"John Varley - The Phantom of Kansas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

10 John Varley

I knew I'd have to get used to this. People would always be telling me what I had done, what I had said
to them. I controlled my anger and asked her to go on.

"It's simply to stay put. I know you think you're a detective, but your predecessor proved pretty well that
you are not. If you stir out of that door you'll be nailed. This guy knows you inside and out, and he'll get
you. Count on it."
"He? You know something about him, then?"

"Sorry, you'll have to bear with me. I've told you parts of this case twice already, so it's hard to
remember what you don't know. Yes, we do know he's a male. Or was, six months ago, when you had
your big fight with him. Several witnesses reported a man with blood-stained clothes, who could only
have been your killer."

"Then you're on his trail?"

She sighed, and I knew she was going over old ground again.

"No, and you've proved again that you're not a detective. Your detective lore comes from reading old
novels. It's not a glamorous enough job nowadays to rate fictional heroes and such, so most people don't
know the kind of work we do. Knowing that the killer was a man when he last knocked you off means
nothing to us. He could have bought a Change the very next day. You're probably wondering if we have
fingerprints of him, right?"

I gritted my teeth. Everyone had the advantage over me. It was obvious I had asked something like that
the last time I spoke with this woman. And I had been thinking of it.

"No," I said. "Because he could change those as easily as his sex, right?"

"Right. Easier. The only positive means of identification today is genotyping, and he wasn't cooperative
enough to leave any of him behind when he killed you. He must have been a real brute, to be able to
inflict as much damage on you as he did and not even be cut himself. You were armed with a knife. Not a
drop of his blood was found at the scene of the murder."

"Then how do you go about finding him?"

The Phantom of Kansas 11

"Fox, I'd have to take you through several college courses to begin to explain our methods to you. And
I'll even admit that they're not very good. Police work has not kept up with science over the last century.
There are many things available to the modern criminal that make our job more difficult than you'd
imagine. We have hopes of catching him within about four lunations, though, if you'll stay put and stop
chasing him."

"Why four months?"

"We trace him by computer. We have very exacting programs that we run when we're after a guy like
this. It's our one major weapon. Given time, we can run to ground about sixty percent of the criminals."