"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Spirit Guides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

KRISTINE KATHRY RUSCH

SPIRIT GUIDES

Los Angeles City of the Angels.

Kincaid walked down Hollywood Boulevard, his feet stepping on gum-coated
stars.
Cars whooshed past him, horns honking, tourists gawking. The line outside
Graumann's Chinese clutched purses against their sides, held windbreakers
tightly over their arms. A hooker leaned against the barred display window of
the corner drug store, her makeup so thick it looked like a mask in the hot
sun.

The shooting had left him shaken. The crazy had opened up inside a nearby
Burger
Joint, slaughtering four customers and three teenaged kids behind the counter
before three men, passing on the street, rushed inside and grabbed him. Half a
dozen shots had gone wild, leaving fist-sized holes in the drywall, shattering
picture frames, and making one perfect circle in the center of the cardboard
model for a bacon-double cheeseburger.

He'd arrived two minutes too late, hearing the call on his police scanner on
his
way home, but unable to maneuver in traffic. Christ, some of those people who
wouldn't let him pass might have had relatives in that Burger Joint. Still and
all, he had arrived first to find the killer trussed up in a chair, the men
hovering around him, women clutching sobbing children, blood and bodies mixing
with french fries on the unswept floor.

A little girl, no more than three, had grabbed his sleeve and pointed at one
of
the bodies, long slender male and young, wearing a '49ers T-shirt, ripped
jeans
and Adidas, face a bloody mass of tissue, and said, "Make him better," in a
whisper that broke Kincaid's heart. He cuffed the suspect, roped off the area,
took names of witnesses before the back-up arrived. Three squads, fresh-faced
uniformed officers, followed by the SWAT team, nearly five minutes too late,
the
forensic team and the ambulances not far behind.

Kincaid had lit a cigarette with shaking fingers and said, "All yours," before
taking off into the sun-drenched crowded streets.

He stopped outside the Roosevelt, and peered into the plate glass. His own
tennis shoes were stained red, and a long brown streak of drying blood marked
his Levis. The cigarette had burned to a coal between his nicotine stained
fingers, and he tossed it, stamping it out on the star of a celebrity whose
name
he didn't recognize.