Snow White and Rose Red
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: Matthew Hope #5
- Год: 1985
- Язык: английский
- Год: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
- ISBN: 978-0-03-002603-4
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Snow White and Rose Red». Краткое содержание книги:
“Male or female?” Bloom said at once.
“A girl, a girl,” Barish said. “Don’t ask me hair, eyes, whatever, ’cause I couldn’t tell you if you stuck needles under my fingernails.”
“White or black?” Bloom asked.
“White.”
“A girl about the same age?”
“About. Who remembers?”
“You don’t remember the color of her hair?”
“I don’t.”
“Was she blonde?” Rawles asked.
“I just tell him I can’t remember,” Barish said to Bloom, “so he asks me was she blonde.”
“You’d remember two blondes coming in together, wouldn’t you?” Rawles said.
“I only remember the pretty one was blonde, the one who gave me the argument.”
“Then the other one wasn’t blonde,” Rawles said.
“I guess she wasn’t. Maybe.”
“And she wasn’t pretty, either.”
“A dog. You know what a dog is? This girl was a dog.”
“The other one was pretty, though, huh?” Bloom said. “The one who brought the dress in?”
“A knockout. You know what a knockout is? This girl was a knockout.”
“And you think she lived somewhere in the neighborhood, huh?” Rawles said.
“Who said?”
“You did. You said she lived in an apartment with a hundred other hippies.”
“Oh. I was only saying. I don’t know that for a fact. But if she walked in, she must’ve lived in the neighborhood, no?”
“You ought to become a cop,” Bloom said, and smiled.
“A traffic cop is what I ought to become, those bastards from the hardware and the cowboys.”
“What was she wearing?” Rawles asked. “The blonde.”
“Blue jeans and a T-shirt,” Barish said at once. “No bra, no shoes. A regular hippie.”
“And the other one?”
“A brown uniform. Like a uniform.”
“What kind of uniform?”
“Brown, I told you.”
“She wasn’t a meter maid, was she?”
“No, no, I could use a meter maid here, believe me, all these bastards parking on private property.”
“A brown uniform,” Bloom said, thinking out loud.
“She wasn’t a Girl Scout, was she?” Rawles asked. “A troop leader, something like that?”
“No, they wear green, the Girl Scouts, I clean a lot of uniforms for them. The girls’ uniforms smell even worse than the boys’, did you know that? They sweat a lot, girls. This wasn’t a Girl Scout uniform, this was brown. And she had a little plastic tag with her name on it, right here on the chest.”
“A waitress?” Bloom said. “Did she look like a waitress?”
“Coulda been, who knows?” Barish said. “Little name tag here on the chest, it could be.”
“A waitress,” Bloom said, and looked at Rawles.
“A nice chest, too,” Barish said. “A very nice chest on that girl.”
Both detectives were wondering how many restaurants in Calusa featured waitresses in brown uniforms.
6
Sarah looked radiantly beautiful.
She was dressed entirely in white. White slacks and sandals, a white scoop-necked blouse. She smelled of soap. She told me she was not allowed to have perfume; she guessed they thought she would try to drink it or something. She told me she had showered and dressed a full two hours before I was expected. None of the patients were allowed to shower unattended, she said; a member of the staff was always watching. She wondered aloud if anyone had ever tried to drown herself in the shower. Or perhaps tried to eat a bar of soap.
We were sitting in what the hospital called its Sun Room.
Wide windows covered the entire eastern wall of the second-story room, creating a greenhouse effect marred only by the bars on the windows.
“They’re afraid we’ll try to jump out,” Sarah explained.
Across the room, a man was playing checkers with a woman. Visitors and patients sat everywhere around us on wicker chairs with yellow and green cushions. I wondered if Mr. Holly would be visiting his wife, Becky, today. Sarah listened attentively as I told her about my conversations with Mark Ritter and the arresting officer and Dr. Nathan Helsinger. Her eyes never left my face. Her attention was complete; it never wandered, never wavered. I could not imagine her as someone who was not in complete possession of all her mental faculties. My own attention bordered on scrutiny. I was looking for clues to support the possibility that everything Dr. Helsinger had told me was true.
“What did you think of him?” Sarah asked.
“Helsinger? He seemed competent.”
“Do you mean mentally competent?” she asked, and smiled.
“I meant... no, no.”
“Mentally incompetent then?”
She was still smiling.
“He seems to know his job,” I said, and returned the smile.
“And of course he told you I am totally apeshit.”
I had decided that I would be completely honest with her at all times. If she was sane, she was entitled to an open lawyer — client relationship. If she was what they said she was, then perhaps her reaction to the truth would reveal something I could not detect on the surface.
“He said you’re a very sick person, yes.”
“Did he describe my delusional system?” Sarah asked.
“Not in detail. He said it’s... elaborate, was the word he used.”
“Yes. And am I hearing voices and such?”
“Are you?”
“The only voice I’m hearing right now is yours. And I’m also picking up snatches of conversation between Anna and her daughter there. Anna thinks the FBI is investigating her for making pornographic films. Writing, directing, starring in, and producing skin flicks.”
She glanced over toward where a woman in her seventies was sitting in quiet conversation with a younger woman who kept patting her hand.
“That’s Anna’s delusion,” Sarah said.
“And yours?”
“My alleged delusion? The one they cooked up to get me in this place? Ah, elaborate indeed. But then, Dr. Schlockmeister knows his job, as you pointed out. He certainly wouldn’t have come up with a garden-variety delusional system, would he?”
“Dr. who?” I said.
“No, Who’s on first,” Sarah said, and smiled. “Schlockmeister — that’s short for Helsinger. Or long, as the case may be.”
“And you feel he’s the one who, in effect, created a phony delusional system and attributed it to you?”
“Oh, how pretty the man talks,” Sarah said, and rolled her eyes. “Sure. That’s what he did.”
“What sort of delusional system?”
“We start with an unresolved Electra situation,” Sarah said, and sighed. “The so-called delusional atmosphere, a fixation on dear Daddy as evidenced by a fondness for horseback riding and an unnatural desire to please the master of the house. We take it from there to the onset of the delusional system itself, the certainty that Daddy is having an affair with a person unknown—”
“Was he?”
“This is my supposed delusion, Mr. Hope. Do I have to call you Mr. Hope?”
“You can call me Matthew, if you like.”
“Does anyone call you Matt?”
“A few people.”
“I prefer Matthew.”
“So do I.”
“Done, then,” she said, and smiled again. “In this ‘elaborate’ delusional system I am alleged to have evolved, Daddy was having an affair with one or perhaps many women, it varies from day to day — we lunatics are not often consistent, you know — which naturally infuriated his only daughter because it deprived her of the love and affection to which she was entitled as her birthright. Are you following me?”