centrifuge. Her braided hair fanned out around her head, which was tilted to the right side. Her skin color still retained a slight shade of pink, but her body had already cooled down. The priest put his hand to his lips, which began to tremble. This picture threw him off balance as quickly as it did the two teenagers.
A minute later, Father Benetti pulled himself together, took a handful of coins from his pocket, handed Gordon a few pieces and said:
– Run, call the sheriff.
– I’m quick – as if Gordon had snapped and ran at full speed towards the payphone.
Fourteen and a half minutes later, the squeal of rubber rubbing was heard as the sheriff’s car pulled up near the park. Next came Jenna and forensic scientist Larry Greene. A van has already been sent from the morgue.
Desmond ran up to the beam carousel with the flashlight on and asked:
– Padre, you didn’t touch anything?
The priest moved his lips silently for a while, but then he shook his head and answered:
– No-no. I… I just sent the boy to call you at the office, and I stayed here.
– Fine.
After a short silence, Father Benetti said with a trembling voice:
– What is it? God, she’s still a child.
Jenna came up to him and took him to the nearest bench, sitting down next to him. She stroked Benetti’s sobbing father on the shoulder, trying to calm him down just as he had recently helped her find peace of mind.
13. Chance, coincidence, pattern and fate
– Some kind of bastard has started up in my town! – Desmond shouted in a dissatisfied voice immediately, as soon as he and Jenna crossed the threshold of the office.
Harry, who was on duty that night, immediately perked up, listening carefully to the sheriff’s voice.
– When did this happen!? What kind of scum do you have to be to do something like that!
In the dead of night Desmond, Jenna and Harry speculated about what the killer’s motives, if any, were. All four victims were in no way related to each other. In all cases there are no injuries that would be identical in nature. It looked as if the murders were committed by different people, and some could even be considered an accident. In a deductive sense, it was complete chaos.
The sheriff doubted that any of the locals had done this, so he ordered Jenna and Harry to call the only hotel in Heartstone and three motels. He was sure that this was the work of one of the visitors.
Telephone conversations with the administrators of the inns ended in nothing. No one stayed in any of the motels or the hotel for more than one day. Having written down all the names of the guests over the past five days, Harry and Jenna did not find a single repeated name, as if a maniac had decided to change inns so that he would not be identified.
After the hotel and motel administrators were unable to help, the sheriff ordered in the morning to go around all the cafes, restaurants, banks, post offices, train stations, shops, supermarkets, gas stations, hospitals and all objects with a large flow of people, so that as soon as anyone noticed even the slightest degree suspicious of a person from outside the area was immediately reported to the sheriff’s office. Desmond also ordered that everyone be notified that all those who had moved to Heartstone over the past year should be reported, in case the sheriff, for some reason, still does not know something about someone.
14. Always in touch
Ever since Rebecca started reaching for the phone mounted on the wall in the kitchen, she constantly tried to be the first to pick up the receiver. No one in the family could understand which parent the girl, who loved to talk and keep her mouth open for hours, took after. In such cases Saul always joked, saying that it was not necessary to be like their parents, thereby hinting that the granddaughter took after her grandfather, who firmly believed in the great power of the main weapon – the tongue, which should not rest. Rebecca was even jokingly called “Dispatcher” at home. If a call rang and Carter was closest to the phone, and he was too lazy to leave his seat, he called Rebecca: “Dispatcher, you are being called”. Even if Rebecca was in the basement or on the veranda, this did not stop her and she ran towards the phone. But this trait explained her success in learning languages, and not only English. When Rebecca was eight, Giselle noticed that the girl somehow sorted words into parts in too much detail and was immersed in their meaning. This led to her frequently correcting adults when someone used a word in an inappropriate manner. By eleven she could speak fluently in Spanish and a little French. In the case of French Rebecca was bothered by the strong accent that emerged from her. Carter gave her a collection of French hits from recent years, which the girl listened to from morning to evening. She didn’t get rid of her accent completely, but she began to understand some slang words better. Everyone understood that in the case of Rebecca the issue of choosing a profession had already been resolved.
Around noon the phone rang. Rebecca picked up the phone in the living room.
– Hello?
– Heartstone, Boston speaking. How can you hear? – said Roger.
He was the eldest of Carter and Giselle’s three children. Roger studied at Boston University to become a surgeon. When Roger decided on his choice of profession, that evening, while lying in bed, Carter said to Giselle: “Well, we can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s not for nothing that he loved watching horror films since childhood. It turns out that our boy was simply training his psyche so that his hand in cutting people would not waver. And most importantly, it’s legal”. Since the eighth grade, Roger deliberately focused his attention on biology and chemistry. His knowledge of chemistry was truly appreciated by Saul when, five years ago, his grandson assembled homemade explosives, with which he helped his grandfather get rid of the withered trunk of an old cedar tree. Saul patted his grandson on the shoulder and said that he saved him a lot of time, effort and nerves. That tree had long been an eyesore for Saul. True, Carter and Giselle did not appreciate such talents of their son and Carter forbade Roger to even try to mix everything that in total could be explosive, but without specifying, because he had no idea what exactly and in what proportions his son mixed; and at the end Carter added: “I forbid you to even make flaming cocktails”. For some time after this, Ines called her brother “dynamite”. True, Giselle soon realized how useful knowledge Roger’s head was filled with after he removed a stain from a white tablecloth, against which all powders were powerless.
In matters of education until the age of thirteen, Roger was more pliable than most boys. Carter or Giselle didn’t have to work very hard to influence their son, even though he was less flexible than the two sisters. But after the process of adolescence was in full swing, Roger’s character changed greatly. Energy began to bubble within him, which had to be channeled somewhere. He did long distance running and some swimming. But he was especially interested in cycling. Having become a student, in his first year he joined the university cycling team. Roger didn’t understand the excitement of cycling until Kayla dragged him to the track.
Kayla Freeze was the only daughter of Carter’s maternal cousin, Vanessa. Kayla’s parents were in a car accident when she was four years old. A couple of weeks after the funeral of Vanessa and her husband, Saul was going to offer his son custody of the girl, but Carter got ahead of his thoughts. So Carter and Giselle raised Kayla as their own daughter. If she called Carter and Giselle aunt and uncle, then Saul became her grandfather, because while she remembered her parents, at least very vaguely, she didn’t even see her grandparents at birth. Kayla was three years older than Roger and became that big sister to all three of them, helping them with homework, flying a kite, teaching them how to play chess, ride a bike, and shoot a basketball. When Giselle began teaching Kayla to draw at an early age and saw her success, she was delighted and decided that she had revealed the girl’s talent and determined the