"Destroyer - 022 - Brain Drain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"Well, there you have it." The fag.

"Have what?" The flat voice.

"Creativity. A song. A dance. A painting. A piece of sculpture. Perhaps you would like to try, Mr. Regal? What would you like to do? You must remember of course that to be creative you must do something different. Difference is the essence of creativity. Come on now, Mr. Regal. Do something different."

"Other than sculpture and dancing and painting and singing?"

"Oh yes, that would be lovely." The fag.

"I don't know what to do." The flat voice.

"Well, let me give you a hint. Often the beginning of creativity is copying what's already been done, but in a different way. You build creativity by copying in a different medium. For instance, you change a painting into a sculpture. Or vice versa. Look around. Find something and then change it into a different medium."

And suddenly there were screams and awful tearing sounds, cracking bones and joints that came apart like thick, soft balloons stretched too far. And the wild desperate screams of the singer.

"No, no, no, no. No I" It was a wail, it was a chant, it was a prayer. And it wasn't answered. Snap! Pop! And there were no more screams. Waldman heard the heavy crunch of plaster, and it hit the ground with a splash. Probably in a pool of blood. Plaster, then splash.

"Lovely." The flat voice. This time it echoed through the room. Then the door closed on the tape.

Inspector Waldman rewound the tape to where the screaming had begun. He played it forward, watching the second hand of his watch. A minute and a half. All that done by one man. In eighty-five seconds.

Waldman rewound the tape and played it back. It had to be one man. There were the voices of the four victims and their references to their guest, their one guest. He listened carefully. It sounded like power tools at work but he did not hear any motors. Eighty-five seconds.

Waldman stumbled trying to straighten up. He had been kneeling too long for his fifty-year-old frame. You knew you were getting old when you couldn't do that anymore. A young patrolman with a happy, glad-to-meet-you smile entered the basement room.

"Yeah?" said Waldman. The patrolman's face was familiar. Then he saw the badge. Of course. It must have been the model for the recruiting poster. Looked just like him, right down to that artificial friendly grin. But that couldn't be a real badge. The commercial artist hired by the police department, some radical freak, had done his defiance bit by giving the poster model a badge number no one hadЕ "6969" which meant an obscenity.

And this patrolman, now smiling at Waldman, had that number.

"Who are you?"

"Patrolman Gilbys, sir." That flat voice. It was the voice on the tape.

"Oh, good," said Waldman pleasantly. "Good."

"I heard you were on the case."

"Oh, yeah," said Waldman. He would put the suspect at ease, then casually get him to the station house, and stick a revolver in his face. Waldman tried to remember when he had last cleaned his pistol. A year and a half ago. No matter. A police special could take all sorts of abuse.

"I was wondering what you meant by a horror scene? You were quoted as such in the newspapers. You didn't mention creativity. Did you think it was creative?"

"Sure, sure. Most creative thing I've ever seen. All the guys down at the station house thought it was a work of art. You know, we ought to go down and talk to them about it."

"I do not know if you are aware of it, but your voice is modulating unevenly. This is a sure indication of lying. Why do you lie to me, kike? I assume it is kike, unless, of course, it is kraut."

"Lie? Who's lying? It was creative."

"You will tell me the truth, of course. People talk through pain," said the phony patrolman with the glad-to-meet-you smile and the obscene badge from the recruiting poster.