Presumed Guilty
Presumed Guilty
I got another letter from Byron today. It’s already marked, Number 136, and filed with the others. That’s one letter for each day since the jury pronounced him guilty. Guilty of a murder he didn’t commit.
Poor Loretta! We were best friends, and Byron was devoted to her.
“I didn’t do it,” he told the police when they discovered the body, dripping with blood in his basement workshop. “I didn’t do it,” he told the jury. But no one believed him. There was too much evidence stacked against him.
That’s one reason he writes to me. I believe in him, and I tell him so every day in the letters I write back. What do I write about? Sometimes I remember the happy times the four of us used to have – Byron and Loretta, Jason and me. We were best friends right from the start, when Byron and Loretta moved next door. Loretta was like the sister I never had, while Byron and Jason were best buddies. They liked the usual guy things – Sunday afternoon football and an ice-cold case of beer. They liked fishing and hunting and fooling around in Byron’s workshop. I always told them those electric tools were dangerous, but they just laughed.
A lot of times they didn’t pay much attention to Loretta and me, and then I would get the feeling we didn’t matter. But I never mention that in the letters. I mainly remember the things we all four did together – the camping trips, the time we rented a motor home and drove clear across the country to California. The line dancing we all enjoyed.
After the accident, I took in Loretta’s orange cat. Marmalade, she called it – “Mumsie” for short. I never liked that name any more than I liked the name Loretta. But that’s what I call the cat now: Loretta. Except when I write to Byron. Then it’s “Mumsie this and Mumsie that.” He likes hearing about his cat. I’ve never let on that I myself don’t really like cats or that I sometimes think of taking Mumsie to the Humane Society for a final bye-bye. Of course, I don’t though because there’s always that possibility the jury’s decision will be reversed and Byron will come home. So I take good care of the little beast and even talk to her out loud, the way Loretta used to. I can’t bring myself to pet her, though, and I can’t stand it when she tries to rub up against me.
Still, as I said, I always talk civil to the cat. “You’re missing Byron today, aren’t you, Loretta? Well, maybe one of these days Byron will come home.” I do not refer to him as “Daddy,” the way Loretta (the person Loretta, I mean) used to. It was always “Mommy and Daddy” this, “Mommy and Daddy” that. It’s a ridiculous way to talk to a cat.
They didn’t have any kids, and neither did Jason and me. Loretta was always moaning about that, as if it was some great tragedy not having kids, so I went along with it and pretended that I really wanted kids too. If I hadn’t put a stop to it, I think Loretta would have tried getting Jason into bed, just to see if his sperm was more receptive. She never said it, and Jason denied it, but I could see something was in the air between them. I’m almost psychic that way – I can see things before they happen, I can tell what people are going to do long before they know it themselves.
Loretta didn’t know I had these psychic powers, so she didn’t suspect that I was on to her schemes. She was ready to move in on Jason – I know it. But she just went on acting like she was my best friend, and I can be a pretty good actor myself so I kept pretending she was my best friend too. Like those teeny boppers profess: “Best friends forever.” And then the next week it’s “best friends forever” with someone else. That’s the way it always was with my best friends anyway. It got so I never trusted anyone.
Their house has been standing empty ever since the accident. It’s starting to look run-down now, so I don’t know if anyone will ever buy it. People are funny that way. A few permanent bloodstains on the basement floor, rumors of “premeditated murder,” and they won’t come near the place.
Poor Loretta. That was a gruesome way to die. But I can’t truthfully say I miss her much – not the way I miss Byron. After Jason disappeared, Loretta and Byron were loyal friends to me. I appreciated that – the same way Byron appreciates me, sticking by him all this time.
Byron’s theory is this: Loretta was a victim of thugs who broke into their house. Maybe one of those gangs that leave graffiti all over the neighborhood. Just last summer he had to repaint his garage because of all the graffiti. Those guys would know how to operate an electric chainsaw, Byron says. But the police didn’t buy it. Neither did the jury.
Byron’s attorney think he may have been framed. But who? He didn’t have an enemy in the world. For a long time, they tried to track down Jason, thinking maybe he had something to do with it. But Jason had been gone for more than a year. He never left a trace, and there was no evidence to suggest he came back to murder Loretta. Well, I knew that was impossible. The last I saw of Jason, he was being carted off by the garbage truck. No one ever suspected.
I don’t tell Byron about the house getting run down, or about the big sheriff’s sale that they held to pay off his debts. It would have killed him to see all of his favorite tools sold off like that: his wrench collection, the electric drill, the new chainsaw. People are are funny that way – I just said that, didn’t I? They won’t buy the house because they think it’s haunted or something, but everyone wants the weapons, the suspected instruments of torture.
Sometimes, after reading through Byron’s letters, I wonder if I might have made things work out differently. Well, sure, now that Loretta’s gone, Byron talks about wanting to marry me, and maybe on appeal he’ll get lucky, and he can walk right into my arms. That’s what I wanted from the beginning – that’s why I plotted it out the way I did. Even Byron doesn’t suspect. As I said, he thinks it was an accident, the same way he and Loretta both thought Jason walked out on me.
It’s time to write to Byron now. I’ve written every day since they arrested him. Sometimes in my dreams I cling to the cops who are hauling him away. “He didn’t do it! He’s innocent,” I cry. And this one big burly guy, who in the dream looks exactly like Jason, turns to me and sneers, “Oh yeah? And how do you know?”
In the dream I’m wide-eyed and innocent. I just shrug my shoulders and I reach down to pick up the cat. I stroke her fur and she purrs, snuggling up to me. (I hate that, even in my dream, but I’m good at pretending, awake or asleep.) So I bury my face in the cat’s orange fur and smile, thinking, mum’s the word. Mum – Mumsie, get it? Even in my dreams, I’m able to think that clearly.
But then I wake up right away, and I’m all alone. Even the cat keeps her distance – I sometimes think she knows. One of these days, I’ll have to let her go too. Then what will I tell Byron?
Oh, I’ll think of something. I always do.
Marjorie Pagel lives in Franklin, Wis., with her husband and their English cocker spaniel, Annie, and has two grown children and three grandchildren. She has been writing since the age of 9 when she self-published a book of poetry for her grandmother. For 10 years, she was a reporter and feature writer for Community Newspapers, a chain associated with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and continues to write a weblog, “Meet Me at the Corner,” published by one of the chain’s online affiliates, HalesCornersNOW. She also teaches college writing at Concordia University in Mequon, Wis.