The Prison Inside Me

by Gilbert Brown

  George told his father that a lot of other boys were present, that they were only having a little fun, and that no one even touched the boy involved because ‘he was different.’ His father again accused George of lying, but now George was too big to be hit. His father called the mother of the boy involved and apologized, but he received a very sharp rebuke about the perversions of his son. “I taught my son never to let anyone touch him there. Why can’t you do the same with George? I’m glad the police know of this. I hope they send George to reform school!”

  George Senior decided not to call the police. Instead, since he knew one of the judges of the juvenile court, he called him, asking for an interview in his chambers with George Junior present. At that interview, the judge had already received the police report, which was filed as an ‘incident’ and not as a complaint. The judge thought this was just a little harmless childish touching, a normal curiosity of young boys. It would pass; he did not intend to make case of it, assuming the mother of the other boy involved did not file an action. The judge would record that the concerned parents came in of their own accord, unrepresented by counsel, to ask the court’s advice, and had agreed to instruct their son in more appropriate behavior. Barring repetition, the matter was closed.

  George had never appeared before a judge before. He had seen shows on television where people were sent to jail for years. When he heard that he was going to see a judge, he became quite frightened. This fear was heightened by the anger, threats, and harsh words of his father: “I hope he gives you thirty years!” In private afterward, George’s mother admonished her husband for using such tactics. “If I don’t scare the bejesus out of him, we’ll have this every week. This is the second time—at least, the second time we know of. How many other times has he done this that we don’t know about? He doesn’t understand anything else!”

  George was duly threatened by his father’s words and reinforced with his mother’s kindness, and everything returned to normal. He threw himself into his schoolwork. His parents followed his every movement. He continued in Scouts, but since he wasn’t very good at baseball, he quit Little League. He always came straight home from school and began homework at once. He asked to take piano lessons since his mother played piano, and he invested himself in daily practice. He went on to high school, always first in his class in mathematics, and took high honors at graduation. He became sort of a loner, choosing his best friends among those who came to be called “nerds” in his classes. He became the pet of the math department, even being taken by his math teacher to a weekend symposium for gifted students at a local university. His only social contacts outside of school were with his nerdy friends at the annual birthday party his parents made for him. He didn’t go to school dances, never dated, and showed no interest in girls, many of whom admired him for his academic achievements and his newfound ability at piano.

  He made his high school’s National Honor Society. He enrolled at Demotte State, majoring in math and spending time with other classmates who were as deeply involved in mathematics as he was. He roomed with another introverted math major. They spent a lot of time working through mathematical paradoxes given to them by their professor. Math became George’s life. The absence of younger children at college kept George’s mind off what was soon to become a real problem.

  During the summer between his freshman and sophomore years, when George was nineteen, he took a job as a swim instructor at a local camp. Another locker room exposure and touching incident occurred after late swim one day. George and this excellent eight-year-old swimmer were alone in the locker room. George exposed himself to the boy, and a mutual touching scene ensued. The boy related this to his parents, who in turn informed the camp director. Concerned with the potential for a lawsuit, the director fired George on the spot, while George denied the entire affair.

  “You have no right to do this. Yes, we were in the locker room. No, no one else was there. But I never touched that kid; he’s lying, and you have no right to take his word over mine! If you think you’re in danger of a lawsuit, you’re right! I’m going to sue you for character defamation! You’ll pay for this!”

  The police informed the boy’s father that they could not act on mere hearsay. The father would have to come to the station and issue a formal complaint on which they would take action. He did so. Police came to the Nicholses’ home and arrested George based on the complaint, charging him with pedophilia and releasing him in his own recognizance without going before a judge, pending trial.

  His father hired a lawyer for him, who advised George to ask for an immediate appearance before a judge and plead guilty to a lesser charge of lewd and lascivious conduct. The penalty would be much less than if he undertook a lengthy trial for pedophilia, in which a jury was sure to believe the story of a young boy against his.

  “You have no previous record,” the lawyer advised, “and a great history at school and college. No one except you, your parents, and now me, since you were very correct in telling me, knows of these previous incidents that have been erased from the record. I am sure the judge will go very lightly since it is a ‘he said, she said’ type of situation. No one wants this to go to trial. There will be no prison time, no fines—just some type of probation, really nothing at all, perhaps not even a record that will be deleted when whatever probation the judge assigns is completed. Trust me, this is the best way. The other parents have refused to withdraw the complaint. I will make things easy for you.”

  “You don’t believe me either.” George raised his voice at the lawyer’s counsel. “You’re just like all the rest, ready to take some crazy kid’s word over mine!”

  “George,” answered the lawyer soothingly, “it’s not a matter of whether I believe you or not. It’s a matter of whether a jury will believe you, believe us. That’s a roll of the dice that no one is able to predict. Others have been found guilty on much less than some kid’s accusation. We can’t run that risk. We also have an enormous risk that if we go to trial and this comes out in the news or on TV, someone from your past will come forward and speak to the DA to testify against you. That would make our case completely untenable. Listen to me, George; I know what I am doing to protect you.”

  However begrudgingly, George followed his lawyer’s advice. He appeared before the judge in court and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, maintaining vehemently that the boy who had accused him was lying. The judge was quite sympathetic, assuring George that he was taking the right course. He assigned a probation period of two years, during which time George was to keep at least five hundred feet away from young children unless accompanied by another adult, and he was to see a psychiatric social worker—one was available at the college—for any counseling that the social worker thought he needed for a period not to exceed two years. During this period he was to make monthly reports to the court’s probation officer, either in person, by phone, or by mail.

  The next two years were easy. He enjoyed seeing the social worker at school, first twice a month, and then monthly, and then every two months. At the end of George’s sophomore year, the social worker thought that there was no reason to continue. George never discussed his sexual incidents with her; he controlled the sessions by limiting them to his fixation on mathematics, his lack of interest in women, and how he loved the challenges of the more difficult piano pieces he was attempting. “I see the college offers piano to music majors. Do you think I should give up one of my math courses and take an advanced piano offering?” George avoided what was to become a real problem, repeatedly denying to the social worker the accusations that had resulted in the court having mandated his visits to her.

  The two years of probation went by uneventfully. He visited the probation officer only once. All the other reviews were done by telephone. “I’m doing fine, aced the theory of numbers final; you should hear me play the piano, working like crazy on that in the college practice rooms; yeah, I’m keeping away from kids; ther
e are none here, and I’m going to summer school rather than working with kids, which I can’t do anyway; they’ll only accuse me again of things I never did.” The monthly calls became even more perfunctory, to the relief of the overworked officer, who had much more serious cases of probation to pursue: “Hello, Fred, it’s me, George, again. All is OK, nothing to report, no problems. Saw the psychologist twice. Call you in a month.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I am Detective Robert Szysmanski, attached to the Third Precinct. We had a call that your husband had committed suicide. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

  At that moment, the men from the medical examiner’s office appeared and greeted the detective. “OK, Siz, we’re finished. No need for EMS; it’s a DOA. We’ll wait until you get finished.”

  Szysmanski turned to Susan. “Mrs. Nichols, I know it’s very late, but could you wait for a few minutes until I take a look in the den there? Maybe you’d be more comfortable waiting in your living room. Is there someone you would like me to call to be with you? Someone in the family? A neighbor? A friend?”

  “No, thank you; that won’t be necessary,” she replied as she moved into the living room and sat down in the easy chair. Szysmanski went into the den, where Brighton was standing alongside the body. The detective took out his pad to make some quick notes. He turned to Brighton. “What’ve we got?”

  Brighton mused, “Gunshot wound to the head, Glock on the floor, George Nichols, Mrs. Nichols says her husband, alone in the house, no visible note. I didn’t touch anything so it may be in the desk, or under the blotter, or in that inbox, or who knows where. Seems to have occurred at about 10:05 p.m., time she called nine one one. The med people said death was instantaneous, self-inflicted; they only lifted his left arm to take a pulse and listened to his heart, didn’t touch his right side where the bullet entered. Appears to be right-handed, but I’m no detective.”

  Szysmanski took notes: “Bullet wound in right temple, possibly right-handed, Glock on floor near dangling right arm, body slumped to the right against arm of chair that is lightly bloodstained, no blood on floor, bloodstain on right temple and cheek”—to do this examination, Szysmanski had to squat down to see the slumped man’s face—“mouth slightly open, no signs of resistance, body completely relaxed.” So far the detective had touched nothing but his pad and pen.

  Szysmanski then took out his smartphone and took pictures of the desk, the room, and the body from different angles. He took some flash close-ups of the wound, the bloodstains on the chair, and the position of the weapon in relation to the body.

  He reached in his pocket, pulled out two surgical gloves, and put them on. He also took out a ziplock bag. He carefully picked up the Glock with his pen in the trigger guard, making sure it was pointed in a harmless direction, since he wasn’t sure if it remained loaded. He put it into the bag, sealed it, wrote something on the bag indicting it as evidence, and then left the bag on the floor. He noted in his pad that the only bloodstains were near the body; there were none elsewhere on the rug of the den. He turned to Brighton. “You watch me as I open some of these drawers and go through these papers on the desk to see if we can find a note.”

  He proceeded with gloved hands to rummage through papers in the drawers. For the next few minutes, he found nothing of any import, no note, except a box of bullets for the Glock in one desk drawer. “He must have kept the Glock in the desk, a crazy place to keep a weapon if you are trying to protect yourself against I don’t know what,” he mused.

  He said to Brighton, “Strange that Nichols’s desk has no computer on which he may have written a suicide note. Everyone has some kind of computer on his desk today.”

  He made a few more notes of the untouched and neat condition of the room and put his notebook and gloves back in his pockets. He then picked up the bag with the Glock very carefully, in case it remained loaded.

  He walked back into the vestibule where the medical team was waiting. “I’m done; he’s all yours.”

  He then went into the living room where Susan was sitting. “Thank you for waiting. I know this is a tough time for you. But if you can spare me just a few moments to tell me what happened, maybe we won’t have to inconvenience you again.”

  The medical team had left the house and was now returning with a gurney to remove the body, which they wheeled through the vestibule in view of Susan. Szysmanski, noting her distraction, explained, “They will have to take your husband’s body to the morgue to do an autopsy. They will call you soon to ask how you wish to proceed with burial. It’s all very routine. They’ve done this dozens of times. They are most kind and understanding. They’ll make things very easy for you.” He noted her rather detached appearance at his comment. Must be in some kind of shock, but it sure doesn’t look like that, he thought.

  “May I sit down and take some notes?”

  Susan nodded.

  “If this is not a convenient time for you to answer a few questions, I would understand. I can always come back later to speak to you, or, if you’d like, we can meet at the station when you feel up to it.”

  Susan nodded again. “No,” she replied, staring intently at Szysmanski, “please, let’s get this over with.”

  “Please tell me as best you can exactly what happened.”

  Susan stared blankly at him for a few moments and began, “I was upstairs getting ready for bed when I heard a gunshot. Yes, we do have a license for it. We bought it many years ago to protect us and our camp against burglars when neighbors up the road from the camp had an incident. I told George many times in our forty years of marriage that I didn’t want a firearm in our home, but he insisted.

  “I called out, ‘George, what was that?’ but he didn’t answer. I came running downstairs into the den, where he usually sat reading or writing or looking over his mail at night, and found him as you saw. I picked up the phone on the desk and called nine one one. Oh, yes, I called to him again when I got to the bottom of the stairs, and he still didn’t answer.”

  Szysmanski made notes, including an observation that in his inspection of the desk, he saw nothing that would indicate that the deceased was working on anything—no computer, no writing, no papers, no mail, no book or any other reading material; in short, nothing to indicate that he was at the desk for the usual purposes as described by his wife.

  “Just another question or two, Mrs. Nichols, and then I’ll leave you. The desk in the den, was that yours, too?”

  “No, that was George’s. My desk is upstairs in our bedroom.”

  “Did Mr. Nichols leave a note somewhere? Did he speak to you about wanting to commit suicide?”

  “He never mentioned anything about that. If he left a note, I’m not sure where he would have done that. Perhaps it’s on his desk.”

  “Do you know of any reason he had, like debts, some scandal, or a recent depression, that would drive him to kill himself?”

  “I don’t know of anything. He was a very happy person in all the many years I knew him.”

  “Do you know if anyone threatened his life recently?”

  Susan shook her head. “No.”

  Just then, the medical examiners wheeled their gurney with the covered body through the dining room and vestibule toward the front door. Szysmanski looked up at the sound, noticing that Susan remained undistracted, her eyes fixed on his face.

  “Did your husband own a computer?”

  “Yes,” Susan responded, staring more intently at the detective, “he had a laptop and a tablet, too.”

  “Do you know where they are? I was wondering why it wasn’t on his desk.”

  “I really don’t know where he keeps it when he is not using it. The tablet and the laptop may be in his briefcase somewhere.”

  “You don’t know where that briefcase is?”

  “It may be in the car in the garage, or at his office at the college.” />
  “What kind of work did your husband do?”

  “We used to own a summer sleep-away camp at the lake for children who needed special tutoring to overcome learning challenges they were facing. We also ran a weekend camp with the same purpose during the school year. He also did some private tutoring with these same children. We sold the camp a few years ago when we decided to retire. George was a professor of mathematics at Trout Lake Community College. He retired from that, too, but often taught a course or two as an adjunct whenever he was needed. He continued to tutor individual students and prepare small groups for the college entrance examinations.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what is your profession?”

  “I was a psychiatric social worker, also now retired,” Susan responded rather coolly.

  Szysmanski nodded slowly, making notes and delaying a bit before going on.

  “And the pistol, where is it usually kept?”

  Susan stared blankly at Szysmanski for a long moment before answering, “He kept it in the night table by our bed. I don’t know when he removed it to take it downstairs. When we lived at the lodge where the camp was out on the lake and the kids were still at home, we kept the weapon in a locked box on a high shelf in our bedroom closet. When we moved here, George said he felt safer having it by his bedside. I wasn’t wild about that, but he insisted, and I decided not to make an argument out of his feeling of security.”

  “You have children?”

  “We have a daughter and a son. I assume you want to know if I have informed them yet. The answer is no, but I will as soon as everyone leaves. Both of them live out of town. My daughter was married a few years ago. My son is still single. He is an engineer.”

  “How old are they?”