"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 319 - Murder on Main Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

radio off.

He squatted down on his heels, and only then when vertigo made his head swim, did he remember about
the blow on his head. He said, "Mary, look at my head. Is the skin broken?"

Aghast, she looked at a lump the size of a robin's egg. She said, "What happened?"

"I don't quite know. I got out of the car to come in and talk to Tom for a while, and as I stepped out of
the car, something hit me. That's all. As I got up, I don't think I was really out, I saw someone run
away... but he was far away by then. Too far to chase."

She looked at his face. "Doc, that must have been the one who killed my Tom! Could you see who it
was?"

Dubiously shaking his head, the doctor said, "It was just a shape in the dark. A darker shape against
darkness. I think it was a man, but that's just a guess. A woman in slacks would have made the same
silhouette. He looked down at the face of the man who would never argue politics with him again. He
said, "Mary, go next door and visit with the Jasons."

She turned to obey his suggestion. Then swiveling slowly back, she looked at the doctor's seamed heavy
red face. "You don't think..."

She could see the same thought express itself on his face. "Mary... that nutty kid! Jimmy... he wouldn't...
he was given a D. D., wasn't he?" the doctor said.

"He was a Section Eight, or that's what Tommy called it."

"The Army thought he was psycho. Mary, call the sheriff. Get him up here and then go over to Kitty
Randall's and wait there. I'll pick you up later."

She went to the door. From there she said, "You know... there's one thing I don't understand."

He looked up, the futile stethoscope hanging from his ears. He pulled one earprong out. "What?"

"The radio said that there was likely to be a storm later on."

"Umm. It feels as if it were going to rain," the doctor said, absent-mindedly.

"You don't understand. I locked all the doors and windows. Ever since that time that Jimmy Jason scared
me peering in through the window at night, Thomas put heavy burglar-proof locks on all the windows and
doors."

"Hmmm."

"They're still all locked, doctor." The woman's grief torn face looked more haggard as fear made itself
manifest.

"Are you sure? Have you checked?"

She shook her head. "I looked all around this floor. I didn't go upstairs."