The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Helen crouched beneath the window. Whittled gray clouds raced in from the north. The wind tore through her. Her hand on the pistol grew terribly cold. A half-mile away in the tree, Jocey’s body was freezing solid, and Helen felt herself at the center of something enormous and urgent, bigger than her mind could hold, and though terrified, and angry, mainly she felt desperately alone. The urge to flee, to hide, was overwhelming. This is how Jocey felt, she thought, and clicked off her pistol’s safety.
She eased each step through the crackling snow, past firewood stacked to the roof, on around to the door where a metal bucket gave off the stench of urine. A dog barked inside the door, heavy and loud barking that did not cease.
Christmas Eve, 1992: She followed at a safe distance, as children on inner tubes towed behind a pick-up made wide tracks in the road’s snow. More children huddled in the truck’s bed, sparklers burning in their mittens and gloves. The truck took the curve of Elm Rodd, and the inner tubes swung out, the last in line dropping into the ditch before the whip cracked and yanked it back onto the road. Helen switched on the blue and red lights atop the squad car. The truck did not pull to the shoulder but merely slowed and stopped, the inner tubes sliding forward, one knocking into the next. Helen grabbed her flashlight and walked out into the snow, the kids splayed and breathing hard on their tubes.
“We ain’t done nothing,” said the boy on the last tube, a boy they all called Knight, his chin resting on his gloves.
“Not yet, you ain’t,” and Helen stayed the flashlight beam on his face just to get him riled.
“You’re piss mean even at Christmas,” Knight snapped, and all the other kids laughed.
Helen passed the kids in the truck bed, their sparklers hissing glitter and glistening in their eyes. “You kids cold?”
“No’m,” said one boy. “I am,” said a girl, and the boy told her to shut up.
Then Helen was at the truck’s door, and Willie Sharpton grinned at her, the flaps of his hat down over his ears and a cigarette in the slit between his mustache and beard. Helen put a boot up on the truck’s running board and leaned in the window.
“Them kids just grabbed hold of my truck,” Willie said. “Don’t know whose they are.”
“They just lassoed your tailgate?”
“That’s about right,” and Willie blew smoke back into the truck as to not blow it on Helen. He turned and studied her face and closed one of his eyes. “That eye looks like hell.”
“Our wedding pictures’ll look awful.”
It was a play on an old joke, one neither smiled at. Knight yelled for them to come on, that his nuts were freezing. Willie patted Helen’s arm and took a drag on the cigarette. He stared ahead where the snow was yet to be tracked by tires.
“Any leads?” he asked.
“No.”
Then they were quiet, and Helen stepped down from the truck’s runner and looked back at the children. The sparklers had burned out and the bed was dark. Drift snow crawled out of the ditch and sidewound over the road. She shone her flashlight on the line of tubes. The kids had their hoods pulled over their faces.
December 19, 1992: Footsteps and a man’s scolding voice came behind the cabin door. The barking ceased. Flat against the weatherboards, Helen tried keeping her frozen fingers from gripping the gun too tight. The door unlatched and swung open, its shadow covering her. A large yellow-haired dog ran into the prairie, stopped, raised its head, sniffed at a briar. Joakes walked out into the snow, shirtless, thick hair covering his shoulders and back. He watched the dog in the prairie. Helen stepped out. She pressed the gun against the dark beard of his cheek and yelled at him to get on the ground.
Joakes whirled and hit Helen with an elbow, and she slipped to one knee. He paused and glanced over his shoulder, maybe looking for the dog, maybe checking to see if there were others. Helen drove into his legs and took him to the ground. Forearm under his chin, she pulled mace from her belt and doused his eyes. He flailed his fists. She scrambled out of his reach, then stepped forward and sprayed him again. He covered his face, mace dripping down his fingers and chin. The dog charged in, sniffing at the man and barking. Helen approached, both pistol and mace drawn, the dog baring its teeth, yapping, pouncing. She sprayed the dog and it recoiled, pawing its snout, then came at her again, viciously snapping at her legs. She fired the gun. The dog fell in a lump, a hole bore through its neck, hot blood leaching into the snow.
A knee in Joakes’s back, Helen pressed the gun to his ear and said she figured to kill him for what he’d done. His eyes were shut tight. He sniveled like a child. He did not move.
Spring, 1993: Helen stared at the canopy’s sheer fabric and heard it again; hissing and what sounded like a gunshot. She rose from the Dempsys’ bed and stepped to the window. Again came the hissing. In the northern sky the pop unleashed golden sparks that willowed down. On what she knew was Macey Goff s roof stood a silhouette, another whining flare rising from its arm and exploding high above, green sparks shimmering, falling.
Helen held the Christmas sweater to her breast, like a child with her blanket. She stuffed it into her jacket, zipped up, and hustled down the damp hall to her boat. She hooked in the oars and began rowing around the Dempsys’ house, making for the Goffs’. The current was strong. To keep the boat straight Helen pulled twice on the right oar for each on the left. Across the bay a silver bass boat hitched to a second-floor window thudded against the house. The man on the roof wore jeans tucked into his boots and a sleeveless flannel shirt unbuttoned to show a mural of tattoos across his chest and abdomen. He dropped a Roman candle into the guttering, drew a fresh wand from his boot. He was Danny Martin, a young strip miner who’d been a great ball player, even had offers to play in college, but then he beat up a girl and it all went to hell.
Blue sparks fell directly above. Helen brought in the oars and the boat glided. A flashlight beam waggled inside the house. She drew her pistol and switched on the boat’s spotlight. Inside the room a large long-haired man in black waders spun around. The spotlight threw his shadow on the back wall and when he shielded his eyes the shadow took the appearance of a hunchback, then grew larger as he ran to the window. He clanged out into the bass boat, the hull rocking and sliding away from the house.
“Danny,” the man hollered, furiously yanking the motor’s cord.
“Stay where you’re at,” Helen yelled.
A candle shot whistled low overhead. Helen ducked, trained the spotlight on the roof. Danny toed the gutter, the wand aimed down at her. She spun off the bench and onto the wet floor. A shot hissed into the water beside the boat “This is the police,” Helen yelled. The other boat’s outboard turned over and raised an octave speeding away. Then another pop, and Helen looked to the sky. Golden sparks rained down. Held in an eddy, her boat slowly turning, red sparks fell, and moments later the sky bled green. Then the candle was done and Danny gazed into the whitecaps thrashing the house. He teetered, raised his arms. He leapt from the roof, his legs scissoring as he hit the water.
December 20, 1992: Robert Joakes sat tied to a chair in the lantern’s pitiful light; Helen had torn bed sheets and bound his ankles, his thighs, wrists, chest, waist, and gagged his mouth so he could not scream.