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

"You have protection?"

"I gave my husband's shotgun to Glen. It belonged in their family. It was their father's."

But she kept the clothes, he thought.

Wind machine-gunned droplets against the window.

He snapped the kitchen light off and waited for his eyes to adjust. A sound, hidden in the roar of rain, had reached him. Soon he was able to make out the lumpen line of earth and trees against the sky. And behind the trees, a broken streak of light. He almost did not catch it, the first time. It came again, closer, slicing through the trunks.

Alice sat perfectly still, not even breathing. The light cut through again, very close, sweeping the windowpane, its glow catching in the sheeting water.

"I think the man you've been expecting is here."

Light leapt across the windowpane, slid away. The truck went past the house, slow, the sound drowned by rain. A cough as the engine was snapped off. Silence.

"He's gone past the house. At least a few hundred yards past."

He could feel her fear in the dark, like warm breath on his neck. The chair squealed against the linoleum as she stood up.

"Oh god... of course. The horses."

"What?"

"He's at the barn. He's going to shoot the horses."

Sam went down the front steps, gun in hand. The rain sheeted down, harder now if anything, slapping wet into his face with each gust of wind. He kept his flashlight in his pocket. Ahead was the truck, lights on, driver's side door open, empty white cab lit up like a ghost-white box, taillights comet-smears in the rain. The headlights pasted a hazy spotlight to the side of the barn, sliced by black where the door had been forced open. The remains of the heavy chain that had guarded the door, and the bolt-cutter that had cut it, lay in the mud.

A shot thundered from inside. The muzzle flashed, illuminating for a second Glen's face above the shotgun, the glossy eyes of the horse, the terrified square of its teeth as the buckshot ended it. In the black that followed the flash he heard the horse collapse against the boards of its stall, the other horses crying out in a terror that sounded almost human.

The interior of the barn was ink-black, except for the dim wash of the truck's headlights, scattered a dozen feet across dirt. The nervous shuffling and nickering of the horses concealed any sound of Glen's movements. Sam could shout at the man to stop, but knew it would only bring the shotgun around. Glen might fire on him without thinking. Or with thinking.

He found himself remembering a time when, in the locker room at the station, he had walked in on a rookie patrolman, scratching his name off his locker with a quarter. Sam had said nothing to the man. He had simply replaced his name later. Samuel Wilson. But at that moment he had realized the answer to his greatest question: When will the other men accept me?

Never.

He set his back foot, felt his muscles coil. He cocked the slide of his gun. Never. Not even if he made himself a hero by stopping this man. To some of the other patrolmen there could be nothing worse than a man shooting horses. Rape and murder were second and third. They had been raised in this county. They had more pictures of their horses than they had of their picket-fence wives.

The snap of the shotgun's slide. The thunder. He was inside with the flash, registering the distance to the leering yellow-washed face, the hard-corded hands around the stock. He collided with Glen in the darkness that swept down after the flash, like a bull goring a matador. The air in Glen's lungs coughed out. He crashed against the boards of one of the stall. The shotgun clattered to the ground. Sam's hands scrambled up the fabric of his shirt, rain-wet, found his collar, closed around his throat. A fist slammed into his face, and the world went flashbulb-white.

Glen was on top of him. The fist came down again, whiting the world. Sam felt his grip on Glen's throat loosen, and brought the gun butt up against the invisible face above him. There was a pop as the automatic went off. The body on top of him jerked, and was still.

A flicker of unconsciousness. He came to and scrambled out from under Glen's limp body. The world was silent. The rain had decreased to a soundless drizzle. He tore the flashlight from his belt and snapped it on.

Glen lay belly-up on the haystrewn dirt. He was bleeding from a gash in his head where the misfired bullet had creased him.

"Looks like you missed him."

She was faceless in the doorway, a silhouette in the truck's headlights, light catching in the blonde hairs sticking carelessly up around her head, making them glow like filaments. For just a moment, she was Rachel, knees up, blanket wrapped, skin flushed from before, freckles standing out like drops of chocolate: "You're a cop because you hate us. You're just waiting for the opportunity to kill one of us. I can see it in your eyes when we're making love. You hate me too."