"Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Murderer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

The Murderer
by Lawrence Watt-Evans
This story copyright 1993 by Lawrence Watt-Evans.This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use.All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Jacob Stein stared at his client in bafflement. "Don't you want to be acquitted?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter," the man said, smiling. "It's a relief, really, to have it over. And I did far more than I
could ever have hoped. I never thought I'd be here this long." The smile faded slightly. "Though I can't
say everything worked out the way I expected it to."
"You didn't expect to get caught?"
"No, no-- I was pretty sure I'd be caught eventually. I mean the rest of it." The smile was back-- a
gentle, kind smile, directed entirely at Stein. "You don't understand what I'm talking about, of course," he
said. "There's no way you could."
"Well, explain it to me, then." Stein tapped a No. 2 Ticonderoga on the tabletop.
"I honestly don't know if I can." The accused considered, then shook his head. "I don't think I even
want to try."
"Well, how am I supposed to help you, if you won't explain anything?" Stein demanded.
"Oh, probably you'd best just plead me insane-- I think I'd prefer an asylum to prison."
"Don't forget Old Sparky, Mr. Jones-- if we don't show insanity or mitigating circumstances, you'll get
the chair."
"You think so?" The smile was uncertain now. "That would be a bad way to go."
"Well, it's the way you'll go, if you don't help me."
"I'm an old man," Jones protested. "Would they really give me the chair?"
"You bet they would, if you don't give me something to work with, to keep you out of it. You killed a
kid, Mr. Jones-- judges and juries don't like that."
"I killed a monster, Mr. Stein. In fact, I've killed a lot of monsters over the past seventy years."
"I saw the photos, Mr. Jones-- I didn't see the body, but I saw the photos. He looked like a kid to
me."
Jones shook his head. "He was a monster. Most of them were. Some were just wrong-headed--
maybe I deserve to die for those, but not for him."
Stein tried to hide his reaction. He had seen the photos; young Ted had been a good-looking boy
before Jones put a dose of buckshot through his face. If anyone involved in this case was a monster,
Stein was very much afraid it was his client, not the victim.
"I think we'd better plead insanity," Stein said.
"If you like," Jones agreed. "In a way, maybe I am insane."
Stein snapped his pencil angrily. "You're not very convincing," he said. "Sitting there calmly agreeing
isn't going to look very crazy to a jury."
"All right, then; what would you like me to say?"
Stein threw the eraser end of the pencil across the room. "Why don't we start with the truth, then?"
Jones nodded. "All right," he said. "All I have to do for a plea of insanity is tell the truth, I suppose. To
begin at the beginning, I was born in 1998..." He paused, as if waiting for something.
Stein blinked. "You look a little older than that," he remarked.
Jones smiled again, that gentle, maddening smile. "No, no, Mr. Stein," he said. "Nineteen ninety-eight."
Stein threw the other half of the pencil. "What, you were born in the future? You're living backwards,
like T.H. White's Merlin?"