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

head. It was a circular shape, cut with three slashing lines. Two of them were so close together that the
topmost line ran into the one below it.

Will called the photographer over. “Did you get a shot of that, Stan?”

Stan Miller nodded. “A nice close-up,” he said. He was chewing on a pencil stub and talked around it
rather than removing it.

“What the hell’s it supposed to mean?” Will muttered.

Briggs motioned to the medics that they could collect the body and watched his partner. He could see the
cogs turning under Will’s short Afro, but his face mirrored the bewilderment Briggs knew was on his
own. He and Will moved aside as the medics took the body away. All that remained now were the chalk
outlines of where it had lain and the thickening pools of blood. It never failed to shock Briggs as to how
much blood there was in one human being. There were only about ten pints in a full-grown man, but
when you saw it all spilled out in some alleyway like this, it looked like about ten gallons.

“Hey! Is one of you Briggs?”

Both men turned to see a patrolman standing at the mouth of the alley.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve found you a witness.”




The man’s name was Ralph Cleary and he was a wino. He was in bad shape tonight, hands shaking like

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 MULENGRO

he had palsy, shuffling his feet, staring at the detectives with scared rheumy eyes. He wore a baggy suit
that even the Sally Ann wouldn’t have accepted on a bet. It hung from his sloped shoulders and slender
frame in loose, oversized folds. His face was flushed with alcohol poisoning, blue veins prominent.

“Where’d you find him?” Briggs asked the patrolman.

“Down the street in the park. He was sitting on a bench, just shaking and talking to himself. When I
asked if he’d seen anything, he just started telling me that he ‘didn’t hurt no one.’”

Briggs nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Stick around, would you? I want to talk to you after we’ve had a word
with him.”

“He’s all yours,” the patrolman said, turning Cleary over to them with obvious relief.

Briggs led the frightened man to the unmarked car that he and Will had arrived in. He helped him into
the back seat, then climbed in beside him. Will got into the front and leaned over the seat to look at
them.