"Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

"What in the hell is the matter with you, Crowe? You stoned?"
"No more than usual," Theo said. "What's the problem?"
"The problem is you removed evidence from a crime scene."
"I did?" Talking to the sheriff could drain all of Theo's energy
instantly. He fell into a beanbag chair that expectorated Styrofoam beads from
a failing seam with a sigh. "What evidence? What scene?"
"The pills, Crowe. The suicide's husband said you took the pills with
you. I want them back at the scene in ten minutes. I want my men out of there
in half an hour. The M.E. will do the autopsy this afternoon and this case
will close by dinnertime, got it? Run-of-the-mill suicide. Obit page only. No
news. You understand?"
"I was just checking on her condition with her psychiatrist. See if there
were any indications she might be suicidal."
"Crowe, you must resist the urge to play investigator or pretend that you
are a law enforcement officer. The woman hung herself. She was depressed and
she ended it all. The husband wasn't cheating, there was no money motive, and
Mommy and Daddy weren't fighting."
"They talked to the kids?"
"Of course they talked to the kids. They're detectives. They investigate
things. Now get over there and get them out of North County. I'd send them
over to get the pills from you, but I wouldn't want them to find your little
victory garden, would you?"
"I'm leaving now," Theo said.
"This is the last I will hear of this," Burton said. He hung up.
Theo hung up the phone, closed his eyes, and turned into a human puddle
in the beanbag chair.
Forty-one years old and he still lived like a college student. His books
were stacked between bricks and boards, his bed pulled out of a sofa, his
refrigerator was empty but for a slice of pizza going green, and the grounds
around his cabin were overgrown with weeds and brambles. Behind the cabin, in
the middle of a nest of blackberry vines, stood his victory garden: ten bushy
marijuana plants, sticky with buds that smelled of skunk and spice. Not a day
passed that he didn't want to plow them under and sterilize the ground they
grew in. And not a day passed that he didn't work his way through the brambles
and lovingly harvest the sticky green that would sustain his habit through the
day.
The researchers said that marijuana was only psychologically addictive.
Theo had read all the papers. They only mentioned the night sweats and mental
spiders of withdrawal in passing, as if they were no more unpleasant than a
tetanus shot. But Theo had tried to quit. He'd wrung out three sets of sheets
in one night and paced the cabin looking for distraction until he thought his
head might explode, only to give up and suck the piquant smoke from his Sneaky
Pete so he could find sleep. The researchers obviously didn't get it, but
Sheriff John Burton did. He understood Theo's weakness and held it over him
like the proverbial sword. That Burton had his own Achilles' heel and more to
lose from its discovery didn't seem to matter. Logically, Theo had him in a
standoff. But emotionally, Burton had the upper hand. Theo was always the one
to blink.
He snatched Sneaky Pete off his orange crate coffee table and headed out
the door to return Bess Leander's pills to the scene of the crime.