"Cat Seeing Double" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Shirley Rousseau)
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Ryan woke before dawn, but woke not eagerly looking forward to her day as had been her habit lately, not leaping up to turn on the coffeepot and pull the curtains back to look out at the first hint of morning. Instead, an unnatural heaviness of spirit pressed her down; a sense of ugliness made her want to crawl into sleep again. Darkness and depression filled her. And an inexplicable fear. She felt as she had so many nights waking in the small hours to see Rupert's side of the bed still empty, to wish wholeheartedly that she was somewhere else, in some other life.
But now, she
So what was wrong?
The pale room rose pleasantly around her, its high, white beams just visible in the near-dark. On the west wall the white draperies over the long bank of windows were starting to grow pale with the first promise of dawn. Before the draperies, her new desk, her drafting table and computer stood waiting for her just as she had arranged them for ultimate efficiency and pleasure. She was here in her private nest. Nothing could be wrong. Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to get a fix on her powerful but unfocused dread.
A cloud of swirling smoke and churning flying rubble. Black, angry eyes staring at her. People running and screaming. The side of the church gone, the sky above filled with flying pieces of broken walls and with white petals falling, falling. Senseless fragments, borne of senseless hatred.
She lay shivering, seeing the black, hate-filled eyes of that boy. She sat up in bed, driving his image away. Deliberately she brought into vision the lovely bridal procession in the cool night, down the narrow grassy carpet between hundreds of friends all holding up fairy lights, or so it had seemed to her, ephemeral candles burning to mark the bride's way. Charlie approaching her groom stepping to the rhythm of the sea's music and to the rustle of the giant trees that stood guard over her.
Nothing,
Rising, she pulled on her robe and padded into the kitchen to fill the coffeepot, dumping out the grounds from last night. As the coffee brewed, she opened the draperies that ran the length of the studio.
Out over the sea, dawn's light was somber. Impatiently waiting for the coffee, she imagined Charlie rising this morning to let in room service, or to fetch in the elegant breakfast cart herself, where it had been left discreetly outside the door of the St. Francis bridal suite. Charlie and Max were safe. They were safe.
Ryan poured her own first cup of coffee not from a silver server into thin porcelain, as Charlie would be doing, but into an old earthenware mug, breathing in its steamy aroma. She was deeply soothed by the absolute seclusion and calm of her own quiet space. And after two weeks of hot weather, of eighty- and ninety-degree temperatures in the California foothills, she was pleased to see a heavy mist fingering in from the sea, to chill the day. Opening the window, she breathed in the cool, damp breeze that smelled of the sea at low tide. Only as she turned did she imagine someone stirring in the apartment behind her.
But how silly. Moving into the empty studio, she could see into the bath and dressing room, could see from their mirrors' reflections that she was quite alone. Her head must be muzzy from the late hours. Certainly her mind still rang not only with the explosion and the sirens and with her friends' frightened cries, but with the forties music and laughter mat had come later.
Strange how sounds stayed with her. When she was working a job, her dreams would ring, each night, with the endless whine of the Skilsaw or with the incessant pounding as she drove nails in a rhythm which, even in dreams, was so real that she would wake to find her arm twitching with tension. Or in her sleep she would hear the repeated
Sipping her coffee, she decided to take herself out to breakfast before she tackled her mail and some phone calls, give herself a little treat. Maybe breakfast at the Miramar Hotel, sitting on the terrace watching the sea and enjoying a Spanish omelet-a small celebration to welcome herself home. She was never shy about tendering herself fancy invitations. Seven weeks in a cramped trailer sharing that tiny space with her two carpenters, and she deserved a little pampering. Particularly since their nights had been purely platonic, about as exciting as curbing up with the family picture album. Scotty was one of her two second fathers. And young Dan Hall was happily married, his wife coming up every weekend, further crowding the cramped, two-bedroom rig. On those nights when Dan needed a place of his own rather than bunking with Scotty, she had given him her room, and she had slept in the main house among stacks of lumber and torn-out walls. Dan Hall was a hunk, all right, and so was his beautiful wife, a slim girl with a body to kill for. Dan had lived from weekend to weekend in a haze of sickening longing, a yearning so palpable it was at times embarrassing.
It must be very special to know that your husband wouldn't cheat on you, to be absolutely certain that he lived only to be with you, and would never play around or lie to you.
Ryan sighed. She had never believed for a minute that Rupert wouldn't cheat. She had known better.
Why she had stayed with him so long was just as much a mystery to her as to everyone else. Both Scotty and Dallas, and certainly her dad, had been more than pleased when she left him. Through all the years she procrastinated, they had stood by her-and most of the time they had kept their mouths shut.
Scotty, her father's big, redheaded brother, had inherited all the bold, blustery genes of the Flannery family. Her dad was quiet and low-keyed, his humor far more subtle-a little quizzical smile, and crow's feet marking his green eyes. Michael Flannery enjoyed the world fully, but with little comment. Her uncle Scott Flannery took hold of life with both hands and shook it, and laughed when life banged and rattled.
But her dead mother's brother, Dallas, was the rock. You had to know the stern, silent cop for a long while to enjoy the warmth and humor underneath.
She refilled her coffee mug and sat at the kitchen table, her bare feet freezing. The fog was moving in quickly, the sky turning the color of skimmed milk; she could hear the waves pounding the shore and the seals barking from the rocks, but the ocean itself was hidden in fog. Too restless to be still, she tied her robe more securely and went out along the front deck and down me long flight to get the paper.
The wooden steps were rough under her bare feet, the chill dampness of the fog stroking her ankles. The concrete drive was icy, the Sunday paper damp where it had been tossed against the bushes.
The church bombing covered the front page. A montage of pictures, the ragged, torn-out wall. The more severely wounded, the pictures taken at angles that magnified the seriousness of cuts and the size of bandages. She didn't need to look at this. Refolding the paper, she turned back up the drive.
But, brushing by her pickup mat Dallas had gone over last night collecting evidence, she stopped, frowning.
She had left the truck relatively clean yesterday, much to Dallas's chagrin. Now it wasn't clean, but smeared with mud and with huge paw prints.
She'd had the truck only a month, had traded in the old company model for this reliable baby that made her work so much more fun. It had everything, king cab, lockable toolboxes down both sides, a bull-strong overhead rack. At this particular time in her life, no husband or lover could have given her the same ego trip, the same sense of self-worth, as that shiny new truck.
But now, the vehicle was filthy. Some dog as big as a moose had been all over it, some bad-mannered neighborhood beast had hopped up into the truck bed and apparently walked along the tops of the lockboxes too, rendering her shiny red paint a mess of dried, flaking mud and paw marks. Circling the truck, she headed around the side of the garage to the pedestrian door to fetch some rags and the hose. She didn't realize until she was through the door that she'd left it unlocked last night, that, preoccupied with Dallas's search for evidence she'd forgotten to punch the lock.
Switching on the light she dug under the sink for the box of rags she kept there, pulling out a handful of threadbare towels. Rising, she turned toward the frail, vintage windows that she'd brought down from the foothills, glad the mutt hadn't been able to get into the garage to trash the antique stained glass.
She caught her breath and stepped back, banging into the sink.
The windows stood leaning away from each other, each set of four supported by a heavy box of plumbing fixtures, leaving an empty V space between. A man lay there, jammed between the windows, his face turned away.
The side of his cheek was very white, the blood on his neck and cheek dark and dry. His black hair was tossled and scattered with broken glass, as was the black stubble on his jaw and the black hair on his arm. His blood splattered the broken window and his shirt.
Rupert.
Involuntarily she reached out a hand, but then drew back.
Not quite believing that this was her husband, not quite believing that anyone at all lay there, she moved around the windows to an angle where she could see his face, and stood looking down at him.
His skin was too white even for Rupert. He looked, in death, no more solemn than he had in life. His eyes were open and staring, his face grayish, like the melted paraffin that her mother had used long ago to seal jelly glasses.
The wound in his chest was dark around the edges, the hole in his forehead dark and ragged. Surely both were gunshot wounds.
When was he killed? She had heard no shots. Staring at the bone of his skull, her stomach turned. She badly wanted to heave.
The drying blood that had run down his face and stained his blue polo shirt was so dark it must surely be mixed with the black residue of gunpowder. His ear against the shattered glass was covered with tiny blue fragments. His dark hair was so mussed he looked almost boyish, though in life Rupert had never looked boyish. His broad gold watchband shone from his pale wrist pressing the white skin, nestled among thick black hairs. She thought of Rupert naked, the black hairs on his arms and chest and belly over the too-white flesh. She'd come to hate hairy men. She leaned to grab his feet to drag him out of there, get him away from the frail windows before his weight shattered them further but then, reaching, reality took hold and she backed away, chilled.
But the next moment she knelt. She felt compelled to touch him, though she knew he was dead. Reaching to his thigh, she jerked her hand away again at the feel of lifelessness, at the icy chill that shocked her even through the cloth of his chinos.
Kneeling over him, she didn't know the fog was blowing away until the newly risen sun shot its rays in through the small high window at the back of the garage, a bolt of morning light that lay a glow across her hands and, gleaming through the colored glass, threw a rainbow of colors across Rupert's shattered face. She rose, needing to be sick.
Getting her stomach under control, she stood staring down at the man she'd spent nine years alternately loving and hating until the hate outdistanced all else. And she realized that even in death Rupert had the upper hand.
That even in death, he had placed her in an impossibly compromising position.
She had no witness. He was dead in her garage. She would be the first, prime suspect. Maybe the only suspect.
Dallas could vouch for her until one o'clock this morning. No one could speak for her after Dallas left. She'd seen no one; no one had been in her house. What time had Rupert died? How could he have been killed here in the garage, not ten feet from her, and she had not heard shots?
And what was he doing in Molena Point? Why had he come down here from San Francisco? He had no friends here.
Had he come to confront her in person over the lawsuit where she was claiming her half of the business? She'd started proceedings five months ago. And who had been with him, to kill him? Even if the shooter had used a silencer, why hadn't she at least heard glass breaking when Rupert fell? That sound should have waked her, occurring just beneath the floor where her bed was placed.
She glanced at the unlocked side door, trying to remember if she
She had to call Dallas.
The thought of calling the station, of calling for the police, of calling for Detective Dallas Garza, both comforted and sickened her.
She needed Dallas; she needed someone.
Dad would be out of town for two more weeks. And Scotty-big strong guy that he was, she was afraid that Scotty would do nothing but worry.
She needed Dallas. Needed, even more than Dallas's comforting, the facts that he would put together. Fingerprints. Coroner's report. Ballistic information. Cold forensic facts that would help her understand what had happened.
She wondered what the neighbors had seen. Her nausea had fled, but she felt shaky and displaced. Nothing made sense. Staring at Rupert, she found herself swallowing back a sudden inexplicable urge to scream, a primitive gutteral response born not of pain for Rupert or of empathy, but an animal cry of fear and defiance.
What had someone done? What had someone done not only to Rupert but to her?
Glancing to the back of the garage, into the shadows around the water heater and furnace she realized only then that the killer might still be there, perhaps standing behind those appliances silently watching her.
Backing away, she stared into the dim corners where the light didn't reach, expecting to see a figure emerge, perhaps from behind the stacked plywood or from behind one of the old mantels she'd collected or the stack of newel posts. She had no weapon to defend herself, short of grabbing a hammer. She studied the low door beneath the inner stairs that opened to a storage closet. She breathed a sigh when she saw that the bolt was still driven home.
She longed for her gun, which was upstairs in her night table. How many times did one need a.38 revolver to fetch the Sunday paper? Frightened by the shadows at the back of the garage behind what Dallas called her junk pile, she turned swiftly to the pedestrian door and, using the rag in her hand to open it, she retreated to the open driveway.
If she'd had her truck keys she would have hopped in and taken off, made her escape in her robe and called the department from some neighbor's home. Her cell phone of course was in her purse, by the bed, near her gun. Her truck keys were on the kitchen table. She felt totally naked and defenseless. Scuffing barefoot over the dried mud the neighbor's dog had left across the concrete, she hurried up the outside stairs. She paused with her hand on the knob.
She'd left the front door unlocked behind her. Now, when she entered, would Rupert's killer be waiting?
But why would someone set her up as if she'd killed Rupert, then destroy the scenario by killing her as well? That didn't make any sense.
She could imagine any number of estranged and bitter husbands who would like to see Rupert dead, but why would they make her the patsy? What motive would any of them have-except to put themselves in the clear, of course? And why not? What better suspect than an estranged and bitter wife?
Moving inside, glancing through to the night table at the far end of the room, she slipped her truck keys into the pocket of her robe and eased open a cutlery drawer, soundlessly lifting out the vegetable cleaver. Then stepping to her desk, she dialed the department, using the 911 number.
The dispatcher told her that Dallas was out of the station. She told the dispatcher who she was and that there was a dead man in her garage.
"I'm going to search the apartment, if you'd like to stay on the line." Laying the phone down as the dispatcher yelled at her not to do that, to get out of the apartment-and warily clutching the cleaver-she moved to the night table to retrieve her gun.
Pulling the drawer open, she stopped, frozen.
Empty.
Notebook, pencils, tissues, and face cream. No gun.
Her face burned at her carelessness. The gun was in her glove compartment. She hadn't brought it up last night or the night before; it had been there since she left San Andreas. She hadn't touched it since she packed up the truck and headed out, day before yesterday.
The wedding, and all the picky details of coming home and lining up her crew to start Clyde's job tomorrow had totally occupied her. She told herself she
Yes, and Dallas had admonished her more than once for keeping the.38 in her glove compartment, which was against the law, and in her unlocked nightstand, which was stupid.
Approaching the bath and closet, most of which she could see from their mirrors, holding the cleaver behind the fold of her robe, she moved against all common sense to clear the area. This wasn't smart. Even from the closet she heard the dispatcher shouting into the phone. And, louder, she heard a siren leave the station ten blocks away. Passing the door to the inner stairs, she saw that the bolt was securely home, blocking that entrance. As the siren came screaming up the hill she flung the closet door wider, to reveal the back corner.
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