Understanding Protagonists: The Troubling Journey of Max Laurie

I’m two weeks away from releasing Event Horizon. I’ve been working up to it for some time now, and this promises to be a good, solid Crime-Thriller. As always, we’ll focus on strong police procedural storytelling and detective techniques. In the course of the last several months, I’ve presented a host of subject ranging from spousal abuse to the detectives involved.

One thing we haven’t looked at is the protagonist. Who or what is the protagonist?

To understand that we have to know what a story is first.

At its most basic, a story has been described this way. A man climbs a tree. Someone throws rocks at the person in the tree to knock him out of the tree. Man climbs safely down from the tree, having thwarted the rock thrower.

The man in the tree would be best described as the hero of the story or the guy who has things done to him.

The protagonist is the guy or situation that throws the rocks at the man in the tree. Without the protagonist, all we’d have is a man climbing up a tree and then down. Not much of a story. The protagonist can be a man, a woman, or a situation.

In this detective novel, the protagonist is Max Laurie. Max commits the ultimate sin. He murders his wife. This is a person he promised before God and an assembly of friends that this woman is the one he would love forever and to hold their love as a sacred. While he repeatedly disrespects that promises, he breaks it once and for all with a .38 caliber bullet in her heart.

And that puts him on a collision course with his friends.

It’s hard to call Max a Bad Guy.

He’s tough, very likable, a hard worker, loyal, and has been about as good a friend to my central character, Will Diaz as one could ask for. Like Will, he can ride horses, dresses in jeans, shirts and wears cowboy boots.

But even good friends can go bad and it’s the idea of the bad guy, especially one like Max Laurie that is so intriguing. What makes someone go over to the dark side? What is the attraction we have for these people.

Maybe the answer is simple. When we read a story of someone what has fallen, it’s a mirror we hold up to ourselves. We look at the problems that person had, the horror of what has happened to a person we sometimes have learned to care about and somehow, we see ourselves in the fall.

Maybe it’s because we see a chink in our own personal armor or because we behold an image in a dark mirror that looks like us. And often, we try to figure out what went wrong. Will admits in Event Horizon, that getting into someone’s head can easily drive one insane. But maybe to take a look at where Max winds up, maybe we need to understand where he came from.

Will first met Max at the airport in Atlanta. Both had just flown in and were waiting for the bus that would take them to Ft, McClellan, Alabama where they’d be go through Army Basic Training and Military Police school. Will walked up to Max, sat down next to him and said, “I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.” Later, they’d meet Michael Jones (Jonesy) and Terri McMillan, also cowboy types. Together, they would form the founders of an informal group called The Regulators.

Unlike Will, Max’s military career was a bit of a disaster. He was up and down in rank and not all of the reasons have been covered in the books. There are several things about Max we do learn.

Max does drink but he doesn’t drink any more than anyone else does. That changes after they all return from the Gulf War. While he had a front row seat to the horrors of war, he didn’t go through anything Will and some of the others experienced. He’s out every night and both his home and military life suffer.

Why be starts doing this is a big question mark.

But there’s one thing that is spelled out in detail.

Max abuses his wife. There are at least three incidents recorded in the book. In the final incident weeks before her murder, he assaults Detective RJ Madril who along with another deputy had responded to the domestic in progress. Will regards RJ as a brother and if there’s a big red line Max should never have crossed, it was that one.

Assaulting a police officer in the course of his duties is a felony. Max is going to prison and there’s nothing Will is going to do to help him this time. Will used his clout once to help Max and this latest incident has him thinking that one time was a mistake.

The question becomes, why would someone assault their wife? It just doesn’t make sense. The Bible instructs men to love their wife like Christ loves the church. You provide for her. You care for her. You talk with her.

You do not use her as a punching bag.

Why someone would do that is something I’ve never understood. If it gets that bad, leave. Better to have a divorce on record than doing time for assault or a murder.

When we had a domestic resulting in arrest, we always tried talking to the individual arrested. More often than not they refused to even discuss it and invoked their rights. But sometimes the people who have done this will talk. They will give reasons that to be honest, are about as a logical as dog poop on the sidewalk.

But they make sense to the person saying it. And that’s scary.

Here a short list:

Alcohol or drug abuse: I don’t care what anyone says. substance abuse changes a person. It lowers your inhibitions and causes people to do stupid things. So, if you have a little anger or jealousy locked away someplace, then you just opened the door wider for it. It’s rare that I’ve seen spousal abuse without substance abuse being a contributing factor. It can also alter your thinking and if you’re the kind who makes mountains from mole hills, then you just put that thought pattern on steroids.

Money: The Bible warns us that the Love of Money is the root of all evil. It’s easy to make money the most important thing in your life and elevate it over God, Love, or country. Money is important to people and when someone uses it, it might cause an angry reaction. We also live in a world where there seems to never be enough of money to go around. When you’re at the end of the month and the bank account is on zero and you need a tank of gas, that adds stress to a relationship.

Well over two-thirds of the domestics I worked were sparked by money or the lack thereof and how that limited resource was used.

Ego: Plain and simple, how we feel about ourselves impacts our relationships. Ego is most likely at the base of Max’s problems with Eva as reflected in book one, The Cross and the Badge. On the last night everyone is together, Max and Eva have a fight. He runs off down the road and Will goes to find him and talk some sense into him. The conversation shines some light on what’s going on in Max’s head.

Here’s their conversation:

“So, what’s going on?”

     “Eva wants a baby?”  Max said.

     “And you still don’t.”

     He looked up at the glittering star I’d looked at as if he was making a wish upon it.

      Either way, it was several seconds before he answered. “More like I can’t, Will.”

     “I’m not following?”

      Max said something.

      “What was that?”

      “I said, I can’t have children.”

      It took me a second to realize what he’d just said.

      “You’re impotent?” I asked. Eva would know if he were impotent.

      “No, listen to me. I can’t have children, not get it up?”

      “What?”

      “I’m shooting blanks.”   

     “Wait, you use condoms.”

     “That’s to keep from getting something, not give it.”

      It finally sank in.

      “What happened?”

      “Childhood malady,” he replied. “The old family doc said it wouldn’t be a problem. He was wrong.”

     “I see.”

     “Now you know. When I say I don’t want kids, ‘don’t” means ‘can’t.’”

      “Does Eva know this?” I asked.

      “It’s not the kind of thing a guy tells his new bride,” he said. “Hey, Baby. Here’s something funny. You don’t need birth control because I can’t make babies. That’ll go over like a lead balloon!”

      “Max,” I said. “It’s the nineties. You ever hear of something called artificial insemination?”

     He nodded. “It wouldn’t be my child.”

     “How about adoption?”

     “Expensive. You know, it costs nothing to make a baby, but a lot to adopt one!”

     “Obviously you’ve never paid the hospital bill for one.”

That was well before the murder. With 20/20 hindsight, everyone should have known the peace between Eva and Max was temporary at best. It was a storm that was a long time coming. The signs were there, but somehow, they missed them.

Now as to the why of the crime. Something you need to understand is we don’t have to prove is “why “or as they phrase it in the movies, “the motive” in a crime. The big thing in TV shows and books about motive is a lot of nonsense. We don’t have to prove a why someone did something. Just that they did it.

But it is nice to know the why and Max provides a motive. It’s stupid but it’s the best he can do.

He hefted his rifle, smiled slightly, and said, “If you want a ‘why’ for your report, I killed Eva because she was happy, and I wasn’t. That’s the best I can do for an explanation.”

There’s one other big difference between Max and Will. Of the four members of what others call “The Regulators,” Will, Jonesy, and Terri stayed in Law Enforcement. Max got out to pursue his dream of having a guide service. He wanted to run his life his way, to be a successful businessman and to meet life on his terms.

Call it bad calls. Call it bad luck. Call it insufficient capital to pursue the dream. Whatever you call it, it didn’t work out like he expected.

Knowing this, Will tries to help and brings him aboard as a “Consultant” to help fight the drug trade in the county. Will is working under the belief he’s helping a friend by providing a means to get money and get his business going.

But, it would seem that Max has been playing both sides of the street. either way, he’s been lying to a lot of people.

“There’s something you need to know,” the Sheriff said.

    “What’s that?”

     “We found some three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars hidden in Max’s barn.”

     That surprised me.

      “Max doesn’t have that kind of money,” I said. “Where did it come from?”

     “That’s what we’re wondering.”

      I shook my head. “He always acted like he was one step ahead of the bank.”

     “Want another surprise?”

     “Why not.”

     “The ranch, all the cars, everything was paid off. Near as we can tell, he didn’t owe a dime to anyone.”

     “Jesus!”

     “The Feds will be asking you and Jonesy about this in the next few days.”

      That would be a short statement. “Beats the hell out of me,” was all I could say.

     There was only one place I could think of where that kind of money came from.

     My friend was dirty.

Just how dirty, Will has no clue yet.

Will is going to relearn something he already knew and to take it as a warning. You walk on one side of the road you’re safe. Walk on the other side and you’re safe. Walk down the middle, and you get ran over.

Will doesn’t know it yet, but that’s what Max has been walking between two worlds, between what we call Good and Evil.

And he got ran over big time.