Free Last Days by Brian Evenson;Peter Straub

Are you absolutely certain Aline's death wasn't a suicide?
    "Six: Did you kill Aline?"
    What followed was a blank unrolling of tape, a dim static that lasted five or six minutes, and then the tape clicked loudly and a man's voice began to talk.
    "Helming," the voice said. "We were . . . associates." There was a pause, the tape microphone clicked off but the tape ran on.
    "I was in my room. I heard a noise and had Michael carry me out into the hall and--"
    The tape fell suddenly silent, part of it erased.
    "I don't know why anyone would [blank space] question I suppose of having insufficient faith."
    "No, I didn't see the [blank] . . ."
    "Yes."
    "No. I--"
    The tape cut abruptly off, and there was silence and then it resumed with another voice, another individual, the same enigmatic, half-erased style, nothing really stated of substance. Why were there gaps? A third voice was the same, and it was only then that Kline realized that the answers being given were vague enough that they could be read as responses to almost any questions. On that night I was in my room. I heard a noise and went into the hall and-- could be answering his question Where were you on the night Aline was killed? but he could imagine other questions that might have been posed that would elicit the same response. Where were you on the night the hallway was graffitied? Where were you on the night Marker came in drunk? None of the three recorded voices mentioned the word "murdered" or the word "Aline" or the word "death." Or if they did it was in the portion of the tape that had been erased.
    He rewound the tape and listened again, turning up the volume as high as it would go, listening to the blank spots of erased tape, hoping to hear hints of whatever had been there before the erasure. He heard nothing but a low half-muttering which, he realized, wasn't a human voice at all but the magnified sound of the tape recorder's mechanism itself. He turned off the tape and sat, thinking, wondering what to do next.

    When Ramse arrived with dinner balanced on his arms in the early evening, Kline demanded to see Borchert.
    "I'll put in a request," said Ramse.
    "I need to see him right away," said Kline. "I need to see him now."
    "Right now what you need to do is eat some supper," said Ramse. "And try to get over your hangover. You were a hell of a mess last night."
    "I need to see Borchert," said Kline. "It's urgent."
    "Fine," said Ramse. "Go ahead and eat. I'll walk over and see what I can do."
    At the door he stopped and looked back, a look of reproach on his face. "You didn't even ask about Gous," he said.
    "What about him?"
    "About how he's doing."
    "How is he doing?"
    "Good," said Ramse. "He's doing just fine."
    "Wonderful," said Kline. "Now, goddammit, go get Borchert."
    Once Ramse was gone Kline uncovered the tray and ate: boiled potatoes, a thin and curling piece of grayish meat, a pile of overcooked carrots. He ate slowly, moving from potatoes to meat to carrots and back again until it was all gone, then sat playing the tape over. It seemed obvious that there was no real interest in solving the crime. Why even bring me out at all?
    When Ramse returned, he turned the tape off.
    "It's all arranged," said Ramse. "Borchert will see you."
    "Good," said Kline, standing up. "Let's go."
    Ramse looked a little surprised. "Oh, not today, Mr. Kline," he said. "He can't do it today."
    "I need to see him today."
    "He can see you in three days," said Ramse. "That was the best he could do."
    Kline pushed past Ramse and went out the door, out of the house. He could hear Ramse calling after him, loudly. He walked briskly across the gravel-ridden lot in front of the house, turned down the road, cut at the right moment down the path to dip down through the trees. He wondered if Ramse was following him. He broke into a jog.
    He came up over the top, the tree-lined path, the house looming up, the gate before it, a guard darting out again from behind a pillar of the house, standing