Shred of Evidence

Ben straightens his back and adjusts the heavy new briefcase in his left hand before he rings the doorbell of this non-descript house. He’s never carried a briefcase before, yet somehow a briefcase seems necessary to give him an air of authenticity. Dana helped him pick it out. They sat in front of the computer for an hour and ordered it online, along with the other things they’d need, and then they climbed into bed and she was crying. And although Ben is used to her tears, it continues to disturb him in a way he cannot explain.

Ben sees that the man inside the house has raked up the leaves, because although the trees are a riot of color, there is not a single leaf on the path to his house or cornered on his porch, trembling in the wind. Everything’s in order. The summer flowers have been ripped from the soil; he sees some upturned roots and a few battered stems. There’s very little to notice on the street. Dogs are barking, but Ben can’t see them. A boy rides by on a bike without looking his way, which girds him for the job he’s beginning. The child’s helmet glints in the sun before he disappears, his spokes cackling.

Ben sees all of this in the time it takes for the man inside to make his way to the door. Ben’s heart races, as if these will be the last things he sees.

“Mr. Costello?” he asks. The man is smaller than he would have thought and Ben realizes he would be surprised regardless of what he found when the door opened, because the man is flesh and blood, like all men.

Mr. Costello wears slippers and a brown woolen cardigan, and his glasses magnify his eyes, making them look watery, vulnerable. “Yes?” he replies.

“Hello! I’m Peter,” he says, though of course Peter is not his name.

Mr. Costello smiles and shakes his hand. Ben says, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m so looking forward to our lessons.”

Sticking his pale neck over the door jamb, Mr. Costello glances down the walkway as if someone might pop out from the bushes. “Come, in! Come in!” he says, motioning to a table in an adjacent room. “You can set your things down there, if you like, while we work.”

Mr. Costello turns on the light by the piano and says, “I think we shall need some light,” and “I thought it’d be warmer today,” and “Don’t forget to have him fill out the form!” Dana has told Ben that Mr. Costello talks to himself all the time. It is one of the habits that will destroy him, Ben thinks, smiling. Dana was so right about it. All of it.

Ben takes lessons twice a week. He tells Mr. Costello that such frequent visits give him the impetus he needs to practice on his own. Ben says, “Just hearing you play, Mr. Costello, gives me hope,” with such a reverent tone that bitterness rises in his throat and he longs to spit it out, to watch it drip slowly from the tip of Mr. Costello’s nose onto his lap, to watch it etch a hole into him as if it were acid.

Ben locates Mr. Costello’s spare key hanging near the back door, and one afternoon while pretending to watch squirrels in the yard, he slips aside the sheer panel covering the panes of glass, and resting his hand there for a moment, he palms the key. He plunges the key into his pants pocket and stretches, as if it has been a very long day. Feverish with fear that Mr. Costello will discover its absence that day, or the next few, before Ben he can copy and replace it, Ben’s fingers stumble over the piano keys and his brow becomes damp, and he asks for a drink of water, shadowing Mr. Costello to the kitchen and sneaking the key back on its hook while Mr. Costello is filling a glass with ice. “Thanks,” Ben says, smiling. “You’re very kind.” And the strange thing is that he seems kind. He would seem harmless, if Ben didn’t know better.

But he does know better. “He’s perched on the headboard of our bed, like a gargoyle,” Dana says, ever since she told Ben what happened when she was ten. As the years pass, she says she’s more aware of the burden of Mr. Costello’s presence, not less. It makes her cry. It smothers her desire. She cannot release it, though she has tried. Neither of them can remember who first thought of their plan, and it doesn’t much matter, as they are entwined in it together. They imagine a day in which Dana does not remember, a day when what happened so long ago becomes a brief recollection, a bad accident that she survives intact. But this of course has not occurred. It coils around her still, like a snake.

When Ben returns from his lessons, he tells Dana about them, and she sits quietly, seeming more absorbed in her own thoughts than in what he’s telling her. And there is not much to tell at first. But as he spends more time there, Ben plants tiny microphones carefully on top of the bathroom cabinet, in the kitchen, and in the living room where Mr. Costello teaches his students. Placing a microphone in Mr. Costello’s bedroom proves somewhat more difficult, but he manages to do so one day when another student arrives, when Mr. Costello focuses his doting attention on the red-headed girl Julia, in her starched uniform. Ben wants to pick her up like a broken doll and run out of there, but he stops himself. He knows he can’t involve the police. They wouldn’t understand, would probably charge him with some sort of crime, and Mr. Costello would saunter away, pleased with how his life has been saved from treachery, free to sniff the girls like a yellow cur.

Soon the minutiae of Mr. Costello’s life become known to Ben and Dana as they listen to him. They learn he wakes at exactly 7:15 every morning to the canned sounds of the rainforest, and that he gets up immediately to urinate. They learn that he does not brush his teeth until after he eats his breakfast, which is ordinarily hot cereal, which he cooks on the top of the stove. He grinds his own coffee. He takes baths every day instead of showers, sometimes whacking off in there, talking to himself and grunting like an animal. They know he suffers from a pinched nerve in his back for which he takes aspirin, as he often says to himself, “My back’s at it again,” as if someone cares. He repetitively whistles “Rule, Britannia” and they have no idea why.

At first they fear they are no better than he, spying on him as they do. They don’t talk about it, but glances pass between them; sometimes Dana simply turns the sound of him off and they consider aborting their plan, losing it as one does an inconvenient memory. They long for their mission to be over. They are not criminals. They do not enjoy it. Yet as they hear all that delights Mr. Costello, as they listen to the music tainted by his hands, they know that what they are doing is just. So they continue.

They send flowers to him anonymously, and they hear his pleasure. He has an admirer, he thinks. They send him chocolates. And, for almost a week, they call him a few times a day from phone booths, hanging up after breathing heavily, as if they’d just climbed a great hill. He says, “Who is this?” They can hear the fear in his voice.

They can tell that his next victim will be the red-headed girl Julia. She practices at home. She apparently tugs on her braid when she’s thinking, a habit about which Mr. Costello gently teases her. They hear her giggle when she recites the acronyms for the scales, as if he’s made them up himself. She becomes upset when her fingers do not span the keys the way she wants them to, and sometimes she stamps her little foot when she makes a mistake, causing the piano to reverberate like an organ. She talks to Mr. Costello about her father’s death and about how at night the shadows loom over her canopied bed and she is afraid. He seems kind as he listens to her, ever aware of her pain, so willing to comfort her. If they didn’t know better, they might think he cares for her. Yet with his piano weaving a merry path, they know he waits to spiral around her like a poisonous vine. They have to stop themselves from calling the police. They know there is a sharp edge between what they can see and hear, and what they can’t. It makes them fearful for Julia and the other girls, but they need time to do what they’ve planned. They remind themselves that they cannot let their imaginations take hold; they must focus on their task. They listen to him carefully even though it is burdensome sometimes. At times Ben calls Mr. Costello on the phone when they’re afraid he’ll go too far, which breaks the rhythm of Mr. Costello’s oily pace. He must try another time to mangle a childhood as he did Dana’s so many years before.

Dana and Ben gear up for the rest of their plan. They’re terrified to wait much longer. They’ve argued about rescuing Julia if they have to, about calling the police. But then they’d have so many questions to answer. How would they know what he was doing and when he was doing it? They could not answer those questions without incriminating themselves. They discuss all of this after Mr. Costello turns in for the night, as they listen to the regular way his breath wends in and out of his chest, over and over again. They do not understand how he can sleep so soundly when they cannot.

“He made me a cake for my birthday,” Dana says. “I had frosting all over my hands. He insisted on licking my fingers. His tongue was ticklish and it made me laugh and it horrified me too. All at the same time.” She says this with scrutiny at the guilt she still feels, even though she was a child, even though he was wrong.

When the trees are bare, the night is cool, and Mr. Costello is safe in his bed, they take cans of frosting and write on his windows, “We know what you do.” They hear him the next morning gasp and sputter, grumbling “Who could have done such a thing?” He scrapes off the dried frosting and they imagine the sharp odor of the spray cleaner as he toils on this all morning long.

A few days later, at Thanksgiving, Mr. Costello flies to his mother for the holiday. He brings her a fruitcake. They wonder how she could have borne such a man. They wonder if she is a monster too. Or if it was his father. Ben now has the time to do things properly. He is alone in the house, as Dana cannot bear to go inside. The house is reminder to her of all that she lost. Ben opens his briefcase and sets out his things on a table. He has choreographed his moves ahead of time. He accomplishes all they’ve decided to do. Before he leaves the house, he takes a crayon and draws a primitive picture of a little girl crying, with the words, “I know what you do” strung across the wall like a banner. Dana waits at home for Ben to return, her face ashen. She merely asks him, “Is it done?” and he nods and embraces her as if she has never before been loved.

Upon Mr. Costello’s return home, they listen for him to discover their surprises. He sputters and whines as he cleans the walls marked with crayon and they hear him pace his home, over and over, as if looking for someone hiding there. He calls a locksmith, who changes the locks and sells him an industry quality deadbolt. As they listen to him turn the bolt after the man leaves, it sounds like the steel scraping of prison bars. He’s locking himself in for the night. When Mr. Costello climbs into bed, he feels the scratchiness of something at his feet, and up his leg. He throws back the bedding to find the soil they’ve sprinkled on his bed like chicken feed. He sleeps on the couch.

The following day, Mr. Costello does not eat breakfast. They hear him talking to himself, though they cannot make out most of what he says. Mr. Costello seems not so much surprised at every accident that befalls him as he seems depleted by them. When he turns on the washing machine to wash his sheets, small holes Ben made in his hoses slowly leak water all over the floor, and he has to call a repair man, who charges him $250.00 because it’s an emergency call. There’s a foul odor emanating from his sink, and when he turns the switch on the wall for the disposal, shards of metal fly at him like bees. He screams, and must search through drawers to find the ointment he applies to cuts on his face, saying “Ouch,” as if it could help. Mr. Costello complains, “I just don’t have an appetite,” before they hear him open up a can. As they hear the clink of the can against a saucepan, Mr. Costello notices the thin layer of yellow at the bottom of the pan, already almost evaporated, but smelling so strongly of urine that there must be no doubt in his mind what it is. He shrieks horribly and throws the pan into the trash can. They hear him remove dishes and glasses and bowls from his cabinets and silverware from the drawers and, one by one, wash everything while feverishly talking to himself, asking the empty room, “Who could have been here?” and “What should I do?” but he does not call the police. He does not call a soul, and they think there is no soul interested in him.

They hear him close all his blinds, all his curtains. They hear him gasp when the phone rings, when his newspaper is delivered with a thud at his front door. As he turns on the vacuum, it screeches plaintively before depositing dust over everything. He coughs. He needs his inhaler now. He is too exhausted to comb his balding head. He doesn’t so much turn in for the night as he falls into a chair and dozes off, fitfully, waiting for another shoe to drop.

The next day they hear him scream when the chandelier loosens itself from its mooring and crashes into his dining table, depositing tiny pieces of glass that will crackle beneath his feet for days, due to the unfortunate disposition of his vacuum cleaner. As he pours oatmeal into a pan, he notices tiny larvae snuggling into his steel cut flakes, and he gags mightily. Mr. Costello then throws away food without looking at it. They hear the slaps of boxes and cans, the trips outside to the trash. He goes out to the store for more trash bags and misses his 3:30 student, something he says he’s never done before. He cancels his lessons for the rest of the week, telling everyone he’s feeling unwell. “Too much Thanksgiving turkey,” he says, vainly attempting a chuckle. The gravity in his voice makes him sound like he’s battling a fatal illness. Ben says, “Is there anything I can do?” with convincing empathy, and although Mr. Costello sounds touched that he’s offered his assistance, he declines.

Mr. Costello talks to himself a great deal during this time, crying, “Holy Mother of God,” as if a deity could hear him. He says, “Why me?” with great plaintiveness, though there is no answer to that question either. They hear him climb into his bed, but he’s unable to fall asleep. The mattress groans with his weight, and he can’t find a comfortable position, as all the activity of the last few days has apparently awakened his sciatica. Groaning in pain, he gets up to take some aspirin, and finds the bottle full of tiny nails instead. His breath is ragged and he begins to gasp as if he’s been in the most horrible accident and is watching the life seep out of him, one drop of blood after another puddling around him like a sticky shadow. He screams over and over, “Who are you?” and checks and rechecks the locks on all the windows and doors. He cannot bear to peer outside, afraid that something will come out from the shadows. He says to himself, “Maybe he’s out there, waiting for me,” and begins to weep like a child.

Just as he they hear him begin to drift into sleep, they activate the incoming wire of the microphone for the very first time. “How are you sleeping tonight, Mr. Costello?” Dana says, almost too softly. They hear him jerk upright, the shriek of the bedsprings. He knocks what must be a lamp off a table. He begins to cry, guttural sounds. He yells, “Stop it! Stop it!” over and over, as if someone might be listening. They say nothing more to him, and after a while he says, “It must have been my imagination!” with pathetic hope. Just as he painstakingly falls asleep once more, Dana says, into the microphone, louder now, “You are a coward, Mr. Costello. Only cowards prey on children.”

They now hear him rush about frantically, muttering mostly indistinguishable words, ripping cushions from his sofa and turning over tables to find the source of the voice, which does not stop this time. “You told me I was beautiful,” Dana says, her voice husky. “You told me I was beautiful and then you said we needed to play a game so I could learn my scales. Each time I got something right, I got a candy, and each time I got something wrong, I had to let you touch me. You said it was a kind of tag, and you were ‘It.’” Dana chokes back tears, and despite the sounds of Mr. Costello toppling a bookcase and finding one of the wires, ripping it out as if he could it were a whip, she hears only the sound of her own voice. “You told me I couldn’t tell. You told me people wouldn’t understand. I tried so hard to get my scales right, but they were never right enough.” Her voice sounds tired and very sad. “You said it was my fault because I couldn’t play my scales.” Taking a deep breath, she is afraid she will choke now. “I thought I was wrong. You said it was our gift. Your love. I’ve had to live with you every day since then, you miserable piece of shit.”

He cannot find the other wires. Ben was too good. Mr. Costello repeats, over and over again, “I’m sorry for your pain. I’m sorry. But I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who you are!” They think there must have been too many others, and it sickens them. They are almost as spent as he.

Mr. Costello falls asleep just before his rainforest sounds awaken him and they imagine him thinking, “The jungle will be eating me today.” They hear him rip out the plug and hurl the clock across the room, where it shatters. His bed complains as he lies down again. They imagine him curled up tightly, a fallen jagged stone.

Later in the day, every time they hear Mr. Costello begin to do something routine, like brush his teeth or make some coffee, they interrupt him with the quiet words, “How does it feel, Mr. Costello? Does it feel good?” They hear him drop his toothbrush. They imagine him holding onto the sink as a lifeboat, wailing.

Mr. Costello finally calls the police. He stumbles over his words on the phone, and begs an officer to see him. Two arrive, their walkie-talkies scratchily punctuating his pleas for help. They have more important business. By this time, Mr. Costello must appear disheveled, sleepless, and nearly insane. After all, he hears voices. They take a cursory cruise around his home, which now must be littered with broken small appliances, up-turned furniture, and garbage. One officer says to the other, “What a freaking mess” quietly, but not so quietly that Dana and Ben can’t hear him. The officers suggest, as nicely as possible, that perhaps Mr. Costello might benefit from some psychiatric help, and he is able to say, almost heartily, “No. I’ll be fine,” before they leave. He sobs when the door closes behind them.

He cancels all his lessons, crying wretchedly between phone calls. He tells people that he’ll be leaving town, that everybody needs to get another teacher, that he can’t think of anywhere else he might refer them. Perhaps he thinks he is irreplaceable. He tells them what good little students they were. After all his calls have been placed, he wonders out loud if they all know how much he loves them. How he adores those little children. How he lives for them, forming their little minds, filling them with music. How now he is left with nothing.

Later that evening, Dana and Ben throw their briefcase into the dumpster, closing the lid with a clatter that dissipates in the cold night. They are almost done.

Mr. Costello no longer spends time looking for microphones. Dana and Ben begin to turn off the sound most of the time, but a few times a day one of them whispers into the microphone, “Does it feel good, Mr. Costello?” He lies in bed much of the time. He forgets to flush the toilet. Eventually he refuses to open his refrigerator which has become a mausoleum of stinking food he’s been too distraught to consume. He does not bathe. The phone does not ring. Dana and Ben hear him talking to himself less and less as the weeks progress, except for the phrases, “I loved them…I never hurt them.”

He no longer moves around very much. He stops drinking water. He stops urinating. And one day, as the sun rises brightly in the cold sky, he stops breathing. There is only silence.

Ben calls an ambulance to Mr. Costello’s house, telling them there might be something wrong there. Dana and Ben wait a half hour before driving to that unremarkable house on that unremarkable street. There is an ambulance in front of Mr. Costello’s house and a few police cars, lights flashing on the crusty snow. Neighbors have come out onto the street to watch the attendants remove a stretcher holding a black body bag. He looks small from a distance. Dana and Ben, hand in hand, find the center of the crowd. It is so cold that steam rises from the crowd, as if they’re the only warmth in this forsaken place. Ben asks a woman with a heavy jacket over her robe, “What happened?”

The woman looks at them, her eyes wide with disbelief. “I guess it’s awful in there. A real hell hole.” Her nose is red, and it looks as if she’s cried. “It’s just terrible. Nobody really knew him. Aside from his lessons, he kept so to himself.” She shakes her head and her hair curlers bobble softly. Watching the doors close on the ambulance, she sighs, “It’s a shame, really. Such a shame.” And then she walks away.

A police car leaves, then another. Dana does not feel as she thought she might. She asks, “Will it be over now?” like a child.

The lights stop blinking on the ambulance as it pulls away. There is no rush now. Ben does not know how to answer her. He feels the wind whip at his face. His eyes glint like frost, he is cold and cavernous. “Yes,” he says, wishing he believed it.