Thicker Than Blood - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги онлайн TXT) 📗

I held the gun by my face, pressed my back up against the wall, and listened. The front door opened and slammed shut. High heels clicked against the floor, and I heard her drop her briefcase. I could tell that she walked through the living room, and I prayed she'd go down the hallway, but instead she stepped into the kitchen. My chest raced furiously up and down.

The answering machine came on, and as the messages played, she opened the fridge. Her back is turned, I thought. Go now. I didn't move. The refrigerator door shut, and she walked to the kitchen sink. She turned on the water, and I thought again, her back is turned. Go.

I stepped out of the dining room into the threshold and pointed the gun at her back. She was bent over the sink trying to scrub something off her hands.

"Don't move!" I shouted. She gasped. Slowly, she craned her neck, trying to see me.

"Turn back around!" I said. "You wanna die?"

"Oh God!" she cried. "Please, no."

"Shut up!" I screamed as she hunched over into the sink. "Turn off the water," I said.

She cut it off, and aside from her quiet sobbing, the house was silent again. My voice lowered, I said, "If you look at me, I'll kill you. You got towels in the kitchen?"

"Yes."

"Blindfold yourself."

She opened a cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a large, white dishcloth. She opened it, rolled it up, and then tied it around the back of her head.

"Back slowly towards me," I said. When she was several feet away, I said, "Stop." I made sure the cloth covered her eyes and cinched the blindfold tighter.

"You can have whatever you want…"

"Walk to the study. I'll guide you."

She stumbled through the living room, and I pushed her through the narrow doorway. When we were inside, I shut the door and knocked her to the floor, at the foot of a tall bookshelf.

"On your stomach," I said.

Immediately she obeyed, remarkably calm, as if she'd done this before.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mary Parker."

"Do you work at the university?"

"No, just my husband. I'm a lawyer."

"You're married to David Parker?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Why?"

I leaned down and put the gun to her temple.

"Six years," she said.

"That's impossible."

"I swear."

"When does he get home? I'll know if you lie to me, Mary."

"After seven. He has a meeting tonight."

"You expecting company?"

"No."

"Why's the fucking table set?"

"It always is. I swear."

"I'll kill anyone who shows up besides your husband."

"No one else is coming," she said, her voice begging me to believe her. "I promise."

"You have children?" I asked.

"No."

"Does your husband expect you to be home?"

"Yes." I sat down on the floor, breathing easily again, resisting the exhilaration.

"What do you want?" Mary asked, her voice so calm it unnerved me.

I took the radio from my fanny pack and spoke into the receiver. "Fred Flintstone," I said. "Complications. Safe now. Bring it home."

"Roger that, Wilma," the radio squeaked.

"How well do you know your husband?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You've heard of the Heart Surgeon?"

"You're not…"

"No. David Parker is."

"There's no way," she said. "Are you FBI?"

"I know a hell of a lot more than the FBI. You know the name Orson Thomas?" I asked, but she didn't answer. "Have you heard the name?" I asked again.

"Yes." She trembled. Her back heaved heavily up and down against the floor as she panted like a dog, nearly out of breath.

"How do you know him?" I asked.

"He taught at the university, but he left, he disappeared. I don't know where."

Rising to my feet, I walked towards her. "You're protecting your husband."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she whined.

"Quit fucking with me!" I shouted. I knelt down on the floor, grabbed her throat, and held the gun to her head. "You think this is a joke? You know I'll kill you if you lie to me, so why protect him? You know what your husband does to people? He takes them to a cabin. He tortures them. He cuts their fucking hearts out, you stupid bitch, and you want me to believe you don't know this? That you don't have a part in it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she cried.

"Shut up!" I screamed, grabbing her hair and shaking her head. I rolled her over on her back and ripped the blindfold from her face. "Your husband doesn't look like this?!" I shouted.

"Orson." Her face turned white. "Why are you doing this to me? What are…"

"I'm not your husband, Mary. I'm his brother, and I'm gonna kill him, because he's a monster. You want to protect him, what does that make you?"

"I don't know what you're…"

"Turn over on your stomach."

"Why?"

"Do it or I'll kill you."

She turned over and lay flat on her belly. I held the gun by its short muzzle and crushed the back of her head with the hard, metallic handle. She let out a moaning gasp and was still.

My first thought was that she might bleed onto the floor, so I took the blindfold and pressed it into the back of her head. Only several drops of blood seeped through the white cloth, and I applied pressure until the bleeding stopped altogether.

A car pulled into the driveway, and I ran to the window. Walter's Cadillac backed in. He got out, opened the trunk, and returned to the driver's seat. I put the gun in my fanny pack and lifted Mary from the floor. Slinging her over my shoulder, I walked to the front door. By my watch, it was 5:15, and as I opened the door, I saw that the sky had deepened into a dark blue evening. Through the black-silhouetted trees, the first stars shined in the cold, night air.

I rushed down the steps, along the walkway, and stopped at the rear of the Cadillac. Setting Mary in the trunk, I slammed it shut and ran to Walter's lowered window.

"Who the hell is that?" he asked.

"His wife," I said. "I never thought he'd be married."

"Is she dead?"

"No. Get out of here. I'll call when he gets home. She said seven o'clock."

"I don't like this, Andy," he said. "We can't kill her. She might not know."

"She knows," I said. "Now's not the time. When the police come looking for them, the neighbors are gonna remember your car sitting in the driveway, so go. I'll call you."

Walter eased down onto the street, and I walked calmly back towards the house. Inside, I locked the front door and picked up the bloody dishtowel in the study. I'd clean up the glass before Orson came. I wanted there to be no trace of a struggle, no evidence that these people had been abducted save the simple fact they could not be found.

# # #

I tapped on the ivory keys and waited. The Steinway horribly out of tune, the notes hung awkwardly in the still air. I'd turned on three living room lamps so the house would look warm and inhabited, but that had been two and a half hours ago. Now it was several minutes past eight o'clock, dark outside, and still no sign of Orson.

I'd walked through the entire house--the upstairs, the first floor hallway and den, even the basement. Nothing here suggested Orson's taste for violence. I'd found no trophies, no hearts or photographs, not even a newspaper clipping concerning the Heart Surgeon. There weren't even indirect links such as horror novels, videos, or paintings. (In Orson's room in Wyoming, a William Blake print of The Simoniac Pope hung above his bed--a pen and watercolor of souls being tortured in hell). I couldn't understand it. I'd expected Orson to live alone, surrounded by the paraphernalia of his hobby. David Parker now seemed to be more than just a safe name. He was a different lifestyle, one separated, almost completely, from Orson Thomas.