Entropy (13 page)

Your music is all I have now, and most of that is a distant recollection of scattered sounds. Sadly, all you now record are hard, industrial sounds … noise. None of what you have catalogued since the accident is ethereal or passionate, as it used to be. It always spoke for you when you were reluctant to or unable to use words. I always felt intimate with its fragile honesty, with its sometimes savage brutality, an array of rich notes that would drip through my fingers and leave my skin feeling warm and sensitized. I love you, for all of your faults, for all of your excesses, for all of your fears …

After the accident, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration employed me to measure the effects of sound pollution on human beings, ecology and other aspects of the environment. In the beginning, I surveyed industrial plants, limiting the exposure of employees to higher decibel levels of noise, and issuing suggestions to increase long-term safety and productivity. That role was expanded to cover construction sites two years later.

I removed a few marked DAT tapes from the large stacks along with the unmarked tapes I had recently acquired concerning my brother and placed them into an empty shoulder bag. I hadn't listened to all of the surveillance tapes yet, but I already knew from the report concerning the wiretaps that almost all of the initial recordings were worthless, just routine discussions. There had been nothing incriminating and after two months, the department was about to pull the surveillance until my brother used the phrase “cultivates flowers” during an online conversation with an undercover agent. There was something about this phrase that had scared someone.

From a misguided life of desperation, mistakes and tragic consequences, as well as patterns of complete irresponsibility with regard to being an educated musician and a complete husband, I couldn't believe that I had been given this information and a chance to at least make this right. I had even being provided with the means to exact vengeance for all the victims which I now held in my shaking, and perhaps misguided hand. My Hand. I could still feel the weight of the muscles that had been there before the accident, the structure of the ligaments and tendons against my body, even though the arm had been completely severed. Once, when I thought I was alone, I tried to learn to play again. However, I could sense my phantom limb wanting to project through the blunted stump at the end of my shoulder and to be able to play again. Even now, I still felt myself instinctively reaching out with it.

I couldn't think of why I, with my physical limitations was chosen for this task. What about a relative of one of his victims? But if I was going to go there, I would have to leave soon. I didn't want to give him a chance to flee once information had leaked out, and the previously unreleased graphic details of his crimes hit the front pages of the newspapers, as they most assuredly would, given how long people had been living in fear and uncertainty.

Everything would work as long as the police didn't get nervous.

In cases like those of abductions and pedophilia, media outlets believed that people needed to know- that they had the right to. There were detailed laws for the registration of sex offenders. Amber alerts …

He might even have been tipped off by now.

I read in the file that some pedophiles communicated through an intricate network, stitched together loosely by ugly threads of abnormal passion and misguided tenacity. A psychological profile included in the package labeled him as an “indiscriminate preferential”; an unconscionable offender identified by a broad, unlimited scope of behavior.

The police would close in soon enough.

I struggled with the duality of wanting to be there when it happened and wanting to escape from everything surrounding the murders, and to flee from the desperate confines of my own self-loathing and rejection, the debility that I had as a man, and which had slowly been brought to the surface during the months of my brother's alleged crimes.

Deep down, I needed the acceptance that this final act of violence would thrust upon me. It would have been smarter to have just left it alone, and to trust that the proper authorities would take the correct actions. I also didn't want to get caught.

But part of me wanted to.

The file stated they were going to place him in custody as soon as the warrant was issued tomorrow morning, even though some higher ranks within the department considered him a high flight risk if he should sense that he was being watched. They wanted to be absolutely certain about all of the evidence before they made an arrest. A judge was already prepared to issue the necessary search warrant that would be needed to search for and seize property from his residence.

No one from the department or any federal agency had been inside his house. It was considered too risky. But I could get in. My brother only lived an hour away.

I had initially thought that I would drive up to see him and confront him first, and give him an opportunity to explain, before making a final judgment. But then someone might recognize my car if things didn't go as planned. Someone could memorize the license plate. It wasn't hard for a witness to describe that they had seen a person with one arm and for the police to trace that description to me. But did I have to worry about being identified if someone should see me? After all, he was my brother and I had visited him before, although not recently.

I concluded it would make more sense to take the bus, even if it meant that the trip would take longer. I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to drive. If someone did see me leave the scene and board a returning bus, there was a risk that the vehicle would be quickly blocked off. But it was a risk that I would have to take.

I tried to remember what the area around his house looked like, the trees, the surrounding buildings and the proximity of the bus stop to his front door. I recalled there was a playground in the backyard, even though he and his wife didn't have any children. I had always presumed that it had been installed by a previous owner.

I now wondered if that was how he had enticed some of his victims: perhaps he had taken them there in his car, with the innocent promise of games and playground adventure. The police had included a photograph of the playground equipment in the file. There were other photographs too; his house, its land and the backyards of the surrounding housing complex. The array of photos utilized an architect's complete attention to detail. There were even locations marked out where the police could hide their men, leaving them invisible from any point inside the house. The points of entry into the residence had also been highlighted. There was even a small circle around an old wine cellar entrance. Somebody had been extremely thorough. It was clear that the investigating officers were not going to leave anything to chance when they did act and they wanted to ensure that he would not be able to escape – or potential worse still, to be apprehended only for him to later be freed on a technicality or lack of physical evidence.

That was the most frightening part to me. I was not just the indiscernible acts themselves, but the fact that my brother had been so meticulous in not being caught to date. In a chronology that encompassed almost eight months, perhaps even longer, he had been so systematic, almost scientific in his approach. I wondered how many reconnaissance trips he had made prior to taking his first victim; driving up and down the side streets, calculating the miles and the speed and the terrain, every entrance, every corresponding exit, slowing down to a mere idle, so that he could peer into the bay windows of brick houses, and the fragile souls of those children, while they ran through sprinklers in the front yard or ate dinner around the family table talking about their day at school.

Our small town had been manipulated, the sanctity of people's lives altered by a perpetration of terror, committed by a man that I had once understood, but now struggled to recognize. He would have to be placed on suicide watch when incarcerated. The stigma attached to that word,
pedophile
, would be written on the cinder blocks and the floors of the small cell, encased in the air pumped in through a small vent in the ceiling above his head. There would be no windows, no sharp edges, just a cot on the floor, and a place in the corner where he could piss. There would be death threats even if the case never made it to trial.

That was probably small consolation to the people and the families that he had destroyed. I told myself that if I hadn't had my accident, I wouldn't have even contemplated doing this. However the disheveled detective was right, doing this would give some meaning to things and save the families from reliving their grief during a trial. At least I justified it that way. I had to. I just couldn't imagine things going to a highly publicized trial, with thousands of reporters and protestors lining the steps of the courthouse, shoving their notebooks and inane questions into faces of the immediate family members of the victims, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

I looked anxiously out the window again. The first couple to have their child abducted lived less than a mile away. It made me sick to know that my brother could have killed that child and then been so close, almost close enough that I could have smelled the acrid perspiration against his collar.

I looked up at the cheap clock on the wall in the bathroom and knew that I would have to leave before my wife got home. She should have left me after the accident. In fact, I had given her the opportunity more than once. I now hated to admit to myself that I had tried to force her out. I had become a fucking cripple, both physically and emotionally, and indirectly, I blamed her. There would no way, once she saw the files that had been given to me, that she would let me go.

She knew it wouldn't make things right.

I wanted so much to abandon her without reproach, to kill him without remorse, and get as far away as I could. She acted as though I still had choices. Tell that to the doctors who had prescribed me all those painkillers after the surgeries, that I now couldn't stop taking. Each of the pills was a different color. Some were supposed to be antidepressants, but ingesting the medication just made me feel unresolved and more discontented. I remembered the chemical names of the “active ingredients”: amitriptyline, imipramine, desipramine, doxepin, and nortriptyline; a dizzying vocabulary of synthetic ingredients that led to a vertiginous spiral of emotional and physical dysfunction.

I glanced over at the towel she had used to dry her lithe body last night, remembering the softness of her touch, and the smell of her skin just underneath the elbow. Small, light remains of her lipstick were embedded into the corner of the white cotton. Augustina was an amalgam, a sensuous blend of brilliance and carnality. God I loved her, but I just couldn't breathe around her anymore, especially after last night, and the way she had told me everything with such a resonance of disappointment that she could no longer hide behind her soothing breath.

In her soulful eyes though, I was still a clean, accomplished musician. She still wanted to see me as the same determined, beautiful man that she had fallen in love with years ago when I was bold, when I was secure. I could see it every time she touched what was left of my arm, the blurred, rough flesh; whenever she reached her inquisitive fingertips around my shoulders, her breasts pressed against the crest of my back.

I tried playing several times after the accident. However the inherent determination to maintain a foolish semblance of normality only lasted a few days. I hated who I was, and continuing my existence as I had been would have been immaterial and pointless. I thought briefly about telling her how I felt, and having her convince me to try again to be who I once had been. But I became lost inside a drug induced mist of insomnia and nausea. And during my extended bouts of loathing and self-pity, I would replay the consequences of my past mistakes and failings, trying to give a clear definition to the utterly indefinable.

I lowered my head and closed the curtain over the window above the toilet. The gun almost fell off the top of the porcelain fixture that I had laid it upon. It made me think that I might have trouble holding it steady. If I did it from a distance, I would probably have to lean up against something, so that I could keep the gun steady.

I reopened the folder and intently studied the topography of the maps, hoping to discover something to momentarily satisfy the hesitation that was building inside. I turned around and sat on the edge of the tub and started to shake. Was I really supposed to just walk directly up to him as he opened his front door place the cold barrel of the steel weapon against his temple?

Despite all of the conjecture and uncertainty, what still remained was that this was something that I had to do. I was being called upon by the close community of the people who had been impacted upon these brutal crimes, the people left to rebuild hope on top of the broken foundations of the past. I was as a savior, a preserver, but it was not through some religious calling or theological diatribe. People often committed crimes in the name of God. I refused to use this as a reason to rationalize my actions. This was just something that I had to do.

I slid down into the bath tub. My shirt was open at the collar but I was sweating profusely. I removed my hand from behind my head, reached up and took the gun from the toilet. The steel of the barrel was cold against my concave burning chest.

There were stains on the tiles and the side of the tub.

Slowly, I moved the gun up the ladder of my rib cage, paused at the notch in my throat, and stopped when the barrel rested on the underside of my chin.

I had only ever meant to hurt myself.

That was what suicide was: a blatant and undeniable act of pure indulgence; egoistic mutilation brought about by indifference to self-worth, and the instability of intimacy and emotion. I pushed the gun harder and the folds of loose skin under my chin collapsed around the opening of the barrel. Sweat now dripped down the length of my spine. I had made the motions, thought I had perfected the means, but had not been successfully. God, I had wanted to so much, but I couldn't. Soon though, if I reached that point again, there would be no going back. I had made mistakes before. No. It couldn't happen. Not this time. This time no one would be hurt except for him. I would make sure of that. There could no longer be any doubt, no more apprehension in any of my thoughts or movements.