I'm remembering how they came that night. Without intent, I think. At least for the murder. That seemed to come on as tempers flew - flew up to choke good sense out of more than one of them for there were several shots and Shrider's body jolted two or three times. It was difficult to keep up with events in the middle of the heat of their tempers and the noise of gunshots inside that room, and argument that hung like sticky clods flung about and dripping from ceiling and walls. So many hateful words, accusations, as if a script had been prepared for them down to the fast pace and deadly timing.

*

You are right in your question. There had to be intent, at least to harm, since they took the time and forethought to bring weapons. Many. Where do so many guns come from? An arsenal comes to mind, and after the murder the guns disappeared back into pockets and folds of material of overcoats - gone. As if it hadn't been. Not so with Shrider's body giving it all away, yet not enough for forensics and you to piece identities together and make arrests.

So you hound me, as if I am implicated, perhaps by omission, by omitting some vital clue that will reveal a name and then it will all fall like dominoes, right down to the handshake from the Mayor congratulating you for ridding the town of corruption and fear. This evil that now lurks among us. And that's the thing, isn't it? That's the real horror, more so than the loss of Shrider's life. What use was he anyway? What use most of us? It is that some of us are the fiends involved. Someone's son, someone's friend, someone's alibi.

 

Ahh, and there it spreads, like a disease. A mate, doing a friend a favour, covering up, doing the honours so to speak. Probably, ostensibly, for some alleged lesser crime of cheating on a wife. Not the sort of thing we arrest for these days - there you're on your own, stone him in the privacy of your own home, if you can.

*

So there were probably six, no, seven. Seven of them. A lot of voices, feet kicking furniture, moving bodies. The noise preceded them and even then there was something ominous in it. Yes, a confidence, a pushing forward, certainly an intent to arrive. I did not deny that previously. Do not confuse this looking for trouble with the cold blood of a planned murder. I said there was heat, tempers, brains were excited, agitated, not exactly logical. Some of the insults flung about contradicted each other. 'You fat, slimy bastard' and 'Dried up shit'.

 

They lacked coordination for their abuse, but the gross aim, to hurt, kept it all together, kept it going. The possibility that physical self-restraint would fail at any moment, that the verbal projectiles would fail to satisfy their desire to inflict enough pain and so trigger a full-bodied explosion did seem to well up like a presence in the room - suffocating.

 

But that didn't happen. They chose guns. The violent, massive power of tiny bone-shattering projectiles. It was mercifully quick. When it looked like they would physically attack him - that would have been excruciating, time consuming to pound away at him hoping for that final blow.

 

Prolonging the pain, therefore, could not have been their aim. They were purely self-interested then, occupied with expulsion from their end. Expulsion of their hate, their revulsion. It was so primary they didn't think to pause and have some fun with him. But perhaps I am confusing them with sadists. They may not be; could truly be emotional purists, with that single purpose to dump their hate on his body.

*

You ask a fair question - why they spared me. Yes, absolutely I was in that room. I stood not four feet from Shrider. I watched his face shrink with fear as he recognised the hate aimed at him and the overwhelming numbers.

 

And he had to look, swung his eyes about the circle and then said, 'Yes, more or less'. Not close friends then, and he centred his attention on the short one.

There's your break-through clue. You should write that down: Hello, Phil. All soft and wanting to keep it calm and having little else he could do. You know when you trap an animal with overwhelming force, some animals are smart enough to know it and they don't fight back. Heroes do, for the sake of an audience or self-respect or sheer bloody-mindedness.

 

But Shrider was in the middle of filling out paperwork for a bank loan, a mortgage. Of course, if they hadn't killed him we would now reassess him as a high risk and withdraw the loan. So he had been calm when the troops arrived, filling in personal details, income figures, an assets listing. Nothing to raise the blood pressure, and the interest rate was good, couldn't ask for more. He was relaxed.

 

He had no prep for a fight. It was the end of a long day. I dropped by as arranged and he hadn't eaten dinner, probably his glycogen level was down. It was a good time to hit him. Still, I wonder if they'd have done it the same if there'd been a wife and maybe kids. Seemingly, they weren't worried about witnesses. Yes. I see your point. Why did they leave me? Unless they thought I wouldn't tell. Unless they thought I was one of them. Unless they had something on me to shut me up.

 

Unless I was, in fact, the decoy that ensured Shrider was home that night, accessible, and willing to open the door a second time, having done it once already and feeling comfortable doing that again with two of us there in the house - not him alone and more liable to precaution.

 

It's an interesting idea, isn't it? I can see it has your attention. Attractive as the idea is, neatly filling in some blanks for you and giving you one in the hand while there are still up to seven in the bush - free as...Attractive as I may seem there is the question of evidence. And, if I am a party to the murder, surely I would not have been feeding you real clues all this time, surely 'Phil' would have been to set up a false trail.

 

Yes, you are correct, I did not offer that piece of information at the outset, which might mean I'm on the inside and feeding you false leads, or I'm not necessarily remembering things in the sequence you think I should. I could be innocent and inconvenient or incompetent in my statement - you see? Rattled.

Without any facts you might just be jumping to conclusions implicating me - any jury would see that. A distinct possibility they'd say - giving them reasonable doubt and letting me walk on air.

*

I know it's the motive that has you trashed. You look pale, tired, chasing dead ends. You think if you can find a motive for the magnificent seven or for me, the facts will flop into place out of somewhere. All your leg work and what do you have? Theories. About a clandestine hate group - racial, of course. What was he? Oh, yes, a Tasmanian, like Errol Flynn. Went out with a bang not a whimper.

 

And what other theories do you have? Gambling. Clandestine again, with money owing left and right, more left than right and Shrider on the wrong end of it. Was that what the loan arrangement was, you ask? Not a mortgage at all but a means out of his predicament with his gaming mates? And does that leave me on the inside or the outside of the fiasco? More like the hero I think, pulling him out of a tough spot - all innocent like, mind you.

 

I am unaware of your hate groups and gambling dens. Do you have a shred of evidence yet?

*

I'm at a loss now. You continue to hold me with no evidence, all the while talking up this hate group, for which there is no evidence except my statement of what happened in Shrider's house before he was shot.

 

My own statement. Without that, no such hate group exists. With that, you have determined a motive for seven anonymous men, including Phil whom you have not found, and you believe you have proof of my complicity. I return to an earlier point that in lieu of any progress with the murderers, you placate your frustration with the dummy in the hand.

 

Have you perchance discovered some distant Jewish ancestor in Shrider's background or even an aboriginal wife hidden in the dim past? This would be considered possible evidence for hate. But you don't have it, do you? You have no group of secret haters, no secret seven, no informers revealing names or late night meetings of seemingly stout and stolid citizens, no fingerprints, no guns with owners, no arrests or confessions.

 

Yet you believe that with the evidence of hate in Shrider's body and my statement, a jury will fill in the gaps, jumping from suggestion to assumption, from pillar to post, and before you need to tangle too intimately with the law, you'll have a heartfelt conviction ready for the jury's vote.

 

You don't need facts do you when you have a powerful bogey to draw on - draw down - draw in 3D and fear-filled colour for a jury to mindlessly embrace, with repulsion? Which will clinch it for them beyond reasonable doubt - the revulsion having moved them beyond reason.

 

Is it perhaps that I make your case for you? Not merely describing the bare bones for your hate group theory, but by failing to play the game, play the part, with tears and quivering lip and non-specific terror, pissing my pants at least once to prove myself and engage your belief in me as a victim?

 

I not only fail to play the victim, I fail to play the female. For there is little between them in the expectations of justice. Does not justice seek my undoing in the face of violence, murder, the reliving of it under interrogation, testimony? Does it not demand an embracing of fear and tears and more tears for display to the jury, the press, the world audience that has come to tune in for nightly doses of revelation and drama?

 

This impotent display that I fail to trot out - repeatedly have failed to trot out from the start - this disturbs you. Cold, you whisper into your notebook.

Unfeeling, you accuse watching the dry cheeks, the steady lower lip. Lips very similar to your wife's, soft and full and begging to be parted and kissed - which you would never - not with some lie obviously draining my woman's heart dry and producing a cold steadiness, almost a calmness, a lack of interest, perhaps a disconnection.

 

Just the sort of unnatural responses you'd find in a hater, you'd say, forgetting the images I've given you of vicious, hot tempered, abusive acts immediately preceding the murder. But that little discrepancy doesn't phase you. Hatred on the face of a man is not the same as that of a woman. I only need to shed my assumed placating or fearful self and there is revealed the essence of hate. My indifference, my strength, my lack of compassion is deemed so powerful as to be beyond the strength of a woman and equal to a full-blown male hate.

 

Is it truly just the difficulty of this case that's pushed you to this conclusion? Do you so hate to lose? Am I simply the easiest target to pick on without a legitimate one being available? Do you generally make arrests based on the fortuitous absence of clues that might get in the way of a gut feeling and wrongful conviction? Does the judicial system work to cover up prejudice in its insistent pursuit of happy ends?

 

When you feel good and have a conviction in your hand, is that justice? Same goes for the jury? Have any of you even looked at your prejudices? It's my life now we're talking about. The absence of freedom if you have your way, manipulating similar prejudices in the jury. Think! Detective School 101. This is how you hunt for clues and this is how you identify prejudices, which will throw you off the scent. Remember? Or were you asleep for that part?

 

Having talked up the case for so long, it's all facts to you now, and I can see how comfortable you have become with your theory. Your face shows naked hate toward me each time you visit; the sort of hate I saw on their faces that night, which I don't like to remember, but must for it marks the difference between them and me. It marks my innocence.

 

If only I can find someone who can see past the face you've painted of me, this cruel, indifferent killer face that still pales beside the truth I've seen and even beside your face. Your face there in court each day, filling the air with justice in the breach.