Self-Defense by JONATHAN KELLERMAN

These log walls were perforated with disease. Remnants of furniture in one corner: a small metal desk, completely rusted and legless, blotched with green and teeming with grubs and beetles. Something on the desktop. I flicked away insects and humus and revealed the black-lacquer keys of a manual typewriter. A bit more scraping produced a gold-leaf Royal logo.

Next to the desk, a leather chair had been reduced to a few curling scraps of dermis and a handful of hammered nailheads; on the ground, near the desk, three metal loops attached to a rusted spine.

Rings from a looseleaf notebook. Something else, copperish with a green patina.

I kneeled. Something crawled up my leg and I slapped it away.

The patina was moss. Not copper, gold.

A gold bullet-shaped tube with a white-gold clip.

The cap of a fountain pen.

Etched in the head: MBL.

I pocketed it and kicked at the loose, fragrant dirt. Nothing else in the cabin.

Lucy hadn’t followed me in. Through the window hole, I saw her make her way to the water’s edge and stare across the pond.

Two trees on the far bank.

Giant, lush, weeping willows, their surface roots worming into the pond.

Branches of knife-blade, golden-green leaves, looping to the ground, then bending and resuming in a relentless horizontal growth.

Sentries.

Diamonds of light shone through the wispy foliage.

A baby-blue network, ethereal as lace.

I ran out of the cabin.

Lucy’s eyes were fixed on a spot between the trees, a bare, sunken area.

She took the shovel from me and began circling the pond clockwise. Awkward, almost hesitant, toeing along the bank, inches from the water’s edge.

Her eyes closed and she slipped. Before I could catch her, one leg went into the water, up to the ankle. She pulled it out. Her jeans were soaked. She shook her leg and kept walking. Stopped in the bare spot, tears dripping down her cheeks.

Cradling the shovel like a baby.

Inspiration.

Lowell’s private spot.

Burying Karen here . . . for company?

He needed company—the adulation of fans and disciples and, when that dried up, the worship of young women.

Send me someone good-looking.

Had other women been buried here?

My initial thought upon hearing the dream was that he’d molested Lucy. There’d been more than a nuance of sexuality in his approach to her just now: comments about her legs and her toilet training. Flaunting his infidelity with her aunt.

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that with Lucy he was after something different.

Stick with me and I’ll show you the world, kid.

Body failing, fame withered, he wanted a family.

He’d stopped coming here a long time ago.

No more inspiration.

Lucy stood up.

Without a word, she began digging.

CHAPTER

44

She wouldn’t let me help her.

The first foot of soil was forgiving, but after that she hit compressed clay and cried out in frustration. I wrested the shovel from her. Each second weighed on me as I excavated a hole six feet long and three feet deep, getting in the pit and pitching out dirt like a manic paid by the shovelful. My arms felt leaden and detached from my body.

No signs of any bones. The smallest chip and I’d yank her the hell out of here. Even without progress, I’d give it five more minutes.

She got in and said, “My turn,” but when I shook my head she didn’t argue. Tears had washed her face clean.

The sun was sinking and the pond had grayed. It had been over an hour since we’d come up, but the day seemed timeless.

Each shovelful mixed with the blood rush in my head.

I dug and dug, till my breath grew short and harsh. Then I heard something else.

Another voice—a woman’s—from across the pond.

Both of us turned.

Nova was standing near Inspiration. A man had one arm around her waist. His other hand held a pistol to her head.

She looked frightened to death. The man’s fingers touched one of her breasts and spidered their way up in a manner that couldn’t be accidental.

I pushed Lucy down and ducked. The man’s gun arm snapped, as if he was throwing the weapon.

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