دانلود رمان انگلیسی “تصویر آینه‌ای”

Jamal Nolan had never seen a dead body before—which, after twenty years as an Everglades ranger, made him something of an outlier. Nearly everyone he worked with had a story about a car accident, an airboat wreck, an alligator attack. There were suicides and drownings and even the occasional murder victim who’d been dumped in the swampy saw grass. He knew a few old-timers who’d been on the job in ’96 when the ValuJet plane went down. They didn’t talk about it often, and on the rare occasions when they did, he tried to make himself scarce. No, save for one time when an idiot tourist lost a chunk of his ass to a gator because he didn’t realize the damn things could run upwards of thirtyfive miles an hour, he really hadn’t come across anything especially disturbing to speak of. Until now. He’d been out in his patrol boat on the main channels when the call came in from dispatch. A concerned canoer on a predawn paddle had noticed some floating gear and supplies along the Nightmare. The eight-mile stretch of waterway connecting the north and south Everglades was a narrow, overgrown tunnel of mangroves, roots, and vines. It was impassible by powerboat, so he dropped his kayak and set out on the arduous trek. People were often ill prepared for the amount of time—and work—it took to get from one end to the other. Even a well-experienced outdoorsman such as himself found it tough going at times. This afternoon, he encountered more than the usual number of large branches and, in a couple of instances, entire trees that had come down during a storm, blocking his way. At some points the fallen debris was angled high enough that he could duck and float underneath, but others required him to actually get out of the boat and climb onto and over the tree trunk while pushing the kayak underneath before rejoining it on the other side. What he couldn’t navigate over or under, he hacked his way through, the occasional alligator watching with disinterest. He was about three miles in when he started to spot items tangled up in the roots—a life jacket, a paddle, a tank for holding fresh water. He called out several times, announcing himself and listening carefully for any signs of life other than the bugs, snakes, and gators. But there was nothing. It was, of course, possible that whoever these items belonged to was somewhere in the water beneath his boat, but there would be no telling that until low tide.