Self-Defense by Johnathan Kellerman

Author:Johnathan Kellerman
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 0345463722
Publisher: The Ballantine Publishing Group
Published: 2003-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

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The road, if you could call it that, was an acutely slanting dirt path lined with elderberry and ferns and sugar bush. I traveled a thousand feet of kidney-jarring, hairpin solitude. The trees, here, were thick-trunked and hypertrophied, the brush beyond them impenetrable. The growth was so thick that branches scraped the roof of the car, and in some places the vegetation sprouted in the center of the road and brushed the Seville’s underbody.

Soon I heard the high-note trickle of a stream. Groundwater. That explained the lushness during the drought. Looking for trees here would be like searching for pedestrians in Times Square.

A couple of turns, then I saw a two-piece gate up ahead. Heavy-duty chicken wire framed by planks of weathered redwood.

Latched, but not locked.

I got out, freed the bolt, and swung both gates open. They were heavy and rusty and left brown grit on my hands.

Another five hundred feet. Another gate, a twin of the first. Beyond it was a big, low-slung, lodge-type building flanked by enormous bristlecone pines and backed by a forest of more pines and firs and coast redwood. The roof was green asphalt shingle, the walls, logs.

I parked in the dirt, between a black Jeep Cherokee and an old white Mercedes convertible. A row of iron hitching posts fronted the lodge. Behind it, wide wooden steps led to a wraparound porch shaded by the eaves of the building and set up with a few bent-willow chairs. The cushions on the chairs were blue floral and mildewed. The windows of the lodge were gray with dust.

Flat, thick silence; then a squirrel scampered across the porch, stopped, and shimmied up a rain gutter.

I climbed the stairs and knocked on the front door. Nothing happened for a while; then it was pulled open and a woman looked out at me.

Thirty-five or so, five-seven, with straight, shoulder-length black hair parted in the middle and painted with copper highlights. Her face was a tan oval, the skin smooth as fresh notepaper, the jawline crisp. She wore second-skin black leggings under a bright green, oversized, sleeveless T-shirt. Her arms were bronze and smooth, her feet bare, her eyes orange-brown.

She had the kind of face that would photograph beautifully: perfectly aligned, slightly oversized features. Both ears were double-pierced.

“Dr. Delaware?” she said in a bored voice. “I’m Nova.”

She waved me into a gigantic main room furnished with sagging tweed couches and thrift-shop tables and chairs. To the right was a clumsy, narrow staircase. The grubby plank flooring was covered haphazardly with colorless rugs. The ceiling was beamed with more planks and raw logs, and each beige stucco wall bore two large windows. Plenty of furniture and still enough room to dance. Along the rear wall, beyond the stairs, what had once been a reception desk had been turned into a wet bar crammed with bottles. On either side of the bar were doors.

The walls were covered with scores of mounted animal heads: deer, moose, fox, bear, a snarling puma, lacquered trout with their vital statistics engraved on plaques.

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