"Murder In The Solid State" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

"You're busy in NEVERland," he said to Marian. The remark was not a question, but a question lay unconcealed behind it: however important your game is, will you interrupt it for me?
In the same neutral tone: "The borders are under attack right now. It's amateurs, I think, thirteen-year-olds or something. I'm dug in for a slow night, so I suspect the guards and wards will take them out without my having to be there." Now Marian peered closely at him through the vidphone screen, and her face softened. "You look terrible. Did something happen?"
"Oh, yeah," he said, and launched into a troubled account of the evening's events. Marian, God love her, seemed fiercely determined not to be impressed with his bravery or his wounds, though her eyes sparkled a little as he talked.
"Do you love me tonight?" he asked her at one point, his voice a bit more wheedling than he would have liked.
"What, after you just trashed your career?" She smirked, to show that she didn't believe that had happened. "After you beat up on the Sniffer King? Boy, you don't make it easy on a girl."
Well, comfort was not exactly Marian's forte either.
David awoke suddenly, with sunlight tearing at the edges of his sleep mask and a loud pounding noise assaulting his ears.
"Police! Open up!"
Who?" David said quietly, more to himself than to the wider world. He pulled the mask off, letting the light flood in against his eyelids. Where was he? What was going on? Then, squinting against the painful glare, he saw the hotel room around him, and the events of the previous night flashed into his mind like a spray of bitter acid. He groaned.
CLUMP! CLUMP CLUMP! The whole door seemed to shudder with the noise, as if someone were kicking it with a heavy boot.
"This is the police! Open the door!"
"OK!" he said, kicking the bedcovers away and sitting up, fighting back his amazement and disorientation. This was a hell of a way to wake up on a Saturday morning. "OK, just a second. I'm coming."
He threw his feet down on the floor and got himself up on top of them. Hopped quickly to the door, unlatched it, opened it. See how eager I am, Officer?
Two police stood in the hallway outside: a uniformed black woman and a white male in shirt and tie, badge dangling from a strap around his neck. The woman's thumbs were hooked at her utility belt, the man's jammed into his front pockets. Both their faces were identically grim and set. David regarded them blearily. "Yeah? What is it?"
"We'd like to talk to you about last night," the female officer said. "May we come in please?"
"Huh?" David blinked, then nodded and stepped away from the door. "Yeah, sure. Is this about Vandegroot?"
The officers shared a look between them, and then considered David, eyeing his jockey-shorted form as if guessing how much he weighed.
"Yes," the female officer said, "it's about Vandegroot. We have about a thousand witnesses that saw you fighting with him last night."
"That's right," David said. "Listen, can we do this later? I already said I'm not pressing charges."
The female officer blinked, as if that remark made no sense to her. Her male counterpart, a beefy man in his late thirties, leaned forward slightly and spoke: "Detective Volhallen, Violent Crimes. You used an illegal weapon against Otto Vandegroot at approximately 7:25 P.M. In the main ballroom downstairs, is that correct?"
The bottom dropped out of David's stomach, as if his hotel room were an elevator that had suddenly begun to descend. Illegal weapon . . . "That wasn't my sword. Somebody handed it to me when Otto pulled out his."
"Who handed it to you?" the policeman asked, his tone suspicious, condescending.
"I don't know. I couldn't see."
"Aha. And after the fight? What did you do then?"
David squared his shoulders. "I drank some vodka. I was pretty shaken up, I wanted to steady my hands. You know?"
"What did you want them steady for?"
"What?"
The policeman sighed, glanced at his partner and then back at David again. "You drank the vodka in front of witnesses, right? What did you do after that?"
"I came up here to my room," David said carefully. His own voice was beginning to sound more than a little suspicious. "I called my girlfriend."
"Did you take the elevator?"
"Yes, I took the elevator. What the hell is this about? Is Otto pressing charges or something?"
The officers looked at each other again, and then the woman shrugged and they both looked back at David.
"Otto Vandegroot is dead," the policeman said, and watched David's face for a reaction.
David didn't have a reaction. He didn't blink, didn't twitch a muscle. Otto Vandegroot is dead? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
"At approximately 9:20 P.M.," the detective said, still scrutinizing David, "in a stairwell, somebody shoved a drop foil through the back of Mr. Vandegroot's head. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
David just stood there, stupidly. "What in God's name are you talking about?"
The cop sighed again, heavily this time. "OK, here's the deal: your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, and nobody that we've talked to saw you at the time of the murder. Can you explain that?"
"The murder weapon?" David said, marveling at the absolute weirdness of the situation. "How would my fingerprints . .."
Oh, dear God. He had dropped the sword after Vandegroot's surrender, and when he'd looked for it later it hadn't been there. He'd assumed the security guards had taken it with them, or else its original owner had reclaimed it. He hadn't pursued the matter because, well, what was there to pursue? The fight was over and best forgotten.
But if someone had picked it up . . . and killed Otto Vandegroot with it...
These days, the police could scan for fingerprints with a device that looked like a penlight, and then consult a national database to receive the ID within minutes. The error rate was supposed to be very low, something like one in a thousand. David didn't feel that lucky this morning.
"I can explain," he said, a bit too quickly.
The policeman cracked a sort of lopsided sneer at that. "I thought you could. Get dressed, my friend. We'll let you explain it downtown."
"Am I under arrest?" David asked.
"What the hell do you think?"
The view outside the window didn't move, didn't change, but David still felt the hotel room descending, like an elevator car on its way down to some dark and unknowable place.