Absolute Brightness (27 page)

Travis, of course, was excused from looking good. Since he was required to wear one of those ghastly one-piece orange jumpsuits during the day and sleep in a courthouse prison cell at night, there was only so much effort he could make on his own behalf. At least his hair was clean.

When I first saw him entering the courtroom wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, I remember thinking how much smaller he looked. But that could have been because the two guards at his side towered over him. I also thought that I might have been comparing him with the other Travis, the one I had invented, the one I had kissed once upon a time.

He shuffled across the room, his eyes cast down and focused on the linoleum. Once, he shyly scanned the place like a girl at a dance looking for a willing partner. There were no takers. Maybe he was just counting heads, estimating his importance based on the size of the crowd gathered together all because of him. Who knows? I wondered if he might be looking for me, or for anyone who might have known him before all the trouble began.

I pretended to drop my purse, and then once I was down there, I fussed with my sports sock.

There were people in town who were sure I was going to be called as a witness for the prosecution, and therefore I was cautioned to steer clear of the boy and have nothing to do with his lawyer. They were afraid I might inadvertently let loose some bit of information and tip the case in favor of his defense. Now that this fiend, this monster, this cold-blooded murderer had been apprehended and put behind bars, they didn't want anything to go wrong. The hope of ending Travis's life by lethal injection was like a giddy little secret everyone in Neptune shared—everyone, it seemed, except for Father Jimbo and me.

Don't get me wrong. People didn't go around town saying that they wanted Travis to die. They were never that obvious about it. But they did find ways to express these darker sentiments in surprising ways just in the course of their normal, everyday conversation. For example, people would run into one another in the supermarket, discuss the case, and quietly discourage the expression of any tender feeling toward the accused. As far as they were concerned, Travis was the devil incarnate, and any contact with him might lead a person straight to hell. A few of my mother's regulars had already begun to evoke Travis's name as a warning to their naughty grandchildren. “You don't want to end up like that Lembeck boy, do you? You know what's going to happen to him, don't you?” It seemed as if everyone had already decided that the Lembeck boy was guilty. It was just a matter of time. Just wait, they said: You'll see.

Travis's defense attorney, a short woman with dark, cropped hair, was not in agreement with the general public. She thought her client was innocent. Sort of. Her name was Ms. Fassett-Holt. She had no discernible waist and wore an outfit that seemed to have been designed specifically to accentuate this fact. All wrong, I thought when I first saw her sitting beside Travis. A boxy suit in a shocking shade of royal blue looked like a birdcage cover with buttons. I later discovered that she had five of them, one for each day of the week. In her hair she wore punishing amounts of goop.

In the beginning Ms. Fassett-Holt presented the idea that Travis was just a boy who had survived a few too many hard knocks, eventually leading him to a life that was beyond his control. She argued that Leonard's death wasn't exactly Travis's fault because it hadn't been premeditated. Sure, Travis may have killed, but he wasn't responsible. Not really. Ms. Fassett-Holt claimed that because Travis's dad, Carl Lembeck, used to beat the boy on a regular basis, because Carl Lembeck locked the boy in the shed in the backyard on several occasions, because Carl Lembeck had pretty much failed the boy as a parent in every way, because the mother, Nancy Lembeck, had died early and tragically, because of all of this the boy had failed to learn the basics of right and wrong. It was a vicious cycle, Ms. Fassett-Holt explained to the jury. Because the boy had been abused, he abused others. This was her opening argument, and though she went on to say that she intended to show just how damaged the boy was because of his background, I wasn't really listening. I was too busy counting the number of times she referred to Travis as the “boy” during her opening remarks (fifty-two). It wasn't difficult to see where she was headed.

To be honest, I don't think the jury bought Ms. Fassett-Holt's theory. Anyone with half a brain knows that tying up a fourteen-year-old kid with rope and then sinking him with an anchor in a lake is as far from right as wrong can get. But any hope of having the father share in the sins of the son was put to rest when Carl Lembeck took the stand. He said that though he loved Travis as much as any guy could love his only son, he wanted it made perfectly clear that he was just another struggling single parent without the time or money to handle a wild and willful child. In other words, he wasn't gonna take the rap for his kid. No way.

After that, Travis was pretty much on his own. He became the star attraction, the psychopath. He was the monster with a mind of his own, and no one could hold a candle to him. It was just a matter of charting his every move, exposing his world, plumbing his life for the damning details to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it.

The prosecution—in the person of Mr. Griswold—was assigned to this task. Mr. Griswold was tall and thin and wore double-breasted suits that had a silky sheen to them. His hair was an indeterminate color, not exactly gray, with a patch of scalp showing through at the top. From his plain, masklike face, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Watching Mr. G present his case was like watching a high school biology teacher dissect a frog—gross, but also fascinating. Everything was laid bare. Even Travis's most private thoughts in the form of amusing or hateful or tender e-mails were pulled apart, examined, and assessed by the courtroom. When the details got to be too much, we looked away, appraised our shoes, checked out everybody's hair and makeup, thought about lunch.

There was not much debate about whether Travis did it or did not do it. The evidence was overwhelming. First-degree murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping. Crimes like these had to be someone's fault, and someone had to be the evil behind them. Mr. G, along with his prosecution team, worked hard to expose Travis as the source. They created a portrait of a boy who had gone astray not because he lacked guidance and a firm hand, but rather because he was born with the cold heart of a criminal and a clear intent to kill.

Curtis Calzoni's confession in exchange for the lesser charge of accessory to murder and the promise to try him as a minor, followed by his teary-eyed appearance on the witness stand, didn't leave much doubt in anyone's mind. Travis had done it.

But even after several weeks of presenting and disputing the evidence, calling witnesses to the stand, asking experts to weigh in on matters related to the boat, the dead body, the scene of the crime, the rope, even after everyone had had enough of the whole case and all its players, one big question remained: Why did Travis do it? After sitting in the courtroom, listening to the endless drone of expert witnesses, the sobbing testimonies, the steely exchange of the cross-examination, I still didn't get it. Not really. And I doubt whether the jury understood it either. Whatever happened that night to make the violence seem inevitable and irreversible remained out of reach, unknown.

What we learned from the trial was this: Travis had been driving around with Curtis, looking for trouble. When they happened to spot Leonard walking west along Colter Road, Travis suggested that they give the kid a ride. Leonard was on his way home from Buddy Howard's house, where he had spent the evening proving to Mr. Buddy that he had, in fact, learned all his act 1 lines in
The Tempest.
Usually Mr. Buddy drove Leonard home as arranged by my mother; but we learned from Mr. Buddy's own testimony that Leonard said he wanted to walk instead because he was meeting a friend. After Leonard had said good night, Mr. B continued to read act 2 of
The Tempest
and then he answered some e-mails. All of this was corroborated by Mr. Buddy's computer records.

Travis pulled over, and after a brief exchange, Leonard got into the car and sat in the backseat. Had their meeting been arranged beforehand? Not according to Curtis; he claimed it had been purely accidental. Leonard leaned his head forward into the front seat so he could discuss with Travis and Curtis the details of his upcoming performance. He asked them if they wanted to be backstage crew. They laughed at the thought of themselves standing in the shadows while Leonard, dressed as a fairy, jumped around in the light. Leonard said they were philistines.

“Whatever,” Travis reportedly replied.

At some point, according to Curtis's testimony, Leonard suggested that they head out to Shark River. To cool off, Curtis had told the court. “Y'know, to swim.” This was odd because, as I told Mr. G earlier, Leonard didn't know how to swim and it seemed unlikely that Curtis would've come up with this idea himself. At the time Mr. G grunted, scribbled something down on his legal pad, and said that bit of info might come in handy.

Travis parked the car on a quiet side street and all three boys got out. There was no indication of a struggle. Not yet. One of them (Curtis wasn't sure who) suggested the possibility of breaking into a nearby house and stealing stuff, but they decided against it. Leonard had to pee and he insisted that they find someplace private so he could do it. Together they worked their way farther down the street, where they couldn't be seen from any of the lakefront homes. When they reached a small natural cove, surrounded by a stand of birch trees, Travis said he wasn't going any farther. He quickly stripped naked and dove headfirst into the lake. When he had cleared the pontoon that was floating about twenty feet from the shore, he turned and called to the shore. He wanted Curtis and Leonard to join him.

“Now!” he shouted.

Curtis stripped down to his underpants, kicked off his sneakers, tore off his T-shirt, and made a splash as he dove into the water. Leonard remained on the shore, watching. Curtis hooted a few times, a reaction to the cool temperature of the water and, as he reported it, the pure fun of it all.

What happened next isn't exactly clear. Curtis's testimony became sketchy at this point, and even Mr. G's no-nonsense examination technique couldn't clear things up. Why, for instance, did Travis swim back to the shore? Was he trying to get Leonard into the water, or did he already have darker motives? According to Curtis's calculations, there were about five or six minutes that he was unable to account for. What happened between Travis and Leonard during that time and what they said to each other remains a mystery, because Travis refused to elaborate.

What we do know is that by the time Curtis reached the shore, Leonard was still alive and lying unconscious on the grass. Travis stood over him with a large rock in his hand, and he was still naked. As a way of explaining what had happened, Travis allegedly muttered, “Fucking faggot.”

Travis then handed his car keys to Curtis and told him to hurry up and get him the rope that was in the trunk. Curtis said he was probably in shock at this point. But when Mr. G examined him further, he said he figured Leonard was already dead (he was not), and he was scared that he'd be Travis's next victim if he didn't do as he was told. In any case, Curtis did as he was told. He claimed that he wasn't an accomplice or an accessory or anything like that. The judge advised him to calm down and just continue answering Mr. G's questions.

After getting the rope from the trunk of the car, Curtis returned to the scene of the crime. By this time Travis had found a small rowboat that was moored nearby and had pulled it ashore near to the place where Leonard's body lay. Curtis watched as Travis leaned over Leonard.

“Help me,” Travis said, and that was when Curtis stepped in and performed his lousy rope trick—the square knot, also known as Exhibit F. Then quickly, efficiently, Travis and Curtis picked up Leonard's limp body and placed it in the hull of the boat.

“Did you at any point notice that Leonard was still breathing?” Mr. G asked Curtis.

“Objection,” Ms. Fassett-Holt offered.

“Overruled,” said the judge, and then she slid her eyeballs over to where Ms. Fassett-Holt was standing. “We've already heard from the experts that the victim died from drowning. I think we can agree that if he was still alive when they put him in the boat, he had to be breathing. Or do I have my science wrong?”

Ms. Fassett-Holt sat down again to chew her pencil end, and the story continued.

Curtis did not in fact notice whether Leonard was still breathing, but he assumed that the kid was dead and they were getting rid of the corpse.

Curtis helped Travis lift Leonard's body into the boat. Together they paddled out to the center of the lake, cut the anchor loose from the boat, and attached it to Leonard. Then they dumped the body overboard, slipping him into the water without a splash. Leonard sank to the bottom of the lake, where he remained until he was found by the divers Vlad and Brian.

“Were you aware that Leonard had two-pound weights attached to his ankles?” Mr. G asked Curtis.

“Yeah,” said Curtis, trying to suppress a smirk. “Everybody knew about that. It was for the play he was in. He never shut up about it.”

“Since you are so familiar with the story,” Mr. G intoned, “would you be kind enough to explain it to the court for us.”

“Okay,” Curtis began. “Leonard was in a play at the high school. We didn't think he'd seriously flit around the stage in tights. Nobody did.”

“And what was the play?”

“Shakespeare. Something by Shakespeare, and he was going to play a kind of fairy.”

The courtroom erupted in titters and suppressed laughter. Judge Gamble whacked her gavel.

“Go on,” Mr. G said.

“Anyway, his character was trapped on this island. I don't know the play. And I didn't get what he was talking about. Something about how wearing the weights would help him to flit about like … well, like a fairy.”