The Spot: Stories

We just felt like doing it, was Bycroff’s statement during his confession. We was just trying it out, you know, like maybe he’d rise again and maybe not, but it was worth a shot, because he was such a lightweight in this life. Bycroff had been rejected by a series of foster homes that took him around the state of Michigan, itself the rough shape of a palm. From Kalamazoo to Petoskey, and then in a series of towns on the way back down to Flint, he proved himself deeply incompatible with several domestic situations until at last he found himself under the care of Howard Wood, a surly loner who, most thought, was abusive. We just figured we’d give it a try, the boy said, working his tongue around his teeth, staring up at Collard, who was listening carefully, tapping his notepad with the eraser end of his pencil. He listened and made notes but knew that this boy’s confession would be thrown out of court on some technicality. It was a fast-spoken confession. It came too easily to stick. The boy was speaking out of unrelated pains. It was the deeply innocent who often came up with the most honest and realistic confessions of crimes. When they had everything to lose, they often threw themselves into it beautifully, like a cliff diver — or was it a pearl diver? Those native boys who found it within themselves to go into the dark waters, their legs kicking up toward the light, flapping softly, their arms extended as they clutched and grabbed. That was the nature of being a detective in these situations; you had to go as deep as you could with the air in your lungs burning and your arms fully extended in the hope that you might bring a pearl to the surface.