Envy Without Jealousy

            by Leslie Lu

 

Todd Deere was starting to question the choice he made in his career path.  His destiny began when he first started high school.  On his first day of school, his mother had cheated on his father.  Despite the betrayal, the two parents remained together.  However his father grew abusive and on the day of Todd’s graduation, his last day, his father killed his mother and himself.  The news was a sudden shock.  Todd never noticed his parents’ troubles since he was so involved in school.  The police also didn’t investigate much; they said there was nothing to investigate.  They should have been more dedicated.  He should have been more dedicated. And so Todd made it his goal, to become a devoted police officer.  He thought he would gain respect.  He thought he would have exhilarating adventures.  He thought he would be protecting the city or maybe even saving the world.          

“Pick up my dry cleaning.”

He recently graduated from the police academy and was assigned to a high ranking officer, Martin.  Todd was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, resting his head on his hand with his arm hanging out the open window.  He didn’t notice the wind had stopped blowing bits of leaves into his eyes when the car stopped moving.  It was hot weather, but not hot enough to make him sweat.  It was only morning, so the heat would rise at some point.  His mouth was craving ice cream, it came close to drooling.

“Todd?  You hear me?  My dry cleaning?  You better not be ignoring me.”  Martin politely shoved a piece of paper into Todd’s left hand.  “It’s right there.”  He pointed to a red brick building a hopscotch game away.

“Oh right sure.”  Todd unbuckled his seatbelt.  “Why can’t you get it?”

“Are you kidding?  I went there last week to drop it off, it stinks.”

“And so you trusted them with your suit?”

“A friend told me to check it out.  It’s cheap,” he shrugged.  “Todd, why don’t I see your legs walking to the dry cleaners?  We don’t have all day to gossip about-” but Todd had already left.

Todd groaned as he walked toward the building.  It was one of those buildings that had a home connected to it.  Truth was, they probably did have all day.  Todd had been working for about a month and nothing remotely exciting had happened.

“Buzz- brring!” 

“Oh god!  Don’t hurt me!”  Todd jumped back then realized it was a door alarm.   

“Coming,” a lady from the back informed.  The short middle-aged lady showed up two minutes later behind the counter.  She was too thin, it seemed kinda gross.  She appeared to be tired and had a dark spot under one eye to prove it, but the tone of her voice was cheery, practically fake.  “Receipt please?”

Todd handed her the paper Martin gave him earlier.

“That’ll be five ninety-five.”

Todd paused for a moment, and then he secretly glared at Martin as he took out his wallet to pay for Martin’s dry cleaning.  He handed her a twenty and tried to maintain his politeness by not covering his nose.  Martin was right, the place smelled disgusting.  The lady flicked a switch, causing the clothes to spin and make clicking noises.  The clothes were about six feet off the floor, but became closer to the ground as the spinning brought them nearer to the front.  When the clicking stopped, the lady adjusted her glasses, stood on her tiptoes and stretched herself as she lifted the coat hanger off.  Todd noticed the bag two feet from Martin’s suit was a thick, gray, sheet rather than the usual plastic all the others had.  He strongly stared at it and could have sworn he saw something move.  He must have been going crazy and decided to turn around and leave quickly.  “Help!”  He turned back around.  Was that the sound of a boy?  “Heelpst,” the bag whispered… Whispered?!  This he absolutely could not ignore.  He impulsively took out his knife and walked toward the back to cut it open.

“Sir you can’t go back there… sir?”

At this point, the bottom of the gray bag was five feet above the ground.  Todd was able to cut open a tiny part off the bottom of the bag.  He licked the side of his mouth, his head almost starting to sweat.  He pried open the bag using both hands and pushed it apart as if he were opening an elevator.  As he reached inside he felt something soft and moist, like hair after a shower.  He let out a small sigh as he saw the bottom of a dark silk dress.

“I’m very sorry about that.  Really.  I don’t know what came over me.”

His hands took the dry cleaning from the annoyed lady, and felt an urge to wipe his sweatless forehead.  And they did.  He opened the door to the passenger seat of the police car and threw in the dry cleaning.  He climbed in and wondered why Martin hadn’t started the engine yet.  “What is there more?  I’m not paying for another one.”

Martin shook his head and turned the review mirror so that Todd could see himself.  Todd didn’t know if he should have been thrilled to see a small smudge of dark red on his forehead.  Actual sweat, the real, salty, liquid now started to form.

The two officers stormed into the dry cleaners.  “Coming!”  The lady’s voice shouted from a distance after the door alarm rang.  Todd wandered behind the counter to flick the switch and flicked the switch again when the gray bag was at a reachable distance.  Martin shoved the bags in plastic in front of the gray bag so that there was a gap.  He unzipped the bag to see a dress, but the dress was not on the coat hanger.  He set the dress to the side and saw a body, so small it had to have been a child, and with a closer examination, one could see it belonged to a girl.  Martin backed away, a tad bit startled.  The body was folded around the coat hanger.  The skin had sagged so much the fingerprints had been lost.  They would have to identify the body another way.  The lady finally arrived to the front counter and this time, Todd didn’t feel the need to be polite as he put his hand over his nose.  With the corpse now exposed, the smell worsened as it scattered through the room. Todd took his hands off his nose and ran to the corner to throw up.  “You’re under arrest…” Martin took out his handcuffs.

Todd waited anxiously in the chair outside the interrogation room.  A moment later Martin exited.  “So…?  Hiring a detective?  Should I interview the family?  Borrow security tapes?”  Todd couldn’t wait to solve his first crime.

“Don’t need to.  She did it.  She confessed.  A hundred percent. Didn’t deny it once.”  Martin crossed his arms.  Todd knew something else was going on.

“Let me talk to her.”

“No.  Kid, she admitted to the crime.  We’re gonna go back to patrolling.  Let’s go.”  Martin walked to the entrance and felt a headache when he heard an absence of footsteps behind him.  “I’ve had enough of this stubborn act of yours.”  He turned around to see he was talking to an empty chair.

Todd was in the interrogation room trying to get answers.  “Hey, I’m Todd.”  His friendly tone grew stern.  “Look, I know that if you really killed the girl, you wouldn’t leave her hanging for cops to find would you?  You would have at least tried to hide her!”

The lady managed a small grin.  “Todd, do you wanna know how I stuck that girl’s fingers into the garbage disposal in my kitchen sink before my failed attempt to sharpen my knife using her leg?”  Before Todd could reply, Martin busted in through the door and pushed him out.  “And I call it a failed attempt because the knife failed to get sharper!” the lady screamed at the two men exiting.  The door to the interrogation room had closed, but the officers could still hear the lady’s voice.  They looked back at the door in unison, then immediately dismissed the words.

 “Let me investigate.  I find nothing, and I’ll quit, maybe they’ll reassign you to someone with more experience,” he spoke in a loud enough whisper for only Martin to hear.  Loud enough to sound rude.   

“Hey!  You don’t talk to me that way.”  Martin took a moment to think and went over to the cabinet, unlocked it, and took out a file.  “I’ll give you her file, that’s it.  You got a day.”

            When Todd got in his car, he didn’t hesitate to open the file.  The lady had a name, Kim.  Kim was married with one son who was fourteen- the estimated age of the girl.  After a quick skim, he started the car and drove back to the cleaners to pay them a visit.  He parked in front of the “20 minute parking only” sign and marched to push the door of the red brick building.

 “Buzz-brring!”  Todd still jumped back out of surprise from the noise. 

A man’s voice shouted he was coming and showed up soon after.  Todd assumed the man was Kim’s husband.  He stopped once he saw Todd in his police uniform; he knew what this was about.  He spoke aggressively; the sight of Todd had quickly sprouted a strong temper.  “I already told another officer everything we know.”

“Yes, but this is an unofficial visit.  I just wanted to confirm a few things.  The file says your son claims to have found your wife with the girl.  Correct?”

“Yeah, you didn’t believe him?  Dere’s a good kid.  Bright future.  What are you trying to do?”

“You don’t think your wife was trying to cover for him?  Maybe he killed her?” 

“He doesn’t even know her.”

“Would you mind if I search his room?  The girl had a particularly distinct cell phone number of 555-0001.”

“Get out.”  The protective father spoke through his teeth.

Todd left abruptly knowing that even if he were to take the extreme measures to squeeze the truth out of the father, he was too much of a rookie to get away by simply not acknowledging his visit. Back at home, Todd was waiting for an approval on his request to search the cleaners.  He used the time to examine the files more carefully.  He sat in an armchair with wheels in front of an empty table, making sure he had plenty of space to place the folder even though he didn’t need the additional room. Todd flipped the pages about the lady’s confession and stopped when he reached the questioning of the boy.  There were details about how his parents didn’t get along and how he was worried.  His mom wasn’t always so weak.  Todd came close to sympathizing with the kid until he remembered that this person was a suspect.  There was a page about how Kim didn’t know why she killed the girl, she felt like it.  She said that she needed to be punished and locked away.  Maybe she really did kill the girl.  Crazy people did exist. 

Next he reached Kim’s medical records; he almost turned the page when he noticed something unusual.  Every word and chart on the page became a blur as his vision zoomed into one word: Korsakoff's.  Todd thought it sounded like the name of a magician, he wasn’t sure what it was so he concentrated until his vision zoomed out to two words: Korsakoff's psychosis.  Puzzled, he wheeled his chair over to his computer and typed in the two words to his search engine.  His eyes carefully scanned through.  His right hand used the mouse to highlight the text as a guide. Loss of short-term memory, progressive memory loss, creating fictional stories to hide memory gaps, amnesia, personality changes.  

All was starting to make some amount of sense.  It was possible Kim didn’t even remember the day of the murder.  She just believes it because someone told her she did… someone she trusts.  Todd recalled the morning when he first investigated the gray bag.  He was attracted to it because he thought he heard a boy’s voice.  Dere?  But the corpse itself was a girl.      

“Brring!”  The phone rang and every muscle in Todd’s body jumped a centimeter.  He wasn’t quite sure why he always had that reaction.  His answering machine picked up.    “Todd, this is Martin.  We searched the kid’s room; we found the girl’s phone number in his cell phone.  We got him in custody. Beeep.”  Todd buried his eyebrows and blasted off his chair to grab the keys to his car and head down to the police station. 

He parked in the middle of the parking lot, and stormed into the station.  Martin was the first to see him.  “Where’s the father?” Todd said breathlessly.  The drive tired him. 

“I would think you wanted to see the kid.  Papa’s in the bathroom.”

Todd found the father in the bathroom washing his hands.  “You are under arrest!”

“I just found out my son killed a fourteen year old girl. Can’t I just mourn?  You are insane.”  He raised his arm to throw a punch at Todd, but Martin came in quickly enough to stop it.  He held the father up against the bathroom wall.

“Todd, you wanna tell me why I’m twisting the arm of a person with a mad wife, and a murderous son?  He’s basically suicidal!”

“I never knew the girl’s phone number.  I made it up.  He was the only person I told.”

Todd sat in the waiting room, waiting for everything to be dealt with.  A crime solved by himself and he was still not included.  What was left to be included in anyway?  A shocked boy slowly walked by and sat in a chair near him.

“Dere?”

“Yes.”

“You want ice cream?”

Martin stopped the two as they were leaving.  “Don’t take too long.  We pulled the security tapes out of the dry cleaners.  Saw that unofficial visit of yours.  Authorities want me to spend the next week going over rules with you.  Then we gotta discuss that probation issue.  My guess, you won’t be patrolling for a lengthy amount of time.”

“I quit.”  Todd led the boy to his car and headed for ice cream.

They each ordered the largest size cup possible.  Todd picked lemon sherbet, and Dere picked chocolate. 

“So how’d you do it?  Kill the girl?”

The boy gave Todd an “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look.

“Don’t worry, it’s between us.  I’m just curious.”

“I didn’t kill her.  She goes to my school.  One of her parents committed suicide, the other one had been neglecting her ever since.  She just joined the suicide prevention club.  And she quit after her first day.  I thought she could use a friend; I invited her to my house.  I left her alone when I had to use the bathroom, and when I returned she was… well dead.”

“That’s a good lie.”

Todd was envious; he knew the kid wanted to punish his own parents for being so cruel to each other.  He only wished he had the guts to do what the kid sitting in front of him did, only with his own parents.    

“It’s the truth.  You’re crazy,” Dere accused.

Todd raised his eyebrows, made a small smile, nodded and shoved a spoon of the lemon ice cream into his mouth.