"Nancy Kress - Oaths and Miracles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

anyone.

Not ever.

TWO

KOBERT Cavanaugh, FBI Criminal Investigative Division, Organized
Crime and Racketeering Section, looked at the girl seated in front of
him and fought off irritation. It wasn't her fault that he hated
interrogating adolescent girls. And that's what this one was, no matter
what her driver's license said. She was twenty-one like he was an Arab
terrorist. The casinos didn't care. Not as long as they could prove it
was the girl lying about her age and not them knowingly hiring children
to pose half-naked at 2:00 A.M. for vacationing out-of-towners who
thought they were living the glamorous high life.

"Let's go over it one more time, Miss Cassidy."

"Ms.," the female LVPD uniform murmured behind him. Cavanaugh
ignored her. Her presence was obligatory; her political correctness was
not. And as far as Cavanaugh was concerned, this witness was a little
girl.

You're only twenty-nine yourself, he heard Marcy, his
soon-to-be-ex-wife, say inside his head. Cavanaugh ignored Marcy,
who was thirty-five. She was good at logic, even better at external
images, but bad at tuition. She was a great success in corporate
marketing.
"I told you everything I can," Jeanne Cassidy said.

"I know. But I want to be sure I have it all."

"I'm so tired," the girl said, which Cavanaugh believed. She looked
tired, under the garish showgirl makeup, or what was left of it after her
crying. She looked tired and stunned and miserable, all of which was
expected after seeing her best girlfriend killed by what the LVPD had
logged as a hit-and-run. Jeanne Cassidy's weary stunned misery didn't
interest Cavanaugh. But she also looked scared. That did interest him.

"You and Miss Jefferson do the midnight show. Miss Jefferson
collapses halfway down the onstage staircase because she hasn't eaten
anything all day."

"That's what she told me," Jeanne Cassidy said, and it was lie number
one. Cavanaugh had a nose for lies. And this exhausted girl wasn't any
good at it. However, there was something odd about her, something
different from the usual gorgeous-but-not-too-bright kids who strutted
their stuff in Vegas, mostly turning after a year or two to drugs or
pros-titution or dubious boyfriends. Sometimes all three. This girl was
subtly different, but Cavanaugh hadn't yet put his finger on how.