"Destroyer - 001 - Created, The Destroyer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

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* Title : #001 : CREATED, THE DESTROYER *
* Series : The Destroyer *
* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *
* Location : Gillian Archives *
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CHAPTER ONE

Everyone knew why Remo Williams was going to die. The chief of the Newark Police Department told his close friends Williams was a sacrifice to the civil rights groups.

"Who ever heard of a cop going to the chair... and for killing a dope-pusher? Maybe a suspension... maybe even dismissal... but the chair? If that punk had been white, Williams wouldn't get the chair."

To the press, the chief said: "It is a tragic incident. Williams always had a good record as a policeman."

But the reporters weren't fooled. They knew why Williams had to die. "He was crazy. Christ, you couldn't let that lunatic out in the streets again. How did he ever get on the force in the first place? Beats a man to a pulp, leaves him to die in an alley, drops his badge for evidence, then expects to get away with it by hollering 'frame-up.' Damn fool."

The defense attorney knew why his client lost. "That damned badge. We couldn't get around that evidence. Why wouldn't he admit he beat up that bum? Even so, the judge never should have given him the chair."

The judge was quite certain why he sentenced Williams to die. It was very simple. He was told to.

Not that he knew why he was told to. In certain circles, you don't ask questions about verdicts.

Only one man had no conception of why the sentence was so severe and so swift. And his wondering would stop at 11:35 o'clock that night. It wouldn't make any difference after that.

Remo Williams sat on the cot hi his cell chainsmoking cigarettes. His light brown hair was shaved close at the temples where the guards would place the electrodes.

The gray trousers issued to all inmates at the State Prison already had been slit nearly to the knees. The white socks were fresh and clean with the exception of gray spots from ashes he dropped. He had stopped using the ash tray the day before.

He simply threw the finished cigarette on the gray painted floor each time and watched its life burn out. It wouldn't even leave a mark, just burn out slowly, hardly noticeable.

The guards would eventually open the cell door and have an inmate clean up the butts. They would wait outside the cell, Remo between them, while the inmate swept.

And when Remo was returned, there would be no trace that he had ever smoked in there or that a cigarette had died on the floor.

He could leave nothing in the death cell that would remain. The cot was steel and had no paint in which to even scratch his initials. The mattress would be replaced if he ripped it.

He had no laces to tie anything anywhere. He couldn't even break the one light bulb above his head. It was protected by a steel-enmeshed glass plate.

He could break the ashtray. That he could do, if he wanted. He could scratch something in the white enameled sink with no stopper and one faucet.

But what would he inscribe? Advice? A note? To whom? For what? What would he tell them?

That you do your job, you're promoted, and one dark night they find a dead dope-pusher in an alley on your beat, and he's got your badge in his hand, and they don't give you a medal, they fall for the frame-up, and you get the chair.

It's you who winds up in the death house—the place you wanted to send so many men to, so many hoods, punks, killers, the liars, the pushers, the scum that preyed on society. And then the people, the right and the good you sweated for and risked your neck for, rise in their majesty and turn on you.

What do you do? All of a sudden, they're sending people to the chair—the judges who won't give death to the predators, but give it to the protectors.