Kirjahaku

This 2008 copyrighted story relates various aspects of a failed execution by lethal injection and the resultant twists. Johnny Lee Childress is a convicted child killer who is a pariah even among his peers on Death Row. After the physician injects Childress with chemicals that should have shut down his breathing and heartbeat, the condemned man slips into a coma. He awakens ten days later a totally different man. He is affable and tells the world that Childress is dead. It seems that while awaiting final judgement, his spirit followed the light trail back to the execution chamber. Jonathon, as he now calls himself because he does not know exactly who he is, argues that he is not the killer and should not be executed. Jonathon becomes an international figure overnight. Eventually he is granted a new trial and is acquitted.

This story is a tale of retribution taken on behalf of a loved one, to a quantum measure. Eddie Veins does the unimaginable, as he systematically hunts down and executes an entire jury over a six-year period. When a journalist for a Chicago newspaper discovers the audacity and gruesome realities associated with Eddie's murderous exploits and notifies the chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department, he sets off a thunderstorm of activity in the Justice Department and the executives sworn to uphold American jurisprudence, as they move to covertly cover up the enormity of Eddie's deeds, realising that the implications of the extermination of an entire jury would send chilling emotions and fears of serving as a juror as part of their civic duty. When the reader believes they have the story figured out, they are shocked to find that they were misled or mistaken in their hypothesis.

This is the sequel to "The Mantis."