Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) by H. Terrell Griffin Page A
Authors: H. Terrell Griffin
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truly liked women. Each was as different from the other as the men I’d known. I respected them, trusted them, fought in courtrooms against them, made love to them, and had loved one of them more than my very life. I’d pushed her away, perhaps out of fear of the intense feelings she had engendered in me, and finally she left, slipped out of my life, and found happiness with another man. Then she died. Maudlin thoughts. I pushed them to the back of my mind, to the corner where I hid those memories that were too painful to relive.
I wondered who was trying to kill us and why. What had we stumbled into? Maybe nothing. Perhaps there was evil abroad on the island, a meanness that we couldn’t fathom. My experience had been that most illegal actions were governed by real emotions. Murder was more often than not retaliation for a perceived grievance, or for money, or sex, or love. It was seldom random, and even then there was usually a purpose to it. The gangbanger making his bones, the terrorist blowing up innocent people because he was deluded or envious of other cultures, the religious fanatic who thought he was doing his Lord’s work. But sometimes, it wasjust pure evil, a meanness of heart and mind that sane people couldn’t comprehend. And the evildoers were the hardest to stop and the least likely to be caught and brought to justice.
I’d tuned the radio to an oldies station and my mind drifted into the memories brought back by the sounds of my youth. When I was a boy, I listened each week to the preacher at the church my mother took us to. Most days I was bored, fidgety, anxious to leave the sanctuary and stop by the ice-cream shop in the next block. That was the deal Mom made with my little brother and me. Go to church, sit still, pretend to listen, and you can have a double scoop of chocolate in a sugar cone.
My mother was a strange woman in many ways. She didn’t like my father very much, but lived with him in sort of an armed truce. There were never the sweet kind words that seem to pass between most lovers. Acrimony was the norm; loud, complaining, bitter acrimony. My dad just sat and listened, never raising his voice. More often than not, he had fortified himself with cheap bourbon before he came home. He’d sit alone in the kitchen, sipping from a glass of whiskey that he kept in the refrigerator. No ice. That only weakened the drink. But he was in reach of the refrigerator and from my and my brother’s room I could hear the rhythmic swoosh of the opening of the door as he retrieved the glass, took a sip, returned it, and closed the door.
On some Sundays, the preacher talked about evil. That always got my attention. I wasn’t sure what evil was or how I would know it if I saw it. I was told that the devil, old Satan, was evil. I figured that if I ever saw a red man with cloven hooves, a forked tail, and a pitchfork I would recognize him and know the face of evil. In reality, it wasn’t that easy.
I’m not a religious man. I think war cured me of that. I had finally seen evil in the war, the one that had almost consumed me. How could a good and merciful and omnipotent God allow evil to exist? Another paradox, a question that is unanswerable. I respect all religious beliefs and the men and women of faith who follow their teachings. It occurs to me that there are certain universal truths that are accepted by most religions. They all seem to support the dignity of man, his need to live in peace, safe from harm, insulated from evil. We have fashioned laws based on these almost universal tenets, the laws that grace our criminal justice system andthose of most cultures. Some are harsh, much harsher than our Western minds will accept, and some of them seem so mired in the Dark Ages that I despair of their ever finding the light of modernity. But their basic laws, those that prohibit behavior, are very similar to our own. The Code of Hammurabi, first promulgated in the eighteenth century BC, almost four
I wondered who was trying to kill us and why. What had we stumbled into? Maybe nothing. Perhaps there was evil abroad on the island, a meanness that we couldn’t fathom. My experience had been that most illegal actions were governed by real emotions. Murder was more often than not retaliation for a perceived grievance, or for money, or sex, or love. It was seldom random, and even then there was usually a purpose to it. The gangbanger making his bones, the terrorist blowing up innocent people because he was deluded or envious of other cultures, the religious fanatic who thought he was doing his Lord’s work. But sometimes, it wasjust pure evil, a meanness of heart and mind that sane people couldn’t comprehend. And the evildoers were the hardest to stop and the least likely to be caught and brought to justice.
I’d tuned the radio to an oldies station and my mind drifted into the memories brought back by the sounds of my youth. When I was a boy, I listened each week to the preacher at the church my mother took us to. Most days I was bored, fidgety, anxious to leave the sanctuary and stop by the ice-cream shop in the next block. That was the deal Mom made with my little brother and me. Go to church, sit still, pretend to listen, and you can have a double scoop of chocolate in a sugar cone.
My mother was a strange woman in many ways. She didn’t like my father very much, but lived with him in sort of an armed truce. There were never the sweet kind words that seem to pass between most lovers. Acrimony was the norm; loud, complaining, bitter acrimony. My dad just sat and listened, never raising his voice. More often than not, he had fortified himself with cheap bourbon before he came home. He’d sit alone in the kitchen, sipping from a glass of whiskey that he kept in the refrigerator. No ice. That only weakened the drink. But he was in reach of the refrigerator and from my and my brother’s room I could hear the rhythmic swoosh of the opening of the door as he retrieved the glass, took a sip, returned it, and closed the door.
On some Sundays, the preacher talked about evil. That always got my attention. I wasn’t sure what evil was or how I would know it if I saw it. I was told that the devil, old Satan, was evil. I figured that if I ever saw a red man with cloven hooves, a forked tail, and a pitchfork I would recognize him and know the face of evil. In reality, it wasn’t that easy.
I’m not a religious man. I think war cured me of that. I had finally seen evil in the war, the one that had almost consumed me. How could a good and merciful and omnipotent God allow evil to exist? Another paradox, a question that is unanswerable. I respect all religious beliefs and the men and women of faith who follow their teachings. It occurs to me that there are certain universal truths that are accepted by most religions. They all seem to support the dignity of man, his need to live in peace, safe from harm, insulated from evil. We have fashioned laws based on these almost universal tenets, the laws that grace our criminal justice system andthose of most cultures. Some are harsh, much harsher than our Western minds will accept, and some of them seem so mired in the Dark Ages that I despair of their ever finding the light of modernity. But their basic laws, those that prohibit behavior, are very similar to our own. The Code of Hammurabi, first promulgated in the eighteenth century BC, almost four
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