening laughter—my hand—her question—the look in her eyes—my hand.

My upraised hand.

Did you feel powerful?

Sometimes in my head I can still hear the snap of Emily's neck.

One day toward the end of the trial my father grabbed me by both shoulders. In a distant way I was astonished. I had never seen him other than contained, measured. But that afternoon in the bleak private waiting room, he was all at once out of control. Using a voice I'd never heard before.

“You're killing yourself! Don't you see, we've got
to give the jury something! You have to take the stand—don't you understand how it looks if you don't?”

“Yes,” I said steadily enough. “It looks like I killed her.”

For an instant I thought he might kill
me
, and I wished he would. But my father mauls only with words.

“Aren't you scared?” he said. “You should be.” And he described prison to me; described in detail; described for a very, very long time.

Oh, yes, I was scared. I was being tried as an adult. Anyone would have been scared.

Especially after listening to Greg.

“Emily didn't dare tell anyone,” Greg had explained rapidly on the stand to the prosecutor. To the jury. To his parents, who had published a vicious open letter to me in the newspaper. To everyone. “She was scared of Davey. But Emily couldn't keep her secret from me.” His face was fevered. “Emily and I were very close,” he said.

“It's my fault,” Greg sobbed. “I thought if I were with her when she broke up with him, she'd be safe. I thought I could protect her. I should have listened to her when she told me he was out of control.”

One woman on the jury reached out involuntarily, as if to pat Greg. But the others looked at me. Eleven pairs of eyes. Curious eyes. Judging eyes.

I had intended to stay silent. To keep off the stand. To let whatever happened to me happen. I had thought it all out very carefully, you see. I put all Greg's lies on one side of a scale, and I put the one truth on the
other. And it seemed to me that it didn't matter that Greg had lied. Emily was dead.

By my hand.

But then I looked back at the jury. Even though Emily was dead, I looked back. I don't know why I had to, but I did. I met every pair of eyes.

Defend yourself
, screamed my father. And in the end, out of fear, out of some blind need for survival, out of the vestiges of rage against Greg—for it was him I'd meant to hit, and both Greg and I knew it—I did.

I defended myself. I did it well, because Davey did everything well. And the facts, those the court considered important, were with me. There were no old bruises on Emily. The judge declared that Greg's history of drug abuse was admissible, and the jury looked at him differently after that. Then there were the bank statements for Greg and Emily's joint account, now empty. And the bank clerk who remembered Greg. “Oh, every week, he came,” she said in her soft voice. “Then twice a week …”

The faces of the jurors changed. The shrieks of the tabloids softened, then died, then turned, snarling, on Greg. By the time the verdict came down, no one even seemed surprised.

No one but me.

Again I pictured Lily. I wondered what the jury would have thought if they had seen me with my eleven-year-old cousin that afternoon. If they had seen my upraised hand.

But I had
not
hit Lily. I had
not
. I held on to that as I lay in bed with my forearm over my open eyes. I had
not
done it. Not this time. And yet …

I recalled the strange expression on Lily's face. Suddenly I recognized it. I had seen it on Greg's face, when Emily fell. Before he buried it in the basement of his house of lies. It was …

Complicity.

T
he next day exhaustion pressed on me like concrete. Only part of that day felt real: last period, in Dr. Walpole's class. There, I got a second wind and was able to sit up and pay attention of a kind.

Despite myself, I had become interested in the class. Up to then, we had been occupied by a rapid overview of the thousand-year period. Dr. Walpole was a good teacher: knowledgeable, and even, in her own dry way, dramatic. I would never forget her slides of the Kriminalmuseum in Rothenburg, with its elaborate instruments of torture. Who had ever heard of a punishment flute for bad musicians? Or a heavy metal mask with a tongue guard for gossips? Not to mention the more elaborate and horrible devices: racks, eye gougers, the inner-spiked case of an iron maiden. “Forget about criminals, witches, and heretics for a minute, people,” said Dr. Walpole, “and notice how many of
these instruments were used for day-to-day social control.”

I wondered, with a kind of sick fascination, what they would have used on me. Or on Greg.

That day we were to announce our medieval identities: the point of view from which, said Dr. Walpole, we would individually grapple with the entire period. “And about which,” she'd added, “you will write a major paper in the spring. So be careful. The character you pick—who can be real or imaginary—will be with you all year. Remember that if you choose to invent someone, you will still be responsible for collecting the background to form a realistic environment and opinions for your character.”

In other words, it would be tougher to make someone up than to choose someone about whom you could just do specific research. I took the hint and chose a real person: Maimonides, a twelfth-century rabbinical scholar, philosopher, and physician. There was lots of material available about him, much of which was easily accessible via the Net.

I was the first person in the class to declare my choice. Dr. Walpole considered me over her half glasses and then nodded. “A fine choice.” She wrote it down, and then said, “Stoph?”

While Christoph Khouri explained his choice (an elaborate imaginary identity for an eleventh-century fighting knight), I heard Frank Delgado whisper at me: “Hey.”

This was unusual. Though we still sat side by side in Dr. Walpole's class, we had comprehensively ignored
each other since he'd matter-of-factly identified the depth of my daily fear. I glanced over at him. “What?”

Frank replied, “I like Maimonides. I can see that his rationalism would appeal to you.”

I blinked. I didn't quite know how to react. But it didn't matter; Frank had already half turned away to look toward Dr. Walpole, who was in the process of rejecting Justine Sinclair's choice. “I don't believe you've really considered the wide range of possibilities, Justine,” she was saying.

“But I have, Dr. Walpole,” said Justine earnestly. “Joan of Arc is a major figure. Don't you think she's fascinating?”

“I think everyone at this school already knows Joan's story,” said Dr. Walpole. “Including you. Her presence will not add new information to our discussions; nor will you be challenged in the research phase.” She paused. “How about Margery Kempe? She saw visions too.” At that, I saw Frank smile to himself; clearly, he knew who this Margery Kempe was. I wanted to kick him.

Frank Delgado was last. I was curious about what identity he'd choose. It was almost certain to be someone we hadn't encountered in the background reading.

It was. “Abulafia,” Frank said. His voice was very soft, close to inaudible. Oddly, he glanced over at me.

“I don't quite recall this Abulafia,” said Dr. Walpole. It did not appear to disturb her. “Why don't you tell us a bit about this … it is a man, isn't it? A real person?”

“Yes,” said Frank. “He was a kabbalist.”

“Well, that helps,” muttered Stoph Khouri.

“Kabbalism,” Dr. Walpole said. “We didn't cover that material. Jewish medieval mysticism, yes?”

Frank nodded. “Kabbalists were mystics, yeah. They believed in all kinds of weird stuff. Magic. Astrology. Witches and demons. All the unexplainable stuff that medieval Christians believed in, but that most Jews, rational Jews like Maimonides”—again I got a glance—“didn't. The other Jews thought the kabbalists were crazy. And Abulafia—they thought he was the craziest one of all.”

There was a little silence. Then, unexpectedly, Justine Sinclair said, “Oh, I see. Kind of like a medieval Fox Mulder.” She added helpfully to Dr. Walpole, “
The X-Files
. On TV. Mulder and Scully investigate psychic phenomena. Mulder believes. Scully doesn't. She's the rational one.”

Without thinking, I corrected her: “No, it's more complicated than that. Mulder
needs
to believe. His whole identity depends on it; it's what keeps him sane. It's a little twisted, but very logical.”

Frank turned to look at me intently. Justine scowled. “Well, when you compare him to Scully, Mulder is
not
rational—”

I couldn't help myself. “Yes, he is! You just don't understand where he's coming from—” I stopped. Everyone was looking at me. Dr. Walpole opened her mouth.

Frank cut her off. “Yes?” he said to me.

I came to my senses. I slouched down in my chair. “Nothing,” I said. “Off topic.”

Dr. Walpole looked relieved. She nodded at Frank, who, astonishingly, had his mouth open again. “Fine,
then, Mr. Delgado,” she said briskly. “You'll research this Abulafia.” And she moved on, explaining how she expected our research to be conducted.

I felt Frank's curious eyes flick my way several times during the remainder of that class. I ignored him. I felt a little self-conscious, which was ridiculous.

The fact was that in a minor way I was an X-Phile. A fanatic. I had tapes of every episode. Avidly I followed all the discussions on the Net.

There was no reason to feel self-conscious about it. I was no different from hundreds—maybe thousands—of other fans. It was relaxing to go online and discuss the show anonymously. To spend hours dissecting its logical threads. To admire the courageous, analytical Scully. And, with Scully, to follow “Spooky” Mulder along his erratic, pain-filled path toward some elusive Truth that—you knew in your heart—would never restore his innocence even if he did find it.

B
y the time I got home I felt terrible again. The mail didn't improve matters. It held a packet called “E-Apply!” which I had actually sent for, by clicking a button somewhere up in cyberspace. I opened the packet, and the names of umpteen hundred different colleges and universities danced dizzily down the information page. At the top a header screamed: “Do it electronically! Cut and paste your essays! Fast, convenient!” A CD-ROM tumbled out and I barely caught it. I leaned my shoulder up against the house for a minute.

My father had said that college applications were only permitted to ask if the applicant had ever been
convicted
of a felony. But it didn't matter; the admissions offices would remember me. They watched high schools for a living, didn't they? They'd have followed the case as a matter of professional interest.

“Hey. You okay?”

There was a tall girl standing next to me, frowning at me solicitously. I hadn't even heard her mount the porch steps. She had loose brown hair. She wore a man's white dress shirt open over a tight T-shirt. Baggy old jeans. Boots. Lipstick. Impartially speaking, and even in my current state, she was enough to make your mouth go dry.

Raina Doumeng. The artist who lived on the first floor; the one with the empty living room.

Somehow I managed to straighten up, and in the process I dropped the CD again. Raina caught it one-handed; looked at it. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “What a nightmare. No wonder you look sick.” She smiled and put out her hand, introduced herself. “I feel for you, really I do. I did all that two years ago. I'm at Tufts now, their joint program with the museum school.” She said it like I was supposed to know what museum she meant.

“David,” I said. I didn't include my last name. I couldn't, just then. She was so beautiful and she was smiling. “I live upstairs.” We shook hands. Hers was callused. I fumbled for something else to say. I didn't want her to go in, to go away. I didn't want to be alone, even though it was better that way. “Uh—why don't you live on campus?”

“Oh, I need room. To paint, for one thing. Plus, I like privacy.” She was examining my face, feature by feature. I knew she knew. I knew she was thinking about Emily. Thinking:
This is a killer
.

She said: “Hey, you got a Star Market card?”

“What?” I pulled myself together. “Uh, yeah.” I did have a grocery card. You used it at the checkout and got discounts.

Raina extracted a blue card from her wallet. She held it out and, confused, I took it.
ALAN BAWDEN
, said the name on the card. She looked at me expectantly. “Well?” she said. “Give me yours.”

My card said
DAVID YAFFE
. Uncertainly, I handed it over.

“Unbelievable. This one's really yours!” She shook her head. “Listen, start swapping, okay? The marketing people use these things to track our spending patterns. But if you swap, you thwart 'em. I trade at least once a week.”