Phantoms
Скачать
Начало книги
The scream was distant and brief. A woman's scream.
Deputy Paul Henderson looked up from his copy of Time. He cocked his head, listening.
Motes of dust drifted lazily in a bright shaft of sunlight that pierced one of the mullioned windows. The thin, red second hand of the wall clock swept soundlessly around the dial.
The only noise was the creak of Henderson's office chair as he shifted his weight in it.
Through the large front windows, he could see a portion of Snowfield's main street, Skyline Road, which was perfectly still and peaceful in the golden afternoon sunshine. Only the trees moved, leaves aflutter in a soft wind.
After listening intently for several seconds, Henderson was not sure he had actually heard anything.
Imagination, he told himself. Just wishful thinking.
He almost would have preferred that someone had screamed. He was restless.
During the off season, from April through September, he was the only full-time sheriff's deputy assigned to the Snowfield substation, and the duty was dull. In the winter, when the town was host to several thousand skiers, there were drunks to be dealt with, fistfights to be broken up, and room burglaries to be investigated at the inns, lodges, and motels where the skiers stayed. But now, in early September, only the Candle glow Inn, one lodge, and two small motels were open, and the natives were quiet, and Henderson — who was just twenty-four years old and concluding his first year as a deputy — was bored.