JК
Ыоуве Been Warned :: Patterson James
Страница: 91 из 138I don’t rush, since there’s little doubt as to what I’ll see. Dr. Curley wasn’t standing there alone; I know I didn’t imagine it. And that goes for everything else too.
Now, if I could just figure out what it all means, or at least how it could be happening.
I hold up the picture. There was a time I couldn’t look at the face of Dr. Floyd Magnumsen without breaking into tears.
His hands were so cold. He always wore gloves during my checkups, except for that one time. Why is he locking the door? I thought. And then I understood: because he didn’t want anyone to know that he was a monster.
I felt so ashamed and confused afterward. And then, when no one believed me, I wanted to die.
Dr. Magnumsen wasn’t only a respected pediatrician, he was a war hero… and I was a twelve-year-old girl with an “active” imagination. Even my parents suspected I was making the whole thing up. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to get attention, Kristin?” my mother asked me. “Are you sure this really happened?”
But then someone else came forward. A sophomore at Concord High School. Dr. Magnumsen had told her he needed to feel for bumps “down there,” and that it was okay if it felt good. She’d kept it a secret for over four years.
But when she read about me in the paper and heard the talk on Main Street, the proverbial scarlet L for “Liar” being plastered on my faded overalls, she could no longer stay silent. She told what Magnumsen had done to her.
I wasn’t alone. I was telling the truth.
Two days later, the girl’s father stormed into Magnumsen’s office and aimed a shotgun at his face. It was a closed-casket funeral, said the newspaper stories.
But here Floyd Magnumsen is now, in my hands, back from the dead. There’s not a scratch on him. It’s as if I took this picture fifteen years ago.
I pin it up on the wall and add the shots I took to show Javier. I take a step back and study it, knowing this has to be a key to everything that’s happening.
But what could Dr. Magnumsen possibly have to do with my father? Or Penley and Michael?
And what do they all have to do with the Fálcon Hotel?
I lean in for a closer look at the gurneys lined up on the sidewalk. Four body bags right in a row.Who are those people? How did they die?
Reaching out, I run my fingers across the pictures. As my hand approaches the weirdest of them all – the one of Michael on the floor that I never took – it stops.
I hear something. I’m sure of it.
Now, if I could just figure out what it all means, or at least how it could be happening.
I hold up the picture. There was a time I couldn’t look at the face of Dr. Floyd Magnumsen without breaking into tears.
His hands were so cold. He always wore gloves during my checkups, except for that one time. Why is he locking the door? I thought. And then I understood: because he didn’t want anyone to know that he was a monster.
I felt so ashamed and confused afterward. And then, when no one believed me, I wanted to die.
Dr. Magnumsen wasn’t only a respected pediatrician, he was a war hero… and I was a twelve-year-old girl with an “active” imagination. Even my parents suspected I was making the whole thing up. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to get attention, Kristin?” my mother asked me. “Are you sure this really happened?”
But then someone else came forward. A sophomore at Concord High School. Dr. Magnumsen had told her he needed to feel for bumps “down there,” and that it was okay if it felt good. She’d kept it a secret for over four years.
But when she read about me in the paper and heard the talk on Main Street, the proverbial scarlet L for “Liar” being plastered on my faded overalls, she could no longer stay silent. She told what Magnumsen had done to her.
I wasn’t alone. I was telling the truth.
Two days later, the girl’s father stormed into Magnumsen’s office and aimed a shotgun at his face. It was a closed-casket funeral, said the newspaper stories.
But here Floyd Magnumsen is now, in my hands, back from the dead. There’s not a scratch on him. It’s as if I took this picture fifteen years ago.
I pin it up on the wall and add the shots I took to show Javier. I take a step back and study it, knowing this has to be a key to everything that’s happening.
But what could Dr. Magnumsen possibly have to do with my father? Or Penley and Michael?
And what do they all have to do with the Fálcon Hotel?
I lean in for a closer look at the gurneys lined up on the sidewalk. Four body bags right in a row.Who are those people? How did they die?
Reaching out, I run my fingers across the pictures. As my hand approaches the weirdest of them all – the one of Michael on the floor that I never took – it stops.
I hear something. I’m sure of it.