699


   "State your name and occupation for the record."
   Anthony Korizek, thin and tall and wiry, walks through ancient Roman gardens.
   "My name is Thomas Roberts, and I am the medical examiner for district eight in the state of Florida."
   Around him, a murder trial is in progress.
   "You have worked on this case, what is now known as the Korizek case, for how long?"
   Inside, Anthony Korizek steps from a path into an airy hall.  A gray-haired automaton rakes the sand smooth behind him.
   "My office has worked the case from the beginning, yes.
   Anthony looks around, touches a wall.  He presses his forehead against the cool marble.
   "Perhaps you would tell us now what your office's findings have been, Mr. Roberts."
   The scent of oil paint wafts to Anthony, and he walks toward a door at the far end of the hall.
   "Well, we're currently holding the bodies of nine of his victims.  We've had seven more, they've been released to the families.  We found his DNA on all of them--"
   A statue sings to him in broad Greek vowels, but Anthony shifts uncomfortably in his seat, coming aware that the specifics of his crimes are being discussed.
   "DNA?" says the prosecuting attorney.  "Do you mean he sexually molested these people?"
   "No," Anthony whispers.  "I sanctified them."  His lawyer kicks him under the table.
   "No," says the medical examiner.  "He used his own blood to draw a cross on their foreheads."
   Anthony leaves behind his singing statue and turns his full attention on the courtroom.  He smiles.
   "This is his tag, his signature?"
   "That's one of them.  He also removed the hearts.  We found those strung from his ceiling, dried like roses."

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   "It's been three years since your son was convicted--what has your life been like in that time?"
   Anthony lies on a cot in his cell in the Florida State Hospital.  He can hear the television in the hallway, placed for the enjoyment of other inmates.
   "Oh, it's gone back to normal pretty much by now, Larry.  Our daughter is expecting another child any day now, we're happy about that."
   /Never tell me anything now, do you,/ Anthony thinks.  The cracks in the wall form his father's face for a split second.
   "Congratulations to her.  Have you told Anthony, are you allowed to see him?"
   Anthony narrows his eyes, and swings his legs over the side of the cot.
   "We tried to visit him, Larry, we try, but he won't see us."
   A statue in Anthony's mind bursts into flames, and he walks calmly to the bars of his cell.  "He lies," he says to the crazies gathered by the light of the television, not loud enough to be heard.
   "Looking back now, to his childhood, do you think there may have been any signs of what was to come, of what Anthony would do?"
   Anthony snorts.  /As if I would ever allow /him/ to see to what greatness I was trying to rise./
   "Well, it came out later, Larry, I knew nothing about this at the time, but during the trial . . . when he was twelve, between twelve and fourteen, he was collecting roadkill, going out and picking it up off the road--I didn't know this, his mother didn't know--"
    "That is wrong," Anthony says, louder now.
    Andrey, a medium and Jesus-hunter from Russia, looks up at him.  "Yeah?"
    "Yes," Anthony says, eyes narrow and hard.  "I did not pick up road kill.  I picked up stray cats and I sliced their throats so they would not hurt.  I kept their hearts and I sanctified them, I did not hurt them, I never hurt anybody."
    "Hee hee HEEEE," screeches the little guy in the cell across the hall.  "You never had the BALLSSSS to hurt anyone, Tony-man!"
    "I love cats," Anthony murmurs.  He leans against the bars of his cell and for a moment he is again in his childhood bedroom, a kitten purring in his ear.
    On the television, Anthony's father and the interview-man have moved on to his college years.
    "We knew he was into drugs, you know, but we never thought he would do anything /violent/.  I tried to hook him up with a psychiatrist, but he just wouldn't go."
    "Tony-boy, what drugs didja do, huh?!" shrieks the little guy.
    "It's Ahn-t'ny," Anthony says softly.
    "We sent him to live with an aunt in Wisconsin, he even got a job."
    "Please," Anthony says, and turns away from the bars.  "Turn it off."
    "Kept it for a few years, too, he was doing real good . . ."
    Anthony lies down on his cot.  The kitten purrs, warm and soft in his lap.  And then he hears his father's voice, screaming now, bigger and more real than when it came from the television:
    "Get that goddamn filthy thing out of my house, you hear me?  Get your faggot ass outside right now and drown the damn thing!"
    Anthony sighs, and cuddles the kitten close to his chest as he walks, head down, outside.  No reaction, no fighting.  Not anymore.

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