"Rain, Anthony Vincent - Three Palms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rain Anthony Vincent)

The milling cops held my attention for another couple of hours. Six years in the business and I still found crime fascinating, even the nuts and bolts of a crime scene. Something for a shrink to figure out.

There was a knock at the door, and I opened it to a young officer. He politely asked if he could look around.

"For what?" I asked.

"We're just checking to make sure everything is stable."

"All right," I said. "But you won't find any murders lurking behind the shower curtain."

I let him in, surreptitiously moving my bag under the bed with my foot. He looked at the surfaces of the main room, poked his head into the bathroom, then thanked me and left.

I shut the lights and lay down on the bed, still dressed. I fell asleep quickly and dreamed about chasing DePalma.

I woke up with thick bands of sunlight and a swarm of dust motes flooding my room. I grabbed my M&Ms and headed out to eat breakfast on the balcony.

The sun infused the colors of the trees and ocean, making them brighter and deeper. The waves rolled in like gently disturbed bath water. This was what really mattered in life. A beautiful day with beautiful scenery. There's going to be crap to deal with most days, but you should still kick back and feel the sun on your face, the ocean at your feet. I held the moment as long as I could.

Finally, I went downstairs and back to the parking lot. The gravel stones had been raked and the victim's car had been towed away. The crime scene tape was gone. The crickets were a fraction of their volume from the night before.

When I strolled around front, the motel clerk was sitting on a wooden bench next to a palm. His rounded brown cheeks were covered with black and gray stubble, and he was wearing the same clothes from the night before.

"You look like you could use some coffee, and I know I could," I said. "I'm buying."

He looked up. "Coffee won't help. The police think my son killed that man."

"What?" I recalled seeing a young kid standing behind the clerk last night. He'd been maybe seventeen or eighteen, and he hadn't said a word. Just stood and watched.

The clerk shook his head sluggishly and wiped his face with his hand.

"They book him?" I asked.

"Not yet. He was released, but the lawyer says it's gonna happen."

"Fill me in." I knelt down next to him.

"The police found a gun under my windows. I live here with my son." He nodded in the direction of the lower left-hand side of the first floor of the motel. "They also found small traces of blood on one window ledge. The police got a warrant to search the premises. They said they had probable cause."

That must have been the reason the cop came up to my room.

"The police saw a T-shirt with blood on it sticking out from under KJ's bed. They found shorts and sneakers with traces of blood shoved under the bed too. They questioned him last night and took his fingerprints."

He got up and rubbed the backs of his knees. "The lawyer told me this morning that the police sent the clothes and gun to Orlando for testing. They are saying KJ dropped the gun when he climbed back in his bedroom window, after shooting that man."

"Were your son's fingerprints on the gun?"

"Well, they didn't arrest him."

"Most likely they didn't get prints. Did they give a motive?"