"07 - Burnt Offerings 4.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

buffet. If you came up Ballas at lunch time, you always had plenty of time to
study the shops on either side.
He smiled, then grimaced. "I had two bodies to stake. Both vamp victims that
didn't want to rise as vampires."
"They had dying wills, I remember. You've been doing most of those lately."
He nodded, then froze in mid-gesture. "Even nodding my head hurts."
"It'll hurt more tomorrow."
"Gee, thanks, boss. I needed to know that."
I shrugged. "Lying to you won't make it hurt less."
"Anybody ever tell you your bedside manner sucks?"
"Lots of people."
He made a small hmph sound. "That I believe. Anyway, I'd finished the bodies and
was packing up. A woman rolled in another body. Said it was a vamp with no court
order attached."
I glanced at him, frowning. "You didn't do a body without paperwork, did you?"
He frowned back. "Of course not. I told them, no court order, no dead vampire.
Staking a vamp without a court order is murder, and I'm not going to be up on
charges because someone screwed the paperwork. I told them both that in no
uncertain terms."
"Them?" I asked. I eased up the line of traffic, a little closer to the light.
"The other morgue attendant had come back in. They went out in search of the
misplaced paperwork. I was left with the vampire. It was morning. He wasn't
going anywhere." He tried to look away and not meet my eyes, but it hurt. He
ended up staring at me, angry.
"I went out for a cigarette."
I looked at him and had to slam on the brakes when the traffic just stopped.
Larry was flung into the seat belt. He groaned, and when he was finished
writhing on the seat, he said, "You did that on purpose."
"No, I didn't, but maybe I should have. You left a vampire body alone. A vampire
that might have had enough kills to deserve a court order of execution, alone in
the morgue."
"It wasn't just the cigarette, Anita. The body was just lying there on the
gurney. It wasn't chained or strapped. There were no crosses anywhere. I've done
executions. They plaster the vamps with silver chains and crosses until it's
hard to find the heart. It just didn't look right. I wanted to talk to the
medical examiner. She has to approve all vampires before execution, or somebody
does. Besides the ME smokes. I figured we could have one together in her
office."
"And," I said.
"She wasn't in, and I went back to the morgue. When I got there, the woman
attendant was trying to pound a stake through the vamp's chest."
It was lucky we were at a dead stop in traffic. If we'd been moving, I'd have
plowed into someone. I stared at him. "You left your vampire kit unattended."
He managed to look embarrassed and angry at the same time. "My kit doesn't
include shotguns like yours does, so I figured, who would bother it."
"A lot of people will steal things out of the bag for souvenirs, Larry." Traffic
started to creep forward and I had to watch the road instead of his face.
"Fine, fine, I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I grabbed her around the waist and
pulled her off the vampire." His eyes slid downward, not looking at me. This was
the part that bothered him, or the part he thought would bother me. "I turned my