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

Two weeks after leaving the hospital he flew to Richmond and let himself into
Loesser's apartment. He still had bandages on his face, would have them until
plastic surgery did its magic. People he met averted their gaze, and that was
fine with him. The apartment was scrupulously neat almost obsessively so--with
good paintings, good books, good furniture, good stereo and television. Money,
he thought bleakly. Loesser had had money. He had not given it any
consideration until then. He went through the apartment carefully, getting to
know his host, not liking him, but reassured because it became more and more
apparent that Loesser had had no friends or relatives. Had he become a recluse
after his wife death, or had the trait always been there? There were names in
an address book; he recognized a few from cards he had received impersonal,
duty cards--while he was still hospitalized. He found the financial
statements. There was real money. Mrs. Loesser insurance had been half a
million dollars, a traveler policy that anticipated the worst scenarios, and
now and then paid handsomely. He found her picture, a pretty woman with a
small mouth, upturned nose, blue eyes. A forgettable face. The picture had
been put away in a closet in a box of mementos, along with her college
diploma, and medical records dating from childhood up to the time over five
years ago when they had ceased to matter.

He spent the weekend there, learning about Loesser, learning about money,
about stock holdings, bonds, certificates of deposit. No one challenged him.
The building superintendent knocked on the door, and when Carson opened it on
the chain, the man hardly glanced at him. He had heard, he said; what a hell
of a thing. If there was anything he could do .... He went away.

Carson sat in the darkening room on Sunday and suddenly was overwhelmed with
grief that shook his frame, made his cheek hurt with a stabbing pain, made his
chest tighten until he feared--and would have welcomed a heart attack. He had
to call her parents, he knew, but not yet. Not until they found her, found
Gary. No bodies had been recovered. Not yet.

He drove Loesser Malibu back to Washington, and collapsed into bed as soon as
he arrived at his rooming house. He could get an apartment, he thought,
staring at the ceiling, a good apartment with a view, and there he would wait
until they found her, found Gary, and then he would call her parents. The next
day he drove out to the inn.

Someone had come and boarded it all up again, exactly the same as it had been
the first time he had seen it. He walked around the building and stopped at
the back porch where he had found her. Although it had been scrubbed clean, in
his mind the blood was there, her body was there, one sandal missing. Where
had it gone? He almost went down the stairs to the tangle of briars to search
for it. He clutched the rail with his good hand and rubbed his eyes with the
other. He remembered rising, seeing his son with the rifle. Suddenly, cutting
through the memories, there was the other thing again, just as it had been the
last time. Something present but out of sight. Carson did not move, held his
breath listening. No sound. But something was there, he knew without doubt.
Something. Slowly he turned, and now he closed his eyes, concentrating on that
something. He felt as if he had moved into an electrical field vibrating on a