Evil Explored in ‘Pattern of Wounds’
In the second of three crime novels, Pattern of Wounds, J. Mark Bertrand’s homicide detective, Roland March, tries to capture the inner-work of his suspect. He lingers at the hideout, trying to get a feel for the thoughts behind the crimes. He looks forward to the interrogation, hoping to find out what makes him tick, but his superior officer offers another line of thought.
“Maybe you can’t put a label on him. Maybe it’s not enough to say he was insane or evil or a product of a bad environment. But in this case, there’s one thing you do know. He’s guilty.”
The question March wants answered is what produces a dedicated murderer. Many stories depict the wages of hatred as murder. The loving husband, who worries over his troubled marriage, discovers his wife’s infidelity and disdain for him, so in jealous rage he lashes out at her. Most people just walk out; some lose control.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old,” Jesus taught, “‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council…” (Matthew 5:21-22). This raises the bar very high, equating hatred with murder. Despite this warning, many of us still get angry with each other. Some of us hate certain people, even if we don’t actually kill them.
What would provoke us to murder, or are you and I immune by our natures? Bertrand gives us a few clues.
“If Only There Were Evil People”
When the murderer is gradually revealed, we get to read some of the backstory: abusive behavior, broken home, sociopathic trends, etc. We get an explanation for what drove this one person to act, but what goes untold are the many things absent from the final portrait: healthy love, constructive discipline, selflessness, respect for family and outsiders, to list a few. All of these things work together to produce the kind of disturbed person who believes murder is a good exercise.
Is the murderer crying out for a father’s love? Has he been spoiled by permissiveness, by being protected from natural consequences through family or money? Was he abused? Is he just twisted? Yes, maybe all of those things, and together they work to motivate him to choose murder.
So when someone accuses violent video games, for example, of provoking murder, he may have a good point about desensitization and training to kill, but he takes it too far when he implies the games alone bring a player the violence. It can only be one of many factors.
“The Line Dividing Good and Evil”
Detective March does not have a spotless reputation. In the first book, Back on Murder, he works in the Houston Police’s Homicide Department, but he doesn’t work on regular homicide cases. He works the standard procedure cases no one else wants. He earned that position from a long line of disappointing decisions, “letting things drop” and “cutting corners” as he would say. Because of that, his old partner believes he is completely corrupt, and his superiors don’t trust him to follow through with things.
March swears he has changed, and we see the contrast between who he is and who he could be in a Louisianan cop named Fontenot. Both are veteran cops. Both are zealous for justice. Both have been tempted to take matters into their own hands, and both have. But one of them has begun to hold back.
If you assume a role as agent of justice, what holds you back from bullying a suspect into the confession you want to hear, the one you already believe is true? Is it respect for your fellow man? What about respect for the victims? Shouldn’t they be protected more than the suspect?
“He’s the proverbial crooked cop,” March thinks of Fontenot, “convinced what he’s doing amounts to greasing the wheels of justice.” It’s a love of power over people, which is fundamentally disrespectful. It’s a lack of love for one’s fellow man that gets lost in our desire to make the most of ourselves or our cause. It’s the same love of power which, when combined with other things, leads to murder.
“Cuts Through the Heart”
March’s superior doesn’t have an answer for why the murderer chose to kill, but he knows the bottom line. “He’s guilty. There’s no doubt about that. And if you have that much, March, I’m not sure any of the rest really matters.”
It matters, of course, to humanists hoping to help people before they commit a crime, but to cops perhaps it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to explain why a person did something, only that he did it.
For the rest of us, is there an answer? Is there a way to see a murder coming, maybe capture the suspect before he commits the crime? Maybe, but it isn’t simple. Depravity is a complex state that touches all of us.
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes, “and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
That’s where Bertrand leaves us. It isn’t a matter of what makes us tick; it’s whether or not we are guilty. If we return to the words of Jesus, we’re all guilty, no matter what infraction we’ve committed, because to break the law in one place is to be guilty of breaking all of it. The question, then, isn’t whether we are guilty, but who can atone for our guilt.