The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

You don’t know fucking shit.

Release my hand.

You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, you crazy fuck.

I wish I didn’t, but I do.

You motherfucker.

I can take it away.

You’re a fucking freak.

Call me whatever you need to call me.

I want to know how you knew.

By looking at you.

Tell me how the fuck you knew.

I did.

This is not some fucking joke here.

I’m just trying to help you.

You’re gonna help me? You in shackles and a jumpsuit and twenty years hanging over your fucking head?

If you let me.

I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I was confused and angry and in pain. He scared me. He scared me more than anyone I had ever been in a room with, anyone I’d ever met, anyone I’d ever seen. Most people, as dangerous or violent as they may be, are easy to figure out. They come from somewhere, and they have experiences that have shaped them, and they have soft spots, weaknesses, places inside where you can open them up. Ben wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met, watched, or interviewed, he wasn’t like anyone I’d ever heard about. He was absolutely impregnable. At the same time, he wasn’t putting up defenses, and didn’t appear to have any. He made me think of something I read when I was in college about Buddha, something that described his physical presence and his state of being. It said he was soft as iron, hard as rain, quiet as thunder, and still as a hurricane. Our professor explained the paradox of the description, that iron is one of the hardest substances on earth but also malleable enough to be shaped into anything we want it to be, that water is fluid and yielding, but strong enough to carve canyons.

That while thunder shakes the ground we walk on, a thunderstorm is also a peaceful and serene event, and that while hurricanes are among the most destructive forces we know of, the eye of the hurricane is an incredibly calm place, an eerily and almost otherworldly calm place. Ben stared back at me. He didn’t move, and if he blinked, I didn’t see it. He just took me in with his eyes, those bottomless black eyes. And our session as agent and suspect ended, and our conversation as two men, two men trying to live and be alive and find their way, which is all any human being can really do in this life, began. He spoke.

Despite your earlier statements, you believe in God?

Yes, I do.

And you have sought God out in order to deal with your grief?

I have.

You have gotten down on your knees and cried, and pleaded, and begged for relief, and for answers?

Yes.

Has your God answered you?

No.

What version of God do you believe in?

I’m Christian. Episcopal.

Your priest has counseled you?

Yes.

And he is well-intentioned, but he has left you empty?

Yes.

Has he spoken to your God about you?

What do you mean?

Has he spoken to him, the way I speak to you, the way you speak to other people?

No one speaks to God that way.

And yet you keep trying, because you believe at some point your God will answer your prayers?

I hope.

Hope is an illusion, a carrot dangling.

Hope keeps me going.

Going towards what?

I don’t know.

Your God offers you hope. Hope offers you nothing. You should seek another way.

What would that be?

I’ve told you.

Let you go.

I don’t care if you let me go. I don’t care if I’m in a cell for the rest of my life. I’m telling you, if you release one of my arms, and believe in what I tell you, and trust me for a brief moment, I can do what your imaginary God, your fairytale God, a God no one has ever seen or spoken to and who has not relieved your pain or provided you with the answers you seek, cannot do.

I could lose my job.

If that’s more important to you.

He sat there and waited. I looked away, towards the glass, and wondered if my colleague was watching us or listening to us. We also record all interrogations, so video was a concern. Agents are given a certain leeway with suspects. If we think giving a suspect space or room to move might help them open up, we are allowed to do it. If