"Bloodstream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerritsen Tess)

6

The first snowflakes spiraled down through the bare branches and gently dusted the excavation site. Lucy Overlock glanced up at the sky and said, “This snow’s going to stop, isn’t it? It has to stop, or it’ll obscure everything.”

“It’s already melting,” said Lincoln. He sniffed the air and knew, by some instinct developed during a lifetime in these woods, that the Snow would not last long. These flakes were merely a whispered warning, deceptively gentle, of the wintry months to come. He did not mind the snow, did not even resent all the inconveniences that came With it, the shoveling, the plowing out, the nights without power When the lines went down from the weight of it. It was the darkness he disliked. Darkness fell so early these days. Already daylight was fading, and the trees were featureless black slashes against the sky.

“Well, we might as well pack it up for the day,” said Lucy. ‘And hope it’s not buried under a foot of snow by tomorrow.”

Now that the bones were no longer of interest to the police, Lucy and her grad students had assumed the responsibility of protecting the dig. The two students pulled a tarp over the excavation site and staked it in place. It was a futile precaution; a marauding raccoon could rip it away with one slash of its claws.

“When will you finish here?” asked Lincoln.

“I’d like to take several weeks,” said Lucy. “But with the weather turning bad, we’ll have to rush. One hard freeze, and that’s it for the season.”

Headlights flickered through the trees. Lincoln saw that another vehicle had pulled into Rachel Sorkin’s driveway.

He tramped back through the woods, toward the house. In the last few days, the front yard had become a parking lot. Next to Lincoln’s vehicle was Lucy Overlock’s Jeep and a beat-up Honda, which he assumed belonged to her grad student.

At the far end of the driveway, parked under the trees, was yet another vehicle-a dark blue Volvo. He recognized it, and he crossed the yard to the drivers side.

The window hummed open an inch. “Lincoln,” the woman said.

“Evening, Judge Keating."

“You have time to talk?” He heard the locks click open.

Lincoln circled to the passenger side and slid in, shutting the door. They sat for a moment, cocooned in silence.

“Have they found anything else?” she asked. She didn’t look at him but gazed straight ahead, her eyes focused somewhere among the trees. In the car’s gloom, she seemed younger than her sixty-six years, the lines in her face fading to uniform smoothness. Younger and not so formidable.

“There were only the two skeletons,” said Lincoln.

“Both were children?”

“Yes. Dr. Overlock estimates their ages at around nine or ten years old.”

“Not a natural death?”

“No. Both deaths were violent.”

There was a long pause. “And when did this happen?”

“That’s not so easy to determine. All they have to go on are some artifacts found with the remains. They’ve dug up some buttons, a coffin handle. Dr.

Overlock thinks it’s probably part of a family cemetery."

She took her time absorbing this information. Her next question came out softly tentative: “So the remains are quite old?”

“A hundred years, more or less.”

She released a deep breath. Was it Lincoln’s imagination or did the tension suddenly melt from her silhouette? She seemed to fail almost limp with relief, her head tilting back against the neck rest. “A hundred years,” she said. “Then it’s nothing to worry about. It’s not from-”

“No. It’s unrelated.”

She gazed ahead, at the congealing darkness. “Still, it’s such a strange coincidence, isn’t it? That very same part of the lake…“ She paused. “I wonder if it happened in the fall.”

“People die every day, Judge Keating. A century’s worth of skeletons-they all have to be buried somewhere.”

“I heard there was a hatchet mark on one of the thigh bones.”

“That’s true.”

“It will have people wondering. Remembering.”

Lincoln heard the woman’s fear, and he wanted to reassure her, but could not bring himself to make physical contact. Iris Keating was not a touchable woman.

Her emotional barrier was so thick, it would not have surprised him to reach out and feel a shell.

He said, “It was a long time ago. No one remembers.”

“This town remembers.“

“Only a few. The older ones. And they don’t want to talk about it any more than you do.”

“Still, it’s a matter of public record. And now all those reporters are in town.

They’ll be asking questions.”

“What happened half a century ago isn’t relevant.”

“Isn’t it?” She looked at him. “This is how it began last time. The killings. It started in the fall.”

“You can’t interpret every violent act as history repeating itself.”

“But history is violence.” Once again, she faced forward, her gaze directed toward the lake. Night had fallen and through the bare trees, the water was only a faint glimmer. “Don’t you feel it, Lincoln?” she asked softly. “There’s something wrong about this place. I don’t know What it is, but I’ve felt it since I was small. I didn’t like living here, even then. And now…“ She reached for the ignition and started the engine.

Lincoln stepped out of the car. “It’s a slippery road tonight. Drive carefully.”

“I will. Oh, and Lincoln?”

“Yes?”

“I’m told there’s a new opening in that alcohol rehab program in Augusta. It might be the place for Doreen. If you can talk her into it.”

“I’ll try. I just keep hoping that one of these days it’ll take.”

He thought he saw pity in her eyes. “I wish you luck. You deserve a lot better, Lincoln.”

“I’m managing all right.”

“Of course you are.” He realized, then, that it wasn’t pity, but admiration he heard in her voice. “You’re one of the few men in this world who would.”

A photo of Mrs. Horatio was propped up on the coffin, a picture of her as a young woman of eighteen, smiling, almost pretty. Noah had never thought of his biology teacher as pretty, nor had he imagined her as ever having been young. In his mind, Dorothy Horatio had sprung up on this earth already middle-aged, and now, in death, she would remain eternally so.

Moving with the long line of students, he shuffled dutifully toward the coffin, past the photo of Mrs. Horatio in her past incarnation as an actual human female. It was a shock to confront that eerily familiar image of Mrs. Horatio before the extra pounds and wrinkles and gray hair. To realize that the photo had been taken when she was not much older than Noah. What happens when we get old? he wondered. Where does the kid part of us go?

He stopped before the coffin. It was closed, which was a mercy; he didn’t think he could handle seeing his dead teacher’s face. It was terrible enough just to imagine how she must look, hidden beneath that mahogany lid. He had not particularly liked Dorothy Horatio. Not at all, in fact. But today he had met her husband and adult daughter, had seen them both sobbing, their arms flung around each other, and had come to realize a startling truth: that even the Mrs. Horatios of this world have people who love them.

In the coffin’s polished surface, he could see his own face, bland and composed.

Emotions hidden beneath an expressionless mask.

He had not been so composed at the last funeral he’d attended.

Two years ago, he and his mother had stood holding hands as they gazed at his father’s coffin. The lid had been left open, so people could gaze down at his gaunt face as they said their good-byes. When the time had come to leave, Noah had refused to go. His mother had tried to lead him away, but he had sobbed: You can’t leave Daddy in there! Go back, go back!

He blinked and touched his hand to Mrs. Horatio’s coffin. It was smooth and glossy. Like fine furniture.

Where does the kid part of us go?

He realized that the line ahead of him had vanished, that people behind him were waiting for him to move forward. He continued past the coffin, walked up the aisle, and fled out the mortuary doors.

Outside it was lightly snowing, the cold kiss of flakes soothing to his face. He was relieved none of the reporters had followed him out. All afternoon, they’d chased him around with their tape recorders, wanting just a sentence from the boy who’d courageously wrestled the gun away from the killer. The hero of Knox High School.

What a joke.

He stood across the Street from the mortuary, shivering in the gloom as he watched people walk out of the building. They each performed the identical into-the-cold ritual: the appraising glance at the sky, the shudder, the hugging close of one’s coat. Just about everyone in town had come to pay their last respects, but he scarcely recognized some of them, so transformed were they by their suits and ties and mourning dresses. No one wearing the usual flannels and jeans. Even Chief Kelly was wearing a suit and tie.

Noah watched as Amelia Reid stepped out the mortuary doors. She Was breathing quickly, deeply, and she sagged against the building as though she’d been pursued and was desperately trying to catch her breath.

A car drove by, its tires crunching across the crystalline snow as it passed between them.

Noah called out to her: “Amelia?”

She looked up, startled, and saw him. She hesitated, glancing up and down the street, as though to assure herself it was safe to proceed. He felt his heart beat faster as she crossed the street to join him.

“Pretty grim in there,” he said.

She nodded. “I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I didn’t want to start crying in front of everyone.”

Neither did I, he thought, but would never admit it.

They stood together in the gloom, not looking at each other, both of them moving their feet to stay warm. Both of them searching for some thread of conversation.

He took a deep breath and said, suddenly, “I hate funerals. They remind me of…

.“ He stopped.

“They remind me of my dad’s funeral, too,” she said softly. And she looked up as snowflakes spiraled down from the darkening sky.

Warren Emerson walked on the side of the road, his boots crunching the frost-stiffened grass. He wore a blaze-orange vest and an orange cap, yet he couldn’t help flinching every time another gun went off in the woods. Bullets, after all, were colorblind. It was cold this morning, far colder than yesterday, and his fingers ached in their thin woolen gloves. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kept trudging, not worried about the cold, knowing that in another mile he would cease to notice it.

He had walked this road over a thousand times, in every season of the year, and could trace his progress by the landmarks he passed. The toppled stone wall was four hundred paces from his front yard. The Murray's’ tumbledown barn was nine hundred fifty paces. At two thousand paces, the turnoff to Toddy Point Road, he reached the halfway mark. The landmarks became more frequent as he approached the outskirts of town. So did the traffic, every so often a car or truck rattling by, tires spitting up dirt.

Local drivers seldom stopped to offer Warren a ride into town. In the summertime he caught plenty of rides, from tourists who considered Warren Emerson, shuffling along in his boots and baggy trousers, an example of living, breathing local color. They’d pull over and invite him to climb in for a lift. During the drive they’d ply him with an endless stream of questions, always the same ones: “What do you folks do in the winter?” “You lived here all your life?” “You ever met Stephen King?” Warren’s answers never went beyond a simple yes or no, an economy of words which the tourists invariably found amusing. They’d pull into town, let him off at the general store, and wave so sincerely you’d think they were saying good-bye to their best friend. Wicked friendly people, those tourists; every autumn, he was sorry to see them go, because it meant another nine months of walking down this road, with not a single driver who’d stop for him.

The townspeople were all afraid.

Were he licensed to drive, he often thought, he would not be so unsympathetic to an old man. But Warren could not drive. He had a perfectly fine old Ford gathering dust in the barn-his father’s car, a 1945, scarcely driven-yet Warren could not use it. A danger to himself and to others. That’s what the doctors had said about his driving.

So the Ford stayed in the barn, over fifty years now, and it was as shiny as the day his father had parked it there. Time was kinder to chrome than it was to a man’s face. To a man’s heart. Jam a danger to myself and to others.

His hands at last were starting to feel warm.

He pulled them from his pockets and swung his arms as he walked, heart pumping faster, sweat gathering under his cap. Even on the most frigid of days, if he walked fast enough, far enough, the cold would cease to matter.

By the time he reached town, he’d unbuttoned his coat and removed the cap. When he walked into Cobb and Morong’s General Store, he found it almost unbearably hot inside.

As soon as the door swung shut behind him, the store seemed to fall silent. The clerk looked up, then looked away. Two women standing by the vegetable bin ceased their chatter. Though no one was staring, he could feel their attention focused on him as he picked up a shopping basket and walked up the aisle, toward the canned goods. He filled his basket with the same items he bought every week.

Cat food.

Chili with beef. Tina. Corn. He went down the next row for the dried beans and oatmeal, then to the vegetable bin for a sack of onions.

He carried the basket, now heavy; to the checkout counter.

The cashier avoided looking at him as she tallied up the items. He stood before the register, his blaze orange vest screaming out to the world, Look at me, look at me. Yet no one did. No one met his gaze.

In silence he paid the cashier, picked up the plastic grocery sacks, and turned to leave, steeling himself for the long walk home. At the door, he stopped.

On the newsstand was this week’s issue of the Tranquility Gazette. There was one copy left. He stared at the headline and suddenly the grocery sacks slipped out of his grasp and thudded to the floor. With shaking hands he reached for the newspaper.

HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING LEAVES TEACHER DEAD, TWO STUDENTS WOUNDED:

14-YEAR-OLD BOY ARRESTED.

“Hey! You gonna pay for that paper?” the clerk called out.

Warren didn’t answer. He just stood by the door, his eyes fixed in horror on a second headline, almost lost in the bottom right corner:

YOUTH BEATS PUPPY TO DEATH: CITED FOR CRUELTY.

And he thought: It’s happening again.

Damaris Horne was stuck in purgatory, and all she could think about was how to get back to Boston. So this is how my editor punishes me, she thought. We get into a tiff, and he assigns me to the story no one else wants. Welcome to Hicksville-by-the-Lake, otherwise known as Tranquility; Maine. Good name. The place was so tranquil, they should issue it a death certificate. She drove up Main Street, thinking that this was the perfect model for how a town would look after a neutron bomb hit it: no people, no signs of life, just standing buildings and deserted sidewalks. Nine hundred ten residents supposedly lived in this town, so where were they all? In the woods, gnawing lichen off the trees?

She drove past Monaghan’s Diner, and through the front window she caught a glimpse of a plaid shirt. Yes! A sighting of the local natives in their ceremonial dress. (What was the mystical significance of plaid, anyway?) Further up the street, she had another sighting: a shabbily dressed old geezer came out of Cobb and Morong’s, clutching his grocery sacks. She stopped to let him cross the street, and he shuffled past, head bent in a look of permanent weariness. She watched him walk along the lakeshore, a slow-moving silhouette laboring across a bleak backdrop of bare trees and gray water.

She drove on, to the Lakeside Bed and Breakfast, her home for the indefinite future. It was the only local inn still open this late in the year, and although she sneeringly referred to it as the Bates Motel, she knew she was lucky to have found any room at all, what with the other regional reporters arriving in town.

She walked into the dining room and saw that most of her competition were still stuffing themselves at the breakfast buffet. Damaris always skipped breakfast, which put her ahead of the game this morning. It was eight A.M., and she’d already been up for two and a half hours. At six, she’d been at the hospital to observe the boy being transferred out to his new home, the Maine Youth Center.

At seven-fifteen, she’d driven over to the high school. There she’d sat in her parked car and watched the kids in their baggy clothes gather in front of the building, waiting for first bell, looking like teenagers everywhere.

Damaris crossed to the coffee pot and poured herself a cup. Sipping it black, she glanced around the room at the other reporters until her gaze settled on the freelancer, Mitchell Groome. Though he couldn’t be much older than forty-five, Groome’s face was all sad droops, like a hound in mourning. Still, he seemed fit enough-perhaps even athletic. Best of all, he had noticed her gaze, and was looking back at her, albeit with puzzlement.

She set down her empty cup and strolled out of the dining room, knowing, without even a backward glance, that Groome was watching her.

Hicksville had just gotten a little more interesting.

Up in her room, she took a few minutes to review her notes from the interviews she’d conducted over the last few days. Now came the hard part-putting it all together in an article that would make her editor happy and catch the eyes of bored New England housewives cruising past the tabloid stands.

She sat at her desk and stared out the window, wondering how to turn this tragic but nonetheless commonplace tale into something a little more titillating. What made this case special? What new angle would entice a reader to reach for a copy of the Weekly Informer?

She suddenly realized she was staring straight at it.

Across the street was a rundown old building, the windows boarded up. The faded sign said Kimball’s Furniture.

The address was 666.

The sign of the Beast.

As her laptop computer powered up, she quickly shuffled through her notes, searching for the quote she remembered from yesterday. Something a woman had said in the local grocery store.

She found it. “I know the explanation for what happened at the school,” the woman had said. “Everyone knows it, but no one wants to admit it. They don’t want to sound superstitious or uneducated But I’ll tell you what it is: it’s this new Godlessness. People have pushed the Lord out of their lives. They’ve replaced Him with something else. Something no one dares speak of.”

Yes! thought Damaris, and she was grinning as she began to type.

“Last week, Satan arrived in the bucolic town of Tranquility; Maine…

Sitting in her wheelchair before the living room window, Faye Braxton watched her thirteen-year-old son step off the school bus and begin to hike up the long dirt driveway to the house. It was a daily event she usually looked forward to, seeing Scotty’s slight figure at last emerge through the bus doors, his shoulders weighed down by the heavy backpack, his head craned forward with the effort to lug his burden of books up the weedy and sloping front yard.

He was still so small. It pained her to see how little he had grown in the last year. While many of his classmates had shot past him in both height and bulk, there was her Scotty, left behind in pale adolescence, and so anxious to grow up he had nicked his chin last week while trying to shave his nonexistent beard. He was her firstborn, her best friend. She wouldn’t have minded at all if time suddenly stood still, and she could keep him as he’d always been, a sweet and loving child. But she knew the child would soon be gone.

The transformation had already begun.

She’d seen the first hint of it a few days ago, when he had stepped off the bus as usual. She’d been at the window, watching him walk toward the house, when she saw something happen that was both inexplicable and frightening. In the front yard, he had suddenly halted and gazed up at a tree in which three gray squirrels perched. She’d thought he was merely curious. That like his younger sister Kitty; he would try to coax them down to be petted. So she was startled when he bent down, picked up a rock, and flung it at the tree.

The squirrels scampered to higher branches.

As she’d watched in dismay, Scotty had hurled another rock, and another, his thin body winding up like a tautly coiled spring of fury, the stones flying into the branches. When at last he stopped, he was breathing hard and exhausted. Then he’d turned to the house.

The look on his face had made her jerk back from the window. For one horrifying moment she’d thought: That is not my son.

Now, as she watched him approach the house, she wondered which boy would step through the door. Her son, her real son, sweet and smiling, or the ugly stranger who looked like Scotty? In the past, she would have dealt firmly with him for throwing rocks at animals.

In the past, she was never afraid of her own child.

Faye heard Scotty’s footsteps on the porch. Heart pounding, she swiveled her wheelchair around to face him as he came in the door.