"Cast Of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Guilfoile Kevin)

– 5 -

Davis stood inside the desk at reception and opened the patient’s folder in his hands. He had his back to the waiting area, and when he looked up he could just see inside Joan Burton’s examining room.

In her white smock, with her back to him, talking to a young boy and his mother, Joan displayed none of her sensual curves. He couldn’t see any part of her perfectly oval face with its impossibly deep dimples or her long, elegant fingers or her thick ebony hair, which, when not restrained by pins and spray as it was now, sprung from her head in exciting, unpredictable ways. At a holiday party last year, Joan drew stares from every man and woman in the restaurant, with her hair framing her face like an ornate ceremonial headdress. Davis had stolen long, chaste looks at her all night.

He wrote down a list of prescription medications this patient was currently taking and returned to his office with the information, which he relayed to a pharmacist holding on the phone. Then he input the information into a computer file (where it belonged) and tossed the notepaper away.

Davis reached across the desk to his phone and dialed home. His wife picked up on a digital extension, and from the thinness of her voice Davis could tell she was outside in the garden.

“Hi,” she said.

“I’m coming home early,” Davis said. “Do you want me to grab something on the way?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Italian.”

“AK’s not here. And she’s eating over at Libby’s.”

“She told me. Is she sleeping over there?”

“Probably.”

“Perfect,” Davis said. “I’ll pick up something at Rossini’s for the two of us. You grab a nice bottle from downstairs. We haven’t had a date in a long time.”

“A very long time,” Jackie said.

“I’ll see you in half an hour,” he said. “I love you.”

“Bye,” she said.

Davis grabbed his sport coat and walked down the hall. He knocked on Joan’s open door – she was still consulting with a patient – but didn’t stop or say anything as he passed.

“Good night, Davis,” she called after him.

He waved to Ellen and she smiled back. The waiting room was empty, and he casually stooped to snatch some magazines from the couch and return them to the coffee table. He turned out a light that, to his irritation, others usually forgot to turn off. He detoured into a corner conference room and opened the vertical window blinds on a pair of adjacent exterior walls.

Outside, it was warm and humid, and the air stuck to his face like a plastic Halloween mask. There was an easy breeze from the lake, which did little more than push the heat around. There were no protesters at the curb, at least. The heat and the rain often kept them away.

In his head, he calculated the quickest route to Rossini’s this time of day. He kept an ever-updated table of driving instructions in his short-term memory, convinced he could add days or even weeks of productivity to his life simply by avoiding traffic. His wife always had the frutti del mare, and tonight he’d have the shrimp tortellini. If he called them by York Street and ordered before the light at Hillman, it should be ready shortly after he arrived. You didn’t want it to be ready before you got there. You wanted it to come off the stove just after.

His new Volvo was parked near the back of the building (he left the most convenient spots open as a courtesy to his patients) and he was still experimenting with his keyless remote, getting a feel for its range. Standing at an angle to the front of the clinic, looking through the conference room, he could just make out his car around the corner. He pointed the remote at the conference room window, wondering if he could unlock his car from here, through the double panes of windows.

Later, he’d say it sounded like a cork popping, although he couldn’t say for sure if that was the sound of the gun or the sound of metal striking bone.

He knew it was a bullet the instant it entered, just below the left shoulder blade, exploding a rib before exiting his abdomen. It felt like someone had struck him with a baseball bat in the left side while a second attacker stabbed him in the gut with a knife. His knees buckled, and he hung there for an instant, suspended by God knows what, before collapsing onto the walk.

He could hear shouting and pointing (yes, he would later claim in a tired, confused discursive that he could hear people pointing) and he definitely heard a mistuned car speed away, although it didn’t occur to him at the time the vehicle might be carrying his assailant. He scratched his head against the pavement looking for blood and couldn’t see any. He moved his hand, which had instinctively covered the pain in his belly, and when he held it in front of his face it looked like a flat brush dipped in red paint. Someone approached and tried to turn him from his left side onto his back. He resisted. Then he blacked out.