"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

But, wait, we had a body to look at, a crime to solve, all the sticky personal stuff
could wait. Had to wait. Yeah, sure.
The body was a pale glimpse of flesh between two Dumpsters in the parking lot.
There was something almost ghostlike about that shining bit of flesh, like, if I
blinked, it would vanish into the October night. Maybe it was the time of year, or the
wedding scene I’d just left, but there was something unnerving about the way she’d
been left. They’d stuffed the body behind the Dumpsters to hide it, then the black
wool coat she wore had been opened around her almost naked body, so that you
caught that gleam of pale flesh in the bright halogen lights of the parking lot. Why
hide her, then do something to draw such attention to her? It made no sense. Of
course, it may have made perfect sense to the people who killed her. Maybe.
I stood there, tugging my leather jacket around me. It wasn’t that cold. Cold
enough for the jacket, but not enough to put the lining in it. I had my hands plunged
into the pockets, the zipper all the way up, my shoulders hunched. But leather
couldn’t help against the cold I was fighting. I stared at that pallid glimpse of death,
and felt nothing. Nothing. Not pity. Not sickness. Nothing. Somehow that bothered
me more than the woman being dead.
I made myself move forward. Made myself go see what there was to see and
leave my worries about my moral decay for another time. Business, first.
I had to come to the far end of the right-hand Dumpster to see the spill of her
yellow hair, like a bright exclamation point on the black pavement. Staring down at
her, I could see how tiny she was. My size, or smaller. She lay on her back, the coat
spread under her, still securely on her arms. But the cloth had been spread wide,
folded under on the side nearest the parked cars, so that she could be seen by a
customer walking out to his car. Her hair, too, had been pulled back, combed out. If
she’d been taller, that, too, would have been visible from the parking lot—just a peek
of bright yellow around the Dumpster. I looked down the line of her body and found
the reason that someone had thought she was taller—clear plastic stilettos, at least
five inches high. Lying down she lost the height. Her head had been pressed to the
right, exposing bite marks on her long neck. Vampire bite marks.
On the mound of her small breast was another pair of bite marks, with two thin
lines of blood trickling from them. There was no blood at the neck wound. I was
going to have to move the Dumpsters to get back there. I was also going to have to
move the body around to look for more bite marks, more signs of violence. There’d
been a time when the police only called me in after all the other experts had finished
with a scene, but that was a while ago. I had to make sure I didn’t fuck up the scene.
Which meant I needed to find the man in charge.
Lt. Rudolph Storr wasn’t hard to spot. He’s 6’8” and built like pro wrestlers used
to be built before they all started looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dolph was in
shape, but he didn’t go for the weight lifting. He didn’t have time. Too many crimes
to solve. His black hair was cut so short it left his ears exposed and somehow
stranded on the sides of his head. Which always meant he’d gotten a haircut,
recently. He always had it cut shorter than he liked it, so it would be longer between
haircuts. His tan trench coat was perfectly pressed. His shoes shined in the parking
lot lights. He didn’t care what he looked like, as long as he was neat and tidy. Dolph
was all about the neat and tidy. I think it was one of the reasons that murder pissed
him off, it was always so messy.
I nodded at the uniformed policeman whose only job seemed to be watching the
body and making sure it didn’t get messed with by anyone that wasn’t allowed to
touch it. He nodded back and went back to staring at the corpse. Something about