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

Then Retsler inclined his head toward the body, and Charles nodded.

Together they stepped off the rock and headed down the beach.

RETSLER CLUTCHED the bag tightly. The rifle was heavy in his right hand. He
hoped he wouldn't have to use either. The last time had convinced him that the
gulls weren't afraid of the gun, and the time before that he discovered that a
single bag of popcorn barely gave him time enough to escape. The extra large bag
might give them a few extra seconds, which they would need. Bishop didn't run
well anymore. Retsler always worried about bringing him to the beach.

But if they didn't go together, Bishop might have come alone, a risk that
Retsler just couldn't take.

The fetid odor of decaying flesh mixed with the scent of salt. This one had been
out here longer than the others. Odd that the gulls would prey on it now.

He led the way across the rocks and onto the soft sand. The body was shoved
against the sea wall like all the others, one leg bent in a V, arms outflung
above the head. Retsler knew without looking that the eyes would be gone. The
gulls always took those first, some kind of avian delicacy, followed by the
tongue if they could get it, and then they would peck their way into the
stomach. He had seen it more than once, not just here, but on bodies washed up
all over the beach.

Retsler followed the three-pronged bird prints to the corpse's side. He set down
the popcorn, reached in his pocket for the Vicks, and smeared some inside his
nose. Without looking, he handed the bottle over his shoulder to Bishop. No one
needed to smell this, not even for a moment.

Bishop took the bottle but stayed back. Retsler crouched near the body, tried to
see what it had been through the mess the gulls had made.

Male, older, judging by the strands of gray mixed with the wet curls on top of
the head, corpse white and bloated. It had been in the water a long, long time.
Maybe it wasn't one of the bodies that came to this beach. Maybe it was a true
death by drowning, not some mystery killing offshore.

Then he saw what he hoped he wouldn't; the remains of a vest with a gold watch
still tucked inside, pants with buttons, not zippers, and on the bent leg,
garters to hold up the socks. Old man clothing pre-1950.

He glanced at Bishop, who pointed at the open mouth. Tobacco-stained teeth,
cracked, crooked, and broken. No modern dentist would allow such a travesty.
Bishop set down the bullhorn. "I'll call the coroner," he said.

That night, they got drunk. Bishop tried to beg off, but Retsler, afraid he'd go
home and brood, convinced him to brood in public. They went to the False Colors,
a local bar that had once started as a tourist attraction. But the pirate theme