As Dog Is My Witness (31 page)

“You mean
you
paid for me to get out of jail?”
he asked Kevin. “Really? I didn’t think you liked me that
much.”

Kevin, impressed with the level of authority he’d
gained by being loud and abrasive, decided to continue being both.
“I don’t!” he shouted. “I’ve never liked you! Everybody always had
to tippy-toe around you. ‘Oh, don’t say that, it’ll upset
Justin’
Or ‘We can’t go to that restaurant. They don’t have
anything
Justin
will eat.’ Or ‘You can’t go out for the
football team, Kevin—I have to work and there won’t be anybody to
watch
Justin
.’ You were
eighteen years old
and we
couldn’t leave you in the house by yourself! Jesus Christ, Justin.
I’ve
never
liked you!”

Suddenly thrust into a Eugene O’Neill play, I was at
something of a loss for the proper reaction. I was more at home in
situations out of, say, Neil Simon.

Justin looked positively baffled. It wasn’t that he
was sad or upset because his brother didn’t like him—it was more
that his perception of his family had been changed, and he didn’t
know how to react to it.

His mother did. “You take that back!” she shouted.
“It’s a lie! I remember when you two used to play together and
laugh and giggle all day long.” She put her head down, and I felt
even worse about setting up this situation than I had before. It
was time to press the issue at hand.

“Was that why you set Justin up for Michael Huston’s
murder?” I asked Kevin. “Because you resented the attention he
got?”

Kevin’s reaction stopped and started a couple of
times. “I didn’t set anybody up for anything,” he said. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “You put the deringer in the
bottom of that grandfather clock”—I pointed—” because you knew your
brother would look there. You made sure he knew who’d put it there,
because only you and he knew it was used as a hiding place. And
when he found the gun there, and the police told him it had been
used in a murder, Justin knew exactly what you had done, and he
covered up for you. Didn’t you, Justin?”

Justin, his world not so much rocked as slightly
vibrated, held fast to his prior statements. “No,” he said, shaking
his head. “I shot Mr. Huston. I did it.”

“Fine. Why?”

“Because . . .  because
. . .  Justin never did answer the question, but his
meaningful gaze was straight and sure, and directed at his brother.
He might just as well have said: “Kevin, what am I supposed to
say?”

“You’re crazy,” Kevin said, directing his comment at
me. “I didn’t shoot anybody, and I never had a gun, especially not
some old antique gun like that.”

“Oh, really?” I was ready for this. I pulled the cell
phone out of my pocket and dialed. “Hello?” I said. “Mr. Mitchell?
Ted Mitchell of Brunswick Sporting Goods?”

Justin’s head snapped to attention, and Kevin stared
at me, startled. He must have been just as startled as Leah, whose
voice echoed through my cell phone, saying, “Daddy? Is that
you?”

“Mr. Mitchell, this is Aaron Tucker. I know you don’t
want to betray any confidences, but Justin’s life is on the line
here, and he needs your help no matter how many times he’s told you
not to talk,” I continued. “You have to help me help Justin, so
tell me: It was his brother Kevin who was asking about the
deringer, wasn’t it? And you told him to go buy one at a gun show
out of state, because it couldn’t get traced? You never handled the
gun yourself, did you?” I paused. “That’s what I thought.”

“He’s lying!” Kevin leapt to his feet. “
He
got
me the gun himself! He just didn’t want anyone to know because it
was illegal!”

“Should I get Mommy?” Leah asked.

“No,” I told the phone. “Thanks for your help.” And I
turned it off even as Kevin was grabbing for it.

Once Kevin made his move toward me, the front door
flew open and Big rushed in, grabbed Kevin, and pushed him out of
the way. Big held him down on the rug, a grim expression on his
face.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he told Kevin. “At least,
don’t do anything
else
stupid.”

Mary Fowler stared at Big and stood up slowly, her
mouth agape. “Duane,” she said. “Duane Porter. Is that you?”

Big pulled Kevin to his feet and gave Mary a look of
embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry about your door, Mrs.
Fowler.”

“
D
uane?” I said to Big.
“Your name is
Duane
?”

“You got a problem with that?”

Ethan stood up and reached out a hand. “Hi, Duane,”
he said. “I’m Ethan.” Social skills groups—you can’t beat ‘em.

Big took his hand. “Hi, Ethan.” He held Kevin down
with the other.

“
You’re
not going anywhere,” he said to
Kevin.

“
Duane
?”

Mary stood up. “I don’t understand. What are you
doing here?” she asked Big.

For the first time since I’d met him, Big seemed
absolutely cowed. He didn’t want to look Mary in the eyes, and he
didn’t say anything.

“Let me see if I’ve got all this straight,” I said.
“You two”—indicating Big and Kevin—“know each other a long time,
right?”

Big nodded. “High school,” he said.

“So you”—indicating Mary—“know
Duane
here as a
friend of your son, right?”

Mary, mesmerized, nodded.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it. Duane here gets out of
school and decides maybe Harvard isn’t for him, so he pulls in a
couple of old connections, and gets himself a job working for—”

Big cut me off. “No names, please.”

I nodded, in deference to Mary. Kevin struggled under
the weight of Big’s knee, which was on the side of his face,
holding him to the floor. “Right,” I said. “A job working for a
businessman with rumored connections to unsavory characters.”

“Well put,” said Big.

“I use words for a living,” I reminded him.

But Ethan couldn’t leave it alone. “You mean
gangsters?” he said.

I chose to ignore him, but noticed that Justin’s eyes
widened once Ethan had clarified the situation for him. Mary, too,
wasn’t looking exactly pleased.

“So,” I continued, “Duane here is performing whatever
services are asked of him, and I’m willing to bet he’s performing
them quite well.” I looked at Big, and he smiled.

“One does what one can,” he said.

“And when Kevin, who doesn’t want to go to college,
gets out of school—what, a year or two later?—he talks to his pal
Duane about a similar position.”

Mary sat down hard on the overstuffed chair, not
wanting to believe what she believed. “Kevin! Is it true? You’re
working for criminals?”

Big looked at Kevin’s face and let him up off the
floor, knowing his mother’s horror had knocked the violence out of
him. Kevin stood, but didn’t look Mary directly in the eye.

“I’m not . . .  I didn’t
. . .  You don’t understand, Ma. I made all this
money . . .  But Mary did understand, all too well,
and her hand went to her mouth. I hadn’t exactly delivered a
Christmas present to her, and it was going to get worse.

“And then what?” I said. “I don’t understand what
happened with Michael Huston. Did your . . . 
employer . . .  order you to do what you did?”

Big shook his head. “No. We’ve been looking for him
since then. Nobody had any beef against this Huston guy. In fact,
the first I heard of him was when he was dead.”

“I didn’t . . .  Kevin tried, but it
was too lame. “You have no proof.”

“You bought the gun and you hid it here in the clock,
where Justin found it. Its trigger is too small for heavy winter
gloves, so the killer’s hands were bare. You don’t wear gloves,
even in the coldest weather.” For Mary’s sake, I didn’t reiterate
his slogan about protective hand wear. “Karen Huston’s dog came
back to the house with blood on her mouth, and you have a bandage
on your left hand, the one that wouldn’t have been holding the
gun.”

“The dog never bit me,” Kevin said. “That’s a lie. I
cut my hand on a fence when I was running away
. . . 

The words hung in the air for what seemed an
eternity. The first thing Kevin had specifically disputed was the
notion that he’d been bitten by Karen Huston’s Dalmatian when he
was busy shooting her husband.

“I mean . . .  He began again, but it
was too late.

“You did it, all right,” said Big. “You shot him. And
then you framed your own brother.”

“I did not,” Kevin said with a growl. “I didn’t know
he was going to find the gun. I didn’t know the cops would come
looking for him. I didn’t know he was going to say he did it.”

I don’t get legitimately, blindly, violently angry
often, no matter what my son tells you. But I practically leapt
across the room at Kevin, and would have gone further, if he hadn’t
outweighed me by about fifty muscular pounds.

“Oh, give me a break!” I screamed at him. “Who do you
think you’re lying to? You took advantage of your brother’s
disability from the first minute, and you planned to use it to get
rid of him as easily as you got rid of Michael Huston.”

Kevin looked amazed, and I have to say, so did
everyone else. I clenched my fists and turned away, a gesture Ethan
knew well was an attempt to control myself while I spoke. “You
could have bought any gun to kill Michael Huston, but you
didn’t—you bought a special replica, an antique that only a
collector would find interesting. A gun buff, like Justin. You knew
your mother wouldn’t let him have a collection, so you bought
something that special, that distinctive, with the hope it would
attract the attention of the police. Then you hid it in a place you
knew only Justin would look. You figured the cops would come, find
the gun, and see Justin the way you saw him—stupid, annoying, and
brain damaged, none of which he actually is. You played it just
right to get the cops to suspect him.”

I actually took a few steps toward him, but made sure
I stayed short of his reach, even as Big moved in closer behind
Kevin to assure nothing would go amiss. “What you didn’t count on
was that Justin—Asperger’s or no Asperger’s—would find the gun and,
when the police arrived, understand what you’d done. And that he’d
care enough to cover for you.
That he loved you enough to go to
jail for you for the rest of his life.
That’s what you didn’t
realize. But once it came about, you were only too glad to let it
happen. So don’t give me that bullshit about how innocent you are,
you bastard. You could have come out of hiding and saved your
brother’s ass anytime you wanted, but you let him take the fall for
you.”

Ethan, tickled that I’d used that kind of language in
his presence, was still startled enough to ask Justin, “Did you
really do that—confess for your brother?”

Mary, sobbing in her chair, put her head down, but
Justin simply nodded and looked past Ethan. “Yeah,” he said.

“Why?” Ethan asked.

“I don’t know.”

Even Big seemed a little taken aback by all that had
happened. He shook his head a few times and seemed lost in
thought.

“That’s what I don’t understand, Kevin,” I told him.
“If your boss didn’t want Huston killed, why did you do it? Did he
owe you money or something? How could you collect if he was dead? I
don’t get it, Kevin. Why?”

His upper lip curled and he looked at me. “I’ll tell
you why,” he said.

Then, in one move, he turned and pushed Big backwards
over the ottoman, and ran out the front door. He left it open, and
the freezing wind blew through the room. Big was on his feet in a
few seconds, and put his hand in his pocket, which I assume was an
attempt to shield Mary from the fact that Big was pulling a gun to
use on her son. He ran for the door and into the front yard.

But by the time he got there, Kevin Fowler was
nowhere to be found.