Authors: Gillian Roberts
Suddenly dark. Thick, impenetrable dark. He’d turned the lights off. I lost my last bit of orientation, and lost hope as well. I was completely and totally lost, and there was no way out.
I knew how Adam must have felt all these past days.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “I wanted to slow you down, to help you. You’re in danger from him. The police are on their way, Amanda. Let them find Adam. You never will. These corridors are endless. They stretch the entire city block, one side to the other, back and forth. But I know my way around them—I know these passageways. That’s all I’m trying to do, help you get out of here.”
He hadn’t added the magic word: out of here
alive
. All right, then. I could be hopeless—but not inert. I felt my way around a stack, hit my side on a desk, my head on the bookshelf itself, felt the jolt of this new pain plus a fiery surge of every reactivated ache of the night before. My ragged breath was as good as a flashlight for locating me, but I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hush it.
I was underground, a blind and panicked subterranean creature, nothing more.
I tripped.
He was on me in a second, grabbing my shoulder.
I screamed, loud as I could. Screamed and screamed, and thought somewhere, too far to matter, I heard a murmured response. “Help!” I screamed again, but the only response was the heat of him, his fury.
He tried for my hands, grabbed them, but I grabbed faster, pulling the flesh of his cheek, up to his eyes—I scratched, clawed, gave way to being the animal in a trap, the animal who would free myself by gnawing off my own hands if I had to.
He couldn’t hold his tie and me at the same time. Couldn’t strangle me efficiently the way he had Emily, from behind, by surprise. He didn’t want to strangle from the front— Mackenzie had told me that, too. A struggle would mark him, make his story obviously a lie. I marked him now—hurt him however I could—no thought, pure fury, pulling hair, tearing
skin, biting—and squirmed until I was free of him. I leaped up, turned, and ran—to what, I didn’t know. Where, I didn’t know. To wherever I found a glimmer of light. Ahead. Around.
I heard him behind me. Bites and scratches were not nearly enough for anything except evidence after I was dead. I saw a yellow glow ahead, turned to the light. Another book-crowded space. I could throw books at him, arm myself with a stack, but I had to break the glass, get into the cabinets—
An old-fashioned pale wood catalogue case stood by the wall. How Helena would have coveted that for her store.
Half its drawers were missing. Only half.
Labordeaux came toward me. His silence terrified me more than anything he might have said.
“Get back,” I said.
He took another step toward me. As I’d hoped. My upper body strength was not the best. I needed him close.
He didn’t see what I held, or he didn’t care. Maybe he thought I was doing my research down here, but the moment he was near enough, I lifted the drawer I’d removed from the cabinet and hurled it, cards and center rod and metal pull and all. Hurled it at his face.
It was all sharp edges, metal and wood, with enough heft and speed to reach him as he froze, confused, for a second too long. It hit the side of his head and threw him off balance; he grabbed a bookcase next to him, and both of them went down.
I didn’t stay to survey the wreckage. I still couldn’t see an exit, but that murmured sound sporadically recurred. Voices, people, were somewhere near. I hadn’t imagined it, and I moved toward it. And saw light—a half circle of it—but in the wrong place. The wrong shape for a doorway. It was to the left of me, down a new corridor, and a half circle of light down here made no sense, but it was all I had.
I was suddenly on metal flooring. A balcony, enclosed, with more stacks, and then there—the light, the murmurs.
And Labordeaux, bleeding but unbowed. “Don’t be an ass,” he called out. “Don’t be—I didn’t mean to—come back here, I’ll show you the way—”
I heard the scrape of something he’d grabbed, heard his dress shoes advance, and I looked at the semicircle of light.
I was on a balcony above a room, but not the one I’d left. I saw bright book jackets, an arrangement I remembered. The
fiction room, the lending library below me. I was in the stacks, and the high oval opening from below ended at about eye level, where a soffit almost shut it off. A plain iron railing blocked more than half of the opening, leaving a small space.
But enough.
A small space with nowhere to go, except down, a story or more, to marble floors that were almost as terrifying as Terry Labordeaux.
I pulled back, dizzy at the idea of the plummet.
And heard him. “Amanda,” he said in that weary, overly patient voice. “Stop being a child. Nobody’s going to—come here. That’s not safe—”
Three steps away. I had no choice. I pulled myself up and half over, keeping my head low, below the curved ceiling. I crawled to the outside, perched on the railing, and screamed. “Help! Help me!” Maybe they’d have a mattress ready, a net—maybe they’d all lie down and catch me. Save me.
People stopped where they were, looked around, up, and sideways. Finally a few saw me, but instead of rushing, instead of coming up with an inspired plan, they stood gape-mouthed, as if they’d never seen a screaming woman hanging from an iron rail above their heads in the lending library.
Maybe he’d back off if he knew he’d be observed. Maybe I didn’t have to jump at all; I could crawl back to what now felt like safety. Real floors instead of space beneath my feet.
Wrong. He was there, pushing me from behind. Pushing from the shadows behind me while shouting, “Don’t jump!” as if he were my rescuer. Pulling my fingers off the rail, breaking my hold. Pushing.
“You’re going to die,” he whispered as he pushed. “Your smart brains, your questioning mind—it’s going to be all over that floor. Thanks for doing the job for me.”
I was, very literally, in no position to respond. With each push, my center of gravity shifted forward until—I looked, I clenched muscles, I prayed for an agility I’d never possessed, I aimed, and I jumped, screaming as I descended.
Screaming as I landed, on my back. The first thing I saw after I realized I was still alive and my brains were still inside my skull was a man in a vest. His face was upside down, staring. I was sprawled atop a stack. An orange and blue lettered sign saying
NEW FICTION
lay next to my face. I lifted one
arm and tried to point. “Up there,” I said. “There’s a … get the police to go up there …” I could see the opening, but nothing within it. The man swiveled his stare in that direction, then returned it to me.
A crowd gathered. The librarian—I assumed that’s who it was—shouted up. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Can you move your head? Can you sit up or get down from there?”
I didn’t know. I was afraid to find out. “Police,” I repeated.
“They’re here,” she said. “Hold on a second.”
And then I heard a joyous burst of sound. “She’s there! She’s there!”
“Adam,” I whispered. I tested my neck—it worked. I could lift my head. I could see him, black hair ragged and wild, over in a corner, waving, and with him, two uniformed officers and a third, who was approaching me. “Adam,” I whispered again. “He’s okay.”
“The boy came down the stairs, lady,” the gaper said. “Why didn’t you? Those stairs over there lead right down here—you were maybe ten feet from them. He found them—why didn’t you? And, lady, he’s supposed to be the crazy one.”
I closed my eyes. I was delighted to be alive and safe, but I wasn’t quite ready for irony.
I
FELT A LITTLE LIKE A KID ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL AS
I limped beside Mackenzie, en route to the principal’s office to praise him for deeds undone, to shame him into doing them. I was sure the ploy would work and, with Mackenzie’s gentle suggestions of spin—making Philly Prep’s headmaster the heroic seeker of justice—the school would emerge a winner.
But it wasn’t my first day of school, it was my last. One day, in fact, beyond my last. I wasn’t supposed to darken those doors again, but I needed to get Lia’s book back to her, to return papers. To clear my desk.
After months of wondering whether I was a burnout case, whether anything I did here mattered, whether I wanted to stay after all that dithering, all those unanswered questions about what I’d be when I grew up had been answered, abruptly and finally, by Maurice Havermeyer, of all people.
But surprisingly, my sudden freedom did not gladden my heart. My classroom beckoned, as did the smell and noise and tempo of a school day. What was wrong with me? Was I perverse—take something from me I was going to give away and I immediately want it back?
“You done good, kiddo,” Mackenzie said as we walked. “Sorry my pager went on the fritz, or I could have been there for the finale, too. I kind of wish I’d seen that leap.” Labordeaux was being held. I’d told the police about Emily’s notebook, and I’d explained the stickums that seemed a guide to missing library treasures. The dentist Adam had robbed said he wouldn’t press charges if the boy got help. Even Adam’s
parents reluctantly conceded that psychiatry and medications were better than jail for their son. I had hopes for him and didn’t regret my intervention.
Turned out I was a semi–Good Samaritan.
Helena Spurry was in mourning, of course. Not for her sister but for her lost hopes. Her “prospect’s” only prospect was a long spell in prison. And I was sure that as soon as Mackenzie spoke to Havermeyer, the
InkWire
would be resuscitated along with Nancy and Jill’s piece, the scandal exposed and made better. So things were falling into place.
And speaking of falling, I was in one piece, except for a bump on the back of my head, assorted bruises from my falls in the back passageways, an “insulted” coccyx that complained about its slam onto the book bay with each step, a bandaged cut above my eyebrow, and a bruised ego. “You aren’t angry, then, that I … interfered, sleuthed, whatever?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I don’t know how it is a schoolteacher keeps involvin’ herself in these things, but Lord knows you do. Maybe you were itchy about everything—me, your job—because it had been too long a stretch of ordinary time. Crimeless time. So maybe it’s good if you get your minimum daily requirement of adrenaline from other people’s problems. Maybe we’re a matched pair, and maybe it saves us grief.”
It was a theory, all right. Of course, I would no longer be a schoolteacher who slid into crime. Just a … I didn’t know what.
We reached the corner of the school. “Okay, now,” Mackenzie said. “I’m going in. I give him seven minutes max before he reverses himself on every point. Including you. But I’d prefer you didn’t think of it as the strong arm of the law used on a spineless jerk. Think of it—think of me—as your knight in shinin’ armor, chargin’ the dragon to rescue the damsel in distress.”
“We damsels take care of ourselves these days.” Limp, limp, wince. Mackenzie did his one-eyebrow lift. “I’m alive,” I reminded him.
“Maybe an exception just this once,” he said. “For old times’ sake.”
“Really old times, like the Middle Ages?”
“You have somethin’ against the Middle Ages?”
We turned the corner. And stopped in our tracks.
The sidewalk was lined with students—my students— carrying signs that read
IF SHE’S OUT, WE
’
RE OUT!
They made a slow circle on the pavement in front of the school—in front of my apoplectic former headmaster, who stood at the entryway, sputtering and flailing his arms. At the head of the line Nancy and Jill, twin cheerleaders, set the brisk pace. “Look at that,” I murmured. “Look at that. Look what they’re doing.”
“They’re your kids,” he said softly.
“Maybe it’s an excuse to get the day off.”
“Maybe. But it gives you pause, doesn’t it?”
“Mackenzie, I’ve just had the most amazing thought. What if I
am
grown-up already? What if this is what I’m going to be?”
“Deserves consideration.” He surveyed the marchers. “Kind of eliminates the need for the shinin’ armor bit. You’ve got yourself a damsel brigade.”
“The dragon still needs taming,” I said. “Use all the strong arms of the law you’ve got. And thanks, Cisco.”
“You’re welcome, and you’re wrong.”
The warning bell rang. Another school day was about to begin. The kids marched, their signs held high, ignoring the warning. Nobody spoke a word.
I stood there, beaming at them. Silently they waved at me. Their images swam and blurred as I blinked hard.
Havermeyer’s sigh broke the silence. “You’ll be late,” he said. “All of you.” His glance reluctantly but definitely left the students and moved to me. I was a part of that
all.
Mackenzie gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “One last thing, okay? Should it happen again that you don’ know what job you want,” he whispered, “contact a career counselor. It’s a lot easier and more efficient than getting involved in a murder, being fired from your job, nearly getting killed a few times, and stirring the student population out of its spring apathy in order to reach a decision.”
I’d consider it. If there was a next time. Right now, I had to hurry. The late bell would ring in a few seconds.
Feeling like a benign Pied Piper, I nodded back at Havermeyer, and led my kids and myself back to where we belonged. Together.
GILLIAN: So, Amanda Pepper, how’s life?
AMANDA: Life’s pretty good, Gillian. And please call me Mandy.
I like my job, even though I complain about it a lot, and even though I thought being an English teacher would have more to do with sharing my love of books. But my students are not exactly students, and my headmaster hasn’t read anything since he got his offshore Ph.D. in Jargon. Nonetheless, it’s where I belong. And I more than like C. K. Mackenzie, my extremely significant other. Love and work. I’ve got it all.
Except … I hate to burden you with this, but since you ask—and oddly enough, I feel as if we’re old friends, even though we’ve just met—I do have one problem. To tell the truth, I have the weirdest sense that I’m not in control of my life. The things that happen to me do not happen to other English teachers. And there’s nothing different I do. I prepare lessons, get to work in time, put up with the politics and inanities my headmaster generates, mark and return papers— just like everybody else. But—and I hope you won’t think less of me for this, or worse, avoid me from now on—the truth is I keep finding myself involved with murder. Dead bodies. Investigations. And most involve people I more or less know.
If you ask me, this is not normal. So sometimes I feel as if some unknown force is manipulating me. Putting me in these weird situations. I know that sounds paranoid, and I probably should get help because surely it’s all in my mind, but boy, does it feel real! It just doesn’t make sense. I’m an English teacher. Why do these things keep happening to me?
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with the most horrible thought: What if I’m a serial killer? Why else
am I always there? Maybe I’m not really trying to solve crimes—only to find fall guys, to direct attention away from me. Maybe I’m a split personality, and one of me’s a criminal.
C.K. says I’m being ridiculous. That this is just a combination of astounding bad luck—the wrong places at the wrong times—and a pathologically overactive curiosity. As if “normal” people would hear their friend was in jail, or dead, and say “tsk, tsk” and move on. I hope that’s not what “normal” is. At least I care.
So maybe C.K.’s the killer—setting me up! I get so confused sometimes. But even if I’m not the killer, I wonder how long I’m going to keep any friends. People are going to be afraid to know me. I’m the Typhoid Mary of murder. Or like that Jessica Fletcher who used to be on TV. Of course, she’s fictional, so that doesn’t really count.
GILLIAN: Mandy, does it bother you that you don’t know the actual name of that man telling you you’re pathologically overcurious?
AMANDA: It should, but the word “Seekay” is a comfort in its own way and kind of exotic sounding. Plus, it makes it easy to have things monogrammed. Or to fill in forms. And luckily, he has a fine last name. The only problem with “Mackenzie” is that it’s too close to my cat’s name, so sometimes I call the man “Macavity” and vice versa.
My shrink friends say not knowing my love’s name is sick, and that it’s withholding behavior on his part. Other people suggest there’s a sinister past behind it. C.K. himself acts amused and incredulous, as if I actually know his name and I’m just making a game of it.
Of course, I’ll keep digging for the real name—it’s that pathological snoopiness again—but between us, I’m a little afraid of finding out. I don’t think I could feel the same about a Clem, for example, as I do about a C.K. So what’s in a name, indeed? Did Shakespeare ever actually answer that? Did he name any of his heroes Clem?
GILLIAN: Maybe this is one of those times where ignorance is bliss.
AMANDA: And since you brought it up, Ms. Roberts, I heard a rumor that you know what his actual name is and that
you’re even putting clues to it in something you’re writing about him. No offense, but I think the least you could do is tell me.
GILLIAN: You’ve been together with no-name a while now, haven’t you? Is marriage on the horizon?
AMANDA: Have you been talking with my mother?
GILLIAN: He’d have to sign his actual name on the marriage certificate, so you’d finally know it.
AMANDA: You have definitely been talking with my mother. Don’t you want to tell me what an exceptional man he is? Or where the hands point on my biological clock?
I have nothing against marriage—it’s just more frightening than crime. So complicated. So long! And Mackenzie and I—except for loving and liking each other—are totally incompatible. I am uncomfortable with the unpredictable life of a homicide cop and he has no qualms about it. All I can figure to do about that is balk, dither, and avoid. That’s my strategy. (But have you ever met him? He’s really cute and smart and funny and kind—and oh, that Southern accent. I probably don’t have a choice. Don’t tell my mother, okay?)
GILLIAN: If you didn’t have any constraints—economic, professional, or emotional—what would you do?
AMANDA: Probably the same as I’m doing now—but first, I’d take a year or however long and travel the entire world. I’d buy the sort of blank map of the world used in geography lessons and fill in each country as I visited it. I’d like to ride a camel and an elephant, and see animals in their native habitats, and be in cultures that are totally different from everything I know. I’d like to see all the places that made history, and have Mackenzie, the history buff, along. He’d be the best guide. I’d like to be in St. Petersburg for the White Nights, and see the Aurora Borealis, and swim with dolphins, and dance on the beach in Rio on New Year’s Eve, and—
GILLIAN: I think I’ve got the idea. This interview does have length constraints, so let’s move on.
AMANDA: No, Gillian. Let’s not. Because after I got back home, I’d like to take a year or two to write.
GILLIAN: Travel articles?
AMANDA: Don’t laugh, okay? I’ve always had a yen to write a mystery. I know it must be hard—all those twists and turns and secrets. But I’d like to try. In fact, given recent events, I could almost use my actual life as a plot—write a mystery about a Philadelphia English teacher. Write what you know—isn’t that what they say? Or is that idea just too farfetched?
GILLIAN: In truth, I think it’s been done. But don’t be discouraged. There are no new ideas, just new writers. Something like that. But from what you say, I take it that you read mysteries?
AMANDA: Well, of course. I read everything. When I was a child, I tried to read the library fiction shelves A to Z. I scrutinize the print on the cereal box if there’s nothing else around to read. But I’d prefer a touch of crime with my coffee. Mysteries are aerobic exercise for the brain. I love the puzzle, and trying to outguess the sleuth, and of course, the great characters and ideas. Guess I love everything about them.
In school, I have to maintain the stance my principal wants, which is “Upholder of capital L Literature.” Which means the books he read in school in his childhood. Which literature I, of course, adore—but when the kids are assigned a “free reading” book report, I’m happy to say that they dive into mysteries. So do I.
Someday, maybe, one of those mystery writers will be me … under a pseudonym, of course. Otherwise, Dr. Havermeyer would have apoplexy. Not that my headmaster’s bright enough to read mysteries! Not that he reads anything besides the bottom line.
GILLIAN: You know, I’m glad you’re a fan of mysteries because, actually, that’s what I write.
AMANDA: Oh. Sorry. I thought you were a reporter. You’re a mystery writer? Should I have heard of you?
GILLIAN: Never mind. Is there anything else you want to say?
AMANDA: Only that if by chance you are reading this, Dr. Havermeyer, she made me say everything. Honestly. Or am I sounding paranoid again?