"Roberts, Nora - Divine Evil(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

been broken by the door, how could there be so much glass here, behind the desk?
Under the window?
Slowly, she looked up from the jagged shards at her feet to the tall, narrow
window behind her fatherТs desk. It was not open, but broken. Vicious slices of
glass still clung to the frame. With watery legs she took a step forward, then
another. And looked down to where her father lay face up on the flagstone patio,
impaled through the chest by the round of garden stakes he had set there that
same afternoon.
She remembered running. The scream locked in her chest. Stumbling on the stairs,
falling, scrambling up and running again, down the long hall, slamming into the
swinging door at the kitchen, through the screen that led outside.
He was bleeding, broken, his mouth open as if he were about to speak. Or scream.
Through his chest the sharp-ended stakes sliced, soaked with blood and gore.
His eyes stared at her, but he didnТt see. She shook him, shouted, tried to drag
him up. She pleaded and begged and promised, but he only stared at her. She
could smell the blood, his blood, and the heavy scent of summer roses he loved.
Then she screamed. She kept screaming until the neighbors found them.
Chapter Two
Cameron Rafferty hated cemeteries. It wasnТt superstition. He wasnТt the land of
man who avoided black cats or knocked on wood. It was the confrontation with his
own mortality he abhorred. He knew he couldnТt live foreverЧas a cop he was
aware he took more risks with death than most. That was a job, just as life was
a job and death was its retirement.
But he was damned if he liked to be reminded of it by granite headstones and
bunches of withered flowers.
He had come to look at a grave, however, and most graves tended to draw in
company and turn into cemeteries. This one was attached to Our Lady of Mercy
Catholic Church and was set on a rambling slope of land in the shadow of the old
belfry. The stone church was small but sturdy, having survived weather and sin
for a hundred and twenty-three years. The plot of land reserved for Catholics
gone to glory was hugged by a wrought-iron fence. Most of the spikes were
rusted, and many were missing. Nobody much noticed.
These days, most of the townspeople were split between the nondenominational
Church of God on Main and the First Lutheran just around the corner on Poplar,
with some holdouts for the Wayside Church of the Brethren on the south side of
town and the CatholicsЧthe Brethren having the edge.
Since the membership had fallen off in the seventies, Our Lady of Mercy had
dropped back to one Sunday mass. The priests of St. AnneТs in Hagerstown were on
an informal rotation, and one of them popped down for religion classes and the
nine oТclock mass that followed them. Otherwise, Our Lady didnТt do a lot of
business, except around Easter and Christmas. And, of course, weddings and
funerals. No matter how far her faithful strayed, they came back to Our Lady to
be planted.
It wasnТt a thought that gave Cam, whoТd been baptized at the font, right in
front of the tall, serene statue of the Virgin, any comfort.
It was a pretty night, a little chill, a little breezy, but the sky was diamond
clear. He would have preferred to have been sitting on his deck with a cold
bottle of Rolling Rock, looking at the stars through his telescope. The truth
was, he would have preferred to have been chasing a homicidal junkie down a dark
alley. When you were chasing down possible death with a gun in your hand, the