Signal

Начало книги

The smell hit Marnie Calvert even before she got out of the car. The vents sucked it in from outside: a mix of charred wood and oxidized metal and melted plastic — maybe from linoleum or carpet backing. Then there was the other smell, beneath all those. That smell reminded her of backyard gatherings and nice days at the park. It made her want to throw up.

She wasn’t going to throw up. She never had, in eight years with the Bureau. She killed the engine and shoved open the door and stood up into the desert night.

There were already ten or twelve vehicles at the crime scene. State Police, San Bernardino County sheriff’s cruisers, three fire trucks out of Palmdale. Most of the units were idling, their flashers strobing and their headlights aimed inward on a focal point: the burned-out husk of a mobile home, all by itself next to a gravel road in the middle of the Mojave.

Outside the car, the smells were all stronger. Marnie gave her stomach ten seconds to relax; she turned in place and took in the landscape. Far to the west, the lights of Edwards Air Force Base dotted the plain before the foothills of the San Gabriels. The mountains stood in faint contrast against the lit-up haze above Los Angeles, maybe seventy miles away. The only nearer light was Barstow, a dim smudge off to the north. Everywhere else, the desert was black and empty and baking hot — four in the morning, early August.

Читать дальше →