The Perfect Crime

His name was Dario, Dario Luna to be exact. His first name Dario meant to be kingly and it carried all the connotations that a fiery brash king would have. His family name, Luna, stood for the moon, the cold and often hopeful moon. Something Dario spent a lot of his time staring at.

Dario was an avid fan of crime mysteries. He would often think about whether the crimes that were pure luck or well deserved for their hours of meticulous planning. So after he had read about the infamous D.B. Cooper’s bold, and to this day inexplicable heist, he donned the name D.L.

D.L. on the surface was an average boy. A 5 foot 11 Hispanic boy with brown skin that was not nearly brown enough due to all the time he spent indoors reading. He was 16, had never shaved a single hair from his body and it looked like he never would. The hair on his head however was always an unkempt mess, all in disarray as if he had eternal bed hair. He was a well proportioned boy with well proportioned facial features, and surprisingly amazing teeth.

For all his normality, what made D.L. a standout in any setting was the heterochromia of his eyes. Compared to the rather monochrome world around him his eyes were a paradox. His cornea were green envious pools of an emerald he could never name. His irises were brown, but it was a different shade of brown not the type you would describe as warm, although they did feel like they were.

D.L. was a well-tempered boy, never quick to lash out on anyone, but then again he didn’t really interact with too many people. He would take the bus drive every morning and sit in the front next to no one. Perhaps the other kids thought of him as a psychopath for sitting so close to the bus driver. D.L. did not mind. And as mundane as the bus driver was every morning, he would look out the window in awe of the ephemeral light. “It is a privilege to be alive.” he would say to himself.

Thirty minutes away from D.L.’s school bus was a hospital. This hospital was important to D.L. because it stored the only thing that mattered to him, Silvia. Silvia was a short indigenous woman from South America. She had come to the U.S. to escape the poverty of her home country. Silvia had never told D.L. who his father was, if she was honest with herself she didn’t really know either. She only knew that he was charming. Silvia unfortunately had been diagnosed with cancer and the treatment costs the hospital demanded were absolutely unaffordable. Silvia was worried about what lengths D.L. would go to save her.

D.L.’s first period was Geometry, but considering he could understand multivariable calculus, the class really wasn’t much use to him. So everyday during his first period he would open up his little black book and write in it. His black book read “A Series of Perfect Crimes”. It was a list of carefully thought out crimes and capers, that to his knowledge were perfect in every sense. D.L. knew that he only had to commit three of the crimes in his black book to pay for Silvia’s treatment. “This is what has to be done to save Silvia” he said to himself. If a man could steal a lough of bread for his starving children, then he should be able to steal a hundred thousand for Silvia.

D.L. thought about D.B.’s heist. D.B. had hijacked a plane with a fake bomb, charmed his way to two hundred thousand dollars and jumped off before they could catch him. He hadn’t hurt anyone and hadn't even scared the flight passengers. It was a perfect crime.

Deep down D.L. never wanted to hurt anyone, just as D.B. had not. But D.L. was starting to run out of time and options. “Life above all else” he argued. That day walking home he had decided on three crimes he would do. The first involved an elaborate swap of an art piece in a nearby museum. The second involved stealing from a local awfully guarded bank. The last one involved stealing a twenty thousand dollar gold cross country trophy at his school.

When he got home he discovered a blue beaten up gym bag was left on his doorstep. He crouched to see what was in the bag. He unzipped the bad with extreme caution to avoid any unwanted surprises. D.L. stood in amazement as to what he saw, it was $20,000 dollars, but not just any $20,000 dollars. The bills read “Series 1969” and “Serial Number B30216480A”, only crime enthusiasts would know these were D.B. Cooper’s bills. D.L. with the first display of emotion in a long time almost fell to tears, he didn't know why or who sent the money, but it didn’t matter. While the thought of possibly being D.B.'s kin simmered in the back of D.L.’s head, his foreground conscious thought of saving Silvia.

D.L. looked around to make sure no one had seen him with the bag. He then swiftly rushed the bag into his room. His room was an amalgamation of neatness and disarray. As if some with OCD had color coded everything, and then someone on LSD walked in right after. Papers in his closet were neatly stacked and labeled, the papers on his desk were scattered completely. Surprisingly, however, D.L. knew where everything was in his controlled yet chaotic room. He pushed aside his copies of “Don Quixote” and “A Monster Calls” from his desk to make room for his computer. And D.L. went straight to work examining the dollars that were once D.B. Cooper’s.

After examining each bill D.L. found that he had stumbled upon a fortune, but still not enough to save Silvia. The unfortunate thing was that even if he sold the 20,000 D.B. dollars he would still be short 20,000 dollars of regular hyperinflated fiat. D.L began to think no perfect crime of his could compare to the theft the US Healthcare system was committing on him and Silvia. “Money above all else must be their motto” he thought.

And so D.L. begrudgingly, but also showing a bit of excitement, opened his black book. He skimmed through the black books pages until he found the one page of interest. The page had a meticulous drawing of his school and a photograph clipped to it, the photograph was that of a cross country trophy. He would have to pull a perfect crime after all.

It was nightfall and D.L.’s school was about to be completely empty. You see D.L. had timed the work schedules for all security and over night custodians at the school. After all Silvia was a janitor at the school. There was an opening between 7 and 8 PM where the last custodian would leave and security would start up. It was just one hour D.L. had to pull off a perfect crime.

Thirty minutes later D.L. had completely bypassed the school, shut down its power, and gotten a hold of the trophy. The trophy glowed in the pale moonlight. The trophy itself was a foot tall and engraved in it was a quote that read “ Running teaches that life is about endurance, not speed”. D.L.’s heterochromatic eyes gleamed off the trophy, they gleaned enough for someone else to see.

D.L. heard a squeak come from the end of the corridor. D.L. hid behind the trophy case worried that he had timed his run wrong. A 16 year old girl approached the trophy case, “You’re Dario right?” she asked. D.L. didn’t respond. The girl in question D.L. had never seen before, she had pale whit skin and blonde hair, the type of girl D.L. would think less of. The girl began to speak again “If you’re here for the night that's okay, because I kind of live here” she said.

The girl had been homeless for months and D.L. had failed to notice the error in his plan was a human element. D.L. carefully pulled the wrench out of his backpack and walked into full view of the girl. He looked sinister, but innocent at the same time. The girl could now tell what D.L.’s true intentions were. The girl told D.L. she didn’t care about what he was doing, just that she needed someone to talk to. And so D.L. explained to her his and Silvia’s situation. The girl was sympathetic to D.L. and even joked about maybe helping him with another crime one day. But here D.L. continued to talk and talk, his grip on the wrench loosed until he wasn’t holding it anymore. Two souls that society had forgotten met that night. The stories the girl told were so full of life that D.L. began to think perhaps he thought of life in the wrong way.

And so the kin of D.B. realized that day that breathing was not the sole indicator of life. It is in talking and the formation of bonds that we can escape the aberrations of the chaotic yet controlled society around us. That we escape what it means to be moral, and we escape the laws of life when we talk to one another. D.L. was beginning to walk off with the trophy in hand when the trophy began to feel heavier, perhaps the weight of the guilt was starting to take its place. He thought he'd replace the trophy as soon as he saved Silvia. He gave the girl a D.B. dollar as a token of gratitude and made his way towards the exit.

In an instant the 8PM guard walked into the corridor. They had been caught. They hid behind the trophy case as the guard yelled for someone to come out. D.L. realized that only one person had to be caught, for it would create a distraction long enough for the other to escape. D.L. that about pushing the girl, essentially sacrificing her. However, D.L. for some odd reason thrusted the trophy into the girls hands and ran away from the guard. For his valiant action D.L. was caught rather quickly, but the girl he had barely known managed to escape into the night.

D.L. for a week spent detention in his class and wasn’t even charged for trespassing. Turns out the school was very lenient on first time offenders. The trophy however was still missing and the girl he had briefly had never returned. And so when D.L. finally got home from his last detention he grabbed his black book and realized the girl had taken the photo of the trophy along with the trophy itself. He ripped out the sheet before he threw the entire book into the trash outside. On his way back he saw a bag he hadn’t noticed earlier.

He ran to the bag and lashed it open, there were $20,000 dollars inside as well as a picture of the missing trophy. He put the bag down and proceeded to run to the hospital. He was going to see Silvia for the first time in months. He was going to truly talk to another soul, he was going to truly live life. He was going to see his mom.