"Charles de Lint - Mulengro" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

to, fueled an anger in him that sometimes frightened him with its intensity. This… thing lying in the
alley had once been a man. Someone had worked real hard to make it look like he’d been torn apart by
some kind of animal, but Briggs wasn’t buying it.

“Paddy?”

Briggs looked up at his partner’s call. Will Sandier was a tall, sharp-featured black man who went
through life in a constant state of suppressed tension. It showed in the taut pull of the skin at his temples,
around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, in the birdlike darting of his gaze. He contrasted sharply
with the unimposing figure that Briggs cut—five-eight with a perpetual slouch that made him appear
shorter, dark hair that was prematurely gray at the temples, sorrowful eyes. His suit was rumpled, tie
loose, shoes scuffed. Will, on the other hand, always looked like he’d just left his tailor’s. But the two
men made an effective pair for their strengths augmented each other’s weak points. Briggs was a slow
mover, a deliberate collector of details with little imagination, while Will’s mind moved in intuitive
lunges. Since they’d been paired, their success on cases had reached a departmental high of sixty-seven
percent.

Briggs removed his pipe and thrust it into the breast pocket of his suit coat, stem down, as he moved
closer to his partner. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t a mugging. There was over fifty bucks in his wallet.”

“Animal or man?” Briggs asked, wanting his own feelings confirmed.

Will shook his head. “A doberman might leave a mess like that… but I don’t know. We’re going to have
to wait to see what Cooper comes up with once he’s done the autopsy. Thing is,” he nodded to the
ground, “there’s enough dirt here to hold a track, but Alec didn’t come up with anything we could even
pretend was an animal’s.” Alec MacDonald was with forensics and was standing at the mouth of the
alley waiting for the body to be removed so that he could finish up. “I think we’ve got us a psycho on
our hands. That, or a case of spontaneous mutilation.” Will glanced at his partner, but Briggs didn’t
smile. “Bad juju, Paddy,” he added softly. “All the way.”



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 MULENGRO

Briggs nodded and studied the body again.

“Hodgins wants to know if we’re finished with it,” Will said.

Briggs glanced to where Al Hodgins waited with the medics. A pale green body-bag lay on the stretcher.
Briggs imagined them moving the body and the head coming loose, bouncing down the alleyway with a
wet sound… He grimaced.

“Stan got all the shots we need?” he asked.

Will nodded.

“What about that?” Briggs pointed to a symbol that had been scratched into the dirt near the victim’s