"A Dying Breed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richardson Carrie)

A DYING BREED
by Carrie Richerson
1992

I can live with ghosts. This part of the Texas Hill Country has ghosts thicker than fleas on an ol' yaller dog. Conquistadores slaughtered for god and gold here; the Comanche returned the favor. Tonkawa practiced their ritual cannibalism along these creeks; Anglos answered with their own atrocities. To the south, the martyrs of the Alamo mission still haunt old San Antonio de Bexar. After the unpleasantness between the northern and southern states, freed blacks moved here from Dixie and farmed the river bottoms in the only cash crop they knew -- cotton -- until they and the land wore out. The attentive, midnight ear hears war whoops and Rebel yells mingle with the strains of old spirituals.
The ghosts carry their histories upon their bowed backs and ask nothing of the living. I can live with them in peace. But the dead have never rested easy in this sun-drenched, heat-struck land -- and nowadays, they don't seem to be resting at all....

* * *

Angelina and I had been going over the week's arrest stats, in preparation for my appearance the next day before the board of county commissioners. Fewer people reside in our entire county than in some of San Antonio's suburbs, but that doesn't mean we don't have a problem with crime. Vandalism and driving-while-intoxicated arrests were way up over last year, and drugs were starting to be a serious concern. Domestic disturbance calls were on the rise, too.
Everyone seemed to be on a short fuse. Just the previous month, a local businessman had engaged in an old-fashioned shootout on the main street of the county seat with his wife's lover. Both were lousy shots and only managed to inflict painful but non-life-threatening wounds, despite firing off a total of fifteen rounds between them. It was a miracle that someone wasn't killed.
A miracle that my department had nothing to do with, since none of us were anywhere around at the time. It is simply not possible to give adequate law enforcement coverage to an entire county with only four people and one working patrol car. I would take the arrest stats and an impassioned plea for more money to the commissioners' court the next day, but it wouldn't do any good. I already knew what I would hear: times are tough for everyone, tax rate too high already, no extra money in the budget. The same excuses I'd heard for the last three years.
Angelina and I were crammed into the microscopic cubicle that functions as my office; the only way we could both fit on the same side of the desk to review the booking log was for Angelina to kneel on top. That blocked my view of the door, so I didn't see our visitor enter. The first I knew of something wrong was Kyle's voice going up in that stuttering squeak he does when he gets excited or angry.
That sound has set my teeth on edge since Kyle was a baby nursing at my breast. I suppose it always will. But this time he was alternating it with some sort of gagging moan. It sounded serious, but imagination failed me. It couldn't be an escape; we had only one prisoner, a DWI still sleeping it off. Besides, the only thing the county commissioners had agreed to spend good money on was a set of primo locks for our two cells. My fifty-year-old joints could scream at me tomorrow. I threw myself over the desk and out of the cubicle.
I didn't draw my gun. Experience has taught me to be wary of such a facile solution to problems. It's a good thing, too: the temptation to put a bullet into the thing standing just inside the front door was overwhelming. The part of me that said, "Shoot!" shoved up hard against the part that said, "Run!" -- and both were immobilized by the part that said, "Pray."
My mind refused to accept the sight of the decomposed body standing before me, but the smell was another matter. It was God-awful -- that vicious, rotten tang that even a novice can't mistake. Kyle's noises had changed to the sound of vomiting. I didn't blame him, but I needed something I could deal with. "Kyle, stop that right now! Angelina, get out here and make Kyle clean up his mess!" Angie had managed to extricate herself from the tangle in my office. She edged up to the front desk, never taking her gun off our visitor, and bent over the retching Kyle. I heard a sharp slap, and a string of quiet Spanish profanity that would blister paint. Kyle shut up. Angie can keep him in line. Me, I'm only his mother.
This had to be a dream or some sort of horrid practical joke, and I must look just as silly as I felt. I tried to think of a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. I opened my mouth, to say I don't know what, but the apparition beat me to it.
"Sheriff Webster." The sound was a dry whisper that went right to my knee joints and gnawed. The fleshless jaws moved a little, but I swear I don't know how it made sound: it had no lips, no tongue -- no lungs, for godsakes. The vacant orbits regarded me blankly. Any minute, I thought, Angelina and Kyle are going to bolt and leave me here with this -- thing. Hell, I might even go with them.
Instead, I found myself answering it. "I'm Sheriff Webster, yes." And, inanely, "How can I help you?"
Shreds of dry flesh rustled as the corpse made a faint motion -- something that rang a familiar chord, but there was no time to follow the thought -- with its hands. I felt like joining Kyle in his adoration of the floor tiles. The whisper came again. "Arrest the man who killed me."
This just had to be a dream. Or maybe one of those new-fangled "Candid Camera" rip-offs. Hollywood special effects can do anything these days. I was probably exchanging pleasantries with latex and invisible wires. What could I do but play along? "Come into my office and tell me about it."
As I passed the front desk I leaned over to address my deputies. "Angelina, get your notepad. Kyle, get that mess cleaned up and get back on the radio. Both of you -- if you so much as breathe a word of this to anybody, I will personally line you up against that wall and shoot you. Do you understand me?"
They nodded, wide-eyed. Angelina whispered, "Doris, is that thing for real?"
"I don't know, Angie. Now get a move on." She crossed herself, and Kyle looked ready to heave again. I fixed him with a glare that made him change his mind and turn back to the radio monitor.
I sat down behind my desk as the walking affront to gastric stability edged into the office and lowered itself gingerly into the other chair. That left no room in the office for Angelina; she took up station in the doorway behind the thing. She must have been thinking along the same lines I had been: I saw her wave her hand through the air above it, feeling for wires. Nothing.
If it was fake, it was a beautiful job. Adult male, exact age and race unknown (I can do some field forensics, but I'm not that good), in an advanced state of decompostion. All the internal organs were gone, but some stringy remnants of muscle and skin clung to the bones. Some black hair remaining on shreds of scalp. Dead several months, at least, but it would take a pathologist to tell exactly how long.
Multiple traumatic fractures of all the long bones, several broken ribs, palmar bones crushed. Probable cause of death: the entire left side of the skull was shattered. Dark emptiness yawned within. Buried without benefit of shroud or coffin, and recently exhumed: dirt dusted the parchment skin and filled the floors of the orbits, and a dessicated millipede was wound into one of the shoulder joints. I shivered. Entirely too realistic for my taste.
"Don't you recognize me, Sheriff?" There was a plaintive note to the dry rasp this time.
Recognize it? "I'm sorry, I don't." How could I put this? "There isn't, uh, much left of your face. Who are you?" This conversation was growing more unbelievable by the minute.
"I am -- I was -- Jesse Carmody, Mrs. Webster."
Oh, my God. Suddenly I did believe, and with no more evidence than that -- because no one, no one would have the supremely bad taste to make such a joke about Jesse. Certainly not to me.
Jesse had been my daughter's boyfriend throughout high shcool. They had met when Tamara had offered to tutor him in math in the ninth grade. Many a night I'd sat in my kitchen with this young man, drinking coffee and listening to his plans for the future. He was going to work hard, save his money, go to college, make something of himself. The recitation of those bright hopes for the future always drew to a close with Jesse and Tamara sharing promises of eternal loyalty, and those special smiles kids in love give one another -- while I smiled a totally different kind into my coffee.
Some nights Tamara still cried herself to sleep in my arms.
He'd been missing for six months now, and we had all just hoped he had run away to the city. That wasn't Jesse's style, but his father was a drinker with a hot temper and had admitted to having a yelling fight with the boy the night he disappeared. I'd never suspected Hector Carmody of harming Jesse, though; until now, there had never even been any reason to suspect foul play.
So Jesse was dead, and what sat before me was all that remained of his promise and his dreams. A great sadness filled me. And a great pity, too -- for it must be lonely indeed to be dead, and rotted, and to walk again among the living. Impulsively I reached out to touch his hand. The knuckles were cold and dry under my fingers. "I'm so sorry, Jesse. Who did this to you?"
He gave us the name: Robert Englethorpe, a local rancher. The quiet, pleasant, loner type that no one ever suspects of wickedness -- until it's too late. I swore. The son-of-a-bitch was a deacon in my church.
Jesse waited for me to fish out a tape for our decrepit recorder, then gave us the details. He'd gone for a long walk after the fight with his dad. Englethorpe had passed him on the road, then turned around to offer him a ride. When Jesse told him of the fight, Englethorpe offered to let Jesse stay at his ranch until his dad cooled down. Jesse had accepted the offer of help from a neighbor without hesitation.
The specifics of torture and violation were even more chilling when recited in that passionless whisper. Angelina wept silently over her notepad. She had never served on a big-city police force, had never had her nose rubbed in this sort of sickness, as I had. I had left Houston when I couldn't stand it anymore, and moved to a sleepy country town. But no place is immune, and a sleepy surface can simply camoflage the virulence underneath. I felt very old, very tired, listening to Jesse.
In the end, Englethorpe had beaten his victim to death with an axe handle, then sodomized him with the same instrument. Somehow it made it worse that Jesse knew every degradation Englethorpe had inflicted on his body, even after his death. "He hurt me so bad, Mrs. Webster, I was grateful when he finally killed me." How could a mere whisper convey that much pain?
I had to know. "Jesse, how it is that you are here?"
He seemed to struggle for words. "A dispensation, they said. For a little time, they said. For justice." The way he said the word justice made my neck hair stand up.
"Who said, Jesse?"
He made a confused gesture. Something he couldn't answer? Or wouldn't? Maybe I really didn't want to know.
My bottom desk drawer was the only one with a lock. It was the safest place I could think of to store such a bizarre and momentous tape recording. When I opened the drawer a half-full bottle of rye rolled with a clunk from one side to the other. I have never craved a drink so intensely as I did at that moment. My hand was shaking as I closed the drawer, but I don't think Angelina saw. I refuse to speculate upon what the former Jesse Carmody might have seen.
It was my call to make. It didn't take me long to make my decision. I could spend the rest of the afternoon tracking down the county judge and trying to convince him I had enough probable cause for a search warrant for Englethorpe's ranch. Or I could go get the bastard right then. This crime's aftermath was too bizarre to keep it a secret for long, and if Englethorpe heard a rumor of Jesse's reappearance, he'd bolt. Maybe later I could make a case for hot pursuit.
Angelina loaded the heavy artillery while Kyle called George, out patrolling in our one official vehicle, and told him where to meet us. But not why. Broadcasting that over the police band would be like issuing an invitation. I told Jesse I wanted him to wait for us at the station, and that I was going to lock the front door. "I really don't think anyone else should see you yet. I hope you understand."
He nodded. "My parents?"
My stomach twisted. "It's not going to be easy on them, but I know they'll want to talk to you." Oh God, what would I tell Tamara?
Our DWI was still snoring. Just before I went out the door, Jesse cocked that broken skull as if listening to something I couldn't hear, then spoke. "There are others. They will be waiting for you." A chill chased me out of the station.
The three of us crowded into my pickup. Kyle folded himself onto the floorboard; Angelina and I tried our best to look nonchalant as I drove slowly out of town. The ambulance chasers must have been engaged elsewhere; no one followed us.