Blackburn: A Novel by Bradley Denton

Author:Bradley Denton [Denton, Bradley]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Horror, General, Literary, Suspense, Thrillers, Fiction
ISBN: 9780312426958
Google: Yx5EQstILmAC
Amazon: 031242695X
Publisher: Picador
Published: 1993-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

VICTIM NUMBER NINETEEN

The rape charge and one of the murder charges were dropped in April when Heather announced that she would not testify against Blackburn. It had taken her three and a half months of therapy and hypnosis, she said, but now she had grasped the reality of what had happened on the night she was attacked: Blackburn had not been her rapist, but her savior. While he had arrived too late to stop the rape, he had prevented the rapist from killing her. In order to do that, he'd had no choice but to kill the rapist. It had been justifiable homicide.

Blackburn read Heather's statement in the Houston Chronicle over and over again. His first thought was that she was overlooking some basic facts—such as that he should have killed Roy-Boy a week earlier, and that he had broken into her apartment in Roy-Boy's company. But then some of her words began to resonate in his brain.

"While I might wish that Mr. Blackburn had acted sooner," she said, "I cannot condemn him for not having done so. He is only human. He did the best that he could."

That was the key. Blackburn had fallen short of perfection... but no one was perfect. To be human was to fail, and Blackburn could not escape his own humanity. So if Heather was willing to absolve his sin, he had to be willing to forgive himself for committing it.

The State of Texas, however, was peeved. To make up for the charges it had lost, it added a new rape charge to the remaining murder charge.

This pissed Blackburn off.

"I didn't kill that woman," he told his attorney, "and I didn't rape her either. I didn't even go into the bedroom. I didn't even know she was there."

"I believe you," his attorney said.

Blackburn found no comfort in that. "It doesn't make sense. They've known all along that she was raped before she was killed, so if they were going to charge me with it, why didn't they do it when they charged me with her murder?"

"Because the physical evidence didn't support it," his attorney said. "The tests showed that the rapist had a different blood type."

"Roy-Boy's."

"Yes. But now the prosecution will argue that you and he committed the crime together—that you also raped her, but didn't ejaculate. You see, even though there's no physical evidence, the jury's likely to believe you did it just because the state accuses you of it. And that'll help the prosecution push for a conviction and a capital penalty on the murder charge."

"But there's no evidence for the murder charge either," Blackburn said.

The attorney looked down at his notes. "Well, there's no physical evidence," he said. "But you've already confessed to killing a man in Goodland, Kansas, in 1981, and another in Kansas City in 1982. You haven't been charged with those crimes, but the prosecution will make a big deal of them anyway. Furthermore, you've admitted to being in the murdered woman's apartment on the night she was

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