Compelling Evidence

Начало книги

From somewhere behind the scenes the lights in the chamber are turned on.

Dreyers nudges me. ‘Looks like the $64,00 °Challenge,” he says. This is low, directed to me, but others hear it. A little comic relief. There’s a titter of laughter from behind us, up on the risers. Johnston and the other guard don’t laugh.

Dreyers whispers, lower now, under his breath, to me only. “Pretty soon they’ll pop the question.”

I look at him.

“For $64,000-how long can you hold your breath?’ He gives me a little sideways wink. I can hear some giggling on the other side of Dreyers. Another cop, one of his buddies.

Bad taste, I think. But as I study the scene, he’s right. Now this room with its cupola-like top, lit on the inside like some Macy’s store window, does not resemble anything so much as one of the glittering, cheesy booths from a sixties TV quiz show.

A lone guard enters the room through a door on the other side of the chamber. Muffled cries, intonations of a desperate low moan are clearly audible as the door is closed.

Читать дальше →