"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 04 - Kaisho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

He removed two lengths of floorboard he had sawn through when he had first moved into the house, before he had met Hope, and removed the old olive-metal ammo box. He opened this, pushed aside the cushioning wads of

unmarked bills, plucked out a mask. It was a remarkable item. It appeared old and was hand-painted in rich, burnished black, with accents of green and gold on the cheeks, over the eyeholes and the lips. It was constructed of papier-mache, and depicted a man with a rather large nose, prominent brows and cheekbones, and a crowned forehead in the shape of a V. The mask ended just above where a person's mouth would be. Do Duc held the mask as tenderly as he would the body of an infant.

'What's that?'

He started, looking around to find Hope sitting naked on the corner of the bed.

'What are you doing?'

She ran a hand through her long blonde hair, stretching in that sinuous manner she had.

'It's nothing,' he said, hurriedly thrusting the mask back into its incongruous container.

'It's not nothing, Donald,' Hope said, standing up. 'Don't tell me that. You know I hate secrets.' She came across to where he was still crouched.

He saw her with the morning sun firing the tiny pale hairs along the curve of her arm, and the air around her exploded in a rainbow hue of arcs. The aura emanated from her, seemed to pulsate with the beat of her heart or the firing of the nerve synapses in her brain. Do Duc's lips opened just a bit, as if he wanted to taste this aura with his tongue.

A sly smile spread across Hope's face. 'We're supposed to tell each other everything. Didn't we promiseЧ'

Do Duc drove the blade of the pocket knife into Hope's lower belly and, using the strength coming up through the soles of his feet, ripped the knife upward through her flesh and muscle, and reached her heart.

He watched with a trembling of intensity as surprise, disbelief, confusion and terror chased each other across her face. It was a veritable smorgasbord of delicious emotions which he sopped up with his soul.

He stepped quickly back from the bright fountain of blood that erupted. A foul stench filled the bedroom.

Silence. Not even a scream. He had been trained to kill in this manner.

Do Duc looked down, staring at his wife's viscera which gleamed dully in the morning light. Steam came off them. The iridescent coils" seemed to him beautiful in both pattern and texture, speaking to him in a language that had no rules, no name.

The sight and the smell, familiar as old companions, reminded him of where, soon, he would be headed.

On the plane ride up to New York, Do Duc had time to think. He drew out the strip of color head-shots of himself he had taken in an automated booth in a mall where he had stopped on his way to the airport in Lauderdale. Then he put it away, along with his ticket stub, which was made out in the name of Robert Ashuko, and opened a copy of Forbes. While he stared at the text, he pulled out of memory the information he had memorized just after he had moved to Hollywood. It had been sent to him in a book of John Singer Sargent's paintings, remarkable for the extraordinary sensuality of their women, the lushness of their landscapes.

The information was contained on a page on which was printed a full-length photo of Sargent's magnificent painting Madame X, which seemed to Do Duc to secure the imperious eroticism that smoldered in these female creatures of another age.

He had decoded the information, memorized it, then had burned it, flushing what ashes remained down the toilet. The book he had kept to gaze at again and again. It was the one item he regretted leaving behind, but it was far too large and cumbersome to take with him on this particular journey.

Deplaning at Kennedy airport. Do Duc went immediately to the wall of lockers in the main terminal. There he

produced a key with a number stamped into it. He inserted it into the appropriate lock and removed the contents of the locker, which consisted of what appeared to be a physician's black bag.

Do Duc rented a car. He used a false driver's license and a protected credit card, one that could not be traced to him, and would not show up on a hot sheet. He had spent some time in New York, and so had no trouble finding the Belt Parkway even through the tricky maze of the airport grounds. Some miles east, in Nassau County, the highway became the Southern State Parkway.

It was heading toward evening, and traffic was barely moving. A Mack truck loaded with gravel heading west had jumped the divider, and plowed head-on into, first, a VW bug, then a Toyota MR2, and finally a Chevy Citation. Do Duc didn't mind the slow going; he had time to kill and, besides, the vectors of the disaster interested him. By the degree of the carnage he began calculating the speeds of the respective vehicles. Then he began to imagine what it must have been like inside them.

Death, whether quick or drawn-out, was his meat, and he was never sated.

He could hear a howling filling his ears, flooding his mind until his fingers resonated to its frequency. Feral lights danced before his eyes like forest sprites, and every manifestation of civilization dropped away. Time, thus naked, turned primeval, and Do Duc, a beast in the forest, was fearless, omnipotent. He thought briefly of Hope, not of her life, but of her death, and he feasted on it all over again.