"Reichs, Kathy - Temperance Brennan 01 - Deja Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichs Kathy)

"You're the one from the coroner?" His tone would have made a KGB
interrogator sound trusting.

"'Yes. I'm the anthropologistejudiciaire." Slowly, like a second-grade
teacher. "I do the disinterments and the skeletal cases. I understand
this may qualify for both?"

I handed him my ID. A small, brass rectangle above his shirt pocket
identified him as Const. Groulx. He looked at the photo, then at me. My
appearance was not convincing. I'd planned to work on the skull
reconstruction all day, and was dressed for glue. I was wearing faded
brown jeans, a denim shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, Topsiders, no
socks. Most of my hair was bound up in a barrette. The rest, having
fought gravity and lost, spiraled limply around my face and down my
neck. I was speckled with patches of dried Elmer's. I must have looked
more like a middle-aged mother forced to abandon a wallpaper project
than a forensic anthropologist. He studied the ID for a long time, then
returned it without comment. I was obviously not what he wanted.

"Have you seen the remains?" I asked.

"No. I am securing the site." He used a modified version of the hand
flip to indicate the two men who stood watching us, conversation
suspended.

"They found it. I called it in. They will lead you."

I wondered if Constable Groulx was capable of a compound sentence. With
another hand gesture, he indicated the workers once again.

"I will watch your car."

I nodded but he was already turning away. The Hydro workers watched in
silence as I approached. Both wore aviator shades, and the late
afternoon sun shot orange beams off alternating lenses as one or the
other moved his head. Their mustaches looped in identical upside down U's
around their mouths. The one on the left was the older of the two, a
thin, dark man with the look of a rat terrier. He was glancing around
nervously, his gaze bouncing from object to object, person to person,
like a bee making sorties in and out of a peony blossom. His eyes kept
darting to me, then quickly away, as if he feared contact with other
eyes would commit him to something he'd later come to regret. He shifted
his weight from foot to foot and hunched and unhunched his shoulders.
His partner was a much larger man with a long, lank ponytail and a
weathered face. He smiled as I drew near, displaying gaps that once held
teeth. I suspected he'd be the more loquacious of the two.

"Bonjour Coninient,(a va?" The French equivalent of "Hi. How are you?"