"Timothy Zahn - The Green and the Gray" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

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The Green and the Gray




3
They slept poorly that night. At least, Caroline slept poorly, and she assumed from the strained and
mostly monosyllabic conversation between them the next morning that Roger hadn't done very well,
either.
But at least they'd never gotten around to arguing about the play. That was something, anyway.
October was usually a quiet month in the real estate business, and this October had been no
exception. Summer vacation rentals were only memories and bills, families with small children were
firmly settled into the school year, and the Christmas bonuses that drew young couples' thoughts
toward a nice co-op with a view were still two months away.
Which left Caroline plenty of time to think about the events of the previous evening. To think and to
try to pick at the knots of the mystery in hopes of untangling them a little.
But all her efforts yielded nothing. She searched the local papers and Internet news sources for
stories of urban violence that might connect with the bruises they'd seen on the girl's neck, but found
nothing that matched both the crime and the girl's description. The man who'd left a streak of his
blood on the strange gun also seemed to have slipped back into the shadows without any notice. She
spent what seemed like hours on hold at the Missing Person's Bureau, only to come up empty on
both the girl and the man.
She didn't talk to Roger at all that day. Sometimes he called her at lunch, but today she was so busy
with the Internet that she never even noticed it was one-thirty until the twelve-thirty lunch shift
swept back into the office. For an hour after that she worried about whether she should have called
him, even if he hadn't called her, and spent the rest of the day sitting vaguely on pins and needles as
she wondered if interrupting his afternoon would make things better or worse.
It was with considerable relief that she returned home that evening to find Roger not only not angry
with her but already working on dinner.
"Hi, hon," he greeted her, giving her a distracted sort of kiss. "How was your day?"
"Slow," she said, hanging up her coat and returning to the kitchen. "Yours?"
"The same," he said, opening a can of tomatoes. "Judge Vasco is down with the flu, so the contract-
dispute argument I was putting together for Bill is on hold for at least a week. And Sam and Carleton
are out in the wilds of corporate Delaware on some big rainmaking expedition."
"At least they're not running you off your feet like they usually do," she commented.
"Which was handy, given how much time I spent on hold with Missing Persons," he said a little
sourly. "Turns out they don't have anyone on their books who matches the girl's description."
"I know," Caroline said, peering at the open recipe book and pulling a block of cheddar out of the

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The Green and the Gray

fridge. "They don't have anything on the man, either."
He glanced at her, a flicker of surprise and perhaps even respect flashing across his face. "You called
them too?"
She nodded. "I also checked the news sources to see if I could come up with any events that might
link to the bruises on her throat. But there was nothing."