Rama 3 – The Garden of Rama by Clarke, Arthur C.

Ellie was stunned. She just stared at the doctor. He glanced at Nicole and then returned his gaze to Ellie. “I know it’s sudden,” Dr. Turner said. “But there’s no doubt

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in my mind. I have seen enough. I love you. I want to marry you. The sooner the better.”

The room was absolutely quiet for almost a minute. During the silence, the doctor walked over to his office door and locked it. He even disconnected his phone. Ellie started to speak. “No,” he said to her with passion, “don’t say anything yet. There’s something else I must do first.”

He sat down in his chair and took a deep breath. “Something mat I should have done long ago,” he said quietly. “Besides, you both deserve to know the whole truth about me.”

Tears welled up in Dr. Turner’s eyes even before he began to tell the story. His voice broke the first time he spoke, but he then collected himself and eased into the narrative.

“I was thirty-three years old and blindly, outrageously happy. I was already one of the leading cardiac surgeons in America and I had a beautiful, loving wife with two daughters, aged three and two. We lived in a mansion with a swimming pool inside a country club community about forty kilometers north of Dallas, Texas.

“One night when I came home from the hospital—it was very late, for I had supervised an unusually delicate open heart procedure—I was stopped at the gate of our community by the security guards. They acted rattled, as if they didn’t know what to do, but after a phone call and some peculiar glances in my direction, they waved me through.

“Two police cars and an ambulance were parked in front of my house. Three mobile television vans were scattered in the cul-de-sac just beyond my home. When I started to turn in to my driveway, a policeman stopped me. With flashbulbs popping all around and klieg lights from the television cameras blinding my eyes, the policeman led me into my house.

“My wife was lying under a sheet on a cot in the main hall beside the stairway to the second floor. Her throat had been slit. I heard some people talking upstairs and raced up to see my daughters. The girls were still lying

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where they had been killed—Christie on the floor in the bathroom and Amanda in her bed. The bastard had cut their throats as well.”

Huge, desolate sobs wrenched out of Dr. Turner. “I will never forget that horrible sight. Amanda must have been killed in her sleep, for there was no mark on her except for the cut. … What kind of human being coultl kill such innocent creatures?”

Dr. Turner’s tears were cascading down his cheeks. His chest was heaving uncontrollably. For several seconds he did not speak. Ellie quietly came over beside his chair and sat on the floor, holding his hand.

“The next five months I was totally numb. I could not work, I could not eat. People tried to help me—friends, psychiatrists, other doctors—but I could not function. I simply could not accept that my wife and children had been murdered.

“The police had a suspect in less than a week. His name was Carl Tyson. He was a young black man, twenty-three years old, who delivered groceries for a nearby supermarket. My wife always used the television for her shopping. Carl Tyson had been to our home several times before—I even remembered having seen him once or twice myself—and certainly knew his way around the house.

“Despite my daze during that period, I was aware of what was happening in the investigation of Linda’s murder. At first, everything seemed so simple. Carl Tyson’s fresh fingerprints were found all over the house. He had been inside our community that very afternoon on a delivery. Most of Linda’s jewelry was missing, so robbery was the obvious motive. I figured the suspect would be summarily convicted and executed.

“The issue quickly became clouded. None of the jewelry was ever found. The security guards had marked Carl Tyson’s entry and departure from the community on the master log, but he was only inside Greenbriar for twenty-two minutes, hardly enough time for him to deliver groceries and commit a robbery plus three murders. In addition, after a famous attorney decided to defend Tyson and helped him prepare his sworn statements, Tyson insisted that Linda had asked him to move some furniture that

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afternoon. This was a perfect explanation for the presence of his fingerprints all over the house. . . .”

Dr. Turner paused, reflecting, the pain obvious in his face. Ellie squeezed his hand gently and he continued.

“By the time of the trial, Ijie prosecution’s argument was that Tyson had brought the groceries to the house in the afternoon and had discovered, after talking with Linda, that I would be in surgery until much later that night. Since my wife was a friendly and trusting woman, it was not unlikely that she might have chatted with the delivery boy and mentioned that I would not be home until late. . . . Anyway, according to the prosecutor, Tyson returned after he finished his shift at the supermarket. He climbed the rock wall that surrounded the country club development and walked across the golf course. Then he entered the house, intending to steal Linda’s jewelry and expecting everyone in the family to be asleep. Apparently my wife confronted him and Tyson panicked, killing first Linda and dien the children to ensure that there were no witnesses.

“Despite the fact that nobody saw Tyson return to our neighborhood, I thought the prosecution’s case was extremely persuasive and that the man would be easily convicted. After all, he had no alibi whatsoever for the time period during which the crime was committed. The mud that was found on Tyson’s shoes exactly matched the mud in the creek he would have crossed to reach the back side of the house. He did not show up for work for two days after the murders. In addition, when Tyson was arrested, he was carrying a large amount of cash that he ‘said he won in a poker game.

“During the defense portion of the trial, I really began to have my doubts about the American judicial system. His attorney made the case a racial issue, depicting Carl Tyson as a poor, unfortunate black man who was being railroaded on circumstantial evidence. His lawyer argued emphatically that all Tyson had done on that October day was deliver groceries to my house. Someone else, his attorney said, some unknown maniac, had climbed the Greenbriar fence, stolen the jewelry, and then murdered Linda and the children.

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“The last two days of the trial I became convinced, more from watching the body language of the jury than anything else, that Tyson was going to be acquitted. I went insane with righteous indignation. There was no doubt in my mind that the young man had committed the crime. The thought that he might be set free was intolerable.

“Every day during the trial—which lasted about six weeks—I showed up at the courthouse with my small medical bag. At first the security guards checked the bag each time I entered, but after a while, especially since most of them were sympathetic with my anguish, they just let me pass.

“The weekend before the trial concluded I flew to California, ostensibly to attend a medical seminar but actually to buy a black market shotgun that would fit in my medical bag. As I expected, on the day the verdict was being announced, the guards did not make me open my. bag.

“When the acquittal was announced, there was an uproar in the courtroom. All the black people in the gallery shouted hooray. Carl Tyson and his attorney, a Jewish guy named Irving Bernstein, threw their arms around each other. I was ready to act. I opened my briefcase, quickly assembled the shotgun, jumped over the barrier, and killed them both, one with each barrel.”

Or. Turner took a deep breath and paused. “I have never admitted before, not even to myself, that what I did was wrong. However, sometime during this operation on your friend Mr. Diaba I understood clearly how much my emotional outrage has poisoned my soul for all these years. . . . My violent act of revenge did not return my wife and children to me. Nor did it make me happy, except for that sick animal pleasure 1 felt at. the instant I knew that both Tyson and his attorney were going to die.”

There were now tears of contrition in Dr. Turner’s eyes. He glanced over at Elh’e. “Although I may not be worthy, I do love you, Eliie Wakefield, and very much want to marry you. I hope that you can forgive me for what I did years ago.”