The Perpetual Motion Club

by Sue Lange

  “Do I need to bring anything or what?” she asked, trying to keep her annoyance to herself.

  “No, it’s not homeroom,” he said. “You don’t need a standard number two cellphone.”

  “Anyway,” she answered.

  They remained silent as they climbed the stairs. Elsa had more than just a queasy feeling in her stomach. She was glad they were heading for a bathroom where she could throw up.

  On the third floor they heard the rumbling sound of low conversation as soon as they entered the hallway. They followed the sound into the restroom where Ralph was leading a conversation.

  “So anyway, Senator Jackson is willing to put forth the legislation if we can get enough signatures.”

  “How many do we need,” a thin girl, junior probably, with waxed hair asked.

  “From our district we need 10,000.”

  “We’ll never make it,” a voice in the back said.

  “Not with that attitude, no,” Ralph said. “The point is at least she’s considering it.

  Jimmy cleared his throat. Ralph turned with an annoyed look in his eye but softened when he saw Elsa standing behind Jimmy.

  “This is Elsa Webb. She’d like to—”

  “We’ve met,” both Elsa and Ralph said.

  “—join.” Jimmy finished.

  “The more the merrier,” Ralph said before turning back to the rest.

  “What do I need to do?” Elsa said.

  Ralph turned back around. “Can you carry a sign? Speak in rhythm? Get people to sign a petition?”

  “Um,” Elsa answered.

  “You’re in,” Ralph said and then turned back around.

  “But don’t I have to . . . ”

  “What?” Ralph said, swiveling his head only, the rest of his body remained forward, as if the answer would be quick and he didn’t want to lose the current momentum with the crowd.

  “I don’t have to . . . do the initiation thing?” Elsa asked.

  “What initiation thing?”

  “I don’t know it’s not my club.”

  He turned fully to her then. “We know. You have the perpetual motion club. You might have initiation or hazing or whatever you want to call it but we don’t. We need warm bodies to sign petitions, that’s all. Yes, we get together and stare at people, but we don’t have initiations. If you want to stare at people, or scream at them if we go back to doing that, you’re in. We’re trying to get a law passed, that’s it. We don’t ride motorcycles, we don’t scare little kids, we don’t buck the establishment. We just try to get laws passed. If you’re not into that, then don’t stay. May I continue now?”

  “Sure,” Elsa said, shrinking into a corner by the waste can. She felt hot all over and wished Jimmy would stand in front of her so nobody could see her.

  Ralph finished the meeting which was nothing more than a planning session and pep rally for rousing the troops.

  When it was over Jimmy walked her home.

  “How come they don’t have initiations?” Elsa asked.

  “Why should they?”

  “I don’t know, I just thought they did.”

  “They don’t. Never did. You need to stop believing what you read on the Internet.”

  “I guess. Well, thanks for taking me. She leaned over and kissed Jimmy quickly on the cheek before running up to her house where Lainie was just serving dinner.

  ***

  For several days, Elsa racked her brain for an angle in Jason’s plight. She avoided Jimmy and the anti-Rifs as much as possible. Not that she was against them so much, but she didn’t have time to solve their problems. And solve Jason’s problems. And solve the perpetual motion club’s. The last thing she needed right now was to follow up on her commitments to the anti-Rifs. Right now she was panicking and didn’t have time for doing social good.

  Over the weekend, she got a chance to speak to Jason alone. His friends had not yet come over. Lainie and James were at a meeting of the LWTT. Actually it was a putt-putt golf tournament the LWTT was putting on. Whatever. Her parents and Jason’s friends were out of the way for a few hours.

  Elsa had suggested they take a break from the perpetual motion displays. The two sat in front of the movie screen trying to decide between Hoosiers and Pi. Jason had no interest in numbers theory and the last thing Elsa wanted to watch was that old, feel-good basketball movie. They were just now compromising and settling for the latest Austin Powers movie, Quantum Shagging, a movie neither one wanted to watch.

  “Jason,” Elsa said, tuning down the volume just before the flatulence scene started. “Here’s the thing. You’re the only suspect because of all the circumstantial evidence. The bloody knife had your finger prints. Why was it at the scene of the crime, if it was yours? You’d just been fighting and you’d said you were going to kill him.”

  “He stole my knife.”

  “Yes, correct. Nevertheless he was murdered with your knife. So it looks like you did it. But if you did it, wouldn’t you take it with you? Why would you leave it behind to incriminate yourself? No one seems to be asking that. I guess everyone thinks you’re a criminal mastermind. That there’s method to your madness.

  “But you didn’t do it, so there has to be someone else who did it. Is there someone else that goes to that shack? Use it for something? Supposedly it’s abandoned and so far off the beaten track that it isn’t even vandalized. No graffiti from what little I’ve heard about it. They only found it because somebody had ordered a land survey. So whoever killed him must have known about that shack”

  “Well, there you go. I know about the shack. It was Jer’s and my hideaway. As far as I know we were the only two that knew about it. It was all overgrown. We discovered it when we were kids following the river. We used it when we ran away from home to hide from Dad. He never knew about it. It’s the only place we felt safe.”

  “Did you tell my mom?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “It wouldn’t be a secret anymore. I just said I didn’t want my dad to find out.”

  “Jason, you’re going to lose your life but you’re afraid of your dad?”

  “You don’t know my dad.”

  “Doesn’t everybody know where it is by now?”

  “No, they’re keeping it a secret until the case is over.”

  “You need to tell my mom this. What were you fighting about?”

  “He was using iHigh and I didn’t want him to.”

  Elsa pondered that for a moment. Why would Jason care about his brother using iHigh? What was wrong with it?

  “iHigh? Did you tell my mom this?”

  “No, I told the police.”

  “You told the police that he was using iHigh or that that was what you’d fought about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nevermind. Let’s try something e . . . ” She stopped in mid-sentence. Something about iHigh struck her.

  “What?” Jason said. “We fought about the iHigh and I told the police.”

  Why do you care if he uses iHigh?”

  “It’s no good for you. Everyone knows that. Some people blow their minds on it.”

  “Not on iHigh. There’s a million things to blow your mind on, but not iHigh.”

  “That’s what they say, but I don’t care. He didn’t even want to use iHigh, it was just because he wanted to impress those anti-Rifs.”

  “I doubt they'd be impressed with something that doesn't work without the RFID chip,” Elsa said. “Forget it, let’s just watch the movie.”

  Which Jason did, but Elsa didn’t. She spent the entire slap stick comedy stone-faced. She didn’t laugh once, not even during the hilarious kick-to-the-groin scene or when the leading lady’s breasts blew up so large they popped. It was as if she didn’t even notice the fabulous cinematic experience before her.

  ***

  The next day, Sunday, Elsa got up as soon as she heard her mother moving arou
nd. No one else was up, yet. Perfect.

  “Mom,” she said, entering the kitchen.

  “Elsa,” her mother answered.

  “I have an idea about Jason’s case.”

  “I told you to stay out of it. This boy’s life is in my hands. Did he tell you something?”

  “I think there might be something they’ve overlooked.”

  “Did Jason say something to you?”

  “Yes.”

  Lainie dropped her coffee cup to the saucer. “What?”

  “I don’t know if it’s anything but they had been arguing over him using iHigh.”

  “Yes everyone knows that. Is that what he talked to you about?”

  “Do you have access to the autopsy report?”

  “Of course, why? Are you a sleuth now?”

  “Did he have ear buds?”

  “Yes. One.”

  “One only?”

  “Yes, one only.”

  “Nevermind then. It’s not—”

  “Was that it? That iHigh crap that you kids do?”

  “I don’t think so. iHigh isn’t that strong unless it’s in stereo. Unless there are two signals slightly out of sync.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. Are you going to church today?”

  “No, I’ve got some work.”

  “When is that stupid project going to be finished?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I hope, if I can keep Jason’s friends working.”

  “Well, I think you should just accept the fact that—”

  “No! I won’t,” Elsa pursed her lips together in staunch determination. After several pointed moments she ran downstairs to wait for her parents to leave. Finally they left and soon after that Jason rose. She made him some coffee and sat with him just as she had sat with her mother.

  “So, tell me Jason. I’m getting closer to a surefire way for my mom to win your case, but I need one thing.”

  “What?” Jason said glumly. He was not happy with Elsa constantly bringing up his case. He knew he was done for. He’d lost his glorious future in one quick stroke of a murderer’s hand. Why did this girl continue to bother him about it? Couldn’t she just be happy with the last few weeks of his freedom that he was devoting to her dumbass project?

  “I need to see the shack. Can you show me where it is?”

  “Isn’t it in the police report?”

  “I don’t have access to that.”

  “Doesn’t your mother?”

  “Maybe, but she’s not sharing it with me if she does.”

  “I thought you were working with her.”

  “She doesn’t believe me on this hunch. I have to do it without her.”

  “Are you going to tell anybody where it is if I tell you?”

  “Of course not,” she lied.

  His jaw worked side to side as he considered whether or not to trust Elsa. His mind finally decided favorably. “It’s half a mile from the Walk Right,” he said. “On the east side of the river. Follow the riverbank and when you see a clump of roses, it’s behind that. You’ll have to crawl through them. We usually kept a tunnel open, but it’s been a while. Watch out for the thorns.

  Without waiting another second, Elsa jumped up, grabbed her raincoat, and headed for the door. At the door was her mother’s garden box. She pulled out a pair of nippers before leaving the house.

  Within an hour she’d made it on her bike to the Walk Right Inn. She locked it to the stand and slid down to the bank. It was raining by now and the going was slippery but she didn’t care. She was sure she knew what happened and only had to find one piece of evidence to prove it.

  The roses were all gone, the entire shack was tied with yellow police tape. It was not hard to break in, though, the door handle was gone and there was no way to padlock it closed. She tentatively pushed it open.

  A raucous cry arose and a fluttering object flew against her face. She fell backwards with a cry and sat stunned for several moments until she realized it was just a dove. She pulled herself up, brushed the mud off the back of her slicker, and stepped inside the shack.

  The single room was lit by the sun coming through cracks in the walls and the broken windows. The air stank of mold and dust. Broken pots lay on the floor. In the center of the room stood a rusted out coal burning stove. A laminated table, defoliating from years of summer humidity, sat on the far side of the room.

  She tried to not touch anything or leave her footprints. If she found something she’d have to pretend like she was never there, or she’d queer this whole thing.

  In the end, the trouble she took to ensure no one knew she was there didn’t matter. In less than half an hour after she entered the shack, the wailing of a siren indicated the police had left motion detectors behind at the crime scene and she was now caught in them.

  “Miss,” the policeman said at the doorway. “I’m afraid you’re compromising the scene of a crime. You’ll need to come with me.”

  Elsa jumped at the voice even though she was expecting it. She rose from the dust and kept her eyes on the room as she exited with the cop. She hadn’t even had time to overturn a pot to see what was underneath.

  ***

  “So the thing is, if Jeremy had been listening to channel44, considering the condition he was in, there’s a good chance he did it by accident. He was trying to impress the anti-Rifs. He didn’t know they didn’t have a hazing. Everyone just assumes they do that. He was crazy high, not just feeling good. His mind was not functioning right. He could very well have cut his own jugular and then crawled out to the river where he was found. Nobody else knew about this shack before this happened except him and Jason. If you can find that other earbud, you’ll be able to see where it’s tuned to.”

  “Wouldn’t the original have to be tuned to channel44?”

  “No, it’s turbo charged. Not only out of sync but the signal comes from an alternate section of the band. Channel44 puts out a mono signal which matches the regular iHigh station which changes all the time because it’s . . . ”

  “Illegal.”

  “It’s wicked strong. Obviously.”

  “Well, the story is far-fetched. We have a prime suspect. I doubt the detectives will be interested in your idea, but we’ll pass on the information.”

  She couldn’t believe she was getting the brush off. This was Jason’s only chance. “You’re not even going to take me seriously? I mean, you could be convicting an innocent man.”

  “I said, we’ll pass on your idea to the detectives in charge. You needn’t worry your pretty little head about this criminal.”

  “He’s not a criminal.”

  “Oh, sorry, correct that, this basketball hero.”

  Elsa understood now. They were jealous of Jason’s status. They knew who he was. This was a setup. Just like in the movies.

  “Can I go home, now? I really don’t want my mom to figure out what I did. She’ll kill me.”

  “Too late, young lady,” Lainie was just entering the station.

  It would be two days before she’d speak to her daughter again. And no, she had no interest in Elsa’s ideas concerning a second earbud, the anti-rids, or channel44.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The day for Jason’s trial came, spelling disaster for Elsa. She had let him down. If he didn't get the chair he'd at least go to jail for the rest of his life. With dismay, she noted that he dressed neatly and repentantly. He was trying so hard, but she had failed him. She went along to the inquiry to offer her support and watched the proceedings with trepidation.

  Jason answered stoutly and honestly all the questions about the confrontation with this brother. He said if he could relive that day, he would. He loved his brother and certainly never meant what he said. He would always regret the words. He’d been living in hell ever since then.

  Jason’s lawyer, Lainie Webb, asked why he had not told the police about the shack. It became clear from the answer that Jason should probably not be living with his father, but that was no excuse for
murder.

  The prosecutor paraded ten witnesses that all provided testimony as to Jason’s vow to kill his younger brother.

  A social worker described the living hell that was Jason’s and Jeremy’s life under their father. And yes, battered children often wind up battering each other and even killing each other eventually. It’s a sad cyclical thing, the social worker said.

  Jason admitted the knife was his and that he had no idea how his brother had gotten it.

  School records showed Jason to be academically deficient, indicating a low IQ. No one brought up the fact that he was a star basketball player and that he’d never felt the need to do homework while he was perfecting his natural talent.

  “Do you have any more witnesses?” the judge asked Lainie, just as she was shuffling through her papers.

  “I’m sorry?” Lainie said.

  “Any more witnesses?” the judge repeated, he looked at Lainie over his reading glasses, his eyebrows raised, his eyes dark, his lips frowning.

  Elsa could not believe the inadequacy of Jason’s defense. How could Lainie give up so easily? How had poor Jason wound up with such a pitiful lawyer?

  Lainie shook her head, dropped a sheet of paper onto the floor, stood to pick it up. The prosecutor leaned over in his seat and retrieved it for her.

  “Uh, thank you,” Lainie said. “Um, actually, yes, I do have one more uh, little detail to, er, bring to the court’s attention.”

  Elsa’s eyes darted around the room. She turned to see who else could possibly help Lainie help Jason. A slight pinprick of hope entered her heart.

  The judge rolled his eyes, held open his hands, urging Lainie to get on with it.

  “If it please your honor, I’d like to call Detective Joseph Dantzen.”

  The judge closed his eyes, shook his head, all thoughts of a quick nine holes fled. He said, “Court calls Detective Joseph Dantzen.”

  The detective was led into the court and took his place on the stand, swearing to tell nothing but the truth. He sat and upon questioning described how he had followd a hunch, revisited the crime scene, and underneath an overturned flower pot found an ear bud tuned to channel44. Apparently Jeremy had died an accidental death. His wound had been self-inflicted. He had been trying to get into the Anti-Rifs and thought the act of defiance would do it.