"TUROW, SCOTT - THE BURDEN OF PROOF" - читать интересную книгу автора (Turrow Scott)

accentuation of the persistent Hispanic traces in his speech; the accent
was always there, an enduring deficit as he thought of it, like a limp:

"Something is wrong with Mother," Peter said. Stern had mentioned
nothing like that, but his son's feeling for these things was sure.
"What happened in Chicago?"

When Stern answered that she had not been with him, Peter, true to his
first instincts, began to quarrel.

"How could she not be with you? I spoke to her the morning you were
leaving."

A shot of terrible sympathy for himself tore through Stern.

He was lost, the emotional pathways hopelessly tangled.

Hours later, toward morning, as he was sitting alone beneath a single
light, sipping sherry as he revisited, reparsed every solemn moment of
the day, he would take in the full significance of Peter's remark. But
that eluded him now. He felt only, as ever, a deep central impatience
with his son, a suffering, suppressed volcanic force, while somewhere
else his heart read the first clues in what Peter had told him, and a
sickening unspeakable chasm of regret began to open.

"You must come now, Peter. I have no idea precisely what has occurred.
I believe, Peter, that your mother is dead."

His son, a man of thirty, let forth a brief high sound, a cry full of
desolation. "You believe it?"

"Please, Peter. I require your assistance. This is a terrible moment.
Come ahead. You may interrogate me later."

'For Chrissake, what in the hell is happening there? What in the hell
is this? Where are you?"

"I am home, Peter. I cannot answer your questions now.

Please do as I ask. I cannot attend to this alone." He hung up the
phone abruptly. His hands were trembling and he leaned once more
against the laundry basin. He had seemed so coldly composed only an
instant before. Now someterrible sore element in him was on the rise.
He presumed he was about to faint. He removed his tie first, then his
jacket. He returned for an instant to the garage door; but he could not
push it open. If he waited, just a moment, it seemed he would
understand.

The house was soon full of people he did not know'. The police came
first, in pairs, parking their cars at haphazard angles in the drive,