"C.E. Murphy - Banshee Cries" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy C. E)

my best to stifle a groan. “Captain.”
“I need you—”
 These were words that another woman might be pleased to hear from Captain
Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department. Then again, if he was saying
them to another woman, there probably wouldn’t have been the slight tension in his
voice that suggested his mouth was pressed into a thin line and his nostrils flared
with irritation at having the conversation. He had a good voice, nice and low. I
imagined it could carry reassuring softness, the kind that would calm a scared kid.
Unfortunately, the only softness I ever heard in it was the kind that said, This is the
calm before the storm, which happened to be how he sounded right now. I crushed
my eyes closed, face wrinkling up, and prodded the bump on my forehead.
“—to come in to work.”
“It’s my weekend, Morrison.” As if this would make any difference. I could hear
his ears turning red.
“I wouldn’t be calling you in—”
“Yeah.” I bit the word off and wrapped my hand around the bottom of Petite’s
frame. “What’s going on?”
Silence. “I’d rather not tell you.”
“Jesus, Morrison.” I straightened up, feeling the blood return to the line across my
back where I’d been leaning on the car. “Is anybody dead? Is Billy okay?”
“Holliday’s fine. Can you get over to Woodland Park?”
“Yeah, I—” I tilted my head back, looking at the Mustang’s roof. Truth was, I’d
been futzing around under the engine block because I couldn’t stand to look at the
damage done to my baby’s roof anymore. A twenty-nine-inch gash, not that I’d
measured or anything, ran from the windshield’s top edge almost all the way to the
back window. From my vantage, thin stuffing and fabric on the inside ceiling
shredded and dangled like a teddy bear who’d seen better days. Beyond that,
soldered edges of steel, not yet sanded down, looked like somebody’d dragged an
ax through it.
Which was precisely what had happened.
A little knot of agony tied itself around my heart and squeezed, just like it did every
time I looked at my poor car. The war wounds were almost three months old and
killing me, but the insurance company was dragging its feet. Full coverage did cover
acts of God—or in my case, acts of gods—but I’d only said she’d been hit by
vandals, because who would believe the truth? In the meantime, I’d already spent my
meager savings replacing the gas tank that somebody’d shot an arrow through.
My life had gotten unpleasantly weird in the past few months.
I forced myself to find something else to look at—the opposite garage wall had a
calendar with a mostly naked woman on it, which was sort of an improvement—and
sighed. “Yeah,” I said again, into the phone. “I’m gonna have to take a cab.”
“Fine. Just get here. North entrance. Wear boots.” Morrison hung up and I threw
the phone over my shoulder into the car again. Then I said a word nice girls
shouldn’t and scrambled after the phone, propping myself in the bucket seat with
one leg out the door. Bedraggled as she was, just sitting in Petite made me feel
better. I patted her steering wheel and murmured a reassurance to her as I dialed the
phone. A voice that had smoked too many cigarettes answered and I grinned, sliding
down in Petite’s leather seat.
“Still working?”
 “Y’know, in my day, when somebody made a phone call, they said hello and gave
their name before anything else.”