A Very Simple Crime by Grant Jerkins Read Free Book Online Page B

attached, is stuck in a crevice of the crystal. The gash in her head is unthinkably deep and profane, like a flower trying to bloom. But bloom it shall not. The blood, coagulated in the carpet beneath her head, has dried into a blackened crust. Lethargic autumn flies buzz around her open eyes.
    I can think of nothing else to do. I call Monty. He tells me to remain calm. But I am calm, I tell him. He tells me to hang up the phone and call an ambulance and then the police, and then to call him back. I do. When I call Monty back, he tells me he knows a man in the prosecutor’s office. He will help me. I thank him and hang up.
    I look over at Albert. He continues to rock and chant. And I know, the play has begun. I look over to Rachel. Her body has already started to bloat. And yes, it is true. The play has begun.

PART TWO
    That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
     
—JAMES M. CAIN,
DOUBLE INDEMNITY

TWENTY
    Leo Hewitt sat behind his small desk in his small cubicle in the very large criminal courts building, his mostly bald head bent over a furniture catalog. The rest of the cubicles, a small warren of them, were deserted now, the other workers having left hours ago. A small lamp cast a dim light on the catalog spread out before him. He turned the page and smiled wistfully at a photo of an impracticably huge and impracticably priced mahogany executive’s desk. He rubbed a stubby finger respectfully over the photo in an attempt to feel the grain of what looked to be deeply stained, highly polished wood. He felt only paper. Beside him, a cigar, stubby and thick like his fingers, smoldered in a cracked glass ashtray. He kept the ashtray hidden in his desk for times like these when he was alone in the office. He reached for the cigar, but his hand passed over it and grabbed instead a felt-tip pen. He uncapped the pen and circled the photo of the mahogany desk. He also circled a photograph of an elegant leather desk chair on the opposite page. The pen jerked and made an imperfect circle when the phone squawked at him in an inelegant electronic simile of a bell. He answered the phone before the first ring was over. His gaze never left the catalog.
    “Leo Hewitt. Mr. Lee, how are you? Okay, Monty. How are you, Monty? Oh, I’m sorry to . . . Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, no problem. That’s not a . . . Sure.”
    Leo switched the phone to his other ear. He pushed the catalog aside and picked absently at a piece of laminate peeling away from the surface of the pressboard desk.
    “Peachtree Battle, yeah, I know where that’s at. It would be my pleasure. I’m happy to help out. Especially at . . . Really. Anytime. That’s what I’m here for. Okay.”
    Leo hung up the phone. He scratched his head and was again surprised at its smoothness. He was only thirty-nine and had lost the majority of his hair to male-pattern baldness in a span of just under six months. It had fallen out so quickly that he’d gone to see a doctor, scared it was a symptom of some underlying medical problem. Something malignant. It wasn’t. The doctor had told him to try Rogaine if he was concerned about his physical appearance. Leo went to the drugstore and priced Rogaine. He could afford to go bald, but he couldn’t afford to grow the hair back. And now when he looked in the mirror, a stranger, an old-looking stranger, looked back at him.
    He was only thirty-nine in a philosophical sense. But in a professional, business sense, he had been thirty-nine for quite some time. He was thirty-nine years old and had done damn little with his life. The junior deputy prosecutor of the district attorney’s office. They’d made the fucking title up just for him. Didn’t know what else to do with him, he supposed. Oh well, he was happy to have a job. Happy to be everyone’s errand boy. Happy to be the simpleton who had fucked up, but hey, let’s keep him around the office for old times’ sake, what the fuck. Happy to say “How high?”