"Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

pain diminished, but the emptiness grew. The company sent someone out to see
him again, and for the first time he suggested that he might never return
work. He talked to the man--Tony Martinelliwin a shadowed living room, making
certain he was hidden by shadows.' Martinelli did not press him, was probably
relieved. They would wait, he had said; there was no rush, no quick decision
to be made. But no one had urged him to mend quickly and return. Loesser had
had no real friends in the company; no one would miss him. Intime they sent
papers; he hired a law firm to represent his interests, and paid no more
attention to any of that until one day when he received a letter asking
politely if he would mind sending back certain records, certain computer
information. He went to the study where he had John Loesser computer, records,
files, books--all boxed. He had not looked at any of it. That afternoon he
unloaded one box after another and examined the contents. He got out the
computer manual and connected parts to other parts as directed, but he did not
know what to do with it. There were books on the insurance industry, on
computers, on statistics and rates and liability schedules; there were
actuarial tables. At last he had something to do, something he could not ask
for help with; Loesser was supposed to know all this. It had been weeks since
he had called the police to enquire about the missing bodies, weeks since he
had thought about revealing

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his own identity. That night he realized that Carson Danvers was as dead as
Elinor and Gary Danvers. He learned how to use the computer, learned how to
copy the disks, use the modem. He took a large folder to a Xerox machine and
copied everything in it, then reboxed the originals. He sent the company the
information and was finally done with them. He could not have said why he
wanted copies; there was no real reason other than it was something to do.
Without pondering further, he gradually learned the business through John
Loesser accumulation of records and notes and his modem connections. He had
been startled one day when, following John Loesser directions, written in the
man precise, minute handwriting, he had found himself accessing a mainframe
computer that apparently held data from the entire insurance industry.
Fascinated by the information available, he had scrolled through categories.
Liability claims: flood damage in Florida, starved cattle in Montana, wind
damage in Texas. ┬╖ . Accidents in supermarkets, on city buses, in neighbors'
yards and houses .... Medical claims for hernias, broken bones,
hysterectomies, bypasses .... He was appalled by the automobile claims, then
bored by them. He learned how to ask for specific groupings: shark attacks,
bee stings, food poisonings .... His fingers were shaking when he keyed in the
request for hotel fires. There it was, his River House, followed by
Arson--unsolved. He was shaking too hard to continue. What i f they had a way
of tracing who looked up information like that? What if they came back to him?
The next day he registered as a public insurance adjuster, making his use of
the computer data appear more legitimate. Why? he asked himself, but he did
not pursue it. He looked for a list of closed hotels and marveled at the
number. Carson Danvers would have liked seeing what all was available, he
thought. Some days later it occurred to him to look up instances of sudden
madness and homicides, and again he was appalled.