"Дон Пендлтон. The Violent Streets ("Палач" #41) " - читать интересную книгу автора

The lady cop was nodding energetically.
"Jack Fawcett," she snapped, "it has to be. But I can't prove it right
now. I know it sounds foolish. Women's intuition, and all that..."
"Not necessarily," Bolan said. "How much trouble would it be to have
another sketch made?''
"No need," she said, flashing him a conspiratorial smile, and with a
flourish she pulled a small rectangular card from her handbag, sliding it
across the Formica table top to Bolan.
He examined the sketch closely, taking in the portrait of a long-faced
young man, eyes set wide apart on either side of an aquiline nose, the mouth
a narrow, almost lipless slit. The entire face was framed by hair worn
fashionably long, hiding the ears.
There were no distinguishing marks or scars of any kind. Nothing to set
that face apart from any of several thousand others on the streets of St.
Paul and neighboring communities.
Bolan stared long and hard at the facsimile face, trying to see inside
and behind it, to get a feel of its owner, but there was nothing there. The
lifeless face stared blankly back at him.
Fran Traynor seemed to read his secret thoughts.
"Not a lot, is it?" she said.
"Not much."
"Except," she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper, "I think I
may have narrowed it down a bit."
Bolan stared at her.
"I have a friend on the unit who's been trying to call me since about
the time you... that we went to the motel. The canvass of local sanitariums
was completed last night ahead of schedule."
Bolan felt excitement growing in him.
"We have four possibilities," she revealed, "all of them committed to
institutions within the past two years and escaped during the relevant
periods."
"I wouldn't have thought that many." Bolan frowned.
"Wait a second," she continued. "We can narrow it further. One of the
four is dead, and two others are back inside. That leaves one."
She looked pleased with herself. Fran sat back in the booth and drained
her cup.
Bolan kept his tone deliberate and cautious.
"You're assuming the Blancanales rapist and your lady-killer are one
and the same," he said. "But if that assumption is wrong, the two survivors
still inside stay on the suspect list. Without a positive tie-in, either one
could be your murderer."
Fran shook her head in a firm negative.
"No chance, La Mancha," she said stubbornly. "I know this is our man."
"All right, let's have it."
She gave him the recitation without consulting her notebook, holding
his eyes with hers as she reeled off the facts from memory, chapter and
verse.
"Courtney Gilman, age twenty-three, originally committed by his family
two and a half years ago. That's soon after the first murder. He took a walk
eleven months later - just before the second and third killings. Within a