"Nayler, Ray - Man In The Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

= MAN IN THE DARK
by Ray Nayler


He shouldn't be out in this. Sam scanned the road ahead for the reported washout, but the entire world looked like a washout--black pavement on black earth, the headlights of his cruiser skating yellow across the water of the road, sparkling on the reflective dots of the centerline. The cruiser's tires hit a puddle, and the wheel shuddered in his hands. Water barked against the undercarriage. He held his breath, as if the pressure of his lungs could keep the tires biting.

The radio squawked--patrolmen calling in washouts, flooding, power lines down all over the county. The sky had opened up on California. The Central Valley was quickly becoming an inland sea.

The rain was more than the wipers could handle. They swiped at it but could not clear the solid coat that pasted the windshield, instantly refilling the semicircle of their track across the glass.

He was thinking of Rachel, seeing her laundry bag stuffed with clothes, catching on the door frame as she left him. She'd left before the storm had started. She would be at her mother's house by now. Safe from the rain and from him.

The road was just a black streak without reference, the crossings he usually guided himself by gone behind the solid curtain of water. Where was the washout?

He hit a set of railroad tracks and tapped the brakes too hard. The wheels came off the pavement, and the cruiser tilted sideways through space. Sam worked the steering wheel desperately. The cruiser hydroplaned sideways. The tires bit into the road, and the world turned itself upside down. He had a sudden, sickening view of the ditch, lit up crazily in the headlights, before the car turned over again and smashed grill-first into the mud.

The radio was crushed under the buckled dashboard. His hip ached, where he had been thrown against the driver's side door. His short wave had broken itself against his bones. He yanked it out of his belt and depressed the talk button. Nothing. Not even static. He was alone.

Sam pushed on the cruiser door. It wouldn't open. The car had ended up on its wheels, down in the ditch, grill sunk in the mud. He smashed the windshield out with his boots and climbed through, stumbling in the slippery earth as he made his way around to the trunk. The trunk lid was crushed shut. The lock would not budge. His raincoat was inside. He smashed a fist down on the metal in frustration. He hadn't seen a car in hours. He would have to walk to the nearest house. This far out in the county, the houses were up to a mile apart.

Wind pushed water across blacktop in inch-deep waves and slapped rain into his eyes. He started to walk, swinging the thin beam of his flashlight ahead of him like a cane. After twenty minutes, he came to a gravel road, posted "private".

Just as he set his foot on the gravel, a truck roared past him, so close it set him off balance, knocking him to his knees in the drainage ditch. The truck stopped, a hundred yards ahead, blurred by the rain, its red taillights two bloody streaks. He raised the flashlight, waved it back and forth. Maybe they had not seen him. The truck's reverse lights came on, then went out. With a spin of its tires it continued, away from him.

The gravel road was slippery under his boots, as if the mud underneath was trying to pull him down into it.

Stupid. A professional driver, a highway patrolman, and he had been going too fast, had let impatience carry him right into a ditch. The other men, who never spoke to him, his "fellow officers" would laugh about this for years coming to pick up the wet black patrolman at a farmhouse. Towing his wrecked cruiser out of the ditch. How dumb was he? He'd put his raincoat in the trunk.

One of them would use that word about him. He knew one of them would. Not around the station, of course. Maybe at home, to his wife or his young jock son. But someone would use it. And someone would laugh.

Thinking about it made him hate the water that dropped from the trees and the air onto him.

A square of warm orange light, the shadowy triangle of a roof. He broke into a trot, boots slipping on the gravel, anger like a hand at his back, shoving him forward. He climbed the slick porch step and hammered on the farmhouse door.

The door had a four-pane window in its center, covered by blinds. No light showed behind the blinds. They shifted, split, came back together. More waiting. Finally the door swung open.

A woman stood in the doorway, in a beat-up Pendleton jacket and jeans, blonde hair pulled back and knotted. She shook her head at him.

"Don't you cops wear raincoats?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you this late, ma'am. But I wrecked my car up the road...."

She ushered him in with a wave of her hand.

"I'm not surprised, on a night like this. Nobody should be out in this. Just the sound of it is keeping me up."

"I was wondering if I could use your phone."

The house was dark, except for a pale filter of light from the top of the staircase. Despite the darkness, the house seemed full of energy. He quickly placed it as nervousness, radiating from the woman.