The Greatest Law

Two brothers face a murder charge and the chance to obey the greatest law.

“They can’t both be telling the truth”

              The voice was in his ear again, “They can’t both be telling the truth.”

              Before him sat two men. They both claimed they were innocent. This was certain to be impossible. They were both at the scene of the crime; they were both covered in the victim’s blood.

              “You can’t both be telling the truth,” he parroted the voice in his ear.

              As chief Morale Officer for his precinct it was Justin’s job to investigate these incidents. Though it was rare that someone was murdered, much less in a government plaza, these things did happen. He held his pistol in his left hand, rubbing the stock with his thumb.

              What am I missing?

              He had been interrogating these men for 6 hours now, and still he had nothing. The one was a clerk for the city of Pleasant Prairie, married to the deceased. He was found covered in the victim’s blood, with a bloodied kitchen knife in hand. The other was the former’s brother. He also was covered in blood and was incoherent when the Morale Officers arrived on seen. What further complicated the incident was the fact that a Morale Officer who had been on seen, was now nowhere to be found.

              Why did things always need to be this complicated?

              “They can’t both be telling the truth!” the voice in his ear seethed, “ask them again about the missing officer.”

              “Let’s talk again about the missing officer,” he said, “You claim he left shortly after you arrived home?”

              “Yes”, said the husband.

              “And that was about the time when you discovered…” He stopped this line of questioning. Even those accused of crimes had rights in the eyes of the law. It was not his job to harm but discover truth and enforce the code of this precinct. He turned to the brother, “and you still have nothing to say in defense?”

              The man sat silently. He had spoken only one word his entire time here, “innocent”. He remained dumb now, not giving so much as a flit of the eyes to the officer. He had sat in this way for the entire interrogation. The look in his eyes said that he was looking, but perhaps not truly seeing.

              Justin started again, “So you came home, and your brother was there. Your wife was there too?”

              The husband nodded.

              “And she was alive at that time?”

              At this a strange smile came across the husband’s face. “I don’t know if that is an adequate way to describe her.”

              Justin turned his head at this statement. “How would you describe her?”, he said.

              “The way I see it,” the husband said, shifting his weight, “Jennifer hasn’t been alive for quite some time.” He sat back in his chair, now staring off into some place found only in memory and sunlight.

              “How long has she been dead then?”, asked Justin. He asked more out of personal curiosity than for his investigation.

              “Ask him”, the husband replied, nodding his head towards the brother. “He would know more than I.”

              Justin turned and looked at the brother. A small tear was running down the man’s red bearded face. He moved his lips as if to say something, but nothing came out.

              “You see, he has nothing to say”, sneered the husband.

              “Stop wasting time”, said the voice in his ear, “Ask them when the victim was stabbed.”

              “When was she stabbed then?”, asked Justin. “When did you stab her?”

              This received no reply.

              This was still going nowhere.

              “Tell me this”, started the husband, “Which law is greater, the one that governs our bodies or the one that governs our hearts?”

              Justin was taken aback. Where was this line of questioning coming from?

              “I can’t rightly say”, he replied, “I would suppose that law is greatest which governs the things closest to each of us.”

              “I think you are right”, said the husband, “there is nothing greater than the laws that govern our hearts. It is the heart that is the foundation of everything we have come to revere and love. It is the heart that guides, more strongly than the logic of wise men, more earnestly than the ethics of the business man. The heart reveals what is really in us.” He paused, picking up a picture of his deceased wife. “When you look at this picture what do you see?”, he asked Justin.

              What do I see? A woman savagely mutilated, passionately slaughtered, no doubt as the result of an affair she was having with the husband’s brother.

              “I see a member of this society, murdered.”, he replied.

              “And what do you see, my brother.”, he said, holding out the picture to his brother. As he did, his brother turned away.

              “The husband did it”, the voice in his ear said.

              Of course, he did it. Anyone could tell that. The contempt in his voice, the blood on his hands, the anger in his words all spoke to his guilt.

              What Justin could not get over was the husbands eyes. Though the rest of his body screamed hate, his eyes cried a different word. Loss. This man had experienced loss. His eyes were filled with sorrow not murder.

              Both men were crying now. Justin looked intently at the brother now. He was weeping. As Justin looked, he saw something that he hadn’t seen before. The brother’s eyes were filled with sorrow, but there was something else there. He had a look of guilt.

              Of course, he looks guilty. He slept with his brother’s wife.

              This was more than a mere murder case; it was adultery. The brother had been found with the husband’s wife. The husband had initially confirmed this much. Now he no doubt felt remorse over betraying his brother in such a way.

              Or did he feel guilt over something else?

              “Eric,” Justin said, speaking to the brother directly, “Why won’t you say anything? If you were there, then surely you know who did this?”

              “Innocent!”, he burst out. He said this, but not a word more.

              “Innocent”, repeated Justin, “You are innocent or your brother?”

              Eric said nothing.

              “If you won’t tell me who killed Jennifer, then at least tell me what happened to the Morale Officer? Where is Officer Davies?”

              Eric said nothing.

              “Did you do something to him?”, insisted Justin.

              Eric said nothing.

              “Did you kill Officer Davies?!”

              “INNOCENT!!!”, screamed Eric, now inconsolably crying into his hands.

              “There you have it,” spoke the husband softly, placing his hand on his brother’s shoulder, “we are innocent.”

              Justin waited to hear the voice in his ear, but the voice never came. The voice had gone silent a long time ago.

Author's Note

This is a piece as part of a bigger collection of short stories I am writing. Please feel free to comment on things like: plot, word choice, symbolism, did it entertain you? etc.

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

Scene is the word, not seen; you have been betrayed by your spell checker.

The last line is meant to be important and I sense that it is essential to the story as you see it in your mind, the writer's mind. I only read the story once, but I did not feel that importance or appropriateness in my reading. This reader's mind is not in sync. Could be me, could be the story.

Had I not read "Everything is Perfect" this story would have been mystifying perhaps you might include a note to the readers that they are companion pieces.
I sense the repetetion of "Inocent" is very important, but again I do not grasp the reason. Perhaps it is symbolism I simply don't understand.

I feel like I have served you a useless word salad, but I hope you find something helpful here.

[JayG]

There are a few issues you need to address. The primary one hits the reader early:

• Before him sat two men. They both claimed they were innocent.

This is NOT our protagonist looking at the scene, it's the narrator talking about it.That places us with the narrator, not with the protagonist, so there can be no feeling of immediacy. You, a voice lacking any inflection, are explaining what can be seen, a dispassionate approach. Remember that while you can tell us how the protagonist speaks, and make us know his every emotion, you cannot tell the reader how YOU speak a given sentence, and the majority of this is you talking to the reader. That's why we can't simply TELL the story, as we do in person. Have your computer read this and you'll see how different what the reader gets is from what you "hear" as you read. So basically, you're providing a report on the life of a fictional character. It may seem a small thing to replace, " Before him sat two men," with, "Justin studied the two men before him." But it's not. One comes from you, someone neither in the story nor on the scene, The other is Justin acting. And as a result of his study, the reader expects to learn what he concluded, which leads, naturally, to the first sentence below.

• They both claimed they were innocent. This was certain to be impossible.

You're way over-explaining. The reader already assumes they can't both be guilty. Wouldn't you? Never tell the reader what they already know, because reading unnecessary words slows the pace of the story and dilutes the impact of action.

• As chief Morale Officer for his precinct it was Justin’s job to investigate these incidents.

Again, you're explaining. But suppose he said, "As chief Morale Officer for this precinct it ’s my job to investigate these incidents. And from what I can see..."

The first sentence says the same thing, leads into a comment from him to the accused, and gets you off stage and into the prompter's booth. And the viewpoint shown is his, in the moment he calls "now." In reality, the often repeated advice to "show, don't tell," can better be stated as for, "Show the scene from the protagonist's viewpoint, don't personally tell the story.

• He had been interrogating these men for 6 hours now, and still he had nothing.

Look at this from the reader's viewpoint. Where are we in time and space? Dunno. Who are the people involved? No way to tell. Where are we? You didn't say. What's going on? I can't tell. For you, who have context it works perfectly. But the reader is being informed, not being made to see the situation in real-time. And that's where the fun of reading lies. Never lose sight of the fact that the reader is seeking to be entertained by having an emotional, not informational experience.

Think like a reader: "he, who is" someone unknown to the reader, had been "interrogating" two unknown men about things unknown, for unknown reasons. That truly is a fact, but to be a meaningful fact the reader must have context. That's why the three areas a reader wants addressed early in a scene is: Who am I? Where am I? What's going on? And the trick isn't to spoon feed the reader that data as a fact, but to provide it unnoticed, as part of the necessary lines.

Obviously, our schooldays writing assignments—mostly reports and essays—didn't prepare us for that. Instead, we learned general, nonfiction writing skills, to prepare us for employment. Writing commercial fiction, like learning accounting, is part of our professional education, and learned as we specialize, after our public education years complete.

So a bit of time spent digging out the tricks of writing fiction in the library's fiction writing section would be a wise investment of time. And while you're there, seek out the names, Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon. They're pure gold.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/