The Kind Worth Killing

by Peter Swanson

Everyone has a full life, even if it ends soon. All lives are complete experiences. Do you know the T. S. Eliot quote?”

“‘The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration.’ I know it’s not justification for murder, but I think it underscores how so many people think that all humans deserve a long life, when the truth is that any life at all is probably more than any of us deserves. I think most people

we went upstairs to watch television, settling on a remake of Sleuth that was being shown on one of the five hundred movie channels we had.

My younger sister, Emily, who knows me better than anyone in the world, told me recently that my problem with relationships is that I fall in love with every woman I’m attracted to. “Don’t most guys?” I said. “No,” she said. “Most guys just want to sleep with all the women they’re attracted to. The last thing they want to do is fall in love. You call yourself a detective, and you don’t know that?”

We understood that survival was everything. It was the meaning of life. And to take another life was, in many ways, the greatest expression of what it meant to be alive.

“If you’re having some, sure. If not, I’m fine.”

I knew I was being watched through the glass, analyzed, talked about. It was like I was tied down naked, being pawed at by a bunch of dirty hands.