"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Claire Moffatt 02 - The Inheritor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

She knew she hadn't thrown it. And Eileen couldn't have reached it without getting up out of the chair, and then she could hardly have thrown it at herself, hard, and been back in the chair in time for the ashtray to hit her hard enough to draw blood.
Leslie went back in the office and picked up the ashtray. There was a smear of blood on the sharp corner; it felt warm and tingled in her hand, and she had to force herself to put it carefully down; Her impulse was to drop it, draw her hand back in horror.
It's starting again, the kind of thing I thought I'd left behind in Sacramento. She remembered something she had read about the parapsychology studies at Duke University; a famous psychologist had said "On any other subject, one tenth of the evidence would already have convinced me; on this subject, ten times the evidence would not convince me, because I know it to be impossible."
Now she was faced with evidence and did not know what to believe. She sat down at her desk and forced herself to write up the session, adding her own observations and what she had seenЧor what I thought I saw, she added to herself grimlyЧand filed the account away before she could challenge the reality of it in her own mind.
She seemed to remember that there had been a study of poltergeist phenomena by a reputable psychologist; tomorrow she would go to the Berkeley campus library and dig it out. If she had a poltergeist for a patient, she ought, at least, to know what was known about them, if anything. After that session she wanted nothing more than to make herself a cup of tea, draw herself a bath with millions of scented bubbles, soak in it for an hour with a frivolous book, and think about nothing till the next morning.
However, the light glowed red on the answering machine, and she forced herself to rewind and play back the tape. There might be a message from a new client, Emily might have called to say she would be late, the real estate agent might have called back to tell her about another house, or Judy Attenbury might be forcing herself to vomit her dinner again.
But there was only one message.
"Joel here, Leslie. I was out of the office all afternoon taking Bobby to a ball game, so I have to stay overtime to make up for it. Give me a call and we'll get a bite together when I finish, okay. Love ya, 'bye now."
She smiled; how like Joel that was. Bobby was a black ghetto child Joel had adopted in the "Big brother" program, and he spent a considerable amount of time with the kid, taking a real interest in him. She wondered what he would have had to say about Eileen and her poltergeist, and wished she could tell him. But, what happened in a counseling session was only a little less inviolate than what went on behind the screens of the confessional. And what could a lawyer do to help? You couldn't drag a poltergeist into court and have it bound over with an injunction to keep the peace, or to cease and desist!
She waited while his office phone rang twice; at last his voice, curt and preoccupied.
"Manchester, Ames, Carmody and Beckenham."
"Joel? It's Leslie."
"Les!" The voice changed, became warm and welcoming. "I hoped you'd call. All ready to go? Pick you up in ten minutes?"
She laughed. "Where are we going?"
"Put on your fanciest outfit and I'll take you dancing at the Claremont. I'm due for a celebration; the judge threw the Hanrahan case out of court. Insufficient evidence for a true bill."
"How wonderful, darling!" She knew he had worked long and hard over the Hanrahan case, for relatively little in the way of fees, and this was a very real victory for him. "But could we have a raincheck on the celebration? I had a rough day and another lined up for tomorrow; I'd really have a quiet bite somewhere, and an early night." Besides, she remembered, the Claremont food, though splendid, was expensive.
"All right, honey; we'll go to that little Greek place you like, the one on College Avenue," he agreed, "Or if you're really too tired, I could pick something up and bring it over?''
That was what she loved about him; he was always concerned about her, always ready to change a cherished plan, even at a moment's notice.
"No, Greek food sounds wonderful. And we'll celebrate some other time, I promise."
"I'll pick you up in twenty minutes, then?"
"Fine."
In high spirits she ran up the stairs, pulling off her jacket and blouse, choosing a fresh silk print in a raspberry red that made her dark eyes glow, and ran a quick brush through her short dark curls.
If she had believed in destiny, she might have thought that she had left Sacramento to meet Joel Beckenham. Such a difference from NickЧ
She had never really been serious about Nick Beckenham. They had dated a dozen times, shared a liking for Italian foods, for the revival of Big Bands from the forties when neither of them had been born; he was halfway engaged to a former classmate of Leslie's, finishing up a Master's degree in Chicago, and while Margot was away, Nick went out with Leslie. She had kissed him two or three times on the cheek, no more; they celebrated together when he was promoted from patrolman to detective. And it was not true that he had come to question her about the missing schoolgirls, though two of them had been pupils at the high school where Leslie was on the counseling staff. She might even have been the last to see Juanita Garcia alive; the girl had been in her office only the day before her parents had reported her missing, and no one had seen Juanita after the girl had left the counseling center.
"Except the murderer," she had said dryly to Nick, "or are you indicating that I'm a suspect?"
"Don't be silly, Les." The young policeman laughed, but his face was still troubled. "There's a nut out there; we've got three girls dead already. Same age. They all have long black hairЕ"
That was when she had seen it clearly; like her own face reflected in a mirror, or under running water. She had heard the high, rising note of horror in her own voice.
"She's in a ditchЕ a drainage ditch," she heard herself say, "with her hair braided. He liked to braid their hairЕ"
"How did you know that? Leslie, that's what we kept back, so we could weed out the crazies who called in with fake confessions. Down at the station we're calling him the pigtail killer because he braids their hair after they're deadЧ"
"I saw her," Leslie whispered, "lying in the ditch. A drainage ditch by a windmill. Wearing her black leather jacketЧ"
Nick had piled her into the black and white police cruiser then, siren screaming. She had never gone to look at Juanita's actual body. She had seen it, in that terrifying underwater flash, clearly enough. A real girl, a girl who had been in her office the day before, Juanita Garcia, sixteen years old, and black hair falling to her waist. Black hair, braided into intricate strands. She had heard herself babbling; she had seen the killer's hands, the killer's face. Joachim Mendoza's face, with the crescent-shaped scar and the mended harelip with a moustache split along the scar, and the broken eyebrows. She had seen it later when they picked him up and found braided locks of hair and the girls' bloodstained panties in his room, and she was still seeing him, from time to time, in nightmares. Nick's squad car partner had sat there staring with his mouth open while she was babbling out her description. He had never believed, she supposed, that she had seen Mendoza's face only in her mind. He never stopped wondering if somehow she had been involved, even an eyewitness.
Nick had been nice. He had stood by her, reassured her about her own sanity. But the Enquirer had kept calling, had wanted to fly her to Chicago to try and get psychic impressions about a new sex murder. And there had been crank calls and crazies, until she had cut it all off. And of course there had been Juanita Garcia's mother, who had burst into a tirade of abuse at the funeral.
"Why didn't you get your psychic flash when she was in your office, why didn't you warn her before she went out to meet that crazy killer? You wanted her to die so you could get your name in the papers?"
Leslie said what was true; that she would have given a year of her life if she had known beforehand, if she had foreseen that Juanita was to walk from her office into the hands of an insane killer. She would have warned the girl, would have begged Juanita to be careful. But no fateful flash had crossed her mind when Juanita stood sullen in her office, habitual truant, delinquent, stoned out of her mind on pot and contempt. What made the Garcia woman think Juanita would have listened to a warning about murder? She hadn't listened to anything else-her teachers and counselors had ever said.
She became aware that she was staring into the mirror, seeing Juanita Garcia's long dark hair, her drowned face under water, instead of her own face. The telephone was ringing; she made a dash for the extension in the hall. Over the noise she heard the sound of a Bach prelude; Emily was home and had begun practicing.
"Hello?"
The voice was thick, curdled and strange; she had a hard time making out words in it. But disturbed persons sometimes found it hard to get what they were saying out; their thoughts frightened them too much.
"I'm sorry," Leslie repeated patiently, "I can't understand you."
"IsЧisЧis Alison there?"
"I'm sorry; I think you must have a wrong number."
The voice mumbled, protested indistinctly, finally clicked away into a dial tone. Leslie hung up. Crank call, or innocent wrong number? They had taught her when she was putting in her time on a suicide prevention hotline, that there were no wrong numbers; they dial your number for a purpose, even if they have to hide it from themselves. She wasn't quite sure she believed itЧsurely it wasn't as cut-and-dried, as Freudian, as that, surely fingers sometimes slipped or eyes read the wrong digit in a telephone book. She heard footsteps on the stairs and recognized them as her sister Emily's; she was putting pearl studs in her ears when Emily looked into her room. Tall, coltish and seventeen, dark auburn hair drawn back into a formal bun, Emily's adolescent rebellion took the form of over-precision rather than grubbiness. She had studied ballet for four years before she had finally chosen the piano, and it still showed in the long delicate neck on which her head was a long-stemmed lily, the posture which gave her the illusion of more height than her modest five foot seven.
"What was the phone, Les? Was that Mommy?"
Leslie shook her head. "Wrong number."
"Did you get the house?" Emily asked eagerly.
Les shook her head. "Not quite big enoughЧno good place for an office and a piano."
Emily sighed. "It sounded so good when you told me about it. Are you going out?"
"Joel and I are getting a bite of dinner somewhere. There's hamburger in the freezer."
Emily made a face, and Leslie remembered she was going through a vegetarian phase again. "I had some salad on the way home; all I want is a carton of yogurt. Did-the piano tuner come?''
"I didn't have a chance to call him. Is there something wrong with it, Em?" She came down the stairs, catching up her camel-hair coat, and glanced into the big old square living room; Emily ran her hands over the keys and grimaced. "Can't you heart" Her look of contempt was promptly concealed; she said with careful kindness, "Call him tomorrow-Чearly, won't you, Les?"
"You call him," Leslie said with cheerful brutality, "you're the one who can't live with it the way it is. I have an early appointment, and I'm seriously thinking of calling another agency; this one doesn't seem to have anything more to show me." Emily wandered to the piano, sat down on the bench and ran off a few scales, tilting her head and grimacing. "Les, do you have any real honest-to-God crazies among your patients? I know, you can't tell me anything about your clients," she mimicked impatiently, "It's just that when the phone rang I got a little scared. There was a real crazy call earlier today. TheЧthe person didn't really talk at all. Just kind ofЧ" she hesitated. "Чkind of buzzed. And breathed."