【“同”声传译·第14期】连载:西雅图最勇敢的女人(三,完结篇)

接上期: 【“同”声传译·第13期】连载:西雅图最勇敢的女人(二)

男人叫道:“别动!”
巴斯的爱人此刻处于一个更危险的位置,正遭受着蹂躏。她也对巴斯说道,别这样,别这样。
巴斯放弃了拿到刀的企图。男人说:“我知道你们想报警,所有人都这样。但我会走得远远的。我向来如此。”
“我们也许不会的。”巴斯的爱人对他说。
“可能你不会,”男人说。他将目光转向巴斯:“但她会的。”
男人的暴行开始变得更为残忍,情况开始超出巴斯的爱人最恐怖的想象。她感到自己会被撕成两半。她想:“他不会用刀杀我,但我也会被他蹂躏而死的。”
接着她便听到巴斯的声音:“为什么用刀捅我!为什么用刀捅我!”
男人对巴斯说:“闭嘴,不然我就杀掉你的女朋友。”
他把两个女人带到另一间房间,从他扔在床上的牛仔裤兜里掏出另一把刀。
男人一直告诉她们的谎言,巴斯的爱人一直告诉自己的谎言——这个男人只是为了发泄自己的肉欲,而不会伤害她们的谎言——彻底破灭了。“那时我才明白他会杀了我们,”巴斯的爱人对法庭里的人们讲到,“我才明白。他的眼神变得不一样了,没有恐惧,没有愤怒,什么也没有。”
男人逼她们回到了卧室。她们向他哀求着,搜肠刮肚地想着应该对他说什么。她们告诉男人自己是一家非盈利机构的董事,专门帮助无家可归的人——这的确是事实。男人没有回答。他用两个膝盖将她们各自死死压在床上躺着,两只手里各握着一把刀。
接下来听到的,便是巴斯的声音:“你刺中了。你刺中了。你刺中了。”巴斯已被男人刺中了心脏。
“我当时想,‘不!不!我们本来要离开的,我们本来要走的,她不能死!’”
男人对巴斯的爱人也猛砍猛戳。“他就这样一刀刀地切着,我感到血在往外流。有些地方血直接喷涌而出。我想,我完了。他已经切开了我的喉咙,我不可能活下去了。我完了。”
“接下来我记得的便是他换成了戳的动作。”
两个女人都举起双手想把男人推开。但巴斯的爱人意识到,她越是挣扎,脖子上的血就涌出得更厉害。
“哪种感觉真是奇怪,一点都不痛。血从身体里涌出,却没有什么感觉。”她在法庭上讲道。
她想:“我会就这样死了。”当时的感觉,她说,“一时非常平静。”
“特蕾莎跟我讲的天堂,也许真的存在。也许这样也好。”
她停止了反抗,彻底放松下来。

“我突然感到一股力量涌了上来。”
巴斯连推带踢把男人掀下了床。
“我喊着:‘制住他!’”
男人一拳打在巴斯的脸上。(后来的尸检发现巴斯的三颗下牙被打碎并被推了进去。)巴斯抓住了床头桌。
“我看见她抓住了那个小小的金属桌,似乎在用来把他往后推。”
发生了什么已经不重要了。再也没有希望可言。现在只有反抗或者逃跑,只有杀戮或被杀。巴斯把床头桌扔出了窗外,从玻璃破碎的窗口挣扎而出,掉在了窗外的地上,站了起来,用尽最大力气向街上跑。“她一开始奔跑,就立刻倒下了。”
巴斯的爱人和男人依然站在卧室里,他们互相对视了一眼。
他跑出了房间。
她跑向了前门。
“我打不开门,因为我的手上的血太多了。”她告诉法庭。终于,她打开了前门,跑向街对面的邻居,跑过此刻正躺在南罗斯街上的爱人——因为此时她们两个都需要帮助,因为此时她们似乎没多少时间了。“我只知道能跑多快跑多快。”巴斯的爱人告诉法庭。她全身赤裸着——她们俩都一丝不挂——跑到了邻居的前门。
“我用尽最大力气敲门。”她说道。此时,她看见自己一条手臂皮开肉绽。她甚至不记得那里被刀刺过。她的手掌在门上留下一个个形状完整的血掌印。
邻居却不在家里。
“我只好转过头来叫道:‘救救我们!救救我们!’”

一片漠然的寂静。呼叫没有任何回应。暴徒趁着夜色逃走了。没有任何人制止他的暴行。文明没有阻止这一切的发生,文明,甚至不知道这一切的发生,只在一切都发生后,才回过神来,迟钝地向两个女人伸出无力的援手。
巴斯的爱人看见一个年轻的西班牙男子向她们跑来,一个年轻的女人在她爱人身旁俯下了身子,附近的孩子们赶来帮忙。有人脱下了汗衫交给巴斯的爱人。“我拿起她的汗衫遮住了脖子以下的身体。”她说。她让一个年轻男子用手机给她的母亲打了个电话,告诉母亲,自己爱她。“接下来我能记得的事,就是一个警察走来,有些突兀地让我别再叫喊。”警官问道,歹徒跑了吗?是从哪条路跑的?他需要保证片区的安全,以便此刻穿着蓝罩衣戴着白手套在街区等待的消防员能够赶过来帮忙。“他们”——消防员——“朝我走来,却没去她的身边。我喊着,‘去帮她!去帮她!’其他的消防员和医生朝她去了,但已经太晚了。”

接下去,警犬队将会出动追踪凶犯。急诊医生将会为巴斯的爱人处理伤口并进行取证。顾及她的情况,医生会暂时向她隐瞒巴斯已经去世的消息。
验尸官会检查巴斯的遗体。取证室会处理犯罪现场的证据:留在梳妆台和浴缸的指纹,地上一张纸上一个血淋淋的脚印,从两个女人身体上和体内提取的DNA。所有的证据都会指向卡勒布。
有一天,巴斯的爱人会坐在圣路易斯一家密西西比河边的餐吧里——这是她最喜欢的地方之一——从侦察员德娜·达菲打来的电话里得知凶手落网的消息。精神病学家将会证明他有完全行为能力,国王郡的检察官们将会致力于让他受到终身监禁的判决——他们再熟悉不过,在这次惨案发生前的16个月中,卡勒布怎样一次次地被抓获,而华盛顿州的精神健康和刑事司法部门却又怎样一次次地让其逃脱罪责。法官和陪审团将会各就其位。卡勒布将会被指派律师,他们会暂时采取“全面否认”(general denial,在一些司法系统中,原告所提出的各种主张,没有受到被告专门进行否认的,全部视为被告接受。为了避免这种情况,被告一开始可以对原告所有主张采取“general denial”的态度。译者注)的态度——这场审判是为了维护文明而做出的努力,即便向文明挑衅的人也不应被这努力抛弃。也正因如此,所有人将会为审判的公平而竭尽全力。
而她,西雅图最勇敢的女人,将会现身法庭,再次体验并讲述那个夜晚的故事,亲身作证,将自己的伤痛公之于众——只为了公正的希望。

但今夜,在南罗斯街,在这种种努力被付出之前,消防员还在想方设法让巴斯的爱人停止嘶喊,坐起来。但她做不到。在今夜的一切发生后,她没有办法做到。
她能隐隐猜到巴斯的结果。但她仍不依不饶地向着夜空嘶喊:“我爱你,特蕾莎!加油!加油!加油!”——即使巴斯再也听不到她的声音,但有人也许能听到。

2011年7月1日,法庭判决以赛亚·卡勒布各项受指控的罪名均成立——有预谋的恶性一级谋杀(杀害特蕾莎·巴斯),重罪谋杀(杀害特蕾莎·巴斯),有预谋的谋杀企图(企图杀害巴斯的爱人),一级强奸(强奸巴斯的爱人),一级非法入侵(在凌晨时间从打开的窗户进入受害者的住宅)。卡勒布最终被判处终身监禁,不得假释。
判决下达后,卡勒布的辩护律师之一拉蒙娜·布兰德斯如此评价巴斯的爱人:“在我14年的律师生涯中,她是我见过的最好的证人。”

He said: “Don’t dothat! Don’t do that!”
Butz’s partner, who wasbeing raped at that moment, and was in a more vulnerable position, also said toButz: “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”
Butz stopped trying to getthe knife. The man said: “I know you’re going to call the police. They alldo. But I’m going to be long gone. I always am.”
"Maybe we won’t,"Butz’s partner told him.
“Well, you mightnot,” he said.
Then he looked at Butz:“But she will.”
The attacks became moresadistic. Things began to happen that were beyond the worst imagining of Butz’spartner. She felt like she was going to be ripped in half. She thought:“He’s not going to kill me with a knife, but he’s going to kill me thisway.”
Then she heard Butz say:“Why are you cutting me? Why are you cutting me?”
The man said to Butz:“Shut up, or I’m going to kill your girlfriend.”
He took the women intoanother room in the house, where he pulled another knife out of a pair of jeanshe’d left on a guest bed.
The story he had beentelling them, the story Butz’s partner had been telling herself, the story thathe just wanted sex and was not going to hurt them, now completely shattered.“In that moment I just knew he was going to kill us,” Butz’s partnertold the court. “I just knew. There was something different in his gaze.There was this kind of looking. I didn’t feel fear from him, I didn’t feelanger from him, I just felt this nothing.”
He made them go back intotheir bedroom. They pleaded with him, tried to think of what they couldpossibly say. They told him they were on the board of a nonprofit that helpshomeless people, which was true. He didn’t respond. They were back on the bed,on their backs, one of his knees on each of them, pinning them down, a knife ineach of his hands.
The next thing she heardwas Butz saying: “You got me. You got me. You got me.” He had stabbedButz in the heart.
“I remember thinking,‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. We were supposed to get to leave. We were supposedto get to go. She can’t be dying.’”
The man was slashing and stabbingButz’s partner, too.
“He just cut, cut,cut, cut, and I remember just feeling the blood come down, some of the bloodjust spurting up and out. And I remember thinking, ‘This is it. There’s no wayI can have my throat slit and live. There’s no way. There’s just no way.’
“The next thing Iremember him doing was switching his hand from a cutting motion to a stabbingmotion.”
Each of the women had theirhands up, trying to push him off. Butz’s partner realized, though, that themore she struggled, the more blood gushed out of her neck.
“It’s the weirdestthing. You don’t hurt. Blood’s spurting out of you, but you don’t feelanything,” she told the court.
She thought: “This ishow I’m going to die.”
It was, she said,“sort of a moment of peace.”
She thought: “Maybewhat Teresa tells me about heaven is true. Maybe it will be okay.”
She stopped fighting andreleased.
“The next thing I felt was just thispowerful surge of energy.”
Butz had pushed and kickedthe man off of the bed.
“I remember screaming:‘Get him!’”
He punched Butz in theface. (An autopsy later showed her three bottom teeth broken and pushed back.)Butz grabbed the nightstand.
“I saw her holdingthat metal table, that little teeny tiny table. She kind of pushed him backwith it.”
No stories matteredanymore. No hopes. No promises. It was now fight or flight in that room, killor be killed. Butz threw the table through the window. She pushed herselfthrough the jagged glass, fell to the ground outside, got up, sprinted to thecurb, ran into the street. Then, her partner said, “As quickly as shestarted running, she just fell straight back.”
The man and Butz’s partnerwere still standing there in the bedroom, and they looked at each other.
He ran out of the room.
She ran to the front door.
“I remember I couldn’tget the front door open because my hands were too bloody,” she told thecourt. Eventually, she did get it open and she ran to the neighbors across thestreet, ran past her partner lying on her back on South Rose Street, becauseboth of them needed he
lp right now, because itseemed like they didn’t have much time. “Just ran as fast as Icould,” Butz’s partner told the court. She was naked. They were bothnaked. She reached the neighbors’ front door.
“I bang on the door ashard as I can,” she said. As she did, she noticed the skin open on one ofher arms, muscle popping through. She didn’t even remember being stabbed there.Her flat palms left perfect bloody prints on the door. The neighbors weren’thome.
“So I just turn aroundand start screaming: ‘Help us! Help us!’”
Indifferent silence. Unansweredscreams. A murderer and rapist running away through the night. Crueltyunchecked.
And then civilization,which did not stop this from happening, which did not even know this washappening, slowly returned, slowly wrapped itself back around the women, layerby insufficient layer.
Butz’s partner saw a youngHispanic man running toward them. “He just ran,” she told the court.She saw a young woman leaning over her partner. Neighborhood kids, up late on awarm night, were coming to help. One of them took off a sweatshirt and gave itto Butz’s partner. “I just grabbed her sweatshirt and held it up to myneck,” she said. She told a young man to call her mom on his cell phoneand tell her she loved her. “And the next thing I remember at this pointis an officer coming up to me and kind of abruptly telling me to stopscreaming.” The officer asked: Is the bad guy gone? Which way did he go?He needed to secure the area before the firemen, waiting down the block, couldrush in, blue smocked and white gloved, and try and help whomever they could.“I remember they came to me”—the firemen—“and they didn’t go toher, and I was like, ‘Go to her! Go to her!’” Other firemen and medicswould go to Butz, but it would be too late.
The canine unit would cometo track the man’s scent. An emergency room physician would swab Butz’s partnerfor evidence and, for a time, with her best interests in mind, withhold fromher the information that Butz had been killed. The coroner would autopsy Butz’sbody. The crime lab would process the evidence: fingerprints on the dresser andthe bathtub, a bloody footprint on a piece of paper that had been on the floor,DNA in and on the bodies of the two women. Detectives would run down leads, matchthe prints and DNA directly to Kalebu.
One of the detectives, awoman named Dana Duffey, would call one day while Butz’s partner sat in St.Louis at one of Butz’s favorite places, a bar and restaurant overlooking theMississippi River. Detective Duffey would tell her: “We have him.”(And—no joke—fireworks would go off right at that moment across the river, anaccident on the part of some worker preparing for a later show.) Statepsychiatrists would evaluate Kalebu and declare him competent. King County prosecutors,well aware that Kalebu had been repeatedly held—and repeatedly released—by thestate’s mental health and criminal justice systems in the 16 months before theSouth Park attacks, would prepare to try to put him away for life this time.Public defense attorneys would prepare his defense, which currently is"general denial.” A judge would be assigned, a jury selected. Thecomponent pieces of this effort to be civilized even toward those accused ofdefying the demands of civilization, this attempt at a fair trial, would fallinto place.
And then she—the bravestwoman in Seattle—would testify at this trial, relive and recount it all, bearwitness and bare her pain for the hope of justice.
Before all of this, though,the firemen would try to get Butz’s partner to sit down on South Rose Street,to stop her screaming. But she would not sit down and stop her screaming. Notafter what happened. Not after all that silence. Not anymore.

A part of her knew Butz’sfate. Still, she shouted into the night. Even if Butz couldn’t hear heranymore, maybe someone would hear: “I love you, Teresa! Fight! Fight!Fight! Fight! Fight!” 此楼先占