"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Women of Whale Rock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

THE WOMEN OF WHALE ROCK

THE GULLS SWARMED OVER the Sandcastle Hotel. Whipping and diving and cawing to
their fellows, they looked like something out of Daphne du Maurier's "The
Birds," a novelette more sinister and terrifying than anything Hitchcock ever
produced.

Charles watched from his deck. The morning breeze was harsh and smelled of salt.
He still wore his silk pajamas. Rain the night before had left the wood damp and
cold. His ancient tattered slippers, the ones Grace had given him before she
died, were getting wet.

Grace and gulls. He closed his eyes, knowing what the night would bring. Then he
shook off the thought, hoping, this time, he would have the resolve to let it
end.

Charles opened his eyes and rested his hands on the damp rail. The swarming had
grown worse. Nearly a hundred birds flocked to that tiny section of beach.

There was no way he would go down there.

At least, not alone.

He sighed, went inside, and called Dan Retsler.

Dan Retsler was scanning the Oregonian as he stood near the window of the police
station. The window overlooked Highway 101, the main thoroughfare down the
Oregon Coast. Every morning, Retsler scanned the newspaper and the street
simultaneously. In the summer, he would be the primary witness to petty thefts,
tourists running red lights, and the occasional fender-bender.

His police department had a staff of three, not counting the dispatcher. He put
two officers on at night. During the day, he and a lone officer could handle the
problems with the help of the dispatcher. The dispatcher, one Miss Lucy Wexel,
had been with the department since Retsler was a teenage hoodlum at Taft High
School. He doubted she was any different when she was hired than she was now.
She chewed gum, talked tough, and believed her work safeguarded the mean streets
of Whale Rock for yet another day.

The phone rang and she answered. Then she stabbed the hold button with a stubby
finger, and paused to take a draw from her cigarette before facing him. Smoke
curled around her face, making her look like someone's kindly grandmother
instead of the hardest woman he had ever known.

"Charles Bishop," she said, and from her tone Retsler knew what the call was
about.
He wound around the gun-metal desks to the small cubicle he called an office.
Then he grabbed the receiver on the ancient black phone, and punched line one.