Depraved Heart: a crime novel

Chapter Nineteen – Murderous

It was a single sheet of paper. I read it over his shoulder.

Dear Trevor, it read,
I strongly suspect the following information will not be news to you. Tomorrow Buford will announce in court that DNA results prove Brontë and Shelley are my blood daughters, and therefore, your sisters. You truly share designer genes.
Both Renée and Mary Elizabeth asked me never to tell a soul, and I gave them my gentleman’s word, but circumstances have clearly conspired to relieve me of that pledge.
It was simple, it was logical and it was planned. Mary Elizabeth was frustrated in her efforts to become pregnant through her husband, was impressed by my bloodline, and so solicited my help through my wife, your mother, Renée.
I was glad to oblige. Mary Elizabeth wished to have a daughter and so I accommodated her by coming as close to coitus interruptus as is humanly possible to still deposit seed. Scientifically it is well accepted that deep thrusting produces males. Female sperm may be slow, but by an amusing trick of fate they have far more stamina than the male of the species!
Our efforts were successful; resulting in the birth of Shelley and Mary Elizabeth was so pleased that when she judged her time was right she requested my services again.
I know you love those girls as I do and therefore alert you to use your best judgment, either to prepare them for a fact I suspect will secretly delight them, or even to keep them from court if you think it best.
In haste – your loving father – Oz.

I saw Trevor’s face literally empty of blood. His eyes shuttered, his color fell away. His skull poked out of his face and gasped at me.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, “We’re white trash.”

I thought he would fall. In grabbing for him I dropped my glass of wine. It spilled red across the floor, running in bloody rivulets between the wide, uneven floorboards. I pushed him down into a sitting position in an armchair, trying to get his head between his legs.

He seemed to have stopped breathing. A rasping noise exhaled from his exoskeleton. His past and future were sucked right out of his body. His waxy, frozen skin rubberized at my touch. I tried to make him drink my but my own hands were shaking too much to hold it to his lips.

The death’s head spoke.

“I knew this day would come,” he said.

He was blaming himself. Trevor’s so predictable! I could see it happening and I was helpless to prevent it. I was mad enough at Oz to murder him, myself, right here, right now.

“I knew this would happen. Carnal desire got in the way.”

“But Oz knew the truth all along,” I reasoned. “He knew, but he didn’t he tell us. Ask yourself why.”
Trevor flicked away my question like a bug. He always was pigheaded.

“He gave his word.” He looked away from me, out the window, beyond the world. What did he see?

“He could have discouraged us. Instead, he did the opposite. We were just his experiment. His little bit of fun.”

“You’ve always been unfair to him,” said Trevor colorlessly. “It’s weird, because of all of us you’re the most like him. You go your own way. You have his life force. You always get what you want and that’s a fact.”

I just don’t lie about it! Trevor tried to get what he wanted too, and look at him now, dying right in front of me.

“Oz makes mistakes – I’m not denying he made mistakes,” Trevor went on, “Don’t you see they come from his exuberance? That life force. He didn’t understand that we couldn’t live up to it.”
“Oh yes he did!” I spluttered. “He knew you had a conscience. Stop apologizing for it.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was making excuses for his father! Abruptly I stopped talking about Oz. I’d reach him another way. It was my turn to save him.

“We made a mistake,” I said. “We were lied to. We didn’t know. In the absence of truth we have to carry on as best we can. Come on. Let’s make a pact not to be ruined by this.”
Trevor had collapsed in his chair, folded his shoulders and put his head in his hands. A little boy again. Was this the first time roles had been reversed and I had comforted him? It seemed impossible but I couldn’t remember another occasion. I knelt beside him trying to worm my hot hands into his closed, cold ones. I ran through everything I could think of that might make him feel better.

I knew it wasn’t the time to debate about civilization, its conventions and its discontents, to tell him that Lord Byron loved his sister all his life and it was a good thing, otherwise he never would have loved anybody, or to argue that because we were only half-sibs it was only half as bad. If I couldn’t get him angry at Oz, the author of all our misery, there still had to be something I could say.
“We can make up for it,” I suggested as gently as I could manage. “We can atone. Aren’t the Christians big on redemption? Now that we know the facts, all we have to do is promise that we’ll never touch each other – that way – again.” It was going to be hard, but if we were in different states obviously it could be done.

He rendered me a scary smile.

“You’re just looking for an excuse to leave,” he said. “So we can have a relationship in letters, like Heloise and Abelard. “From the flame to the flame.” Don’t you see it’s too late for that? It’s too late for everything.” He rose and began prowling restlessly around the room, leaving me still sitting, helpless and uncertain, on the floor. He began picking things up and putting them down again, a candlestick, a paperweight. He went to stand by the window, looking out. His back to me. He muttered something to himself, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. It sounded like, “I’m so fucking worthless.”

“I seduced you,” I reminded him. “I talked you into it. Remember?”

He glanced over at me with a horrible leer.

“Brontë the rapist?” Hollow laugh. “I don’t think so. I groomed you. I plied you with drink, I wooed you with gifts. It was always my responsibility. It was always my idea. My obsession.” He shuddered. “I knew it was wrong. Your conscience is the part that hurts when everything else feels good.”

He opened the window and shouted out into the rainy afternoon, “I fucked my little sister!”

I pulled him back and slammed the window. This craziness was disturbing.

“You have to calm down. It was an accident. A mistake. You’re always saying sins can be forgiven. It’s not the sin against the Holy Ghost.” Trevor’s told me no one agrees what that sin is, but whatever it is, it can’t be incest.

For a frightening moment he seemed to contemplate striking me. Then he gave me a terrible, sly look I will never forget. It was a look of contemptuous abandonment. He thought I was abandoning him because my love had never been as big as his.

“Remember how I spanked you and you hated me? Turns out that’s the only thing I did right. I should have spanked you and spanked you, even if it drove you away. Instead, I fucked you.”

I recoiled. You can’t argue with a person who’s out of his mind. Plus, he’s way stronger than me.
“That’s the kind of big brother I am,” he went on. “You can come to me for anything, but you’ll only get one thing. Now I have to challenge myself to a duel.”

He laughed. “What a worthless loser.”

Those were Oz’s favorite insults. Worthless. Loser.

I was still casting about for ways to save him. He liked church so much. He believed in it. He always wanted to go more than any of the rest of us, even Colleen.

“Why don’t we get a priest?” I offered. “Tell him everything. Confess and repent. Don’t you believe that? The priest can’t tell on us, he has to keep it secret. We say we’re sorry and he absolves us. Then we separate and promise never to do it again.”

He looked into my face hungrily.

“I don’t think I can promise that,” he said, and he began kissing me. Not like an older brother. For a scary minute I thought we might end up having sex right there.

At that point I didn’t know what to do. It’s not like I had never heard of addiction, but how do you manage it? I was afraid of him now. He was too much for me. It’s seductive to love someone who knows you so well, but they also know your defenses. There’s no retreat, no privacy.

Time to make up my mind. Who did I want, anyway, the older brother who cared for me, sheltered me, promoted my interests, looked after me but saw himself justified in correcting me, or the lover who adored my body and whispered eternal devotion in my ear? Restless under bondage, I had chosen the lover, but only because like the vine that’s part of pole it clings to, I couldn’t imagine myself without him.

Fortunately his powerful will stopped him just in time.

“See?” he said, “You’re just bursting with self-control.”

It wasn’t fair of him to accuse me! I was fighting for air, trying to stay on top, riding his madness the way Oz rode the bulls, rode the hurricanes. I did it because I had to; Oz did it because they were the most dangerous things he could find. Besides himself.

Trevor began slamming his fist against the wall, so hard his knuckles bled, crying with each blow, “We—knew—it—was—wrong.”

I was afraid someone would hear us and come in. Where were Shelly and Jake, anyway? Probably down in the gym fighting over the oblique machine.

I no longer knew if I was winning or losing.

“Let’s go to Reverend Beasley,” I urged, “We’ll tell him. Ask him to forgive us.”

“Yes, someone will have to know,” Trevor agreed. The old Trevor looked desperately out at me, a prisoner behind the shadowed eye sockets. “Come here.”

I didn’t want him to see my hesitation as he reached out, enfolded me in his arms and hugged me. I tried not to shrink away.

“I’m sorry about you,” he said. “This has all been so terrible for you. I promised always to take care of you and never to hurt you, and look what I did.”

This latest persona caught me so off guard I burst into tears. It felt good to cry.

“It’s been terrible,” I agreed. “Don’t you see it isn’t our fault? Oz lied to us on purpose. He played with us like he always plays with people.”

“Children think untruth is the worst thing,” Trevor assured me, stroking my hair. “You know what’s worse? Being in charge and making the wrong decision. Having to live with that.”
His pain seemed to have eased, so I pressed on.

“I know there’s a way out of this,” I said. I think I had some kind of confused vision of shaved heads and saffron robes. We should leave this place, this accursed haunted house. Burn it to the ground. Give Skylar the money. Writers work better when they’re dispossessed. Some would argue it’s a precondition.

“Of course there is,” said Trevor, kissing the top of my head. “You’re absolved. You were always innocent. Go in peace.”

I was so scared for him. Did he think he was God, or at the very least, Reverend Beasley? Trevor was the last member of our family I would have speculated was in any danger of going insane, but here we both were in looney-town.

I tried agreeing with him. Maybe that would work. “You’re absolved, too.” I echoed. “I mean, it’s not one of the worst sins, is it? It’s a sin of love. Don’t they call sex one of the “warm” sins? I mean, it’s love. It isn’t murder.”

He stared at me intently. “Oh, it’s murder all right,” he said. “It’s murder, too. Go over there and sit down. You need to be very grown up right now.”

I was beginning to cringe like a dog at this “sit down” command because something terrible always followed, but in truth I was glad to get away from him.

I pulled up a chair. We were eye-to-eye, face-to-face. He held my hands.

“I’m sorry about all of it,” he said. “Believe me; I didn’t intend for any it to happen. Not this way.”
“What?” I tried to brace myself for something awful. What could be more awful than what we had already lived through?

“I killed Colleen,” he said.

At first I couldn’t comprehend the actual words. I could see his mouth moving, but it didn’t seem to be English. I creased my forehead, making a supreme effort to understand.
“I killed Colleen,” he emphasized.

Then I got it. Then I understood. It was the Jesus thing. He was going to take on Oz’ sin and rescue Oz. He was feeling damned, so he would offer himself up as a sacrifice to get his soul back. That would be his penance. If he was in jail for the rest of his life he wouldn’t have to worry about self-control, or lack of it, would he? On top of that he’d be getting constant punishment all over the place.

Now it was Trevor who needed rescue. It would be so cruel if Trevor’s fetish for playing the knight in shining armor became his own undoing. Oz had blinded his son with lies, replaced him with this sacrificial mock-up. Trevor was the replicant.

Our father. No, his father, I rejected that DNA. How Oz must have exulted in his good fortune at having a son so hungry for serious responsibility, so much easier to manipulate than that not-very-bright, self-obsessed clone Jake.

I knew I had to choose my words carefully to find the ones that were most effective. Get him to see that in his father’s lifelong quest to sharpen and rarefy his own exquisite appetites, Oz had turned into a monster. Oz’s deliberate wildness meant he alone reserved the right to teeth and claws.
Could I sell this concept to poor blind Trevor? He’s too accustomed to thinking that he’s the only one who can see things clearly.

Couldn’t he understand that we had already suffered enough, that even our most memorable celebrations were games played in a graveyard?

Now the puppeteer was in jail where he belonged. With luck there would be no money for appeals. I refused Oz’s fathership. Now I treasured the elusive Mr. Barringer – in the permanence of his absence, he was anyone I wanted. Even if I was in truth my father’s daughter, I must be also my mother’s.

So I had to try.

“This is all Oz’ fault,” I began. My hands were hot; his hands were so cold, lying passively in mine. He stared into my eyes, downloading his soul into mine, as if he’d have no need of it again.
“Maybe,” agreed Trevor. He continued smiling in that oddly distant manner. Was he drifting too far from me? “Don’t you see that’s a ‘chicken and egg’ argument? Maybe it’s all Oz’ father’s fault. Maybe it’s Cain’s fault. Maybe Cain was Adam’s fault. At some point somebody has got to accept responsibility.”

It’s usually a bad sign when a conversation goes Biblical. I felt dizzy, as if the oxygen in the room was slowly being replaced by some poisonous substance.

I tried changing the subject.

“I think Oz may have killed my mother,” I suggested.

“Oh, I know he did,” said Trevor. “He told me. But he didn’t kill Colleen. He shouldn’t go to jail for a crime that I committed. That wouldn’t be right.”

I just stared at him. Speechless.

“Colleen was contemplating abandoning us,” said Trevor. “I protected you from knowing how bad it was. She had already abandoned you.”

There seemed no way to stop this runaway craziness. My mind was a blank. I massaged his limp hands, trying to push life into them, the way he had pushed his life into me. Isn’t love a question of balance, of who at any given moment has more to give? This time he was the needy one.
“You can’t have done it,” I told him. I’d boss him, the way he bossed me.

“I gave her chance after chance. I gave her plenty of chances. It was bad enough that she wouldn’t put you through Napier—“

“I hated Napier,” I interrupted. “I didn’t want to go. They threw me out, remember? I was happier in public school.”

He shushed me. In his upside-down world what I thought or wanted was of no importance.
“This is not about happiness, you poor idiot,” he corrected. “Or we would never escape the sty. You needed to graduate from a decent school and she didn’t care. She could have gone to bat for you, could have talked them out of it. Other parents do it all the time. She chose not to. I overlooked the real pearls just for Skylar, all the designer clothes. Always Skylar had to have everything just a little bit better. When Colleen said you should go to the University of Arizona just because it was free, when she said she wasn’t going to sell any more stock options but was keeping them for retirement, that was it for me. That’s when I lost it.”

“I didn’t mind any of it,” I protested. How to explain to him about writers and dispossession? “It was OK with me, OK with Shelley, too. We got it. Skylar was Colleen’s real daughter.”

He looked at me as I’d just said I’d be perfectly happy eating junk food for the rest of my life.
“Unfortunately your tastes are notoriously degraded,” he lectured. “It isn’t up to you to see what you can live without. It’s up to me to get the best for you.” His face contorted. “Oz did fail us. Oz was a wimp. He couldn’t stand up to her. And that wasn’t all of it. She wanted to sell this house. She was angry about the termites. She as much as said our family wasn’t worth it. She actually had a realtor come over and give her a quote. She said once we were all in college there was nothing keeping them here.”

“But the house was Oz’ too. They would have to make the decision together.”

“But don’t you see? She was manipulating Oz. It’s like blackmail.”

“No one could manipulate Oz,” I scoffed.

“She could. She called the police on him. She knew all about him and she had all the money. He’d already spent all his money, buying this place, taking care of her. Of us. He was too generous.”
I certainly understood Colleen wanting to flee to some small apartment. If she wanted a rest, she was entitled to one. It’s harder picturing Oz in a condo. He requires an estate, a kingdom. A principality. But how to get Trevor to see that a hovel is better than a blood-spattered swimming-pool?

Trevor continued, “Oz told me what he had done to your mother, all those years ago. For exactly the same reason, I might add. She was threatening to separate us. She had no idea what a proper upbringing was all about! She was going to take you to the States – thanks for all your assistance, bye bye and have a nice life. She would have raised you Catholic! She knew he couldn’t afford to follow. She just looked on him as a stud. Of course it made him angry. What she didn’t know was that he had set himself free from the “cult” of the “mother”. He knew he was the better parent.

“You’re above that, Brontë, you were raised better, you’re not familiar with the way those women think. It’s greed. They misinterpret gentility as docility. They force men to get rough with them. “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine.” A man takes up arms. That’s the definition of a man; he’s a tool-using animal.

“So he stood up to her, and she wound up dead. Tell some people the truth and their heads explode. He knew he’d been clever. He knew I was the only one who could appreciate what he’d done, knew I was the only one he could tell. Seemed foolproof to me. Your mother didn’t even have an autopsy! Of course people would think it was an accident. Brilliant! It happened overseas, years ago, so I didn’t think there would be anyone besides Oz who even remembered it.

“That’s why I suggested we get the pool repaired before your graduation. The Urquhart’s party was the perfect opportunity. I knew Colleen wouldn’t go because, after all, it was only for the kind of people whose children go to public school. I thought Oz would be out, or at least spending the night on his computer like he always does.

“Pretending to get drunk was easy. No one even knows what you’re drinking if you never put down your glass. Fayette didn’t want anything to do with me because I acted like I might throw up on her. When all eyes were elsewhere, I ran through all the back yards and no one saw me except Woofer and Tweeter. They’d never bite me. They’re my buddies.

“Colleen always stepped out for a smoke before going to bed, and I thought I could rely on her to be too cheap to turn the pool lights on. I was exactly right. I went up to her and said I had something important that she ought to see. She came right away. When she asked me what I was doing home I just said it was a bad party and I’d left early. She thought I’d had a fight with Fayette. She—“

“What about Oz?”

“What about him?” Trevor halted in full spate. “It never even occurred to me that he would be suspected. I figured actual innocence is always the best defense; I never thought the police would frame an innocent man just because they didn’t like his lifestyle. Call me naive. I admit it. The only evidence against him that amounts to anything is in your mother’s case.

“What happened to the benefit of the doubt? I mean it could have been an accident. We’ve got all those experts to say so. What are they, idiots? If it has to be murder, then why couldn’t someone break into the back yard to kill her, climbing the fence, which is what really happened?

“But they never gave a damn about anything except proving it was Oz. Without me stepping in, that jury is going to convict him. It’s been a real education in American jurisprudence I can tell you. Forget ever being a lawyer. I don’t know how those guys can stand themselves. Being a used car salesman would be far more honorable.”

“As he spoke his inner rage was building. His face had darkened under ancient bruises. I thought suddenly of the time a deer wandered through the gates and got trapped in the pool house. It went crazy in its new environment; we found skin and blood and broken glass everywhere. Oz said later it fought to the death against its own reflection.

I believed Trevor now. I had to. It was a depraved heart murder after all. Trevor was the lion Oz teased and tormented, then loosed upon the world.

At last I saw the threat Trevor tried protecting me from for all those years. He had met the enemy, and he had become him.

“How could you call yourself a Christian and kill Colleen?” I demanded. Everyone’s a freakin’ hypocrite! Even Trevor.

He sighed. “People won’t read scripture. They’ll do anything to get out of it, and as a result, they’re uninformed. God says, sometimes what’s necessary is not peace, but the sword.”
I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

“It couldn’t have been a sword. So what did you hit her with?” Ten thousand spots of blood. How could anyone actually do something like that to another human being? Someone who’d loved them? How could he?

He worked his jaw furiously, remembering.

“One of Bobby Urquhart’s titanium golf clubs,” he said. “At least, it was supposed to be titanium, but do you know it broke? It was probably adulterated – everything’s worthless nowadays. That scrappy Colleen wouldn’t die. I had to keep hitting her. I was so surprised when I heard those two women had the same number of cuts on their heads. Made me feel close to Oz. I thought I hit her at least a hundred times. I had to keep hitting her because she kept getting up. It was like we were mechanical figures, marionettes on a cuckoo clock. I was committed to keep hitting her as long as she was committed to getting up. My arms ached for days.

“Looking back on it, she should have pretended to be dead. That would have fooled me because I was so eager to get out of there. All that courtroom crap about waiting for her to bleed out was bull. I’d worked the timing out to a half an hour. Nobody thinks anything about losing sight of somebody at a party for a half an hour. As far as all the other drunks know, you’re still there. People lose all sense of time.

“Plus they automatically lie about where they are, who they’re with and what they’ve been doing, at a party. God knows how long that killing really took. While I was in the thick of it I was so afraid you’d come out at sunrise and I’d still be there, slugging away. You’d think these women would be delicate. Oz said after the initial push he scarcely touched your mother at all.

“But with Colleen I was up against that white-trash ancestry, that half-Injun great-grandfather of hers who worked along the railroad. The minute she stayed down I gave thanks and lit out running. I put the golf club safely in the Urquhart’s trash, but old Mrs. Urquhart actually saw me in my bloody clothes. Asked me if I’d had an accident. I said Fayette had thrown a vase at me, and that was almost true. It just happened on another night. Mrs. Urquhart was the one who insisted on getting me Bobby’s clothes to wear. Said he wouldn’t even miss them and I guess he didn’t because he never asked for them.

“Blue shirt, blue blazer, khaki pants, striped tie. Everyone has those. I knew old Mrs. Urquhart would never think of talking to the police. She said something about “going to the beach house” so I assumed she’d be out of town. I just put my bloody clothes in a garbage bag with rest of the Urquhart’s party trash. Must be in a landfill somewhere. The ridiculous thing is that the police could have found everything they were looking for if for one second they’d opened their minds to the possibility that it might have been anyone but Oz. They just took against him from day one.”

People do have that reaction, and that’s definitely Oz’s fault. Oz cultivates it. I walked to the window. I was afraid if Trevor touched me, he would feel my fear of him.

“I saw you in different clothes,” I said wonderingly. “But I figured you’d been sick. There was a lot of that going on.”

Trevor, the designated driver, can play a terrific drunk when he has to. He sure fooled me. I remember putting my arms around him, helping him upstairs. That was the first time I’d taken care of Trevor.

Had I fallen for him at that second, as I contemplated the power of role reversal? Funny how many true things come out of lies. Lies are hard as cement, but the jungle of truth keeps growing insistently up right through it. The deeper I fell into Trevor, the less I really knew him. I had lost the writer’s advantage, being on the outside looking in.

“They’re not going to convict Oz,” he told me solemnly. “Don’t worry, I won’t let it come to that.”
I felt completely helpless. Oz had finally done it. He had committed the perfect crime, the one where you get someone else to do it for you without even asking them, and then they’re glad to take the fall. How had Trevor not realized that of course they would come after Oz in force? He believed what he wanted to believe, just like the rest of us. Face it — Oz absent, me in Trevor’s bed and himself helming the household, wasn’t that irresistible, lifelong dream?
He would never see it but I couldn’t give up.

“Oz made you do this, don’t you see? He used us. He made us do everything.” Thus I threw to the winds those magic nights. I had to.

Trevor’s face took on that frozen Praetorian dog-like stare. Impenetrable by such as me.
“With his hypnotic powers?” Trevor shook his head. ”That’s not the way it works, Brontë. I don’t hold with this fashion of being the victim, blaming authority for everything and you shouldn’t either. Of course we’re programmed, we’re all programmed. But we also have free will. I’ve had more of that than most. I’ve always been able to do whatever I wanted to do. No one put that golf club in my hand. I’d like to be sorry. I’d like to wish it all away. Every time I think of those things Colleen was saying about you—if you knew—“ his jaw worked angrily. “When she saw you with that dreadlocked dude, she said you’d gone “native”.”

I couldn’t believe Colleen would ever badmouth me to Trevor. The most she would have done was compare me unfavorably to Skylar. He should have taken it in stride.
“I bet Oz told you that, right?”

Oz had played him, no mistake. Oz knew Trevor’s weakness. And Trevor’s weakness was me.
“Oz told me everything,” said Trevor confidently, conveniently forgetting that something Trevor could have really benefited from knowing – namely that we were brother and sister – was a deep-dyed secret until only yesterday. If I reminded him, he would only make excuses, better ones than Oz could be bothered to think up for himself.

That withholding look suffused Trevor’s face. He would never let me win this argument. He retreated from me, cutting off my power like yanking a light cord.