“I don’t want to…”

The detective passed the flame over the end of the cigarette. The paper and tobacco were singed. A drop of sweat rolled down Arthur’s upper lip and onto the cigarette.

“Want me to guess why you don’t want to smoke this cigarette?” the detective said. “Okay. How about, because you poisoned it? Could that be it?”

Arthur nodded uneasily.

“Talk to me, Arthur.”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice. “That’s it.”

“And why are you going around offering homeless people poisoned cigarettes, Arthur? Do you dislike homeless people? Do you not want to see them around? Or do you just get off on killing people?”

“No,” Arthur whispered, “that’s not it at all.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is, then?”

“They’re so miserable,” Arthur said. There were tears in his eyes. “Out here on the street, in the cold, on drugs, selling their bodies… No one should have to live like that.”

“So you kill them?”

“I give them a cigarette. They feel no pain. They never know what happened. They’re out of their misery.”

“In other words, you kill them.”

“They go to sleep and don’t wake up.”

“You kill them, goddamn it,” the detective said, pressing the gun harder into the man’s skull. “Say it.”

“I kill them,” Arthur said. “But they’re better off for it.”

Arthur and the detective sat silently, staring at each other. The detective saw no sign of understanding or of self-awareness. He saw terror, but no remorse.

He thought of the digital recorder in his pocket, quietly capturing a record of their words, and pictured this grandfatherly man standing in front of a jury, earnestly insisting on his innocence. He looked at Arthur’s well-cut suit and polished loafers, at the watch on his wrist, and pictured the caliber of lawyer he would hire to defend himself. He pictured a trial with no witnesses to the crimes, a case where the victims were on the margins of society and the defendant looked like a pillar of the community. He pictured the defense lawyer asking the jury if they could trust a policeman who had held a gun to this nice old man’s head. Of course he admitted the crime, ladies and gentlemen-wouldn’t you? With a gun to your head?