"Cray, David - Little Girl Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cray David)

pushed a gurney along the footpath closest to the body. When they
reached the victim, the younger man collapsed the gurney while his
coworker unzipped the body bag. Nearly in unison, the cops working the
scene stopped to watch as the girl was lifted and placed into the bag.
Her skin, Julia noted, was uniformly purple on her left side and along
her left thigh where it had rested against the frozen ground. It was
purple on the left side of her face as well, but the color lightened as
it crossed her chest and her back, from lavender to violet to a pale,
robin's-egg blue.

As if drawing a curtain, the older tech zipped up the bag and the cops
went back to work. Bert Griffith approached Julia, his brows drawn up
high enough to wrinkle his forehead. "Are we havin' fun yet?" he
asked.

"Tell me what we have here," Julia responded

Griffith shrugged. "We got matchbooks, crumpled tissues, candy
wrappers, a frozen condom. Look like they been here since the ice age.
We got no cause of death, no ..."

"Bert," Julia interrupted, "you think she walked into the park?"

Always a cautious man, Griffith took his time with the question. His
response, when he finally decided to answer, was predictably
noncommittal. "Her feet were pretty torn up, loo. Guess she
coulda."

Julia turned to face her detective. "We know she died where she was.
The lividity was consistent."

"That's Bucevski's opinion."

"Which is also consistent with her having walked into the park."

"Can't deny it."

"So, except for her shoes and socks, was she dressed?"

Again, Griffith was caught off-guard. "You figurin' somebody walked
her in barefoot, then stripped her and took her clothes away?" Griffith
shook his head. "Why would the perp do that?"

"How do we know somebody walked her in? Maybe she walked in by
herself. Maybe she ran into the park. Maybe whatever she was running
away from was worse than Central Park on a January night."

"Say that again?"

Julia rubbed her hands together and looked up. The winter sun, hanging