"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Women of Whale Rock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"Gulls?" he asked.

"Got another report, huh?" Bishop sounded vaguely relieved, as if a burden were
being lifted from him.

"No," Retsler said. "Lucky guess."

He rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger, trying to ease a building
headache. He knew the drill: first the gulls, then the body pecked beyond
recognition, and finally the county coroner, who would claim death by drowning
and deny everything else.

"Where should I meet you?" Bishop asked.

"At the turnout," Retsler said. He'd long ago stopped demanding that Bishop stay
home. Bishop would do as he pleased. For some reason, he always chose to join
Retsler in shooing the gulls away.

And then holding watch over the ruined mass of flesh until the coroner arrived
to lie to them again.

The first one showed up just after Bishop arrived in town. He had called Retsler
and begun their tradition. A young woman, somewhere between sixteen and
twenty-six (judging by the age and condition of her remaining internal organs),
washed up on the beach. The gulls swarmed. The tourists were terrified, and
someone started a rumor that she had jumped from the Sandcastle's roof, desolate
about a love affair gone bad.

Only no one knew her, and no one was reported missing.

Definitely not a suicide, the coroner, Hamilton Denne, had said as he knelt
gingerly beside the body, getting his expensive gray slacks covered with sand.
But he couldn't rule out death by drowning. He couldn't confirm it either since
her lungs were missing, her chest cavity ravaged, and her face gone.

He could say for certain that she had died, and that she had spent a long time
in the water.

He would say nothing more. Not even when Retsler asked about her dental records.
Her lower jaw remained intact, and some of her teeth had fillings. Not enough to
identify her, but enough to cause Bishop consternation. He was a newly retired
dentist, and he said, with a single glance, that no one used that odd mixture of
iron and silver fillings anymore. No one had since the thirties.

A week later, a second body turned up. A boy, between ten and eighteen, dead
against the sea wall.
Then the stories emerged, stories about why the Sandcastle had closed in the
early seventies. Guests reported strangers in their rooms, a strange briny smell
in the hallway, and frightening attacks in the middle of the night. Soon the