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

Sylvia Clegg, gloved in latex, started a low-key but thorough search. Her movements were deliberate and efficient. Laura noticed she had a calming effect about her, which was well-appreciated.

Victor said to Lehman, “Mr. Lehman, we’d like to ask you a few questions.” He glanced in the direction of the sunny kitchen. “Why don’t we go in and sit down, while your probation officer looks around.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No sir.”

“Then I’m not answering any questions.”

Victor smiled. “We’d appreciate it if you would. We just want to clear up a couple things.”

“I can’t believe this! I’m calling my lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest. We’re only asking for a little cooperation.”

“You can fuck that." Lehman picked up his cell phone from the kitchen table and turned away from them.

It was a short conversation. When he was through, he closed the phone with a snap and slapped it on the table. “Lawyer’s on his way.”

“Can we at least sit down?” Victor asked him.

“I can’t stop you, can I?”

They sat in the breakfast nook. Lehman leaned against the refrigerator, arms folded.

Victor set his mini-recorder on the table. He spoke into it, giving the time and date and Lehman’s name.

Lehman ignored him, staring straight ahead, his eyes like two holes in his face. She could feel his rage under the surface—he hummed like a powerline.

“Did you know Cary Statler?” Victor asked Lehman.

Lehman didn’t answer. He was in his own zone, his breathing short and rapid. Staring so hard at a spot on the wall, she thought he’d go cross-eyed.

The way he’d tried to bully her …

“When was the last time you saw Statler?” Victor asked.

Lehman transferred his gaze to the ceiling.

“Do you remember where you were the evening Jessica was kidnapped?”

It went on like that for a minute or so before Victor gave up.

Usually he could charm people with his easygoing nature, his sympathetic ear. But Lehman was immune.

Laura looked around the kitchen. Everything was spotless, gleaming. The stove, refrigerator and cooking island were all stainless steel and modern. There was not the usual clutter you’d see on shelves or near the sink; in her house the dishwashing liquid sat next to the sink, but here, the kitchen counter was cleared of everything except a bowl of fruit.

Not much in plain sight.

Buddy leaned in the doorway, looking at her. A self-satisfied smirk on his face. Laura ignored him and concentrated on the kitchen.

Place reminded her of a model home. She thought of the way the bad guy had washed the girl, washed her hair, clipped her nails. This guy was that neat. Would there be trace evidence in the shower? She knew that the probation officer’s search wouldn’t extend there, but if she found something else incriminating, they could get a search warrant.

What would that be? Dress patterns for little girls?

Sylvia poked her head in the doorway. “Can I get in here?”

Lehman shot her a virulent look and launched himself away from the refrigerator like a missile. He went out the kitchen door into his yard, letting the screen door slam behind him. Laura, Victor, and Buddy followed.

Out into the steaming summer heat. Brick patio. Immaculate propane grill. Lehman turned on the hose and began watering the potted plants. The smell of the water mingled with the scent of wet earth.

Laura knew that Clegg could not do a comprehensive search. She’d noticed how Victor had worked certain words into his conversation with Clegg as they’d walked over here. He asked her if she knew how to sew. Mentioned his own mother’s sewing machine. Asked her about actors, too, what she knew about makeup, wigs, dress-up. How as a kid one Halloween he’d gone as Snidely Whiplash, twiddling his big black mustache.

Broad hints. Clegg had gotten it.

Now Clegg spoke through the screen door. “All I have left is the bedroom.”

Laura glanced at her watch. Victor would have to leave soon; he had Cary Statler’s autopsy in Sierra Vista. She wanted to get out of here, too. She needed to go to Tucson to notify Cary’s uncle about the death in person. The man might know already, although the police had not yet given Cary’s name to the press.

She glanced at Lehman.

His intensity scared her. All this time and his anger had not abated. A hard smell to him—could you smell testosterone?—mingling with the smell of water and earth.

This was Victor’s show. Victor’s and Buddy’s.

“I’ve got to go,” she said to no one in particular.

Neither Buddy nor Victor said anything.

Laura let herself out the gate just as a Lexus pulled up to the curb. An ugly little man in an expensive suit emerged, holding a calfskin briefcase.

Lehman’s lawyer.

19

Tucson-Saguaro Auto & Body, near the corner of Palo Verde and 29th Street, was a cinder block building with three roll-up work bays, a parking lot surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain link fence, and a corrugated iron shed that served as the office. The traffic here was a six-lane river of cars and SUVs flowing past a median on which a person dressed like a chicken waved a sign for a fast food place called El Pollo Grande. Every car window was up, the air conditioning going, people with cell phones attached to their ears. All of them isolated from one another in their speeding steel-and-glass capsules.

The chicken looked jaunty, even though he must be smothering from the heat—a real trouper. Laura wondered how much he was paid.

As she stepped onto the curb, she felt that familiar tightening in her stomach whenever she notified people that their loved ones were dead.

She knew what it felt like. The memory was always close at hand, a penance of sorts. A counselor at the University had explained to her the concept of survivor’s guilt. It ran through her head like film: drifting off to sleep, her thoughts on Billy and the fun they’d had in Nogales, turtle soup at La Rocca’s, coming home late and not feeling like going to her parents’ house for dinner. Making love, Billy having to leave because he had to be at work early tomorrow. The stutter of the sprinklers outside the open dorm window. The bedclothes smelling of sex. That Last Happy Day.

Someone knocking on her door. She opens it to two men in suits, who look as if they’ve been lurking in the hallway trying to get their stories straight.

Knowing right then something is wrong.

The older one with the florid complexion clearing his throat—

She walked along the weedy curb to the shed. The heat was like a convection oven. The door to the shed was open and a table fan blew sporadically in her direction. It took her a moment to adjust her eyes to the darkness of the shed after the blinding desert sun.

“Help you?”

The man sat at a metal desk facing the door. Graying ponytail, a red T-shirt washed so many times it had faded to pink. Behind him, a Tecate poster of a sweaty girl with a bare midriff and cutoffs was tacked to the faded wall.

The minute he saw her, his smile faded. She realized that he had been expecting this visit.

“Are you Beau Taylor?”

There was still a hopeful quality to his expression, as if there was a chance that there had been some kind of mistake. Laura remembered going through the same thinking process when detectives Jeff Smith and Frank Entwistle came to her door. It went like this: As long as nothing was said, you were all right. But the moment the words spilled into the air, there was no way to call them back. So the thing was to try and stop those words.

“If it’s about the Coupe de Ville—“

“No sir.” Best to tell him flat out, no ambiguity. “There’s no easy way to tell you this, sir, but your nephew Cary Statler was found in Bisbee yesterday morning, dead.”

His face crumpled. “I thought it was him. The news said they found a body, but they didn’t identify him.”