Reversible Errors Read Online Free PDF Page B

Murder was part of the human condition. And society existed to restrain it. To Larry, the only more important job than his was a mother's. Read some anthropology, he always told civilians who asked. All those skeletons unearthed with the stone ax still right in the hole? You think this just started? Everyone had murder in him. Larry had killed. In Nam. God knows who he'd shot blowing off his M16 in the darkness. The truth was he knew the dead on his own side far better. But one day, during his brief time on patrol, he'd tossed a grenade down a tunnel and watched the ground give way and the bodies come flying up in a fountain of dirt and blood. The first man was launched in pieces, a trunk with one arm, the legs airborne alone. But the other two men exploded from the earth intact. Larry still recalled them flying through the air, one screaming, the other who was probably out cold, with this expression that you could only call profound. So this is it, the guy was thinking- he might as well have held up a sign. Larry still saw that look all the time. He beheld it on Gus's face now, the largest thing in life - death-and it filled Larry on each occasion with the exacting, breathless emotion of one of those perfect realist paintings you'd see in a museum-Hopper or Wyeth. That thing: this is it.
    That was the end for the victims, the instant of surrender. But few gave up willingly. With death so imminent and unexpected, every human was reduced to terror and desire-the desire to continue and the inexpressible anguish that she or he would not. No one, Larry believed, could die with dignity in these circumstances. Paul Judson, heaped by the doorway, surely hadn't. He was your vanilla suburbanite, a mild-looking guy, just starting to lose his blond hair, which was fine as corn silk. Probably the kind never to show much emotion. But he had now. On his knees, Larry could see salt tracks in the corner of his eyes. Paul had died, as Larry would, crying for his life.
    Finally, Larry went to Luisa Remardi, who, as his responsibility, required the greatest attention. Her blood had stained the huge bags on which her body was heaped, but she'd died upstairs. Ripped apart by the bullet like a building in a bomb blast, the devastated arteries and organs had spurted out the blood which the stupid heart kept pumping. Luisa became sleepy first, and then as less and less oxygen reached her brain, hallucinations had begun, fearful ones probably, until her dreams bleached into fathomless light.
    When the pathologists okayed it, he climbed over the levee of bags to see her face. Luisa was pretty, soft under the chin, but with lovely, high cheekbones. Bright highlights were streaked into her dark hair, and even though she worked the midnight shift, she'd applied lots of makeup, doing an elaborate job around her large brown eyes. At her throat, you could see the line where the blush and base stopped and her natural paleness took over. She was one of those Italian chicks - Larry had known plenty-spreading out as she reached her early thirties, but not ready to stop thinking of herself as hot stuff.
    You're my girl now, Luisa. I'm gonna take care of you.
    Upstairs, Larry went looking for Greer to see if he could pull Muriel into the case. On the way, he stopped at a table where an evidence tech, a kid named Brown, was inventorying the discarded contents from Luisa s purse, which had been spread on the floor near the door.
    "Anything?" he asked.
    "Address book." With his gloves, Brown turned the pages for Larry.
    "Beautiful handwriting," Larry noted. The rest was the usual mess-house keys, receipts, mints. Under Luisa s checkbook cover, Brown pointed out two lubricated condoms in the same maroon wrapper as the one in her panties. What did that mean, Larry wondered, besides the fact that Luisa got around? Maybe the bad guy found these as he was looking in her handbag for her wallet and got turned on.
    But they'd never reconstruct events exactly. Larry had