"Gardner Dozois - Flash Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

shoulder; probably it had been already meandering out of control, with no foot on the accelerator. The
hood and bumpers weren't damaged; the car had rolled to a stop against the low embankment, rather
than crashing into it. None of the tires were flat. In the woods taking a leak, Jacobs thought. Damn fool
didn't even leave his turn signals on. Or it could have been his battery, or a vapor lock or something, and
he'd hiked on up the road looking for a gas station. "He still should have ma'ked it off someway," Jacobs
muttered. Tourists never knew enough to find their ass in a snowstorm. This one probably wasn't even
carrying any signal flags or flares.

The driver's door was wide open, and next to it was a child's plastic doll, lying facedown in the
gravel. Jacobs could not explain the chill that hit him then, the horror that seized him and shook him until
he was almost physically ill. Bristling, he stooped and thrust his head into the car. There was a burnt,
bitter smell inside, like onions, like hot metal. A layer of gray ash covered the front seat and the floor, a
couple of inches deep; a thin stream of it was trickling over the doorjamb to the ground and pooling
around the plastic feet of the doll. Hesitantly he touched the ashтАФit was sticky and soapy to the touch. In
spite of the sunlight that was slanting into the car and warming up the upholstery, the ash was cold, almost
icy. The cloth ceiling directly over the front seat was lightly blackened with sootтАФhe scraped some of it
off with his thumbnailтАФbut there was no other sign of fire. Scattered among the ashes on the front seat
were piles of clothing. Jacobs could pick out a pair of men's trousers, a sports coat, a bra, slacks, a
bright child's dress, all undamaged. More than one person. They're all in the woods taking a leak, he
thought inanely. Sta'k naked.

Sitting on the dashboard were a 35-mm Nikon SI with a telephoto lens and a new Leicaflex. In the
hip pocket of the trousers was a wallet, containing more than fifty dollars in cash, and a bunch of credit
cards. He put the wallet back. Not even a tourist was going to be fool enough to walk off and leave this
stuff sitting here, in an open car.

He straightened up, and felt the chill again, the deathly noonday cold. This time he was spooked.
Without knowing why, he nudged the doll out of the puddle of ash with his foot, and then he shuddered.
"Hello!" he shouted, at the top of his voice, and got back only a dull, flat echo from the woods. Where in
hell had they gone?

All at once, he was exhausted. He'd been out before dawn, on a trip up to Kingfield and
Carrabassett, and it was catching up with him. Maybe that was why he was so jumpy over nothing.
Getting old, c'n't take this kind of shit anymore. How long since you've had a vacation? He opened his
mouth to shout again, but uneasily decided not to. He stood for a moment, thinking it out, and then
walked back to his truck, hunch-shouldered and limping. The old load of shrapnel in his leg and hip was
beginning to bother him again.

Jacobs drove a mile down the highway to a rest stop. He had been hoping he would find the people
from the car here, waiting for a tow truck, but the rest area was deserted. He stuck his head into the
wood-and-fieldstone latrine, and found that it was inhabited only by buzzing clouds of bluebottles and
blackflies. He shrugged. So much for that. There was a pay phone on a pole next to the picnic tables,
and he used it to call the sheriff's office in Skowhegan. Unfortunately, Abner Jackman answered the
phone, and it took Jacobs ten exasperating minutes to argue him into showing any interest. "Well, if they
did," Jacobs said grudgingly, "they did it without any clothes." Gobblegobblebuzz, said the phone. "With
a kid?" Jacobs demanded. Buzzgobblefttzbuzz, the phone said, giving in. "Ayah," Jacobs said
grudgingly, "I'll stay theah until you show up." And he hung up.
"Damned foolishness," he muttered. This was going to cost him the morning.

County Sheriff Joe Riddick arrived an hour later. He was a stocky, slab-sided man, apparently cut all