THE HYENA1 SLEPT IN A CLEAN DEN2, UNSOILED by mementos3 of his killings4. No articles of clothing stained with the victims’ blood that he could press to his face to savor5 the scent6 of death. No items of women’s jewelry7 that he could fondle. No Polaroid photos of Justine Laputa or Mina Reynerd after he tested their mortality with a fireplace poker8 and a bronze-encrusted marble lamp. Nothing.
After a quick but meticulous9 search of the walk-in closet, the bureau drawers, the nightstands, and every place else in the bedroom where Laputa might have hidden the kind of pornography that appealed not to prurient10 interest but to an obsession11 with violence, Hazard turned up no evidence of either a crime or psychopathy.
As before, the most notable thing about the Laputa house was the scrupulous12 cleanliness, which rivaled that in any hermetically sealed and frequently sanitized biochemical-weapons lab, and the fetishistic alignment13 and geometry of every object large and small. Not only the items on open display but also the contents of drawers were placed as though with the aid of micrometer, protractor, and straightedge. The socks and sweaters appeared to have been folded and stowed away by a precision-programmed robot.
[549] Again, Hazard sensed that, for Vladimir Laputa, this house was a desperate refuge from the messiness of the world beyond its walls.
He retreated from the bedroom, into the upstairs hall, where he stood for a moment, listening intently, hearing only the tepid14 tattoo15 of the diminishing rain on the roof. He glanced at his watch, wondering how much time, if any, he had to pore through the other second-floor chambers16.
Instinct seldom failed Hazard, but it told him nothing now. The professor might return at any moment or not for hours, days.
He tried the first door past the master bedroom, on that same side of the hall, snapped on the light.
Judging by appearances, this was a storeroom. Plain cardboard cartons emblazoned only with red stenciled17 numbers were stacked three high, in well-ordered rows.
A quiver of interest drew Hazard a few steps past the threshold. Then he realized that the boxes were sealed with precisely18 applied19 strips of strapping20 tape. If he tore open a few, he would not be able to restore them to the degree necessary to conceal21 the fact of his unauthorized explorations.
Approaching the last room on that side of the hall, he detected an unpleasant odor. By the time he reached the open door, the malodor had become a stench.
Central to the stink22, Hazard recognized the smell of corrupted23 flesh, of which he’d had more than a little experience in his career with Robbery/Homicide. He suspected that here he would find at least one of Laputa’s mementos that would make him wish he had not stopped earlier for cheeseburgers and fries.
The glow from the hall sconces spilled only a short distance into the room. Hazard couldn’t see much.
When he stepped across the threshold and flipped24 up the wall switch, a nightstand lamp came on. For a moment he thought the man in the bed, less than half concealed25 by a sheet, must be a corpse26.
[550] Then the bloodshot eyes, which were fixed27 on him in pitiful appeal, blinked.
Hazard had never before seen firsthand a living human being in such wretched condition as this. Here was what the starved slave laborers28 in concentration camps looked like when, at last worked to death, they were tumbled into raw graves.
In spite of the IV rack and catheter-fed urine jar, Hazard knew at once that in this situation Professor Laputa was not a caregiver tending to a family member. The man in the bed had been afforded none of the tenderness due a patient but all the brutality29 that could be rained upon a prisoner by a demented jailer.
Both windows had been boarded over and sealed with caulking30 to keep out daylight and to hold in all sound.
On the floor in one corner were tumbled chains and handcuffs and ankle shackles31. Surely these bonds were from the early days of the imprisonment32, when the man in the bed had been strong enough to require restraints.
Hazard had been speaking aloud for a while before he quite heard himself. He had been reduced to the childhood prayers that Granny Rose had taught him long ago.
Here was evil as pure as he had ever seen it, forever beyond the understanding of a simple sinner like himself. This way a wicked thing had come and gone, and would come again, a demon33 on sabbatical from Hell.
The uncommon34 neatness and order elsewhere in the house didn’t represent Laputa’s need for a refuge from the disorder35 of the world outside. It was instead a desperate denial of just how apocalyptic36 was the chaos37 that churned within him.
By the time that Hazard reached the side of the bed, each breath he drew further sickened him. Weeks’ worth of dried sweats, rancid body oils, and festering bedsores raised a nauseating38 stench.
Nevertheless, Hazard gently took hold of the nearer of the [551] stranger’s fragile hands. The man had insufficient39 strength to lift his arm, and he could barely squeeze his rescuer’s hand in return.
“It’s all right now. I’m a cop.”
The stranger regarded him as though he might be a mirage40.
Although instinct had failed Hazard a minute ago in the hall, it served him well now. He was surprised, but then at once not, to hear himself say, “Professor Dalton? Maxwell Dalton?”
The widening of the withered41 man’s rheumy eyes confirmed his identification.
When the prisoner strove to speak, his voice proved to be so thin, so dry, so cracked and reedy, that Hazard had to bend close to puzzle meaning from the words: “Laputa ... killed my wife ... daughter.”
“Rachel? Emily?” Hazard asked.
Dalton squeezed his eyes shut in grief, bit his lower lip, and nodded shakily.
“I don’t know what he told you, but they’re not dead,” Hazard assured him.
Dalton’s eyes opened as snap-quick as camera shutters43.
“I saw them only today, at your home,” Hazard continued. “Only a few hours ago. They’re sick with worry about you, but they’ve not been harmed.”
For a moment the prisoner appeared reluctant to believe this news, as though convinced that it must be yet another cruelty with which he would be tormented44. Then he discerned truth in Hazard’s forthright46 stare. His bony hand tightened47 slightly on his rescuer’s, and from somewhere his desiccated body found the moisture to flood his eyes with tears.
As moved as he was nauseated48, Hazard examined the dangling49 infusion50 bag, the drip line, the cannula inserted in Dalton’s vein51. He wanted to strip all this away, for surely none of it was doing the man good. But he was afraid of inadvertently harming Dalton. This had best be left to the paramedics.
[552] Originally, Hazard had entered the house with the intention of conducting an illegal and clandestine52 search, after which he would have closed up and gone away to ponder what evidence he found, having left said evidence behind with no slightest proof of his visit. That plan no longer worked. He had to make a 911 call, and quickly.
Judges existed, however, and not merely a few, who would set Vladimir Laputa free because Dalton had been found during an illegal search, made without warrant or due cause. Furthermore, with Blonde in the Pond still ahead of him, Hazard could afford no censures53 or disciplinary actions on his Ten Card.
“I’ll get you out of here,” he promised the prisoner. “But I need a couple minutes.”
Dalton nodded.
“I’ll be right back.”
Reluctantly the withered man let go of his hand.
At the threshold, about to leave the room, Hazard halted, retreated from the doorway54, and drew his handgun. When he ventured into the upstairs hall, he went with caution.
He remained wary55 all the way down the stairs, through the ground floor, and into the kitchen. He closed the back door that earlier he had left open as an escape route. He locked it.
Adjacent to the kitchen was a small laundry room. The door at the end of the laundry opened into the garage.
No cars stood in the garage. A sodden56 pile of clothes lay on the concrete floor: the outfit57 that Laputa had been wearing when he had come home swaggering like a tough guy.
Here also were good tools in drawers and racked on a pegboard. They were as clean and as obsessively58 ordered as the Lalique-crystal collection in the living room.
Hazard selected a claw hammer and raced back upstairs, glad that he had turned on so many lights when he’d first come into the house.
He was relieved to see that the prisoner was still alive. Dalton [553] appeared to be on the trembling edge of expiration59, as if he might slip away at any moment.
Hazard put his gun on the floor and used the claw hammer to pry60 nails from one of the thick sheets of particle board with which Laputa had sealed off the windows. They were three-inch spikes61 and pulled loose reluctantly, with bark and screech62. He tore the board away from the window and stood it aside, against the wall.
The pleated drape had been captured between board and window. Although wrinkled and dusty, it was just the thing with which to wipe his fingerprints63 off the hammer before he dropped it on the floor.
This was a back bedroom only in the sense that it was farthest from the stairs. Like the master bedroom, it faced the front of the house. Through the window, he could see his sedan parked across the street.
Returning to the bed, Hazard said, “I came in here on a hunch64, without a warrant, and now I’ve got to clean up the situation to save my ass42 and to be sure we nail Laputa. You understand?”
“Yes,” Dalton rasped.
“So what you’re gonna say happened is, he was so sure of your total disability, of your inability to even make a sound anyone could hear outside, that the bastard65 took that board off this evening just to torment45 you with the sight of freedom. Can you sell that?”
On an arid66 whisper of breath, brittle67 words scraped and grated from Dalton’s throat. “Laputa said ... he’ll kill me ... tonight.”
“All right. Okay. Then it makes a little sense that he might do this.”
From the nightstand, Hazard snatched up an aerosol68 can of pine-scented disinfectant. The container felt half full, heavy enough.
“Next,” he told Dalton, “you have to tell them that you reached way down inside yourself, to your deepest reserves of strength, and somehow you found the will, the energy, the anger necessary to pull this can off the nightstand and to pitch it at that window.”
[554] “Can do,” Dalton promised shakily, though he looked as if he could do nothing more than blink his eyes.
“The can smashed through the window and rolled down the porch roof as I was coming up the front walk. I heard you feebly calling for help, so I forced entry.”
The story sucked. The first officers on the scene would know that it was bogus, but in light of Dalton’s ordeal69, this would be a flavor of bogus that they could swallow.
By the time Laputa found himself in a courtroom, Dalton would have largely recovered, and the jury would not know just how horribly weak he had been on the night of his rescue. Time could give this shabby story enough luster70 to make it look attractive.
Shifting his eyes from the open doorway to Hazard, Dalton said anxiously, “Hurry,” as if he feared Laputa’s imminent71 return.
Hazard threw the can of disinfectant at the window. The glass shattered with a satisfying crash.
收听单词发音 |
1
hyena
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| n.土狼，鬣狗 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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mementos
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| 纪念品，令人回忆的东西( memento的名词复数 ) | |
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killings
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| 谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发 | |
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savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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meticulous
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| adj.极其仔细的，一丝不苟的 | |
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prurient
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| adj.好色的，淫乱的 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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alignment
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| n.队列；结盟，联合 | |
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tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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stenciled
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| v.用模板印（文字或图案）( stencil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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strapping
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| adj. 魁伟的, 身材高大健壮的 n. 皮绳或皮带的材料, 裹伤胶带, 皮鞭 动词strap的现在分词形式 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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flipped
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| 轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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30
caulking
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| n.堵缝；敛缝；捻缝；压紧v.堵（船的）缝( caulk的现在分词 )；泥…的缝；填塞；使不漏水 | |
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shackles
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| 手铐( shackle的名词复数 )； 脚镣； 束缚； 羁绊 | |
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imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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apocalyptic
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| adj.预示灾祸的，启示的 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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nauseating
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| adj.令人恶心的，使人厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的现在分词 ) | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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40
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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41
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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43
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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46
forthright
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| adj.直率的，直截了当的 [同]frank | |
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47
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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48
nauseated
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| adj.作呕的，厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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50
infusion
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| n.灌输 | |
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51
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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52
clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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53
censures
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| v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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54
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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55
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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56
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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57
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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58
obsessively
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| ad.着迷般地，过分地 | |
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59
expiration
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| n.终结，期满，呼气，呼出物 | |
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60
pry
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| vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起) | |
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61
spikes
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| n.穗( spike的名词复数 )；跑鞋；（防滑）鞋钉；尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 )；偷偷地给某人的饮料加入（更多）酒精（ 或药物）；把尖状物钉入；打乱某人的计划 | |
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62
screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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63
fingerprints
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| n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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64
hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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65
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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66
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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67
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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68
aerosol
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| n.悬浮尘粒，气溶胶，烟雾剂，喷雾器 | |
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69
ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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70
luster
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| n.光辉；光泽，光亮；荣誉 | |
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71
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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