“C’MON, Sandra-dee, you’ll be happy that you came—just you, Patrick and me.”
“I told you not to call me that, anymore; it’s Sandy—not ‘Sandra-dee,’ and not even ‘Sandra’ … Understood? Plus, Herb and I are going for coffee, anyway.”
“Who’s ‘Herb’?” Rich queried, somewhat jealous in tone regardless of never even hinting at non-platonic interest in relations with Sandy. “You’re not talking about the guy with schizo, are you?”
“He’s not schizophrenic, Rich-ee; he has a social dysfunction, as well as a thought disorder that messes with his self-esteem. But I find that those traits actually admirably humble him and also make him exceptionally pleasant and calming to be with. Though, he is aware that it’s a ‘no-chance-for-romance’ friendship—that I’m with a guy I’ve known since early childhood. Besides, I thought you were supposedly Herb’s friend or are …”
“Well, what about after school tomorrow, then?” Rich cut her off to continue the original topic. “And you can bring your pet Herbert … Just joking, Sandy; don’t blow a gasket, now.”
“I guess,” she replied, still a bit hesitant. “I’ll ask him.”
“Great. And Pat’s bringing a forty-pounder or two of Jack Daniels.”
Shrugging her shoulders, she noted, “As long as you two don’t drink and drive—or at least you let Herb or I drive. Anyway, I have to get going. See you tomorrow.”
By age sixteen, Herb had already subconsciously developed, to a climax, his guilt complex.
The guilt complex eventually solidified to a point at which he often heard in his mind’s ear his deceased father unjustly censuring him. For example, when his mom justly scolded his commotion-creating father, Dad usually glared at Herb before verbally spewing, “See what you’ve done!”
It was therefore no surprise to his mom that Herb’s two male ‘friends,’ and perhaps even his female friend who introduced the two guys to Herb, seemed just the insidious types to take advantage of Herb’s as-of-yet untreated debilitating, virtually unrelenting guilt. Herb’s mom knew that he’d made a serious mistake in trusting his ‘friends’ with so much of his troubled psyche’s vulnerabilities.
As far as Sandy and Rich went, they were hardly ‘good friends,’ and not any more so she and Patrick. She happened to meet and ‘befriend’ them on the first day of secondary school, about nine months prior, and got to know them before getting to know anyone else, such as Herb (the first) a couple of weeks later. Sandy, quite the intelligent sort, first got to know Herb while partnering with him for experiment assignments during science class, which he mastered along with calculus algebra.
Around 7 p.m. the following day, Rich was driving his car, with his childhood chum Patrick riding shotgun and Sandy in the back seat opposite from Herb. (She knew well of Herb’s feelings for her, and he obviously knew that she knew, and so forth; nevertheless, he always respected her non-feelings for him and her private space, for he truly admired her as a kind person, first and foremost.)
Rich and Patrick downed the first large bottle of whiskey, followed by a little over half of the second bottle; then came out the baggie of potent skunkweed, and thus the two were exceedingly dangerously intoxicated. Due to naught but peer pressure did Herb take a small shot, though nonetheless hacking from the alcohol hit, for he hated its flavor and twice as much despised its out-of-control inebriating effect. Sandy also wasn’t much of a drinker, however on that particular night she indulged herself with a few swigs.
Rich and (to a little lesser extent) Patrick were real pricks when it came to driving—and they were borderline diabolical when it came to keeping even a semblance of their word in regards to abstaining from driving while under any influence of any amount of alcohol. In fact, that same night while yet again DUI and excessively speeding, Rich, teased and distracted by Patrick, hit a twelve-year-old child walking along the shoulder of the road.
Stunned, the four stepped out of the car, fearful of the gruesome sight that they almost certainly would find. All first noticing the large indentation in the front, right quarter panel via the high-beam headlights’ illumination—immediately followed by Rich’s profane curse over the repair bill to come—Patrick, Herb and Sandy then turned their attention to a small, mangled, bloodied body about 15 metres ahead, partly slumped off of the roadside and down the adjacent embankment.
Slowly stepping up to the ravaged victim, Sandy blurted, “Oh, God!” before quickly turning away to vomit.
The victim was virtually decapitated; only a very slim strip of epidermis connected the head to the body.
“How could’ve this happened?!” Patrick exclaimed, his brain still marinated in alcohol and THC.
Five seconds before impact, Herb yelled out that, “you’re going to hit that kid!”
Naturally, Rich then placed his full focus forward, but it was much too late to avoid blasting the helpless girl into eternity, especially considering the fact that he was foolishly doing at least 60 mph.
Herb was clearly left traumatized, visibly trembling, by the horrific impact and its result, regardless of the medication (including a psychotropic tranquilizer) he consumed daily.
Noticing such, Rich and Patrick instinctively commenced a coordinated effort to manipulate Sandy into assisting them psychologically bully Herb into taking the full blame brunt for Rich’s vehicular manslaughter—with all of their influence on Herb based on his yelling out the warning regarding the endangered child pedestrian.
With sufficient grilling by Rich and Patrick, they actually managed to convince Herb that the accident was his fault.
“Okay, all; let’s go, now,” commanded Rich, with Sandy and Herb looking at him in bewilderment. “I said, let’s go—now!”
As Rich climbed back into his damaged car—though into the backseat—Patrick and Sandy immediately followed inside. Herb, however, was last in line to get in, with only the driver’s seat left vacant.
“What … Where am I supposed to sit?” Herb quietly said.
“In the fucking driver’s seat,” Rich bluntly informed him. “You’re not at all impaired; the cops can’t nail you for DUI manslaughter!”
“But it’s still a killing, Rich!” Sandy loudly retorted, beginning to backtrack on her initial blame-Herb cooperation, which was already weak to begin with.
“We all have to stick to the same story,” he brazenly corrected her. “Look, none of us saw her in time. She was, is wearing dark clothing, after all.”
Rich then again lost his temper and blared at Herb, “To hell with this shit! Let’s go, now!”
He then ordered the meek guy to “get into the driver’s seat, floor the gas pedal and tear away the road! Since there are no witnesses (yet, anyway), I’m sure as hell not going away for half of the rest of my life over this fuck up!”
Intimidated, Herb did immediately comply; although, he deliberately did so without the obnoxious “tear away” demanded by the still impaired Rich.
About a minute’s silence passed as Herb drove with no as-of-yet specified destination to keep in mind, when without anticipation from anyone Rich spewed out his venomous, specious condemnation of Herb’s supposed “idiotic scream right into my ear to ‘Look out!’ At the very least, he should confess to being behind the wheel at the time of impact. If he hadn’t screamed from out of nowhere right behind me, totally distracting me, I’d never have hit her!”
“Oh, bullshit , Richard! Don’t lay your incredible stupidity at Herb’s feet! It was you, and Pat, who drank all of that whiskey, smoked all of that pot, drove while blatantly drunk and way too fast and careless! And Herb did not ‘scream’ into your ear; in fact, he didn’t ‘scream’ at all. He simply reacted appropriately to get your full attention back to where it should’ve been in the first place.”
Rich, however, promptly rebuked Sandy for her change of heart regarding who’d be the fall guy: “I thought you were originally in agreement with Patrick and me … Why the flip flop?”
Sandy then went silent.
Until then quiet, Herb humbly spoke, offering a bizarre and extremely misplaced apology.
“I’m sorry, Rich; I really didn’t mean to distract you … your driving. I just thought that …”
“You ‘just thought’ with shit for brains, that’s all.”
“But I saw the girl, and I saw that you and Patrick weren’t looking at the road ahead, so I …”
“… Fucked right up my attention, my focus, on my driving at such a critical time! And now a girl’s head’s been ripped from her neck!”
With Sandy left utterly astonished by the verbal and emotional blast endured by a trembling Herb, both inebriated good ’ol boys glared at him as Rich suggested that he “take responsibility for your faults as a real man should and would.”
In response, Herb muttered, “Yeah, I guess … I guess it was, after all, my fault—I did suddenly yell at you. And it confused you, like you said; otherwise, you wouldn’t have hit that girl on the …”
“Damn right,” Rich and Patrick said in unison.
“I don’t believe this,” said Sandy, incredulously yet low in tone. “How can you guys do this to him and still be able to sleep at night?”
“Shut the fuck up, Sandy! If just this once, shut up, and let us handle this!”
“You’re actually going to get Herb to pay for something that you did—with Pat’s blessing, of course?” she rhetorically asked with frustrated sarcasm.
“Herbert just admitted his guilt; you stood there and clearly heard him. So what the hell are you babbling about, girl?”
Sandy looked at Herb, like she’d shamefully failed him, while he still had yet to look up even once since the latter portion of the verbal exchange began.
“Oh, God,” she barely audibly moaned, as though experiencing stomach pains caused by guilt.
So thus it would be: Herb was ‘found guilty’ by two guys whom he’d hoped might someday accept him, regardless of his messed up psyche.
“Now, head for the police station,” again Rich ordered, wearing the same smug expression that he always did when matters went his way as per usual. “We’ll turn you in at the cop shop.”
“But, Rich,” Patrick began to wisely query his friend, “don’t you think the cops will be able to tell that Herb’s nowhere even near DUI?”
“Yeah, you’ve got a point there, pal.”
Besides having alcohol on their breath to some degree, including Herb, more troublesome was the alcohol in their body systems. However, unlike the other three, Herb was not at all left noticeably affected by the negligible amount he took that night.
Once they’d driven around killing enough time and thus inebriation, they finally began the trip to the police station.
First and foremost, having already coerced him into agreeing to falsely confess to police to having operated Rich’s vehicle while DUI, Herb was also coerced into first forcing down almost nine ounces of whiskey in a five minute period, quite sufficient to make a non-drinker like him into a very plausible drunk.
As would be expected of their ilk, Rich and Patrick insisted upon dictating to Herb his precise actions and reactions while at the police station, and especially what he is to say and not say to police when they take his (especially if formal) statement. In being exploited so, Herb incriminated himself in record-breaking time, taking full responsibility for the crimes of Rich and (to a lesser extent) Patrick—Rich’s impaired driving causing death and fleeing the scene, with Patrick being an accessory to the same alleged crimes.
“Officer, we’re here to report a hit-and-run,” Rich initiated his official, bald-faced-lie charge, with the other three standing behind him. “My intoxicated friend here, Herbert, was driving my car tonight (which is out front) when he hit a pedestrian, a young girl, walking along the shoulder of Stetson Road, near southernmost Blakeville. He’d been drinking quite a bit while driving the vehicle.”
Having already been informed of the discovery of the victim’s remains by a routine patrol unit about 40 minutes earlier, the police officer closely observed the facial expression of each of the four. He then again looked at Herb.
“Do you, without any external influence or intimidation involved, take full responsibility for being in operation of a motor vehicle while impaired when the said vehicle struck the pedestrian tonight (October 10th, 2012) at approximately 10:15 p.m.?”
Herb stared wide-eyed at the officer while being short for words, mostly stuttering in agreement with the first of about a half-dozen yet-to-come for-the-record questions and accompanying admissions. All, according to the officer, “are only formalities inadmissible in a court of law until the full admission is signed by you while in the presence of your attorney—unless you choose to waive your right to an attorney.”
Again looking over the other three, the officer queried them, “And what were your roles in all of this? You all seem to have alcohol on your breath and obviously are not of age, so …?”
To the officer’s open-ended question, Rich took the initiative and spoke for all three ‘innocents.’
“We did drink, but we were all snoozing at the time. Of course we were all jolted back into sitting up when Herb smashed into … well, when the impact occurred.”
“Okay, then; the three of you need to come back here tomorrow to give some additional information regarding the incident. You, however, come with me.”
Within two days, everyone in town had heard about Herb’s being charged with impaired driving causing death and fleeing the scene.
As Herb was being made to pay such a huge, unjust price for others’ crimes, Sandy wasn’t allowing herself any peace, so she finally firmly decided to formally speak out against what they did to Herb.
“No way,” she proclaimed. “I’m simply not going through with it—I’ve changed my mind.”
“Oh, you’re going through with it, alright. All three of us are going through with it, as planned,” Rich asserted while holding onto her arm. “It’s gone too far, now; we’re in it way too deep to just out of the blue flip the whole story around.”
“Let go of me!” Sandy demanded, pulling free her arm. “Don’t touch me, you creep!”
As per usual, Patrick solidly supported his childhood chum and informal superior: “Yeah, Sandy; we’ve got to stick together on …”
“Not a chance,” she cut him off. “I shouldn’t have even come this far, to have even gone along with this atrocious scheme at the time of its evil inception. I’m going to tell the police the truth. Herb’s the last person who deserves this kind of insidious screwing from you two, from us, and I’m going to …”
(Forty-four hours later)
“And then she walked over to the door and left,” Rich told the police officer, with Patrick nodding like the sidekick he’s always been.
“Okay … And you’re sure there’s nothing more at all that you two have to add?” the officer queried, just before receiving two slowly shaking heads spouting “No, officer,” and leaving.
Rich then expressed his maliciousness in regards to Sandy’s true fate and whereabouts with his typical smirk in Patrick’s direction.
As for Herb, it was bad enough languishing in pre-trial lock-up, but learning early that afternoon that Sandy had been discovered barely covered by a shallow swamp’s murky waters crushed what was left of his spirit.
Immediately upon hearing how she perished, Herb recognized it as a telltale signature of Rich’s handy work. Also exacerbating Herb’s broken heart, he felt certain that Sandy suffered such an untimely, awful fate but for his sake, specifically the blame that Rich and Patrick had corruptly assigned to him over the girl struck dead by Rich’s drunk driving.
I just know that she was going to retract her false accusation against Herb to police, crippling Rich’s and Patrick’s blatant lies in the process, thus she paid an extreme price. She wasn’t the type for matching Rich’s and Patrick’s callous immorality.
As it were, late that same afternoon, Sandy’s boyfriend, in whom she had confided on the very morning of her murder, straightaway finished what his childhood sweetheart had bravely planned to do by telling police about Herb’s innocence and therefore her, Rich’s and Patrick’s guilt.
Obviously, the desperate Rich and Patrick falsified alibis for one another—though to imminently become totally fruitless effort—for the approximately five hours preceding and succeeding the estimated time of Sandy’s death.
_________
THE pretrial lockup officer’s standard issue heavy-duty shoes walking upon the smooth cement flooring could be heard echoing throughout the cellblock, including Herb’s far-end portion of it. The impact noise of the shoes hitting the flooring gradually got louder, until it abruptly stopped at Herb’s cell door.
A moment later came the clamoring sound of a large key, with adjacent keys loosely jangling, being inserted into the keyhole and turned about.
The door loudly opened, and there stood the same officer who’d originally formally read Herb his Miranda Rights just before officially arresting him almost two weeks prior.
“The charges against you have been dropped. Pack up your stuff—you’re free to go.”
“They’ve been dropped? Because of Sandy’s boyfriend’s claims?”
“Because some new information has been forwarded to the Crown prosecutor. That’s all you need to know.”
“New information?” Herb kept up the pace. “From her boyfriend, right?”
Becoming agitated, the guard replied with a tone of finality: “Look, do you want to leave or not? Or should I just shut and lock the door, again, for another couple weeks?”
“No—that’s fine. I’ll go.”
With his belongings readied to go, Herb was escorted to the station’s front entrance, where his anxious mother awaited him.
“Herbert! You’re free! You’re free!” she exclaimed, wearing a brilliant smile.
She immediately gave her son, her only child, a great hug and a kiss on both cheeks. (Both were already pink from embarrassment, for there was a gathering of onlookers plus a variety of news-media.)
“I knew that you were wronged from the very beginning. It was all so very crazy—all of it; everyone who knows you also knows that you hate all alcoholic drinks, even lite beer!”
“Yeah, I know, Mom; but …”
“But what?” she asked in a boisterous tone of non-suspicion.
Herb’s mother knew almost every detail of his psychological dysfunctions, especially that his guilt complex caused him to place the weight of the world upon his own shoulders.
“What cause could they possibly have had to accuse you of committing such a terrible, terrible crime?! Because you ‘confessed’ to it?! The police should’ve known far better, especially with that Richard scoundrel’s criminal record and your complete lack of any—now or ever! And to think that you actually refused legal representation, too! Why?!”
Herb then became anxious and began to stutter: “Because I … I didn’t want you to spend so much money on an expensive lawyer with a fancy reputation … plus … plus, Mom, I was … I was actually in the car, and I …,” Herb tried to explain, though his mother would have absolutely none of her son’s totally unmerited psychological self-flagellation.
“Oh, yes, Herbert; I know all about your phony ‘confession’ after being bullied into ‘admitting’ to your phony ‘part’ in the whole horrible mess. I’ve heard and read so much about what your … deceased friend told her boyfriend that she’d done with those boys,” she vigorously asserted. “I don’t ever want to hear, ever again, that you feel any fault in any part of that atrocious accident!”
Pulling Herb aside for privacy, she wiped away tears before adding, “That’s exactly why I left your father. He’d always be telling you, ‘See what you’ve done!’ I later learned from his sister that their own father would lay the exact same cruel guilt trips on him, and his father’s father before him. It’s an awfully horrible thing to do to a young, very impressionable child’s developing mind!”
“Yeah, I guess so, Mom.”
“Now, let’s go home. I’m going to cook you up some of your favorite food—sautéed prawns in chop suey; you know, with a whole bunch of those baby corns you enjoy so much!”
“Oh, super,” Herb replied, allowing himself to present a small smile for the first time in more than a month. “Thanks, Mom. Love you.”
With photo journalists and reporters briefly following them with some final few questions, mother and son left for home.
Meanwhile, the Crown prosecutor was cautiously, quietly (so as to avoid inducing the two boys to conveniently leave town) preparing the protocol legalese for impending arrests of and charges against Rich and Patrick the following morning.
Once arrested and charged, the two, whose parents hired each his own topnotch criminal defense attorney, were released on bail with accompanying stipulations. Rich’s parents, being of great wealth (i.e. “old money”), originally seriously considered hiring an O.J.-Simpson-like Dream Team defense for their son. However, they were barely persuaded to not proceed with such an extravagant course of legal action because, as Rich’s lawyer explained, the “‘negative optics’ in the public’s eyes resulting from such a bold money move definitely are not in Rich’s best legal interests since he’ll be tried by a jury of his likely-modest-income peers.”
Then, only thirty-four hours later, the two bailed-out boys were also placed under official police investigation in regards to Sandy’s murder. It was reported on the evening news that police and the Crown prosecutor’s office had established a convincing motive for Rich and Patrick, so much so that charges of second-degree murder against the two were rumored to be imminent.
So, being the party-it-up-really-good-with-intoxicants types, the two went over to Patrick’s apartment for dinner, with his divorced father as company; afterwards, when Dad left, they’d share (what else) a 40-pounder of Jack Daniels whiskey along with some potent skunk weed.
The whiskey gulping coupled with the toke-up placed them in the same frame of heavily intoxicated mind as they were on that infamous, deadly night—the one that, because of the resultant slaughter and guilt trip, permanently traumatized the already suffering Herb.
It was because of the pair’s continuous reckless behavior on the road that Herb was left feeling 100 percent obligated to ensure that the two—though especially Rich, even if Patrick was known to occasionally also heavily DUI—are eternally removed from the road. Such an act by Herb, however extreme, would leave absolutely no more legal loopholes for the pair to exploit, nor permit them to seek out for their own selfishly cruel purposes another patsy, however unlikely, as they did with the psychologically very vulnerable Herb.
When they had sufficiently numbed their senses and severely compromised their motor-coordination response abilities, Rich and Patrick decided to drive to the nearby lake where they could high-and-mightily holler to the tune of their extreme intoxication.
“Do you think they released Sherbert, yet?” Patrick blurted with a slur, followed by a THC-induced laugh, as they mostly wobbled over to Rich’s car, which recently had its impact damage repaired. “It’s been some time since Sandy’s guy talked to police, since we’ve been fingered and charged.”
“Of course he’s been freed!” Rich began to bitch, belching out an air-pocket filled with pot smoke. “But I’ll run him down, myself, like a slum-dog if I see him alone!”
As the two sat in the car yammering for almost an hour (without noticing the passage of so much time), Herb was four miles away lying on his bed, certain that Rich and Patrick would eventually—perhaps even imminently—kill again.
It was done to that twelve-year-old, then to Sandy as an indirect side-effect result; how many other innocents must also needlessly die for those two?
It was then and there that Herb felt certain, somehow, that he had to act right away to prevent any further such gratuitous suffering—the two dopes must not be given another chance to get behind any wheel, ever again.
“No—I’m not going to sit idly by and do nothing!”
He looked up Rich’s phone number and was told by the guy’s mother, who bought Herb’s impersonation of a “Marcus—just a friend of his,” that Rich was at Patrick’s residence, which was also listed.
Running out to his car, Herb’s mother futilely asked loudly after him, “Where are you going this late, Herbert?!” (It was three minutes short of half past seven.) He fired up the engine and commenced tearing away the road.
When Herb neared Patrick’s apartment complex, he gradually slowed to a stop as inconspicuously as possible.
Once he noticed the two sitting in Rich’s car, all illuminated by the bright streetlight directly above them, Herb’s heart began intensely beating, reverberating within his chest cavity. But he still wasn’t sure whether they’d just arrived from somewhere or were just about to leave.
Herb’s ignorance was cleared away when he saw them climb out of Rich’s car and walk back toward Patrick’s apartment unit (unwitting to Herb, they actually decided to return to his unit to retrieve a second forty-pounder of whiskey).
The rather mellow turbo-prop-engine sound of Herb’s auto’s rotary engine seemingly enabled him to sneak up so abruptly behind the two that they were allowed only enough time to turn their heads and see Herb behind the wheel of the vehicle that would almost instantly blast them off to meet their Maker.
As it were, almost all of the townsfolk found the latter bloody mess rather poetic.
Much merited justice or not, Herb’s guilt complex was greatly exacerbated by all of the recent traumatic events—including his mowing down of Rich and Patrick—along with all of the horrendous facts surrounding them.
_________
WHILE serving his lengthy prison time for two counts of premeditated murder, Herb frequently thought about what the pair had done to Sandy and his running them down, though even the latter deadly deed disallowed him any satisfaction.
Some of his fellow inmates were certain that Herb was losing his mind. Some even claimed that he could be heard talking to the dead pair as though they were right there in his prison cell with him.
Naturally, Herb much preferred that no prison officials learned of ‘the visitations,’ for he feared being force fed even more psychotropic medication. Nevertheless, the four inmates in the two cells on either side of Herb’s insisted that, upon many late nights they could hear three distinct voices in bile disagreement and exchanging insults.
“Maybe it’s a case of Psycho,” snickered one of two coffee-breaking prison guards. “He is, after all, a certified nut, isn’t he?”
As for the common supernatural belief that iron bars keeping bad spirits in and out of such confinement cells, “Weren’t those ‘ghosts’ bad guys when they were alive?” the second guard rhetorically asked then continued: “How in the hell, then, do they get past those iron bars?”
“Well, first, the ‘iron bars’ myth is just that—a myth,” replied the first know-it-all guard. “And even if the myth was not a myth, this prison is the very first in North America to have received enough funding to afford stainless steel bars.”
Meanwhile, Herb thought a lot about what he did to Rich and Patrick, regardless of the great evil they committed. Though undeniably ironic, besides experiencing misplaced guilt for Sandy’s murder, he also felt the same kind of guilt for the violent deaths of Rich and Patrick; he had in fact killed them, and he did so while believing that it all was “for good measure.”
He henceforth had lost what had been his whole life uncorrupted innocence—even if it was preventing Rich and Patrick from killing again.
Herb was criminally charged after fully confessing, again without legal representation, then tried, convicted and sentenced to serve two concurrent life sentences without parole eligibility for twenty-five years, albeit with a “Faint-Hope Clause” enabling him to apply, if he so desired, for early parole after serving just fifteen years.
He never did apply for any form of parole, nor did he make any attempt at reduced jail time via court appeals.
“The crime means doing the solid time—plain and simple,” Herb was quoted but once by the local news-media. “I have to live with myself after all that’s happened, including everything I’ve done wrong—everything wrong for which I should and must pay. Receiving any leniency would just make me feel far worse. My conscience simply would relentlessly torment me if I were to receive, let alone choose to seek, any degree of mercy.”■
Frank G Sterle Jr (written 2013)
fgsjrFICTION 