"Stephen Goldin - Herds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

sure of its accuracy. Then he let her go out to type it up.

While she was doing that, he sat down beh ;nd his desk and
willed his hands to stop shaking. The thought that he was unfit
for his job would not leave his mind. He'd been a fine cop thirty
years ago, but things had been a lot simpler then. Had time
passed him by permanently, leving him in this backwater with
only a pretense left to him? Was the only reason he'd been able to
succeed as a sheriff because there really wasn't anything
chal-lenging to do in this small coastal county? And. now that
the present seemed to be catching up with him at last, would he
be able to face it as he should?

Carroll came in with a tvped copy and a carbon for his
approval before she made duplicates. Maschen fussed over it,
taking an inordinate amount of time to read the entire
document. When he could postpone the inevitable no longer, he
initialed it and gave her back the carbon to make copies.
Clearing his throat several times, he emerged from his office.

He was greeted by the popping of flashbulbs, which blinded
him temporarily as he tried to reach the microphones. He
groped his way along until he found them. "I have an official
statement to make at this time," he said. He looked at the paper
in his hands and could hardly see the words because of all the
blue dots that seemed fixed in front of his eyes. Hesitatingly, he
made his way through the speech. He described the
circumstances of the body's discovery and the rather grisly state
of the body itself. He mentioned the phrase written on the wall,
but did not mention Simpson's hypothesis about the murderer's
timetable. He concluded by saying, "Copies of this statement will
be made available to anyone who wants one."

"Do you have any suspects yet?" one reporter shot at him.

"Why, uh, no, it's too soon to know, we're still assimilating the
data."

"In view of the fact that your office is so small, do you plan to
ask for state or federal help in solving this case?" That question
from a different part of the room.

Maschen suddenly felt the pressure on him. The TV cameras
were staring at him with one large, unblinking eye apiece. He
was acutely aware that he was wearing a dirty, unpressed
uniform and that he hadn't shaved that morning. Was that the
type of image that was going to go out across the country? A
slovenly, unkempt hick who can't handle his own county when
something really bad happens? "So far," he said deliberately,
"the indications are that the solution to this crime is well within