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

At first it was only victims of intentional murder whose killers were still alive and had never been charged or tried. Victims of crimes of passion, of rage, of lust, of greed. Victims of gang wars, of lynchings, of gay-bashings, of domestic violence. Victims of twisted schemes and twisted desires. Victims of terrorism by the planeload. Victims who could not possibly know the identity of their assailants rose with names, addresses, present locations, physical descriptions. There is never any explanation of the source of the information.
Once their stories are told they wait, impassive and implacable, in whatever hastily arranged quarters have been found for them, as a confounded legal system attempts to cope. They will not go away, not without the justice they demand. They will not waive charges or plea-bargain. Considering how slowly that legal machinery turns, some of them may be with us for years.
I hear a lot of places overseas -- Kampuchea, Armenia, Argentina -- are in chaos. In this country California's infamous Zodiac killer was finally identified; what a surprise that one turned out to be. And the body count was higher than any of the official estimates. Here in Texas, Henry Lee Lucas's toll turned out to be much lower than what he had boasted of, and lots higher than what he had confessed to. He was never tried for most of those murders, you know. When he heard that a delegation of his victims had shown up to visit him, he found a way to kill himself in his maximum security cell. After that the authorities had to put a suicide watch on a number of prisoners. But of course there are never enough guards to go around.
* * *

We know no more about the nature of death, or after-death, than we did before they arrived. Scientists cannot explain the phenomenon, despite imaginative experiments and the stolid cooperation of their subjects. The dead do not change while they are among us; decomposition does not progress. They neither eat nor drink nor excrete. They do not sleep or chat. They never laugh. Perhaps they love. Do they envy the living? I don't know.
* * *

There have been riots, panics, demonstrations. And thousands of suicides. Some, the secret murderers among us, whose hidden crimes have now been exposed in the most literal fashion; but most, ordinary people who cannot bear what has happened to their loved ones. Mothers and fathers of murdered children, spouses and lovers. The funeral industry is having a banner year.
We are trying to live with the dead, and it is killing us. How is that for justice?
Jesse Carmody's mother is one who couldn't take it. She tried to kill herself with some Compound 1080 her husband had bought to poison coyotes; she's still in a psychiatric hospital down in San Antonio. Jesse's father is a changed, sobered man. He invited Jesse to stay at the house while they waited for Englethorpe's trial. Someday maybe I'll have the courage to ask Hector Carmody what they talked about.
But Tamara, dear daughter, has set an example for us all. When she saw Jesse that first night, she marched right up to him, put her arms around him, and kissed his cold, bare cheek. Now she has become a lay visitor for our church, accompanying the minister to counsel those whose faith has been sorely tested by this development.
For every one who breaks, there is one who grows stronger. Kyle has been like the Rock of Gibraltar since that day. He and Angelina are going to be married this fall; they have enough faith in the future to plan to have kids.
I'm pretty proud of both my children.
* * *

We shipped the body of Englethorpe's last victim down to the medical examiner in San Antonio for autopsy and circulated pictures throughout the States and Mexico. No one claimed the body. When the M.E. got tired of her taking up drawer space, he insisted we take her back. The county commissioners didn't want to spring for the cost of burying her, until I got ugly. She stayed in the ground for a while, then rose in time for the trial. We got an ID, and contacted her relatives. Then the commissioners complained that they had wasted the money for the burial!
Englethorpe's trial was less of a circus than I had expected. I don't know why he didn't plead guilty; the evidence against him was overwhelming. Maybe he really was insane, as his defense attorney claimed. That attorney was good, trying every trick in the book -- and making up a few new ones -- to cope with the unprecedented appearance of the alleged deceased victims to give testimony. He challenged that they weren't really dead (dead people don't walk and talk), that the dead couldn't be sworn because they weren't legally persons anymore, that their presence was too inflammatory.... You get the picture. The trial judge just decided to go with his instincts and to let the appeal courts take the heat.
I was one of the first prosecution witnesses to testify. Afterward I was allowed to sit in the courtroom and watch the rest of the show. I pitied Englethorpe. Not for his guilt -- his deeds were monstrous and unpardonable -- but for his fear. He was terrified of his victims, even though not one of them ever raised a finger -- bony, gristly, or rot-bloated -- against him. The pressure of their awful, vacant vision sent him into screaming hysterics. He had to be tranquilized or removed from the courtroom every day. The authorities put a double suicide watch on him throughout the trial.
When little Jeffrey Thornton took the stand and swore "So help me God," the whole courtroom sighed. The verdict, never in doubt, was handed down: guilty of capital murder. The sentence was also never in doubt: death by lethal injection.
The trial and sentence seemed to satisfy the requirements of the dead. They didn't wait around for the years of appeals. The victims made some final farewells, then they lay down and became what they had always been -- dead. And this time, gone forever. We hope.
We are an adaptable species. The world is slowly returning to normal -- a new normality, where the living rub shoulders with the dead as though they had always been among us. But there has been one major -- and, I hope, permanent -- change: There are, for obvious reasons, very few murders these days....
* * *

The other day I drove out to Englethorpe's ranch again. There was a large "For Sale" sign on the gate, but I doubt the place will sell. The real estate market is in the doldrums now; there are abandoned ranches like Englethorpe's all over the county.
A dutiful realtor had shuttered and locked the house. The vehicles and farm equipment had all been sold at auction, for pittances. There wasn't much left of the cornfield. The investigators had torn it apart looking for more bodies. I completed the job the wind and sun had started on the police seal on the barn door and went inside.
The ghosts muttered and fussed in the shadows, but I'll take them over the risen dead any day. No one had bothered to clean up. The straw around Englethorpe's "workbench" was black and tarry-looking in the dim light. It looked just as it had on that hot summer day so long ago. A little dustier, perhaps. Older and tireder, for sure. Just like me.
I didn't bother to replace the seal on the door when I left.
* * *

I'm sitting in my study, working my way through a bottle of middlin' earnest rye and scribbling in my journal. The drought has broken at last; the sound of the rain is sweet. I wonder if the dead can appreciate it?
We will have to modify that old saw about death and taxes.
As a species aware of its own mortality we have always hated and feared death, but it has also been a comfort to us. It offered the promise of resolution, of an end to striving; a way to wipe the slate clean, put down the chalk, and stop trying to solve the unsolvable problem -- forever.
We didn't know how much we would miss death, until it was taken away from us.
In all my long career in law enforcement, I have only had to use deadly force once. I have always had regrets, of course; but I thought then, and still think now, that the shooting was justified -- and so did my superiors. But what if the cosmic authorities do not share that view?
Last week, in California, an accident victim rose from the dead to accuse someone of negligence. In New York today a suicide rose to accuse her mother of indifference. The dead seem to be growing more restive, less tolerant of the excuses made by the living.
I do not think that I could face the boy whose life I took.
So the level in the bottle declines, and I contemplate my service revolver, gleaming bluely in the pool of lamplight. I am tempted, very tempted, to take the coward's way out.
But what if I don't stay dead?
END