The Little Brother (20 page)

Dad held the cigar between his fingers, as if he'd forgotten about it, the ash about an inch long.

Gabe passed a trembling hand through his hair. Everyone, it seemed—except for Cavari—was embarrassed.

Dad seemed to startle to consciousness, tapping his ash and setting the cigar in the ashtray. “What do we do?” he asked.

“I'm glad that you asked,” Cavari said. “We tell the jury that this is a lying, alcoholic slut. That these rape allegations are a travesty. Just like the Kobe Bryant case. That girl consented, and this girl did, too. Kobe's not going to jail, he's no rapist, and this terrific young man sitting right here is not a rapist, either.”

Dad's face had gone red.

Gabe said, “What if I admit that I was wrong? What if I say I'm sorry? I'm a juvenile. So I won't go to jail, right? Maybe I could apologize, and that would be good.”

Cavari took a puff on his cigar and nodded. “That's a nice thought, Gabe,” he said. “I'll bet that you'd like this to go away, to be over with. But that, my friend, is not the way the world works.” He looked at Dad, as if to say, Tell him.

“He's right, Gabe,” Dad said. “That's not the way the world works. We've got to fight.”

“Look, Gabe,” said Cavari, with a measure of severity, “I know that you want to make things better. I know that you feel bad. But I don't see how ruining your life makes anything better. I don't see how that serves anyone's interests.”

I'd broken into a sweat without realizing it, and my shirt was clammy against my back. For some reason I said, “How do you know that Kobe Bryant isn't guilty?”

Cavari ignored me. He didn't even look at me. He said, “The most damning piece of evidence is the video. First, we're going to
try to block admissibility by claiming that law enforcement doctored the images. It's a long shot, and if it doesn't work, then we need to convince the jurors that although Tove looks unconscious, she willingly had sex with these boys.”

“What are our chances?” asked Dad.

“Good,” Cavari said without hesitation. “Very good. With a little pressure, the Kagans might drop their case. I mean, they might come to their senses and see that it's futile to go forward.

“If not, we can convince a jury that this was nothing more than a teenage sexcapade, a case of sex that got a little bit out of hand.”

He reached for Tove's file, opened it, and thumbed through the pages. “We've found out from our investigators,” he said, closing the file, “that Tove's parents sought medical and psychological help for her, because of her rebellion. She repeatedly left the house without telling them where she went, got in trouble, and lied compulsively. Too bad she's a straight-A student, but we can work around that. Her relationship with her father is very strained. Very bad. They don't get along at all. Her friends are already turning on her. We've got them in our pocket. They'll say that she's a liar and a slut, and that she consented. She claimed that she wanted to be a porn star, so of course she agreed to make a video with these boys.”

He closed the file and gave us a triumphant smile. “We'll win,” he said. “I know it.”

23.

N
OT LONG AFTER
the meeting with Cavari, I began to spend more time at Mike's house, eating dinner there at least twice a week. Then school started in September, and I came over after school almost every afternoon, even if Mike wasn't home (he had some sort of athletic practice going on all the time). I never did find out how much Mike told his parents about my involvement in my brother's case.

The Woods had a separate, windowless room with a sliding glass door near the garage, where Mike's mom kept her sewing machine collection (unused for years) and other stuff. It took about a month, but she emptied it out and sold most of it at a garage sale. Mike's dad put a futon, an old desk, a standing lamp from Target, and a chair inside. The room had a small bathroom with a standing shower and a tiny sink and toilet.

“Yours,” Mike's dad told me, with an arm slung around my shoulder, as we stood outside the room one afternoon. “As soon as we get it fixed up.” The Santa Ana winds whipped and flapped the curtains against the open sliding glass door, along with a clanking cord.

“You've got a lot going on at home,” he said, “and this can be a safe place.”

Jerry Wood is an ordinary-looking man with thick silver hair that he keeps groomed in a close cut, and his eyes seem almost always wet with emotion—the only way I can think to describe them.

“Whenever you want,” Lori Wood added, “it's here. We'll get you a key.” She held her billowing skirt down with her hand, her hair whipping around her head. She, like Jerry, is ordinary-looking, but to me, beautiful, her eyes weighted with kindness.

I thanked them, calling them Mom and Dad. Light flashed through my head so that I couldn't see for a second, from gratitude.

I don't want to sound too dramatic, but the Wood family and their generosity helped save my life.

But I had to wait for them to fix up the room for me, and during that time, Cavari came to Dad's house often to talk strategy. He hired focus groups to test trial strategies and a public relations expert and private investigators, all with Dad's approval and financial backing. He explained over and over that Tove—or the Alcoholic, Lying Slut, as she came to be known in Dad's house—was a whore who loved giving blow jobs and enjoyed doggy-style sex and anal intercourse, so that these things became like facts. She dreamed of becoming a porn star, he said, craved group sex, and liked to give road head and swallow. Everyone knew that she'd faked unconsciousness as a porn technique. Some people were into that—snuff-like porn. Not only had she been an enthusiastic participant in the video, she'd been its initiator and director, Cavari said.

Remember that ridiculous speech on the USS
Abraham Lincoln
aircraft carrier? When Bush said, “In the battle of Iraq, the United
States and our allies have prevailed,” all the while standing beneath a festive
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
banner? Remember how beforehand, for the photo ops, Bush swaggered around the carrier in his high-tech flight suit?

One afternoon, Cavari, in his loud, didactic voice, said of his attempts to get Tove and her family to drop the case, “Soon, my friends, I'll be saying ‘mission accomplished,' I'm sure of it.”

Later that same afternoon, Sara and I got into this weird fight on the phone. She asked me, genuinely concerned, “How are you feeling?” and I told her, “There's only one question I hate more than ‘What are you thinking?' and that's ‘How are you feeling?'”

She said I was trying to be a dickhead, but that I couldn't be one, because I wasn't one, and I told her that maybe she didn't know a dickhead when she saw one.

After that, we stopped speaking for a long time. Looking back, what she said about my dad and my connection to him bothered me, and that she'd put me in this predicament.

No matter what she claimed, I also believed that I was too close to the source, too similar to my brother and father for her.

N
ANCY CAME OVER
to Dad's one afternoon with about six or seven other women from her Bible study, in efficient pantsuits and chunky gold jewelry, to engage in a group prayer for our family. To me, the fact that Dad agreed to it revealed how far he'd gone off the deep end.

“I don't want to,” I told him.

“You don't have a choice,” he said.

So I joined Dad and Gabe and the women.

We stood in a circle in the living room, our heads bent, our eyes closed, arms around each other's shoulders and waists. But I kept my eyes open. Nancy's heavy perfume clashed with some of the others'. I had to stifle a sneeze.

They took turns praying out loud for our family's suffering, for us to endure, for Jesus to be with us. “Jesus, Father,” Nancy said, “keep Gabe and his family strong,” accompanied by murmurs of “Yes, Father, Jesus, be with Gabe and his family. Let them feel your strength.”

But it wasn't until they started praying for Tove's soul that I got hot and uncomfortable. “Jesus, Father, we pray that Tove will drop the charges, and that she will admit her lies. Let Tove come to you for forgiveness.”

The air was so heavy with bullshit I didn't think I could take it much longer. A few hot tears slid down my face, but I stayed silent and waited for the prayer circle to end.

The next morning, I packed a bag with some of my clothes and left it in my locker at school, so that I wouldn't have to come home.

After that, I pretty much lived at the Wood's house and slept on the sofa in the living room until the other room—the one they'd emptied and furnished for me—was ready for me a week or so later.

When I got the key—and the room was mine—it was so wonderfully quiet and private. I spent enormous amounts of time in there: reading, napping, doing my homework, listening to music, and being alone.

Dad didn't take it personally, since he was preoccupied with Gabe, of course. He attributed my absence to the stress of the upcoming trial, and I couldn't go live with Mom, since I went to school in Newport.

I made sure to make an appearance now and then, so that Dad wouldn't make me come back.

Dad insisted on sending a check to the Wood family each month for the expense of feeding and caring for me (I don't know the amount, but knowing Dad, it was substantial).

One Saturday afternoon, I stopped by the house to pick up a few things that I'd forgotten—my electric toothbrush and a T-shirt that I liked—using the key hidden beneath a rock. Dad wasn't home, and Gabe's truck wasn't out front.

In Dad's office, looking for scissors to open a tightly sealed package of almonds, I came across a file from Cavari titled
VIDEO EVIDENCE
. I sat at Dad's desk and read:

       
The purpose of this document is to depict the events in the videotape recorded on the evening of July 4th through the eyes of potential experts for the prosecution and the defense.

       
PROSECUTION:

       
The first scene depicted Gabriel Hyde trying to remove Tove Kagan's jeans as she held a can in her hand. Dr. Patrick Fuentes, certified in neurology and sleep medicine, interpreted the events depicted. Fuentes focused on symptoms Kagan displayed to support his conclusion that she was unconscious throughout the events shown in the video.

               
Fuentes found particularly noteworthy Kagan's comment at the beginning of the video, declaring, “I'm so fucked up.” These were the only words Kagan spoke. Fuentes explained that Kagan's silence during the events depicted over a period of 20 to 29 minutes demonstrated a “certain loss of higher brain function as a result of her intoxication.”

               
Fuentes pointed out that although the recording lasts 14 minutes, the elapsed time is closer to 20 to 29 minutes because the tape was paused at different times so that Kagan could be repositioned.

               
After a pause on the videotape, the next scene depicted Kagan nude on her knees with her head in the lap of Kevin Stewart, who is seated on a couch, with Hyde kneeling and entering Kagan from behind as she orally copulates with Stewart.

               
Fuentes explained that in this position, Kagan could not support her weight, but rather was wedged in between Stewart's pelvis and Hyde's legs, with one of Kagan's arms hanging limply at her side.

               
Fuentes noted Kagan's movement in this position was the result of Hyde thrusting, and when Stewart no longer held her, Kagan slid off the couch.

               
She hit her face on the couch, taking no defensive action. Fuentes pointed out that when Kagan raised her head, it flopped back down, indicating that she could not sustain movement.

               
Fuentes opined that Kagan's “rag doll” movements—limp limbs and flaccid muscles—objectively signaled her unconsciousness.

               
When Kagan was moved into position to orally copulate with Stewart, who was standing with his pants down trying to guide Kagan's mouth onto his erect penis, she fell onto his penis, provoking a gag reflex. Kagan moved her arm to her face, which Fuentes
explained represented purposeful action accompanying the natural gag reflex to a noxious stimulus.

               
Fuentes said that Kagan's condition prevented her from understanding verbal communication.

               
Following a pause in the recording, the videotape resumed with Kagan on the pool table and Kent Nixon penetrating Kagan's vagina with his hand, and then Stewart penetrating her vaginally with his penis before ejaculating on her stomach.

               
Fuentes pointed out that while Stewart was on top of Kagan, she remained passive and unresponsive, lowering her hand toward her pubis in a similar way to her earlier gag reflex, but that she was unable to sustain the movement because of the level of her intoxication.