Читать книгу No Way Out - David Kessler - Страница 18

Albert Carter was an old man. Not a wise old man, not a crusty old man, not even really a frail old man, just an old man who had lived a full life and been around the block a few times. He wasn’t in the best of health, having done his share of smoking and drinking, before he gave it up when he noticed it slowing him down a bit. But he was a lonely old man, having lost his first wife to divorce and his second to the Grim Reaper.

Oh yes, the Reaper.

There were many weapons in the Reaper’s arsenal, and Albert Carter couldn’t even pronounce the name of the disease that had claimed Hildegard.

His children were still around, but he had lost them to professional migration. He saw them at Christmas and on his birthday, but that was pretty much it. One lived in Utah and one in Boston. The one in Utah was a store manager and the one in Boston some kind of academic. He understood the work of the former more than the latter, but, both had families and neither came out west very often.

So he spent his days watching TV, reading the newspaper and – with diminishing frequency – bowling with his old friends. It was a dull, repetitive chapter towards the latter part of his book of life, but he had his basic needs and he didn’t want more. All he yearned for was a bit less arthritic pain. Oh, and he wished that the cops would do more to round up those gangs who were turning the neighborhood into such an unpleasant place. He knew who they were…in a generic sort of way, at least.

It was while he was watching the TV alone one night, he saw a news report about the Bethel Newton rape case, saying how a famous local talk show host had been arrested and then released. They didn’t have any footage from the police station, but they showed a still photograph of the girl and stock footage from the man’s talk show. Apparently he’d been arrested after shooting the latest show, yet to be broadcast.

And that was when Carter got the feeling.

He didn’t remember the details too clearly – the whole thing had happened just too fast. But there was one thing that he remembered.

For a moment he hesitated, realizing that criminals could sometimes be vengeful towards people who snitched. But then he remembered his own, all-too-frequent words about the cowards who don’t speak out when criminals destroy their communities. He didn’t want to be like one of those people whom he routinely criticized. He knew now that it was his civic duty to speak out and he didn’t want to be like all the shirkers.

So he dragged his weary bones out of the comfort of his tattered, dust-ridden armchair and trudged over to the phone.