The Ghost Writer (Never Tell collection) by Loreth Anne White

Author:Loreth Anne White [White, Loreth Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

9

“Isuspect you’ve already dug up the answer to why I went into true crime.”

“I’d like you to tell me.”

I suck in a deep breath and consider what I’ve told interviewers in the past so I can stick true to what she might have read about me. “Well, in part, your case—what happened in my hometown when I was fifteen. It was a monstrous thing. It consumed me, as it did so many others.” I clear my throat. “It drove me to understand more about those who kill—women in particular. The—”

“I was never convicted.”

I let it go. “The way I see it, a crime—especially a violent one—is a break in integrity. A rip in the fabric of normal life. And our human desire is to put things whole in our community again afterward. This narrative arc of true crime is appealing to me.”

“What about evil?” she asks. “Does it exist, in your opinion?”

“No.” I take a sip of wine as the butler comes to remove my uneaten tongue and Claudia’s empty plate. When he’s gone, I continue. “Nothing in nature is intrinsically evil. Nature just is, and does what it does for survival. Good, bad, evil—those are human value judgments we bestow on things, depending on our cultures, traditions, history. And we use this to keep our communities, tribes, societies in check and functioning as a whole because, really, we are just herd animals.”

She regards me as the butler brings in the main course of rare steak with grilled vegetables, and I realize Claudia never did ask if I actually eat meat.

“So do you think someone could kill and not feel remorse simply because they have a different narrative of the world?” she asks.

“People justify what they do in this way all the time. By changing their inner narrative of things. The bigger worry becomes whether they’ll get caught, not that what they’re doing is bad.”

“So, no shame, no remorse, no guilt?” She cuts into her steak, and pink juice pools on her white plate. She delivers the morsel to her mouth, chews. “I thought those were sociopaths.”

“Labels.”

“And you like to study these people?”

“Yes. To learn more about the range of human nature, and what might drive someone like you to take lives. Especially to stab to death little Danny Duvalier, just seven years old.”

A spark ignites in her eyes. The energy in the dining room suddenly feels electric, as though my words excite her. Again, I’ve witnessed this while interviewing life-sentence inmates in prison. Talking about one of their murders helps them relive it, and for some this is arousing.

“You knew the little boy?” she asks.

A memory washes into me. Clear blue eyes. Pale skin with pink cheeks. Effervescent energy. Huge smile. Danny loved gadgets, stories about animals, and hunting. He loved knives and guns and wanted to be a hunter when he grew up. But he never did grow up.

I reckon she already knows the answer to her question, so I say, “I babysat him once or twice. Several kids my age did.

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