This story was originally published on the Spinetinglers website.
The Mermaids of the Darian Coast (short story)
The Execution of Thomas Doughty by Francis Drake (essay)
Searching for the Golden Hinde (essay)
Calling the Children (science fiction short story)
Moles (science fiction short story)
My Brother Tom (science fiction short story)
On a Lazy Summer Afternoon (horror short story)
Here Be Demons (two horror short stories)
The Thinner Man (horror short story)
The Curtain Falls and Other Stories
(award winning science fiction and fantasy stories)
Castaway on Temurlone (science fiction novel)
At Drake's Command (sea adventure novel)
The Love You Make (erotic SF short story)
Nag’s Cove was a mile off but a chill fog carried the reek of the bay into town all the same. My hands were cold right down to the joints and they refused to warm up even after fifty minutes in the station house. Three hours remained until the arrival of what promised to be an ugly dawn. I finished a cup of coffee and was in a foul mood by the time Sheriff Henry Kelsoe settled behind his desk.
“Christ, Hank,” I said. “Maybe you could keep me waiting another hour.”
“Sorry, Andy. Jim wanted to talk.”
“Without counsel present?”
“I guess he wanted to get it off his chest.”
“I guess he did. I’d like to see him now.”
“No problem. But if I were you, Andy, I’d listen to this first.”
Hank pushed a recorder across the blotter with a hesitancy out of character for a man normally without second thoughts. We’d known each other more than three decades. His large face was unlined but there was something about his eyes that made him look old. For the first time I became conscious of the stink of smoke clinging to his uniform.
I didn’t touch the machine. “Hank, you look like hell,” I observed.
“Thanks, Andy. I love you, too.”
“Jim didn’t say much. Neither would your people.“ I jerked a thumb toward the officer at the front desk and the night dispatcher.
Hank shook his head. “Listen to the recording. Listen to Jim. Then we can talk.”
Jim Evanston had been the third member of our gang. He was the one who stayed behind and attended community college while Hank went to John Jay to study criminology and I began pre-law at Columbia. Jim inherited his father’s hardware store and married the girl down the block. He and Amy had two boys, Bobby and Jim, Jr., now thirteen and fifteen. When I returned to town and opened my practice, we’d made a couple attempts at reviving our friendship but discovered we had little in common any longer. We exchanged Christmas cards and I gave him legal advice and once I’d helped Amy with a speeding ticket. I’d gone to her funeral, too, when cancer had taken her, but essentially that was the extent of our relationship. Until Jim’s call two hours earlier.
“ . . . what you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“Sure, yes, I understand. You don’t have to tell me.”
“For the record, Jim, you’re volunteering this statement of your own free will. Is that correct?”
“You know it is.”
“You have the right to an attorney.”
“Andy will be here soon, I suppose. But it doesn’t really matter, does it, what I say? I killed him and we all know that and the only thing that counts is why I had to do it—”
I punched the stop button. “I can’t believe you allowed Jim to make a statement!”
Hank looked at me wearily. “I couldn't stop him if I tried.”
“We’ll see if a single sentence ends up admissible.”
“Frankly, Andy, I don’t care. Now are you going to shut up? Or should I take you to the cage right now?”
I pressed play.
“—to save his soul,” Jim continued. “I mean that literally. You know me, Hank. You know I’m not religious. Outside of Sunday mornings I never paid church much attention. I always felt that if you tried to do the right thing, that was enough. The way I looked at it, good and evil were just labels for the actions of men. Am I making myself clear? I’ve done a lot of research, and I’ve worked things out in my own head, but I don’t know if I’m making sense to other people.”
“You were talking about good and evil.”
“Exactly. They’re out there, Hank. Not just in our hearts but separate from who we are. And what it comes down to in the end, the meaning of our lives, I guess, is which we let in. I found this out, and that is why I did what I have done.”