"Reichs, Kathy - Temperance Brennan 02 - Death Du Jour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichs Kathy)

windows, gnarled fingers on plywood blackboards.

The group stood behind me, huddled but not touching, fingers curled
tightly in pockets. I could hear the shifting from side to side, the
lifting of one foot, then the other. Boots made a crunching sound on
the frozen ground. No one spoke. The cold had numbed us into
silence.

I watched a cone of earth disappear through quarter-inch mesh as I
spread it gently with my trowel. The granular subsoil had been a
pleasant surprise. Given the surface, I had expected permafrost the
entire depth of the excavation. The last two weeks had been
unseasonably warm in Quebec, however, allowing snow to melt and ground
to thaw. Typical Tempe luck. Though the tickle of spring had been
blown away by another arctic blast, the mild spell had left the dirt
soft and easy to dig. Good. Last night the temperature had dropped to
seven degrees Fahrenheit. Not good. While the ground had not
refrozen, the air was frigid. My fingers were so cold I could hardly
bend them.

We were digging our second trench. Still nothing but pebbles and rock
fragments in the screen. I didn't anticipate much at this depth, but
you could never tell. I'd yet to do an exhumation that had gone as
planned.

I turned to a man in a black parka and a tuque on his head. He wore
leather boots laced to the knee, two pairs of socks rolled over the
tops. His face was the color of tomato soup.

"Just a few more inches." I gave a palm-down gesture, like stroking a
cat. Slowly. Go slowly.

The man nodded, then thrust his long-handled spade into the shallow
trench, grunting like Monica Seles on a first serve.

"Par poucesr I yelped, grabbing the shovel. By inches! I repeated the
slicing motion I'd been showing him all morning. "We want to take it
down in thin layers." I said it again, in slow, careful French.

The man clearly did not share my sentiment. Maybe it was the
tediousness of the task, maybe the thought of unearthing the dead.
Tomato soup just wanted to be done and gone.

"Please, Guy, try again?" said a male voice behind me.

"Yes, Father." Mumbled.

Guy resumed, shaking his head, but skimming the soil as I'd shown him,
then tossing it into the screen. I shifted my gaze from the black dirt
to the pit itself, watching for signs that we were nearing a burial.