Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

She wished he was here right now. She wanted him to hold her, she wanted him to make love to her, see if that could wipe out the image of Jessica Parris, dehumanized and left like a piece of meat on display in a shabby band shell in a concrete park. Obliterate it from her mind. Tape over it with something good.

She didn’t want to be logical and look at the long run. She wanted them to live together. Hell, if he asked, she’d go to Las Vegas with him right now. Why not just abdicate responsibility, do something for the pure thrill of it? Like getting married to a man you’ve only known for a few months.

The two of them against the world.

“Good thing you’re in New Mexico,” she said to the dark house.

She followed the road back into the desert, the road dipping down into the Agua Verde wash and out again. A quarter-mile to her place. Just where the dirt lane right-angled, there it was, Mi Nidito. It looked like a hacienda in Mexico, white-washed by the moonlight, almost hidden by mature mesquite trees.

Mi Nidito. My little nest. Laura didn’t know who’d named it, spelling it out in Mexican tile by the door. Someone else who had lived here for a while? She saw it as her house, but she knew it wasn’t, that someday she’d have to move on.

Stepping out of the car, she was careful to avoid the cow pies; the ranch cows went where they pleased. She did step on plenty of mesquite bean pods, though, soft, yielding crescents on this hot humid night. The old metal gate creaked as she went through.

Laura was serenaded by cow-like crying—spadefoot toads. She smiled, remembering how her mother had told her that the noise, which always came after a summer storm, came from rabbits who’d lost their homes. Now she knew better, but she loved the sentimentality—the Irishness—of her mother’s story better.

She walked up onto the deep porch and stopped to listen, hoping the bobcat kittens who lived on her roof were back. They hadn’t been around for at least a week.

The place was quiet.

She had it all to herself.

Looking at the cemetery and sky was like peering through a sheet of bright yellow cellophane. Laura knew where she was: the Mexican cemetery on Fort Lowell Road down the street from her parents’ house. The cemetery belonged to los fuertenos, the community of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans which grew up around the abandoned fort on the rich bottomland of the Rillito River. Laura used to walk by here every day on the way to school.

The graveyard was both stark and beautiful, an anthill riddled with plaster and iron crosses, statues, and heaps of flowers both plastic and real. Graves alternated with cactus and creosote bushes.

Julie Marr was standing outside the wire fence by the curve in the road, looking at Laura. From where she was, Laura could see the old car coming. The picture in the paper was black and white, but in this bright yellow world she knew the car was orange over ivory. She knew the make, too, thanks to her experience with the Highway Patrol: a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan. Primer on the rocker panels, a crucifix hanging from the rear-view.

Laura sat up in bed, her pulse hammering in her ears. Her dreams had always been vivid and easily recalled. In recent years, she’d had one recurring dream—going home to show off her DPS Crown Vic to her parents, just a few weeks out of the Academy. It always relieved her to see that they’d come through the months of intensive care, physical therapy, and countless operations with flying colors. Dad didn’t walk so well, and Mom was forgetful. But they’d made it through.

Except it wasn’t true.

Laura’s mind veered back to the dream. She remembered how her parents had freaked out when they heard about Julie Marr on the news. “But for the grace of God, it could have been her” she’d overheard her father say about his only child. Julie’s kidnapping had affected Laura’s mother strangely, leading to an obsession with true crime—the grislier the better. It sent her to a journal-writing group, which she attended faithfully, and a year or so later she started receiving letters with New York postmarks. Laura’s mom never told her what was in them, but she guessed they were rejection letters. Maybe writing about crime was Alice Cardinal’s way of facing her fears.

The car—the 1955 Bel Air—had been stolen specifically for the purpose of abducting Julie Marr on that terrible spring day in 1987. Julie had never been found, but there had been blood evidence in the car.

Lots of it. That didn’t show up in black and white either.

She got on the road early the next morning. The faded moon hung in a clear indigo sky as she drove off the ranch and through the little town of Vail, over the railroad tracks and onto the freeway going east toward Bisbee. Ahead, there was a blush over the far mountains. Julie Marr’s death faded from her mind like an old photograph in a scrapbook.

15

OFFICER NOONE INVESTIGATES

Randall Noone—he hated the name “Randy”; people might as well just go ahead and call him “Horny”—parked a little way down and walked up to the turnout on West Boulevard. He’d just started his shift and wanted to check on the tire tracks and see if the same vehicle had come back. He was sure those tire tracks had something to do with Jessica Parris’s death. Otherwise, why would Laura Cardinal bother to take casts of them?

At seven in the morning, this part of the canyon was still deep in shadow. There was a hushed feeling to the air, which was actually cool for once, thanks to the overnight rain.

His favorite time of day.

Even though he’d enjoyed the thrill of working nights, he never could adjust completely to the night. Working the day shift in Bisbee wasn’t big on excitement, but he enjoyed talking to folks—the place was like Mayberry. He was good at giving speeding tickets, too; he made people feel so good about getting a ticket that they were practically thanking him before he was done. Randall thought that if he’d really wanted excitement, he could have joined up with the sheriff’s department, which had become a war zone in the last few years. With the Feds clamping down on the border crossings in California and Texas, Arizona was a hotbed for illegal aliens. One of his friends in the sheriff’s department had personally discovered three decomposing bodies in the desert just this year, and had nearly been run down during a routine traffic stop when a vanload of illegals jumped out after putting the van into reverse, right at him.

Nope, he liked Mayberry just fine. Especially with the baby on the way. He and Marcie had picked out the name already: Justin. A good strong name.

The only bad thing about days—Heather Duffy was on days, too.

The Duffy trouble began when his wife had a cold and couldn’t make it to the year-end party. After downing five Tabasco shooters, he’d ended up making out with Duffy, and she’d never let him forget it. She sank her teeth into him like a gila monster. When one of them clamped onto your fingers, you might as well get used to having a new clothing accessory.

He reached the yellow tape and looked at the area. He’d made a mental note of exactly how it had looked the night before and was happy to see that the area had not been disturbed.

Glancing back at the Parris house, he said a brief prayer. Man, that was tough—imagine losing your kid like that. The chief had mentioned a possible Internet connection. That was bad stuff, the way some freak with a computer could reach right into your house and lure your kid right out the front door. When Justin grew up, he’d have to watch him like a hawk. He’d get AOL. They had safeguards for stuff just like that.

He walked across the road to look at the other turnout. A raven flew over, making a nut-cracking noise deep in its throat.