Set entirely in Marin County, CHARACTER EVIDENCE is a psychological/legal thriller about Walt Gannon's battle to survive, spiritually and physically, in the face of his twin brother's inexorable quest to kill him.

The story begins innocuously enough, with a band of adolescents poaching abalones from a 'farm' on the floor of Tomales Bay; but it steadily descends into a psychological drama of sibling enmity that goes far beyond what might be described as 'rivalry' when Walt is sent to prison for a crime we know he did not commit. Walter went to a mental hospital for depression after killing his father in a car crash. His identical twin, Rex, filled his father's shoes, and his mother's bed. Rex projects his self-loathing onto his twin, and wants to kill him in order to vanquish his own pain; but Walter just thinks Rex is angry because of the accident. Rex rationalizes his hatred by convincing himself that Walter knows about the incestuous relationship, but turns a blind eye out of hatred for him.

Walter and Rex go on a bender that culminates in another car crash. This one kills seven people. The cops find Walter unconscious behind the wheel. Walter gets out of prison with nothing; while Rex has become a successful lawyer and politician. Indeed, he's running for attorney general. Walter stumbles upon the fact that Rex's extraordinary success stems from racketeering and murder; but there's nothing he can do without proof because Rex commits a murder and blames it on him.

Walter's first attempt to get proof nearly costs him his life; but he tries again after discovering that he's not dead inside. Rex corners Walter in the lantern room of the Pt. Bonita Lighthouse. With Walt held hostage, he confesses that he switched places with Walt in the accident that killed his father and the accident that sent him to prison. But Walt clobbers him with a ball bearing filled sock, and Rex gets chewed by the gears driving the lighthouse's ponderous lens as the lens implodes, from gunfire, in a rain of prisms.

Copyright 2005 Craig Clyde
All Rights Reserved