Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

"Charge him with what? Being a fucking nut job?"

"What about the body? Boyle?"

"What are you talking about, Caroline? The suicide you found?"

"Suicide? There was no gun."

"Sure there was. We found it in the lawn, right where Mason said he threw it. Said he freaked out, grabbed the gun, opened the door, and threw it across the lawn. Kept saying he was responsible. But don't worry. I took care of him. Put the fear of God into him, told him we could charge him with evidence tampering if he didn't put down his pen and cooperate."

She falls back against the wall. "Suicide?"

"Yeah, the vic had powder residue all over his fingers. His prints were all over the gun. From the angle, the ME said it had to be self-inflicted. Straight up through his noggin." Spivey puts his forefinger against his cheek, elbow tight against his side, to demonstrate. "We tested Mason's fingers just to be sure. No powder residue. Besides, he's got an alibi. Boyle's neighbors heard a gunshot at four P.M. Friday. Your boyfriend was on an airplane at four. It's all here." He waves a single sheet of paper.

Caroline grabs it and reads. Spivey has typed it up. Clark has signed it.

Statement of Clark A. Mason:

I certify that the following statement is truthful and complete. I arrived at Spokane International Airport at approximately 4:10 P.M. on February 10, 2002, after a personal trip to San Jose, California. Worried about the emotional state of my friend Eli Boyle, I proceeded immediately to his residence on Cliff Drive, whereupon I found Boyle dead, having shot himself in the head with a.38-caliber handgun. Running to the body, I picked up the gun, went outside, and threw it across the lawn. I was nervous and emotionally agitated and I left the scene without notifying authorities. Later, I was approached by Spokane police officers at the Davenport Hotel, and I agreed to tell them what happened.

Clark A. Mason

The statement falls to her side. It's not right.

"So what the hell got into you?" Spivey is not finished lecturing. "Letting that poor wack job sit in here sweating all weekend, convincing himself he's a murderer?"

Caroline ignores him. "The thing he was writing. His statement. Did you read it?"

"Oh, I looked at it – four notebooks of crazy shit about growing up with the dead guy and going to the prom. Listen, you are not a psychiatrist, Caroline, and no matter how much you want to help someone-"

"Where is it?"

"What?"

"The statement. Where is it?"

"He said he wanted you to have it. I put the whole thing on your desk."

Caroline turns away from Spivey, walks into the Major Crimes office, and switches on the light. She finds the four legal pads stacked neatly and begins flipping through the first one, looking for… what? She can feel adrenaline, and for a moment, she forgets that she hasn't slept for two days.

"Listen, Caroline," he says, "I'm serious about this. You really fucked up this weekend. I'm gonna have to write this up, you know."

She sets the first section down and starts flipping the pages of the second legal pad, Clark's handwriting loosening as he gets tired. The words pour over her like water; none of it sticks. Maybe Spivey's right; Clark is crazy.

"I don't know why you didn't just call me," Spivey says, "why you have to make everything so difficult all the time."

She sets the second legal pad down and starts skimming the third. More rambling. She's about to set it down when the last sentence catches her attention. "… the world would be a better and simpler place if Michael Langford were not in it"

"Where's the gun?" she asks without looking up.

"What?"

"The gun. You said you found the gun in the grass. Where is it?"

"On my desk. God damn it, Caroline-"

She brushes past him, reaches for a box of surgical gloves on the counter, and grabs one as she stomps past the cubicles to Spivey's glass-walled office.

He follows her in. "I'm not kidding here, Caroline! You really fucked up-"

She can take no more. "I fucked up?" She spins on her heel and up into his face. "Patrol found this guy on the twelfth floor of a vacant building. Staring out a window."

Spivey shrugs. "So?"

"So before you kicked him loose, did you consider why a depressed guy might go up to the twelfth floor of a vacant building by himself?"

Spivey takes a step back. "Oh."

She turns away, reaches into the plastic bag, and removes the black handgun, an evidence tag wrapped around the trigger guard. "Or did you ask yourself why, when Mason's friend is lying there dead, his first thought is to pick up the gun?" Caroline releases the pin and flips the gun open. She holds it up and stares at Spivey through the empty chambers. "Two," she says.

"What?"

She holds out the gun for him to see. "There are two empty chambers. One slug went through Boyle. So where's the other one?"

It is remarkably quiet in these offices at one-thirty on a Sunday morning. Caroline's eyes drift from Spivey to the gun and finally to the stack of legal pads, on top of which Clark has written, in big block letters, STATEMENT OF FACT.

You're probably wondering how a man falls so far so fast – how an idealistic, socially conscious lawyer one day finds himself planning a murder, of all things, how a man who's never broken any laws (okay, there were a few narcotics statutes) skips over all the other felonies and misdemeanors and goes straight for a premeditated murder. Of course, the explanation begins with my overpowering ambition and, especially, my unfailing blindness to the desires and motivations of people around me. But there are two other forces at work here, and between them, these two hard cases are undoubtedly the cause of more criminal acts than all the other suspects combined:

Love.

And politics.

This is the shape of my confession, then, a dark story of love and politics, a reckoning, a cautionary tale of how far one man can fall in this world. And to describe a fall, of course, one must start with height.

So let me just say this: I was rich.

I use this as the measure of my success because it is the gauge of my generation, a generation which will fade from even the shortest history because we contributed so little in the way of art and politics and bravery, because our currency was… well, currency. We were an entire cut of people in their twenties and thirties still running creative and procreative juices but spending the current of our days discussing stock options and price-to-earnings ratios and small market capitalization and "What's in your 401 (k)?"

Since profanity is nothing without a tease – a glimpse of flesh beneath the satin – it is a fair question to ask: How rich was I?

At the peak of my wealth, in 1999, I had seven million dollars in various checkbooks, savings accounts, stock portfolios, retirement accounts, and pants pockets. I had a condo in downtown Seattle, a new BMW roadster, a new Range Rover, and a vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I was shopping for a boat. Now by the standards of the founders of Microsoft and Amazon and countless other late-century techno-thieves, my portfolio was little more than cab fare, but to me it was as much money as existed in the world.

I remember the first time it occurred to me that I was rich: in 1997, when I was making one of my rare visits to see my parents. I stood in their driveway as my father paced around my Harley.