copyright 2013, Michael Bigham
Jahar Tsarnaev,
a popular, seemingly carefree, dope-smoking college student at the University
of Massachusetts held a dark secret. He and his older brother planned and
executed the Boston Marathon bombings. Not even Jahar’s roommate had a hint
that his friend had committed the crime. “I have had almost two weeks to think
about it, and it makes no more sense than the day I found out it was him,“ Jason
Rowe said in a New York Times
interview. “Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”
We all have
secrets. They intrigue us, confound us and as in the case of Jahar they shock
us. Secrets drive mystery fiction. Hannibal Lector has a secret passion for
human flesh. Hercule Poirot is famous for pulling his mystery suspects together
and revealing their secrets one by one until he reveals the biggest secret of
all: who is the murderer. When you write
your mystery, create secrets. Have your characters guard them closely. They add
tension and suspense to your tale.
My mystery, HARKNESS, A HIGH DESERT MYSTERY, is set
in the mythical small Oregon town of Barnesville. If you grew up in a small
town, you know that small town life incubates mysteries, amplifies them. When a
secret is uncovered, it zips through the town like wildfire.
Matthew
Harkness, the local sheriff, is a man borne of secrets. His father died when
Harkness was eight. He holds the secret of what really happened that night.
During World War II, he killed a fellow G.I. who was raping a local native
girl. The secret of the killing remains buried in the New Guinea jungle along
with the soldier’s body. Early on, we discover that Harkness has yet another
secret, he’s sleeping with the local judge’s wife:
“Get
your ass down to the courthouse,” Barnes said. “The McIntyre boy has gone
missing, and his old man is frantic.” He
went on a bit about how the kid hadn’t been seen in a couple of days, and how I
had better hop right on this one. The old man, Jeff McIntyre, was the town
dentist, city council member, and a community mover and shaker, just the person
to get special treatment from Barnes. While he talked, I juggled the phone and
signaled for Kate to light me a cigarette.
“Right,”
I said when he’d wound down. “Shower and shave, and I’ll be on my way.”
I
handed the dead phone to Kate. “That was your husband.” The whine of the big
mill saw drifted down the valley.
“So
I gathered.” Kate wasn’t an especially pretty woman, but more than handsome
with Hepburn cheekbones and the rough hands of someone who grew up working on a
farm. We’d been lovers for close to a
year, but I still hadn’t figured out her relationship with her husband.
Being a man of
secrets, Harkness has learned long ago which secrets to keep, which to reveal
and how to manage them to his best advantage. In a backwater timber and
ranching town during 1952, a gay man, even an upstanding citizen, must hide his
sexuality. Coming out of the closet would be a disaster. Here Harkness talks to
just such a man.
Harley
sat down, his face pale except for two bright red spots on his cheeks. “Why share that information with me?”
“Why
indeed?” I said. “I keep thinking about
that time a couple of years back when you got roughed up on a buying trip in
Portland. I’d always assumed it was
probably a trick roll by some pimp. Local yokel goes to the big city and gets in over his head. Not all that unusual.”
“A
baseless speculation,” he said.
“Perhaps,
and not something I’d speculate about in public, but now I wonder if it might
have been something else. Something a
little,” I searched for a word, “a little more extreme.”
“Be
careful,” he said. “Judge Barnes—”
“Ah,
Judge Barnes,” I said. “A buddy of mine
works for the Portland Police Bureau. I could give him a jingle, get a copy of
your report, and find out what really happened. I might be interested in the
exact circumstances of the assault.”
“What
do you want?” he asked.
“Let’s
talk about Joey.” I lit a fag and
instantly regretted it. Smoke choked the
tiny office.
“I
barely knew the boy,” he said.
“I
can accept that,” I said. “But do any of
your friends like the younger trade?”
“Friends?”
he asked.
“Men
who waltz to a different tune,” I said.
“You’re
a complete ass, Sheriff.”
“Guilty
as charged, your honor,” I said. “But
I’ll do what I must to protect the people in this county.” I stubbed out my cigarette.
“That
includes persecuting honest citizens?” Harley asked.
“Harley, make no mistake, I can be a real dick
if need be. Don’t try me. You’re a good family man, pillar of the
community, all that falderal. Hell, I’ve
always liked you, thought you’re one of the saner people in this little
burg. I don’t care who you screw or what
sex they are, but you need to tell me anything that might help me with my
investigation. Help me, and I won’t tell
your secret.”
“You don’t know anything to tell,” he said.
“Harley,
don’t piss me off. Otherwise, I may have a talk with your best buddy Barnes and
tell him how you let your hair down.”
Harley
became as still as I’ve ever seen a man become.
I could hear the ticking of my watch and Ruth’s voice drifting back from
the front of the store. He had frozen
like a fawn waiting for the hunter to pass.
“He
knows,” I said. “He knows, doesn’t he?”
When writing
mystery fiction remember that secrets conceal secrets. Harkness has uncovered
Harley’s secret, but now we must wonder about the Judge. If he knows, why
hasn’t he acted on the information?
Some secrets are
even more sordid. A teen-aged girl has fallen prey to the charms of an older
man. Harkness interviews a missing boy’s father:
“I’m
just trying to understand what happened.
Did Joey know?”
“Not in the beginning. He found out later. It was our secret, Virginia’s and mine,” he
said. “You have to understand how she
felt.”
“But she wanted more,” I said.
“She wanted to marry me, but she didn’t
understand my position. I couldn’t just haul off and do something rash like
that.”
Harkness is
willing to conceal this ugly crime in his single-minded pursuit of the
murderer. Well, at least until the bad guy is caught, then all bets are off.
As in real life,
friends don’t tell their friends everything. A person may even commit a crime
to protect someone they believe is innocent. In HARKNESS, a black man, Thomas
Jefferson Stewart, stumbles into the all white town of Barnesville right after
the murder of a white girl and is arrested for the murder. Though Harkness
doesn’t believe the man is guilty, he can’t release him from jail. Many in the
community already consider Stewart to be guilty. One of Harkness’ closest
friends steps in to help Stewart escape and harbors the fugitive; yet another
mystery for the sheriff to unravel.
A murderer may
use secrets of others to his advantage. Perhaps he blackmails an unwilling
accomplice to maintain their silence, threatening exposure and shame. The
murderer, of course, hides the secret of his crime, but as in many Agatha
Christie mysteries, the murder kills to protect his secrets.
When plotting a
mystery, a writer weaves secrets throughout the narrative. Often small secrets
bear a tremendous emotional weight. What may be trivial to one person, may be
unconscionable to another. Secrets nest into other secrets like Russian dolls.
Open one and another confronts you. Don’t base your story on just one secret.
Create many. Have your protagonist reveal them one by one, a layer at a time.
Readers love hearing juicy tidbits. Use that to your advantage. Play them out
one at a time to spice up your story.
My thanks go to
Murder by 4 for the opportunity to be guest poster on
their great blog. You can contact me at www.michaelbigham.com.
***
Raised in the Central Oregon mill town of Prineville beneath deep blue skies and rim rock, Michael Bigham attended the University of Oregon and during his collegiate summers, he worked in a lumber mill and also fought range fires on the Oregon High Desert for the Bureau of Land Management. After graduating from college, he swung from being budding hippy to cop work. He's still wondering about how that came about. He was a police officer with the Port of Portland and after leaving police work, he obtained an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Mr. Bigham lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, daughter and a spunky bichon frise named Pumpkin. He's had short stories published in two Main Street Press anthologies. Harkness is his first novel.
