Odd Thomas Series Books 1-5. Dean Koontz
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Название: Odd Thomas Series Books 1-5
Автор: Dean Koontz
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780007518746
isbn:
The knob turned without resistance. The door opened inward.
Someone had left a light on.
I am diligent about conserving electricity. The cost may be only pennies, but a short-order cook who hopes to marry cannot afford to leave lights burning or music playing for the pleasure of the spiders and spirits that might visit his quarters in his absence.
With the door open wide, the small bathroom would offer nowhere for an intruder to hide except in the bathtub, behind the closed shower curtain.
I always close the curtain after taking a shower, because if I left it drawn to one side, it would not dry properly in that poorly vented space. Mildew would at once set up housekeeping in the damp folds.
Since I’d left Tuesday morning, someone had pulled the curtain aside. That person or another was at this moment facedown in the bathtub.
He appeared to have fallen into the tub or to have been tumbled there as a dead weight. No living person would lie in such an awkward position, face pressed to the drain, his right arm twisted behind his body at a torturous angle that suggested a dislocated shoulder or even a torn rotator cuff.
The fingers of the exposed, pale hand were curled into a rigid claw. They did not twitch; neither did they tremble.
Along the far rim of the tub, a thin smear of blood had dried on the porcelain.
When blood is spilled in quantity, you can smell it: This is not a foul odor when fresh, but subtle and crisp and terrifying. I couldn’t detect the faintest scent of it here.
A glistening spill of liquid soap on the tile counter around the sink and thick soap scum in the bowl suggested that the killer had washed his hands vigorously after the deed, perhaps to scrub away blood or traces of incriminating gunpowder.
After drying, he had tossed the hand towel into the tub. It covered the back of the victim’s head.
Without conscious intent, I had backed out of the bathroom. I stood just beyond the open door.
My heart played an inappropriate rhythm for the melody of the night bird.
I glanced toward the gun on the carpet, just inside the front door. My instinctive reluctance to touch the weapon had proven to be wise, although I still didn’t grasp the full meaning of what had transpired here.
My cell phone lay on the breakfast counter, and the apartment phone was on the nightstand beside my bed. I considered those whom I should call and those I could call. None of my options appealed to me.
To better understand the situation, I needed to see the face of the corpse.
I returned to the bathroom. I bent over the tub. Avoiding the hooked and twisted fingers, I clutched handfuls of his clothing and, with some struggle, wrestled the dead man onto his side, and then onto his back.
The towel slid off his face.
Still a washed-out gray but devoid now of their characteristic eerie amusement, Bob Robertson’s eyes were more sharply focused in death than in life. His gaze fixed intently on a distant vision, as though in the final instant of existence, he had glimpsed something more startling and far more terrifying than just the face of his killer.
FOR A MOMENT I EXPECTED FUNGUS MAN to blink, to grin, to grab me and drag me into the tub with him, to savage me with those teeth that had served him so well during his gluttony at the counter in the Pico Mundo Grille.
His unexpected death left me with no immediate monster, with my plan derailed and my purpose in doubt. I had assumed that he was the maniacal gunman who shot the murdered people in my recurring dream, not merely another victim. With Robertson dead, this labyrinth had no Minotaur for me to track down and slay.
He had been shot once in the chest at such close range that the muzzle of the gun might have been pressed against him. His shirt bore the gray-brown flare of a scorch mark.
Because the heart had stopped functioning in an instant, little blood had escaped the body.
Again I retreated from the bathroom.
I almost pulled the door shut. Then I had the strange notion that behind the closed door, in spite of his torn heart, Robertson would rise quietly from the tub and stand in wait, taking me by surprise when I returned.
He was stone dead, and I knew that he was dead, and yet such irrational worries tied knots in my nerves.
Leaving the bathroom door open, I stepped to the kitchen sink and washed my hands. After drying them on paper towels, I almost washed them again.
Although I had touched only Robertson’s clothes, I imagined that my hands smelled of death.
Lifting the receiver from the wall phone, I unintentionally rattled it against the cradle, almost dropped it. My hands were shaking.
I listened to the dial tone.
I knew Chief Porter’s number. I didn’t need to look it up.
Finally I racked the phone again without entering a single digit on the keypad.
Circumstances had altered my cozy relationship with the chief. A dead man awaited discovery in my apartment. The gun that had killed him was here, as well.
Earlier I had reported an unsettling encounter with the victim at St. Bartholomew’s. And the chief knew that I had illegally entered Robertson’s house on Tuesday afternoon and had thereby given the man reason to confront me.
If this pistol was registered to Robertson, the most obvious assumption on the part of the police would be that he had come here to demand to know what I’d been doing in his house and perhaps to threaten me. They would assume that we had argued, that the argument had led to a struggle, and that I had shot him with his own gun in self-defense.
They wouldn’t charge me with murder or with manslaughter. They probably wouldn’t even take me into custody for questioning.
If the pistol wasn’t registered to Robertson, however, I’d be as stuck as a rat on a glue-board trap.
Wyatt Porter knew me too well to believe that I could kill a man in cold blood, when my life was not at risk. As the chief, he set the policies for the department and made important procedural decisions, but he wasn’t the only cop on the force. Others would not be so quick to declare me innocent under questionable circumstances, and if for no reason but appearances, the chief might have to park me in a cell for a day, until he could find a way to resolve matters in my favor.
In jail, I would be safe from whatever bloody catastrophe might be descending on Pico Mundo, but I would be in no position to use my gift to prevent the tragedy. I couldn’t escort Viola Peabody and her daughters from their house to the safer refuge of her sister’s СКАЧАТЬ