"Gene Wolfe - Endangered Species" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"Right. Tim. She ain't going to show up. You got to get
yourself used to that."

"She could be . . ." Without wanting to, he let it trail away.

"Where? You think she snuck off and went home? She
could walk out to the road and hitch, but you say her stuffs
still there. Kidnapped? Nobody could have pulled her out of
bed without waking you up. Did you kill her?"

"No!" Tears he could not hold back were streaming down
his cheeks.

"Right. I've talked to you and I don't think you did. But
you're the only one that could have. If her body washes up,
we'll have to look into that."

Tim's hands tightened on the wooden arms of the chair.
The fat cop pushed a box of tissues across the desk.

"Unless it washes up, though, it's just a missing person,
okay? But she's dead, kid, and you're going to have to get
used to it. Let me tell you what happened." He cleared his
throat.

"She got up while you were still asleep, probably about
when it started to get light. She did just what you thought
she did-went out for a nice refreshing swim before you
woke up. She went out too far, and probably she got a cramp.
The ocean's cold as hell now. Maybe she yelled, but if she
did she was too far out, and the waves covered it up. People
think drowners holler like fire sirens, but they don't-they
don't have that much air. Sometimes they don't make any
noise at all."
Tim stared at the gleaming paperweight.

"The current here runs along the coast-you probably
know that. Nobody ought to go swimming without somebody
else around, but sometimes it seems like everybody does it.
We lose a dozen or so a year. In maybe four or five cases we
find them. That's all."

The beach cottage looked abandoned when he returned.
He parked the Triumph and went inside and found the stove
still burning, his coffee perked to tar. He took the pot outside,
dumped the coffee, scrubbed the pot with beach sand and
rinsed it with salt water. The ship, which had been invisible
through the window of the cottage, was almost plain when
he stood waist deep. He heaved the coffee pot back to shore
and swam out some distance, but when he straightened up