A Very Simple Crime Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART TWO

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PART THREE

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Grant Jerkins.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jerkins, Grant.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44476-4

  1. Married people—Fiction. 2. Mentally ill—Fiction. 3. People with mental disabilities—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3610.E69V47 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2010024877

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Andria

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Audrey Kelly saw something of value in this story and advocated tirelessly for it, as did Ed Schneider and Brian Overland. Thank you.

  I would like to also thank each of the following people who contributed to this book in some significant way: Doug Crandell, Ginger Leonard, Jill Haynes, Bonnie Stacey, Wanda Standridge, Rita Kempley, Tom Kavanagh, Joan Scoccimarro, Ruth Newman, Susan Dyer, Angela M. Olsen, Collin Kelley, and Kate Brady. Terry Curtis Fox suggested the title.

  At Berkley Books I want to acknowledge the significant contribution of my editor, Natalee Rosenstein, and my appreciation goes to Michelle Vega for lighting the way.

  Literary Agent Robert Guinsler made it look far too easy. Thank you, Robert.

  Lastly, I want to state the obvious: that people with developmental disabilities are no more prone to violence than any other individuals. We are fortunate to live in a time when institutions such as the one depicted in this book are closing, and people who were once institutionalized are now recognized as important contributors to their communities and workplaces.

  PART ONE

  I’m crazy for tryin’

  and crazy for cryin’

  and I’m crazy for lovin’ you

  —WILLIE NELSON, “CRAZY”

  ONE

  After our parents’ violent and unexpected deaths, my brother, Monty, and I were taken in by our mother’s sister and her family. As if to accentuate our already profound sense of displacement, we were delegated to a makeshift bedroom in the basement of our aunt’s suburban home, separate from those in the levels above.

  As we mourned the sudden and unexpected loss of our parents, the basement seemed an appropriate environment. For us, the basement was not a hardship, though. We shared a dim room in the damp space beneath the house. We grew to love it. We had privacy to experiment with stolen cigarettes and stay up till all hours watching black-and-white crime movies. We were separate from the rest of the family, the strangers above us who shared our blood, and we were rulers, or so it seemed to us, of our own domain.

  The basement, being belowground, was completely without light at nighttime. The deepest darkness. One night, I woke needing to use the bathroom and clambered from my bed to make the trip upstairs to the only bathroom in the house. The bathroom was our only connection to the others who lived in the house with us, the need to relieve bodily functions our only acknowledgment to those who lived above. This night, I neglected to turn on the bedside lamp to light my way. Why should I? It was a trip I had made countless times before. I could have easily negotiated the course with my eyes closed. But this time, for whatever reason, somewhere along the way, I got lost.

  I think that I became conscious of the darkness. That must have been it. The void of the absolute absence of light. Only a few steps from my bed, I paused along the familiar path. I tried to see my own hand held inches from my eyes, but I couldn’t. I was blind. Lost. Frightened.

  I began to walk as a caricature of a blind man. Feeling my way. Tapping my foot cautiously in front of me, finding nothing but emptiness. After what seemed hours, I touched the cool, smooth hardness of the painted cement wall. Thinking I had found an anchor, a landmark of familiarity, I relaxed somewhat. I rested for a moment, thinking myself foolish for being frightened earlier, but I soon realized I was still lost. The wall felt alien to me. Porous and somehow obscene. I followed it and followed it and followed it, loathing the foul feel of it, but still it led me nowhere. Panic rose in my throat, tight like a clenched fist. I played my fingers over each painted pore of each cinder block in the wall. It felt as though I had been transported to some crater-blasted alien landscape. A certainty grew in me that soon, my searching hand would touch something cool and wet and elastic. Something alive. I gave in to my fear and forgot my pride. I called out for my brother. “Monty! Monty! Monty!” His bedside light clicked on
, and my old familiar world swam into focus. Monty blinked at me and asked what was wrong. I felt like a fool. I was standing alone, in an unlikely corner, like some piece of unused furniture pushed out of the way. I felt shame, but also relief. I stood dumbly caught in the light, my outstretched hand less than an inch from the light switch.

  Now I find that I’ve fallen prey to this unlikely phenomenon once again. I was living my life as I always had, as I believed I always would. I did not stumble blindly toward death; rather, each step of my life seemed preordained, as though it had been planned out a thousand years before I was born. And I took each step with complacent pleasure, knowing I was taking the right path. I strode proudly, if predictably, through my life.

  But something went wrong. I faltered. Misstepped.

  Somewhere along the way, I got lost.

  The courtroom is not what I expected. It is very quiet most of the time. The lawyers murmur their objections when they find something objectionable. They are almost polite in their questioning. Today is the last day of the trial. Today is the day I will be called upon to explain myself, to defend my actions. Monty is my lawyer. Thirty-five years later and I still need my brother to save me from the darkness. He leans over and whispers into my ear, “Today I am my brother’s keeper.” He stands, handsome as ever, his suit impeccable, his hair receding but still a burnished blond and freshly cut in a boyish style that makes him seem impossibly young, impossibly beautiful. He addresses the judge. “Your Honor, the defense would like to call as its last witness the defendant, Mr. Adam Lee.”

  I stand. I feel awkward as I push my chair back. The area between the defense table and the witness box seems improbably open and impossibly immense, and the panic of the agoraphobic washes over me. I concentrate on not tripping over my own feet as I make my way into this vast open space. I see the witness seat ahead of me, empty and waiting for my arrival, and I know that it will be years before I can complete the journey to reach it. I glance up and to the left and see the judge watching me. I smile at him stupidly, thinking that he knows what I’m feeling, having seen this drama played out a thousand times before. I feel the twenty-four eyes of the full jury box watching me, gauging me, wondering why I am walking like the hypnotized, the drugged, the undead. Finally, I climb the two steps into the witness box and grasp the chair like an exhausted swimmer touching land.

  Looking out into the gallery, I wonder if the reporters will comment on my stilted trek to the stand, my dazed appearance. Then my brother’s face fills my vision, and even now, blind from the darkness that surrounds me, I am in awe of his beauty.

  “Mr. Lee, after everything that’s gone on before this moment, there’s really only one question that matters. I’ll ask it point-blank. Adam Lee, did you murder your wife?”

  Just as Monty has coached me, I do not hesitate with my answer, yet still, in the time it takes me to open my mouth and spit the words out, I can feel the eyes of the jury on me, drinking me, eating me, like the body of Christ.

  “No,” I say. “No. I loved my wife.”

  TWO

  Rachel had always been a good wife. But at some point, and without my realizing I had done it, I did to her what had been done to me and my brother so long ago. I delegated her to a lower level. She was still there, with me, seemingly an important fixture in my life, as always, but now in a place below me, separate.

  Or perhaps it was I who was separate, who had remained separate. Had never left the damp coolness of the lower levels.

  She would never leave me; of that I was certain. Her love for me, from the very beginning, was fanatical.

  I did not meet Rachel until we were both in our twenties, yet she had never kissed a man, much less the other things. And although her devotion to me was, from the very beginning, that of the born-again convert, I still suspect that had it not been me she found, it would have been another. In the end, her love would have found a blistering focus on any man who could withstand it. It did not have to be me. I could never tell her this, but it is true.

  We met at a college graduation party. Her date was drunk and became belligerent when she asked to leave. Already settled into a sober-minded life, I was not drinking and offered her a ride to her dormitory. She accepted. Outside the dorm building, she opened the car door to get out, then hesitated.

  “This is silly,” she said. “It’s graduation night. We should be having fun.”

  I looked at her, waiting to see what she meant.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I agree,” I said, not knowing what I was agreeing to.

  She pulled her leg back into the car and closed the door. She leaned across the seat and kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s go get some beer.”

  In her dorm room, we played a drinking game that involved bouncing a quarter off a tabletop and into a glass of beer. We drank the beer and flirted with each other. She told me about her father. How he tried to control her with his money. When she reached to pick up the quarter, I noticed a bubble-gum-colored scar that stretched across her wrist. The scar was raised, textured, and repulsive. She followed my gaze and pulled her arm away.

  “That happened a long time ago.” She carefully aimed the quarter. “I used to be a very sad person.” She threw the quarter hard against the tabletop. It bounced off the table, arced spinning through the air, and plopped into the glass of beer. I watched the quarter zigzag lazily through the amber liquid until it came to a rest at the bottom of the glass. Bubbles erupted around the quarter and foamed to the top of the glass. “I used to be a very sad person,” she repeated, and pushed the glass aside. She leaned across the table. “But now I’m a very drunk person.” She kissed me. I hesitated at first. Then I kissed back.

  Can I admit it now? Can I acknowledge that on some level, even then, I was attracted to her mental illness? Certainly it was there, like a badge of achievement for all to see. I saw it, stretched and pink-edged across her wrist, and I responded to it. Darkness is drawn to darkness.

  THREE

  Once, while we were still dating, she caught me appreciating the figure of a salesgirl.

  We were shopping in a mall clothing store, and I waited, as all men do, while she tried on different garments. Rachel emerged from the dressing room to get my opinion of the latest choice. I didn’t notice her. I was idly watching the salesgirl put away clothes. Rachel gauged the emotion in my eyes and followed my gaze to the stockinged legs of the young woman. A sound escaped Rachel’s throat. A sound I had never before heard. It was neither animal nor human. It was inorganic. It was anguish. Rachel seemed to crumple in on herself, as though the horrid sound she emitted were her escaping life essence. I went to her, hands open. She warded me off. “Don’t! Don’t you! Don’t!” Her hands went to her head. Her fingers tore strands, then clumps, of her hair out of her head. Her scalp began to bleed. The salesgirl stared at us, horrified. I have been very careful ever since.

  FOUR

  “So she’s crazy. Guess what? All women are crazy. You know why? Because all men are liars. Like you don’t know. You’re telling me what? That if this salesgirl says to you, ‘Come on in the back, let me suck your dick,’ you’re gonna say what? No? ‘I don’t want you to suck my dick even if you are young and beautiful.’ Bullshit.”

  Monty had passed his bar exams the previous year. Whereas I had perfunctorily gone to school and received a degree in business, Monty had soared through his education and was given a junior partnership at a prestigious law firm. It was quite an accomplishment, but then again, Monty usually got what he wanted. What his sunny blond hair and rugged good looks did not bring to him, his sharp mind could figure out a way to obtain. Every year a local magazine listed the city’s most eligible bachelors, and Monty’s name was invariably at the top of the list. I went to see him at his office. The secretary escorted me in, and I found Monty reclined with his shoes, black leather buffed to a luxurious glow, propped up on his desk, a cigarette clipped between his fingers. Since our father’s death, I always
consulted Monty with my problems. He was stronger, smarter, and more worldly than me.

  “It’s not like that,” I said.

  “It’s exactly like that. I know it. You know it. She knows it. Men cannot be trusted. And it drives women crazy.”

  Monty lit another cigarette, blew a smoke ring. It drifted into my face.

  “And she’s worth how much? How many millions? She can afford to pull her hair out.”

  “Please.”

  “Look, Adam, your track record with women isn’t exactly phenomenal. People are starting to wonder, you know.”

  “This is your idea of advice?”

  “I’m just saying that you have a history of running away from girls who want you.”

  That was a low blow. I was shocked that he would dare mention it at all. He was referring to an incident from our childhood. A girl who vacationed with our family. A girl I had a boyhood crush on. Some extremely unpleasant things happened that summer—including our parents’ deaths at the end of it. It was an unfortunate slip on his part.

  “You have a history as well,” I said. “How many women has it been now that you’ve allowed the pleasure of your company?”

  “Beyond number.” He smiled. It wasn’t much of a jab from me. He was quite proud of his reputation as a Lothario.

  “Look, so she’s a little loony tunes. You say she’s pretty. You say she’s rich—”

  “It’s her father’s money.”

  “And he’s how old?”

  “You’re certainly a lawyer.”

  “Thank you. Want me to be the best man?”