Partners in Crime is pleased to present another wonderful William Morrow book:
The Absence of Mercy
by John Burley
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John
Burley attended medical school in Chicago and completed his emergency
medicine residency training at University of Maryland Medical
Center/Shock Trauma in Baltimore. He currently serves as an emergency
medicine physician in northern California, where he lives with his wife,
daughter, Great Dane, and English Bulldog. This is his first novel.
Excerpt:
This is not the beginning.
Up ahead, a young man sporting jeans
and a black Tshirt walks casually down the concrete sidewalk. He hums
softly to himself as he ambles along, Nikebound feet slapping
rhythmically on the serpentine path he weaves through the late
afternoon foot traffic. He is perhaps fifteen—not truly a young man yet,
but certainly well on his way—and he walks with the energy and
indifference of one who possesses the luxury of youth but not yet the
experience to appreciate its value, or its evanescence.
The predator watches the young man
turn a corner, disappearing temporarily from view behind the brick
exterior of an adjacent building. Still, he maintains a respectable
distance, for although he has an instinct for how to proceed, he now
relinquishes control to something else entirely. For as long as he can
remember he has sensed its presence, lurking behind the translucent
curtain of the insignificant daily activities of his life. The thing
waits for him to join it, to embrace it—observes him with its dark and
faithful eyes. But there are times—times like this—when it waits no
longer, when the curtain is drawn aside and it emerges, demanding to be
dealt with.
The young man in the black Tshirt
reaches the end of the street and proceeds across a small clearing. On
the other side of the clearing is a modest thatch of woods through which
a dirt trail, overgrown with the foliage of an early spring, meanders
for about two hundred yards until it reaches the neighborhood just
beyond.
The predator picks up his pace,
closing the distance between them. He can feel the staccato of his heart
kick into third gear, where power wrestles fleetingly with speed. The
thing that lives behind the curtain is with him now—has become him. Its
breath, wet and heavy and gritty with dirt, slides in and out of his
lungs, mixing with his own quick respirations. The incessant march of
its pulse thrums along eagerly behind his temples, blanching his vision
slightly with each beat. Ahead of him is the boy, his slender frame
swinging slightly as he walks, almost dancing, as if his long muscles
dangled delicately from a metal hanger. For a moment, watching from
behind as he completes the remaining steps between them, the predator is
struck by the sheer beauty of that movement, and an unconscious smile
falls across his face.
The sound of his footsteps causes the
boy to turn, to face him now, arms hanging limply at his sides. As he
does, the predator’s left hand swings quickly upward from where it had
remained hidden behind his leg a moment before. His hand is curled
tightly around an object, its handle connected to a thin metal shaft,
long and narrow and tapered at the end to a fine point. It reaches the
pinnacle of its arcing swing and enters the boy’s neck, dead center,
just below the jaw. A slight jolt reverberates through the predator’s
arm as the tip of the rod strikes the underside of the boy’s skull. He
can feel the warmth of the boy’s skin pressing up against the flesh of
his own hand as the instrument comes to rest. The boy opens his mouth to
scream, but the sound is choked off by the blood filling the back of
his throat. The predator pulls his arm down and away, feeling the ease
with which the instrument exits the neck.
He pauses a moment, watching the boy
struggle, studying the shocked confusion in his eyes. The mouth in front
of him opens and closes silently. The head shakes slowly back and forth
in negation. He leans in closer now, holding the boy’s gaze. The hand
gripping the instrument draws back slightly in preparation for the next
blow; then he pistons it upward, the long metal tip punching its way
through the boy’s diaphragm and into his chest. He watches the body go
rigid, watches the lips form the circle of a silent scream, the eyes
wide and distant.
The boy crumples to the ground, and
the predator goes with him, cradling a shoulder with his right hand, his
eyes fixed on that bewildered, pallid face. He can see that the boy’s consciousness is
waning now, can feel the muscles going limp in his grasp. Still, he
tries to connect with those eyes, wonders what they are seeing in these
final moments. He imagines what it might feel like for the world to
slide away at the end, to feel the stage go dark and to step blindly
into that void between this world and the next, naked and alone, waiting
for what comes after . . . if anything at all.
The cool earth shifts slightly beneath
his fingers, and in the space of a second the boy is gone, leaving
behind his useless, broken frame. “No,” the predator whispers to
himself, for the moment has passed too quickly. He shakes the body,
looking for signs of life. But there is nothing. He is alone now in the
woods. The realization sends him into a rage. The instrument in his hand
rises and falls again and again, wanting to punish, to admonish,to
hurt. When the instrument no longer satisfies him, he casts it aside,
using his hands, nails, and teeth to widen the wounds. The body yields
impassively to the assault, the macerated flesh falling away without
conviction, the pooling blood already a lifeless thing. Eventually, the
ferocity of the attack begins to taper. He rests on his hands and knees,
drawing in quick, ragged breaths.
Next time, I will do better, he
promises the thing that lives behind the curtain. But when he turns to
look the thing is gone, the curtain drawn closed once again.
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