by Owen Thomas
He reached the bottom of the page, the words growing ever smaller and cramped and difficult to read as he ran out of room. He considered signing his name. He reread it, tracing over illegible letters as he went, underlining some parts for emphasis. But when he reached the end, he knew he was not done. Every word made him feel just a little bit lighter; a little bit better about himself and how he lived his life. What was it Charles Compson had said? We are who we are. Fuck the rest and all who would judge us for it. Hollis drew an arrow at the bottom of the page and turned it over.
I do not pretend to be perfect. I am flawed to be sure. But I do not hide behind any illusions about who I am. Susan, if I am not the person you want as a husband, then that is regrettable. We have both invested so much. But I will not – I WILL NOT – pretend along with you that I am in need of some great moral reform. Not from you of all people. You have no regard for Charles Compson. I understand that. You don’t have to like him or respect him. But you must accept that I respect him, just as you must accept that I value the friendship of Akahito Takada. I respect him. He is my friend, no matter how you roll your eyes at the sound of his name. I have done what I could to help Akahito’s daughter, a lovely and kind person, find a college. You have chosen to interpret my efforts in the worst possible light, showing how little regard you have for my character. But as wounding as your low regard for me may be, I will not bend over backwards to convince you of anything. Not any more. You can believe what you wish, as I know you will anyway, no matter what I say or do.
So know this: If you are reading this note, it means you have returned home before I have returned home. I have flown to Phoenix. I am there at the request of Bethany Koan, who has called and asked for my assistance. I believe my friendship with her father, who is not in this country and able to help her himself, calls for me to at least see what I can do. You may think about that what you will. You may imagine what you will. I do not care anymore. When we are both again in the same house, we must discuss whether it is time for us to start over. David and Tilly are grown. You know I will always do whatever is required for Ben. But I do not think this kind of unhappiness is healthy and we each still have many good years left. We should each be concerned about making the most of them.
I hope that your impromptu excursion gave you whatever you were looking for. I am sincere about that. I am making every effort to have David take care of Ben. If that does not work out, I intend to contact Martina Davis. Regards, H.
Yes, by God. That felt good. He read the note over again, folded it and then fished around through the drawers of the desk for an envelope. He wrote Susan’s name across the front of the envelope and sealed it, swatting it over the edge of the desk in a gesture of long overdue satisfaction.
Hollis stood, grabbed his glass, emptied it in a single swallow and headed back upstairs, grunting and grimacing. He climbed all the way up to his bedroom and took the envelope into the bathroom where he placed it with precision behind the sink, leaning up against the mirror. He slipped his free hand in his pocket and stared at the envelope for a moment, twirling the empty wine glass in his other hand. He stood for a full thirty seconds, simultaneously weighing the gravity of the moment and savoring the feeling of freedom ripping through his veins. Then he nodded in satisfaction, snapped off the light and went back downstairs. In the kitchen he washed the empty glass and dried it with a tea towel hanging from the side of the refrigerator by an Ohio State Buckeye magnet. The winking legume was fightin’ mad.
“Ben,” he said, stepping out into the dining room.
Fantasia still gushed its color and sound. Ben had not moved. The pizza was magically gone. Ben turned his head. Mouth open, face blank, he blinked. Hollis winked.
“Let’s go drop in on your brother.”
CHAPTER 52 – David
Lonnie Lumkin acts happy to see me. Like we’re old school chums at a reunion. Officer Malvik – the others seem to like to call her Babs – puts some muscle into sitting me down in a metal chair at the table and takes off the cuffs, which she slips into a holster on her belt. She is built like one of those white stone government buildings that went up in the 1930’s with New Deal dollars. I figure it’s a good bet that she switch hits as either the immoveable object or the unstoppable force as the circumstances may require.
Babs peers over her glasses at Lonnie, fixing him with a look. Lonnie nods and thanks her like she has delivered him a crème brûlée and freshened up his coffee. She offers him something like a smile and closes the door behind her.
Lonnie is not, of course, eating a crème brûlée. He is eating a large white raw potato or radish or something that he has pulled out of the ground on the way to the Westerville Police Station, now like a second home to me. There are two more of whatever he is eating in a clear plastic baggie in front of him on the table.
“Hey there, Mr. Johns,” says Lonnie, his geniality like an air horn. “Sleep okay?”
“No.”
“I hear this place can be noisy. Was it noisy?”
“No.”
“Well, so then it was just being in a new place. That happens. I can’t sleep worth a darn in a new place. Are you hungry? I brought some kohlrabi.”
He holds out the bag on the crook of a finger.
“No.”
“Okay. Well then, let’s get to it. Okay?”
Lonnie bends himself below the table to rummage through a leather case on the floor. I recognize the bag. It belongs on the back of a stagecoach. It’s one of those leather medical kits with a brass clasp on the top that doctors in old westerns always stuffed their stethoscopes into, which was always right before some shit-for-luck cowpoke learns that there’s nothing else to be done and that it’s only matter of time and that he best start gettin’ his affairs in order. The bag looks three times as old as my lawyer.
Stretching into the depths of his bag, Lonnie’s pant legs rise up, leaving a strip of hairless, white flesh between the dark hems and the elastic of his athletic socks. I want to ask if he is wearing exactly the same suit, shirt, tie he was wearing the last time I sat across from him and watched him chew things.
Which was around … yesterday.
I have to think about this because it feels like two or three weeks since I was arraigned. I am still wearing my not-guilty-your-honor suit and tie, which is now considerably worse for wear for having served as everything from my you-never-get-a-second-chance-to-make-a-first-impression courtroom respectability wear, to fine-dining suddenly-single surprise party ensemble, to my burglar-wrestling leotard, to a kind of Jackson Pollock blood-vomit-fish scum wearable canvas, to late-night-lawn-twister funsuit, to, most recently, prison pajamas and pillow. They have taken my tie and my belt just in case it crosses my mind to kill myself, which, I have to admit…
“Just start from the beginning, Mr. Johns. From the time you left my office yesterday morning.”
He has retrieved a yellow pad and a pen and is poised to begin transcription. I am slow to begin, mostly because I am carefully stepping through the events that are none of his concern, like the trip to see poor Pete Miller and the dinner at Leoni’s Trattoria with the recently long lost Mae Chang and the mental breakdown in my driveway, all of which I represent but in a way that makes me seem like less of a loserish asshole than the rest of the story inevitably will. By the time I get to the part about impaling my former student’s head onto the corner of my coffee table and throwing up in my kitchen, I have found the darker narrative stride of my life and the early part of the story seems almost festive and quaint by comparison.
But aside from exercising some harmless editorial license, I tell Lonnie Lumkin the basic story of the past twenty hours. He listens and scribbles and nods his head in understanding, never betraying what he actually thinks of any of it. I try to discern some meaning in the occasional abruptness with which he stops or resumes chewing, but that leads nowhere. When I am done, he drops his pen on the pad and begins fishing around in the baggie for the last chunk of w
hite tuber. In it goes. He stuffs the baggie in his shirt pocket, no doubt to reuse tomorrow. “Well, these are interesting developments, Mr. Johns. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. I guess. At least she’s alive.”
“Well, yes, you and I know she’s alive and that is a relief.”
“You and I and … everybody else? Right?”
“Mmm…” He shakes his head. “Detective North is, well, very worked up.”
“What, he thinks I’m making all of this up?”
“He doesn’t know all of this yet, remember?”
“I told him it was her. And my neighbor. I’m sure Karl gave a good description of her. How can they think… they have blood samples for Christsake.”
“Remember, Mr. Johns, everything that the police have tells them that Brittany Kline was alive last night.” Finger in the air. “Last night. She’s still missing and now they have evidence of violence. Violence by you against her. Strong evidence. For all they know, you’ve always known where she was, you were hiding her or you two were having secret relations, you know, and then something happened and there was a bad fight and she was injured, maybe fatally…”
“Fatally? Oh come on. I just told you…”
“From their perspective. They’re going to consider the worst. You could have killed her and done something with her. Dumped the body in a lake somewhere. See? They’ve already taken dirt samples from your tires. They’ve scraped your shoes. They’re not just going to take your word for it.” He’s smiling in his quirky intensity that I’m sure his mother finds endearing. “In some ways, you’re worse off now than before.”
“Great.”
“It all depends on what they want to believe.”
“I didn’t lay a hand on her. Well, I did, but I was taking her to the hospital.”
“You have to admit, it’s a pretty wild story. Like I said, North is pretty worked-up. He’s too close to this thing if you ask me.”
“Do you believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. All defendants are entitled…”
“Cut the shit, Lonnie. I don’t need the civics lesson.”
“No need to swear, Mr. Johns. Everyone I’ve ever represented has been guilty of some version of the charge. Guilty of something. Not almost everyone. Everyone.”
“Well I’m the exception.”
“Are you?”
“Believe it.”
“Whose drugs did they seize? Who was kissing Brittany Kline at Billy Rocks? Who ended up with her purse and drugs? Who’s home has her blood in it? Who caused her injuries? Who was the last person to see her?”
“Are you kidding me? I have to listen to this from my own lawyer?”
“Hey, now. I’m not trying to be a mean guy or anything. I’m just saying that sometimes the truth can be kind of, you know, gosh … slippery I guess is what I mean.”
“Slippery.”
“Yeah, so like you’re kind of guilty but not in the way they think you are. Or you’re guilty of one thing and the great state of Ohio thinks you’re guilty of something totally different. Or you’re guilty but only if you look at things in a certain way or when you only look at certain facts. See?”
“No. Lonnie. I don’t see.”
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, pushing against the table with his knee so that he rocks back on two hind chair legs.
“Sometimes what we think about our own guilt just leads us into trouble.”
“So?”
“So, a guilty conscience will make you do things.”
“Oh, you think I have a guilty conscience?”
“I don’t know anything about your conscience, Mr. Johns. That’s not really my business. Although you do seem to have a knack for finding trouble. Maybe you’re lookin’ to get punished and maybe you aren’t. I’m just saying that in my business guilt and innocence are slippery ideas and I try to keep an open mind. You never know.”
“If you say so. But the point is that my psychiatrist-public-defender is sitting here hedging his bets.”
“I like you, Mr. Johns, and I hope you’re innocent, just like you say. But it doesn’t really matter whether I think you’re guilty. We just have to wait and see where the evidence takes the case. That’s what really matters. What the evidence says. See? My opinion about your guilt or innocence in the scheme of things makes about as much difference as … gosh, it makes about as much difference as a gnat on a fly on the hind quarters of a horse. Doesn’t matter what the cops think or the press or the public or even the judge. Only a jury can decide what you did and what you didn’t do, and that depends on the evidence.”
“The jury.”
“Yep. The jury.”
“Yesterday you said I should skip the jury and think about a deal.”
“Yes, I did. That was on the drug charges.”
“So then this mess with Brittany is different?”
“You haven’t been charged with doing anything to Brittany Kline, Mr. Johns.”
“And if they do charge me?”
“They won’t. They can’t. Not yet anyway. They don’t have a victim.”
“They sure as hell locked me up.”
“Yeah, they shouldn’t have done that. But it was just overnight. They’re upset. They can’t hold you. They’re just worried about little Brittany. That’s all.”
“Lil’ Brittany can take care of herself.”
“Maybe so. I sure don’t like that she might be mixed up with some real drug pushers. This Richie character. This DJ character. That’s reason enough to be worried.”
My head is still throbbing. I touch the knot that has risen like a forested hill overnight, cresting at its point of contact with my low-hanging kitchen cupboards. It is still so tender I wince. Every heartbeat hurts.
“So what do we do next?” I ask.
“On this here? Nothing to do but wait. Hope they find her. Cooperate. Show you want to help sort things out.”
“What?” I sound indignant. I suppose I am.
“Hey, you’re the one telling me you’re innocent, Mr. Johns. You want to change your story, I’m all ears and maybe we do something else.”
“No.”
“You don’t have much choice anyway. You’ve got information and they’re entitled to question you. Lie to ‘em, you look guilty. Plead the Fifth, you look guilty. You don’t have to answer, but that’s not going to help anything. I’m surprised they haven’t kicked that door open.”
“They’re waiting?”
He nods. “You ready to tell them what you just told me?”
I don’t object, which is enough. Lonnie gets up and walks over to a brown plastic phone stuck to the wall. He dials a two-digit number and waits. He smiles at me watching him. His face registers a sound in his ear. He puts his finger in the air. Big smile.
“Okay Babs. Yep. No time like the present!”
Chuck North is not in the mood for the conventions of polite conversation. He does not care how I have been. He does not ask after my family. He is unconcerned with athletic competitions and all things meteorological. Barely acknowledging my lawyer, he pulls out the chair across from me and sits with all the drama of a thousand pounds giving it all up for gravity.
I recognize the uniformed man with him as one of the officers tramping around my lawn last night. He leans up against the door stirring a Styrofoam cup with a red straw. North must see the recognition on my face.
“Yeah, that’s Hooley. Officer Hooley catalogued all the shit we found in your house last night. He’s here to make sure I don’t violate the Constitution.”
I nod. Hooley nods back. He looks like an alter boy with an appetite for steroids. An Amish bouncer.
“Here’s the deal, DJ.”
“I’m not DJ.”
“Shut up, Dave. You wanted a lawyer; we let you talk to your lawyer.”
“Speaking of the Constitution.”
His jaw flexes and he takes a breath in through his nose.
/> “Shut … the … fuck … up and let me finish. We …”
“Now Detective North, there’s no need…”
“You too counselor.” He turns on Lonnie, who flinches and crosses his arms defensively, pretending to look amused. “I’m not joking around here. Okay? I’m not just killing time. I’ve got a missing girl to find. If you want to tell him not to answer my questions then go right ahead. You want to end this discussion, then get the fuck out and we’re done. I’ll charge your boy here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
“Charge me with what? I haven’t done anything.”
“You’re out on bail, needle-dick. Ever revoke a hall pass, teach? It’s easy. I’ve got enough evidence of assault and endangering a minor to yank your ass right back in.”
“Doubtful,” says Lonnie. He says this, not to North, but to me, in a sideways conspiratorial whisper meant, I can only assume, to provide some kind of reassurance that I am not alone. Which is funny, because now I feel completely alone. I cannot help but wonder just how many ways Glenda Leveau would have been up this guy’s ass.
“Highly doubtful?” asks North. “Just try me. You should hear Karl Gustafson tell his story. Smartest thing I ever did was to give that guy my card.”
“Good ol’ Karl.”
“How’d you like your accommodations last night, Dave? Beats the hell out of your place. You live in a dump, you know that?”
I say nothing, taking an interest in my hands. North turns again to Lonnie.
“Now let’s cut the bullshit, counsel. Since you’re here and I’m here and he’s here, I’m guessing you’ve told him that it’s in his best interests to cooperate with me unless he has something to hide.”