"Nayler, Ray - How They Kill You At Thousand Palms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

Ben clenched his teeth. "You fucked my wife in that motel room, the night you found her."
David stood up and took a step forward, leveling the .45 at BenТs face. "Say that again. Say that again so that I can blow your brains out."
Ben closed his eyes, turning his head away from the gun. "YouТre killing me for her, avenging her death, and she never even gave a damn about you. Did you think that you were special? She was cold. You were just meat"
"Shut up! Did you think that you could get away with it?" David said, nearly screaming. "That you could kill someone and get away with it? Did you think I wouldnТt find you?"
Ben didnТt say anything. His eyes were completely closed, his lips drawn back from his teeth in anticipation of his own death. David pushed the barrel of the pistol against his temple.
"You should have known. You should have been able to feel it last night. I would never stop hunting you. There was nowhere for you to go. Could you feel me biting at your ankles?"
"Yes. Sometimes. I knew you were after me. But I had to try to live anyway. I had to. Fourteen years ago I . . ."
Ben was interrupted by his own screams as David lowered the pistol and shot him in the foot. He jerked off of the bed and fell on the floor, curling up into a fetal position and trying to crawl away at the same time, so that he moved across the floor like an inchworm, blindly. His destroyed foot left a trail of blood on the carpet behind him. He stopped when he ran up against the door to the bathroom. David stuck a foot under his chest and turned him over.
"You know, I thought that I wanted to hear all of the details. All these years, what I wanted most of all was to make you tell me why and how. I wanted you to tell me everything that youТd been doing these past thirty years. I wanted you to tell me every thought that youТd had. But itТs been three decades, and IТm tired. IТm not interested anymore. IsnТt that funny?"
Ben stared up at him through tears. "Please. You canТt kill me. It isnТt just me. ThereТs someone else. A little girl."
David grinned down at him. "I know. Your taste has changed, over the years. You just keep getting sicker and sicker, donТt you? You know, that was how I found you. That seventeen year old girl you left in Barstow had a lot to say about you." He gestured toward the window, turning his head for a moment, seeing her in his minds eyeЧanother snapshotЧthe girl looking over at him in the car, her pretty round face pale and full of hate, her mouth slack from too much drink . It was when she told him she hoped he would kill Ben. David blinked the picture away. He turned back to Ben. "She . . ."
He stopped with a small intake of breath. Ben had a .snub-nosed .38 revolver in his hand. He pulled the trigger three times. The gun barked, and David stumbled back, looking in shock at the three blooming red roses on his shirt. He caught his ankles and fell backwards over the coffee table, pitching onto the carpet with a thud that shook the trailer. Teen magazines scattered onto the floor.
Ben let the revolver fall to the carpet. He put his hands to his face and shuddered with his whole body, collapsing onto his side and sobbing. He stayed that way for almost a half an hour before he took his hands away from his face, now red and puffy, and struggled to his good foot. He limped over to the bunk and sat down heavily, staring at the still body of David, laying on the floor. He had twisted as heТd fallen over the coffee table, and he lay on his side, the automatic still clutched in one hand. His shirt was crimson and blood had begun to pool on the carpet below him.
"You bastard. It wasnТt like that. You wonТt let me change. IТm different now. CanТt you see?" Ben pleaded.
The voice came to David from far away. Everything was black where he was, and he floated in the blackness as if on the surface of a pool, sometimes slipping underneath it and sometimes riding on top of it. The voice came again. "You bastard."
David found his arm where it bobbed in the darkness and felt the automatic in its hand. He raised the arm and fired at the voice, pulling the trigger until it stopped trying to jump out of his hand and just clicked. He let himself slide under the surface of the pool, sinking down toward the bottom. It never came.
Instead, his eyes opened. He couldnТt feel anything. His eyes panned across the pool of blood that ran from his own chest and up to the bunk, where what was left of Ben sat slumped against the wall like a discarded marionette. HeТd caught a bullet in the head that had removed half of his skull and emptied him out all over the wall of the trailer, as well as several in the chest. One green eye stared wide-eyed back at David, accusing. His mouth hung open and silent.
David rolled over on his back. He got inched himself over to the wall and managed to sit up. It seemed to take a year. His chest screamed at him. He coughed, and blood splashed into his hand. By sliding himself up the wall, he managed to get to his feet. Leaning one heavy shoulder against the wall, he made his slow way to the door of the trailer. The door weighed a thousand pounds, and pulling it open ripped things loose in his chest and sent little explosions of pain down his spine. He stepped through the doorway and down the steps on legs that were made of wood and moved without joints.
The gunshots in the trailer had brought nobody. The park was deserted, the heads of the thousand palms hissing in the desert night-wind, black shapes against an indigo sky that overflowed with icy, glittering stars. BenТs car sat on its balding tires a few yards away, a beat-up white Ford sedan coated thickly with dust. He made it to the car and fell heavily against the hood, panting. He could feel himself sliding away, his vision dimming at the edges. If the keys were in the car . . . if he could get to a hospital. Inching around to the driverТs side door, he pulled at the handle with all his strength. The door came open, unexpectedly, and he fell back into the dust. He lay still, staring up into the sky and the stars as the ground beneath him turned liquid.
A small voice came from inside the car.
"Daddy?"
He moaned and felt tears startЧthe first in three decades.
A final snapshotЧblurred a bit by tears in the lensЧthe sleep-rumpled little girl, her wide eyes staring down at him not in fear but in wonder. The eyes were BenТsЧas if they had been plucked from his head and set in her face. They watched him die.


Ray Nayler was born in Desbiens, Quebec. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Crimewave, Blue Murder, Heist, The Edge, and several other magazines. His first novel, AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS, will be released by Crimewave in June. His earlier story, "Hang On St. Christopher" appeared in the January edition of Plots With Guns. "How They Kill You At Thousand Palms" was the basis of the novel AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS. Mr. Nayler would like to dedicate this story to his father, Patrice Desmeules. Mieux vaut tard que jamais.