"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 05 - Bloody Bones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

matter what skirt I wore, the outfit was comfortable. As long as I remembered
not to bend directly at the waist, I was safe.
The only jewelry I wore was the silver cross tucked into the blouse, and
the watch on my wrist. My dress watch had broken and I just had never gotten
around to getting it fixed. The present watch was a man's black diving watch
that looked out of place on my small wrist. But hey, it glowed in the dark if
you pressed a button. It showed me the date, what day it was, and could time a
run. I hadn't found a woman's watch that could do all that.
I didn't have to cancel running with Ronnie tomorrow morning. She was out
of town on a case. A private detective's work is never done.
I loaded the suitcase into my Jeep and was on the way to Richard's school
by one o'clock. I was going to be late to the office. Oh, well. They'd wait
for me or they wouldn't. It wouldn't break my heart to miss the helicopter
ride. I hated planes, but a helicopter . . . scared the shit out of me.
I hadn't been afraid of flying until I was on a plane that plunged several
thousand feet in seconds. The stewardess ended up plastered against the
ceiling, covered in coffee. People screamed and prayed. The elderly woman
beside me recited the Lord's Prayer in German. She'd been so scared, tears had
come down her face. I offered her my hand, and she gripped it. I knew I was
going to die and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. But we would die
holding on to human hands. Die covered in human tears, and human prayers. Then
the plane straightened out and suddenly we were safe. I haven't trusted air
transportation since.
Normally in St. Louis there is no real spring. There's winter, two days of
mild weather, and summer heat. This year spring had come early and stayed. The
air was soft against your skin. The wind smelled of green growing things, and
winter seemed to have been a bad dream. Redbuds bent from the trees on either
side of the road. Tiny purple blossoms like a delicate lavender mist here and
there through the naked trees. There were no leaves yet, but there was a hint
of green. Like someone had taken a giant paintbrush and tinted everything.
Look directly at them and the trees were bare and black, but look sideways,
not at a particular tree but at all the trees, and there was a touch of green.
270 South is about as pleasant as a highway can be; it gets you where
you're going fairly fast, and it's over quickly. I exited at Tesson Ferry
Road. The road is thick with strip malls, a hospital, and fast-food
restaurants, and when you leave the commerce behind you hit new housing
developments so thick they nearly touch. There are still stands of woods and
open spaces, but they won't last.
The turn to Old 21 is at the crest of a hill just past the Meramec River.
It is mostly houses with a few gas stations, the area water district office,
and a large gas field to the right. Where the hills march out and out.
At the first stoplight I turned left past a little shopping area. The road
is a curving narrow thing that snakes between houses and woods. There were
glimpses of daffodils in the yards. The road dips down into a valley, and at
the bottom of a steep hill is a stop sign. The road climbs quickly to the
crest of a hill, to a T, turn left and you're almost there.
The one-story school sits on the floor of a wide, flat valley surrounded by
hills. Having been raised in Indiana farm country, I'd have called them
mountains once. The elementary school sits separate, but close enough to share
a playground. If you got recess in junior high. When I was too little to go to