"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

and a rape and knifing in an alley off La Brea. Only the gunshot victim had bled to death, but there had
been a lot of blood in all three.
Friday, the 22nd, the same day Detweiler checked in the Brewster, a two-year-old boy had fallen on
an upturned rake in his backyard on LarchemontтАФonly eight or ten blocks from where I lived on
Beachwood. And a couple of Chicano kids had had a knife fight behind Hollywood High. One was dead
and the other was in jail. Ah, machismo!
The list went on and on, all the way back to Thursday, the 7th. On that day was another
slashed-wrist suicide near Western and Wilshire,
The next morning, Tuesday, the 3rd, I called Miss Tremaine and told her I'd be late getting in but
would check in every couple of hours to find out if the slinky blonde looking for her kid sister had shown
up. She humphed.
Larchemont is a middle-class neighborhood huddled in between the old wealth around the country
club and the blight spreading down Melrose from Western Avenue. It tries to give the impression of
suburbiaтАФand does a pretty good job of it-father than just another nearly downtown shopping center.
The area isn't big on apartments or rooming houses, but there are a few. I found the Detweiler boy at the
third one I checked. It was a block and a half from where the little kid fell on the rake.
 According to the landlord, at the time of the kid's death Detweiler was playing bridge with him and a
couple of elderly old-maid sisters in number twelve. He hadn't been feeling well and had moved out later
that eveningтАФto catch a bus to San Diego, to visit his ailing mother. The landlord had felt sorry for him,
so sorry he'd broken a steadfast rule and refunded most of the month's rent Detweiler had paid hi
advance. After all, he'd only been there three days. So sad about his back. Such a nice, gentle boyтАФa
writer, you know.
No, I didn't know, but it explained how he could move around so much without seeming to work.
I called David Fowler: "Yes, Andy had a portable typewriter, but he-hadn't mentioned being a
writer."
And Birdie Pawlowicz: "Yeah, he typed a lot in his room."
I found the Detweiler boy again on the 16th and the 19th. He'd moved into a rooming house near
Silver Lake Park on the night of the 13th and moved out again on the 19th. The landlady hadn't refunded
his money, but she gave him an alibi for the knifing of an old man in the park on the 16th and the suicide
of a girl in the same rooming house on the 19th. He'd been in the pink of health when he moved in, sick
on the 16th, healthy the 17th, and sick again the 19th.
It was like a rerun. He lived a block away from where a man was mugged, knifed, and robbed in an
alley on the 13thтАФthough the details of the murder didn't seem to fit the pattern. But he was sick, bad an
alibi, and moved to Silver Lake.
Rerun it on the 10th: a woman slipped in the bathtub and fell through the glass shower doors, cutting
herself to ribbons. Sick, alibi, moved.
It may be because I was always rotten in math, but it wasn't until right then that I figured out
Detweiler's timetable. Milian died the 1st, Harry Spinner the 28th, the miscarriage was on the 25th, the
little kid on the 22nd, Silver Lake on the 19th and 16th, etc., etc., etc.
A bloody death occurred in Detweiler's general vicinity every thud day.
But I couldn't figure out a pattern for the victims: male, female, little kids, old aunties, married,
unmarried, rich, poor, young, old. No pattern of any kind, and there's always a pattern. I even checked
to see if the names were in alphabetical order.
I got back to my office at six. Miss Tremaine sat primly at her desk, cleared of everything but her
purse and a notepad. She reminded me quite a lot of Desmond. "What are you still doing here, Miss
Tremaine? You should've left an hour ago." I sat at my desk, leaned back until the swivel chair groaned
twice, and propped my feet up.
She picked up the pad. "I wanted to give you your calls."
"Can't they wait? I've been sleuthing all day and I'm bushed."
"No one is paying you to find this Detweiler person, are they?"