The Little Brother (19 page)

“This,” he said, running his index finger down a page, “is our time line.” When he reached the bottom, he lifted his hand and licked his index and middle fingers, using them to turn the page, and then he began the process of dragging his finger down it again. This went on for a few minutes. Then he said, “I want to go over the time line in a very general way, Gabe.”

Gabe's foot stilled with the attention. I knew that he'd abused his anxiety medication again, since his face was very pale and his eyes—though glossy—had a startled quality that the pills couldn't erase.

“Now,” Cavari said, “she lied to her parents and said that she was spending the night at Crystal's, the night of the third of July. She also impersonated her mother in a telephone conversation with Melissa Stroh's mother, so that Melissa could also come with Crystal to your house on the third to swim and hang out, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” said Gabe.

Cavari smiled. “Such good manners,” he said. “How could anyone think a boy such as this”—he shook his head sadly—“could do what they're saying he did?”

Because there's a video, I wanted to say. I've seen it.

“Okay,” Cavari continued, “one of these girls, this Crystal Douglas, is your girlfriend, correct?”

“No, sir,” said Gabe.

“Hmm,” Cavari said.

“We just hang out,” said Gabe.

“I understand.” Cavari looked back at his time line. “Don't want to tie a man down. Young and handsome, no need to get tied down, no, no,” he said, while scoping the page.

“Now, Tove,” he looked back at Gabe, “drank about ten swigs of Bacardi rum, along with the other girls, and you and Kevin and Kent, and you all got drunk.”

“No, sir,” said Gabe. “Crystal and Melissa said they were on the Atkins Diet, and they couldn't drink. They seemed real serious about it. I only drank beer and smoked pot. I don't know about Kent and Kevin. But I didn't get that drunk.”

Cavari took a pen and scratched notes on the paper. “So Tove,” he said, “made a video with Kent Nixon in late June, and you watched this porno together on the night of the third? Correct?”

“Yes, sir. Nixon made the video of them. I tried to take one of me and Crystal but she wouldn't let me.”

“But Tove gave her permission and participated. Correct?”

“I don't think that she knew. When she figured it out, she told him to stop.”

Cavari coughed. “Were you there?” he asked.

“No, sir. I was in another room.”

“So you don't know that she told him to stop.”

Gabe nodded in confused agreement.

“At this point, when you watched the video on the third, Tove had consumed a shot of tequila?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She said, ‘Look at me. I'm a porn star.'”

Cavari beamed. He scribbled frantically, saying, “That's wonderful.”

“She was being sarcastic,” I said.

Cavari stopped writing and looked at me. “Excuse me,” he said.

“She was trying to make a joke, because she didn't know what else to do.”

“How would you know?”

“I saw her and heard her. Me and my friend Mike. We left for a party after.”

Cavari scribbled again. Then he said, “No offense, son. But whose side are you on?”

I felt like he'd punched me in the gut.

A long silence as I stared at the grainy pattern of the wood floor and the fringe trim of what looked to be a flashy southwestern-style rug.

Then I heard my dad say, “Leave my boy alone,” and Cavari said, “No one told the detectives that you were there. Let's keep this between us.”

Dad's hand squeezed my shoulder.

“Tove,” Cavari continued, his tone weary, “then went into the pool wearing her work clothes. At some point, her friends helped
her go to the bathroom behind a bush, and they removed her pants at her request, so that she could urinate. Correct?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“When Tove returned to the pool, she sat at the shallow end, took off her top, and then she had sex with Kevin Stewart. Correct?”

“To be honest, sir, I don't know. I was doing my own thing with Crystal at the other end of the pool.”

“You were having sex with Crystal in the pool?”

Gabe looked away.

“So, if you're being honest, you don't know if Tove was having sex with Stewart, because you didn't see, because you were busy having sex as well?”

A quiet “Yes, sir.”

“Honesty,” Cavari said in a contemplative voice. “Let's think about this word. ‘Honesty.' ‘Honesty.' Honesty is about what you know in your heart of hearts, even if you're not sure of specifics. The emotions”—he thumped a widespread hand on his chest—“make it true.”

Although Gabe seemed confused, he nodded.

“At around one in the morning,” Cavari continued, “you all smoked pot in your bedroom, and then everyone left your bedroom except for you and Tove. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Crystal and Melissa fell asleep in Even's bedroom?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait, what?” I said.

Gabe faced me. “Yeah,” he said. “They looked at some of your books and photos and stuff.”

I hadn't known that anyone had been in my room, and it really bothered me to think of Crystal and Melissa poking around and invading my privacy.

Cavari gave me an annoyed passing glance, letting me know that he had no concern for my feelings.

“Tove,” he continued, “fell asleep in your bed. You woke her and began rubbing her thigh. Then you removed her boxer shorts”—he laughed. “Does she think she's a man? Boxer shorts?”

He waited for us to laugh with him, but no one did. “You and Tove had consensual intercourse. Then you attempted to penetrate her anally but she denied your repeated requests, orally copulating with you instead. Correct?”

Gabe was silent, his face red.

“Gabe,” Cavari said, “I know this is difficult for you, but stay with me.”

Gabe nodded.

“Are you sure she didn't consent to anal sex?”

Gabe said nothing.

“Think about it,” Cavari continued. “She's a liar. You might be remembering wrong. It certainly would help you if you did have anal sex, because that's the kind of slut that she is.”

Gabe barely nodded.

“She left your bedroom. She then had consensual sex with Nixon in the living room, and she orally copulated with him as well. Correct?”

Gabe was done. His head was down and he was done.

“Let's move on to something else,” Cavari suggested. He closed the folder and picked up the manila file with Tove's name on it. “Aha!” he said, flipping a page. “Listen to this from the police report.”

He lifted the page and cleared his throat. “When confronted by her parents, Tove Kagan admitted to them,” he read in a deadpan voice, “that she had consensual sex with Gabriel Hyde, but withheld the fact that she had sex with Kent Nixon. She relayed the events from the night of the third as if they'd taken place on the night of the Fourth of July, because she had no memory of the Fourth. She said that she didn't want to disappoint her parents any further, and she felt that they would be less disappointed if she told them about Hyde.” He paused to roll his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said bitterly, “because the Hydes are rich and the Nixons aren't,” and then he continued reading in an expressionless voice: “When she admitted to the police and her parents that she knew of the videotaped events occurring on the evening of the Fourth of July, she thought the police were referring to a videotape Nixon had recorded of her and Nixon having sex in late June. She assumed she was being confronted with evidence from this tape.”

He paused again, taking on the voice of a girl: “Oh, no! I would never let anyone videotape me having sex! Oh, no! I would never have sex with more than one boy in a night. That's bad!”

He shook his head in disgust, and then he continued to read: “The night of the third, Kagan had sex with Hyde and Nixon. Before that, she claims that she was intoxicated in the pool, and that her friends had taken off her pants. Kevin Stewart swam to her
and tried to initiate sex. He pressed against her and she could feel that he was erect, but she pushed him away.

“Yet Crystal Douglas and Melissa Stroh claim that they saw Stewart and Kagan having sex in the pool, and that after, Kagan spoke to them and said to not let her have sex with anyone but Nixon, because he was her boyfriend.” He snorted derisively.

“So,” he concluded, “she says it's only two boys, but we all know she had sex with all three of these boys the night before, and then she comes back—alone, without her friends—the next night for more. This girl is insatiable! She's insatiable! But when her parents find out, when her porno surfaces, she decides to call it rape.”

He paused to give any of us an opportunity to respond, and when no one did, he continued to read: “Kagan woke up the next morning, on the Fourth, feeling sick to her stomach, extremely tired, and with a headache. She and her friends left the Hyde house in her car, and during the drive, she denied having sex with Hyde since Douglas was present and was Hyde's girlfriend.

“But as soon as Douglas got out of the car, she told Stroh that while having sex with Hyde, she thought only about how wealthy her children would be if she got pregnant.

“After dropping off Stroh, she stopped at a McDonald's and ate part of a cheeseburger and a few fries. Then she slept in her car in the McDonald's parking lot for several hours before going to work for her 2 to 7
PM
shift at Marie Callender's restaurant.

“Hyde and Stewart called Kagan at work, inviting her and her friends to return to Hyde's house that evening. Stroh and Douglas could not go. Kagan initially declined, saying that she still felt tired
and queasy. They begged her. She said only if her friends came, but after they continued to plead, she agreed. She said that she wanted to prove her loyalty to Nixon, and that she only wanted to be with him, not with his friends.

“She again lied to her parents. When she arrived at Hyde's, Nixon and Stewart and Hyde were playing pool in the garage. She drank a beer, then asked for hard liquor, stating that she wanted something that would get her drunk.

“Stewart left for about ten minutes and returned with a Styrofoam cup. She asked what it was and he told her that it was a ‘Bombay.'” Cavari paused to take a drink from his Scotch.

“Here's the thing,” he said, setting his glass down. “The prosecutors are going to say that Stewart drugged her, and that's why he was gone for ten minutes. But we're going to say that he didn't, and that the drink contained 8.5 ounces of 94-proof gin, and that Tove gulped it down. She also took a hit of marijuana from a pipe being passed around.”

He went back to reading in his flat voice: “She began to feel dizzy and sick when she tried to stand up.

“Her last memories of the evening were of Stewart sitting down on the couch next to her and Nixon standing at the pool table talking to her. She momentarily awoke later when she hit her head on the side of the couch. She also remembered vomiting into her hand. The vomit spilled all over, soiling her clothes and hair.

“Her next memory was of Nixon waking her in the morning for a ride home and asking her where she put her keys. She didn't remember getting into the car. Next she found herself in the passenger seat in front of Nixon's home. Nixon had left for his job
at the Shell gas station. She was dressed, her car was hot, and the windows were cracked.

“Nixon's mom came outside and gave her a bottled water. Kagan could smell the vomit and urine on her body. She called Douglas and asked if she could clean up at her house before going home.

“At Douglas's house, Kagan undressed to take a shower and, when her bra fell out of her pants, she realized for the first time that something must have happened. She felt sore in her pelvic area when she went to the bathroom. And then she saw the blood. She was afraid to look or examine further, knowing that something was ‘very wrong.'

“After her shower, she talked on her cell phone with Stewart and asked him what happened the previous night. Stewart laughed and responded, ‘Why? Are you sore?'

“Kagan's parents discovered she'd lied about her plans that Fourth of July weekend. To locate her, they contacted her friends and eventually found her car parked outside of Douglas's house.

“Kagan refused to leave the house until her father threatened to call the police. She admitted to her parents that she'd lied about spending the night at Douglas's house that weekend. She did not tell her parents she had no memory of the night of the Fourth.”

Cavari closed the file, heaved a sigh, and stacked it on top of the folder. “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “I'm a victim. Let me destroy these boys' lives so that my parents don't know that I'm a lying, alcoholic slut.”