sharp clothes notwithstanding, Gifford was chewing on his thumbnail like a five-year-old facing a difficult world.
“You’d better go to the police now,” I said to him carefully. And he wheeled and was out the door before I could catch my breath.
Gifford’s hatchet, Robin’s briefcase. Those not cast as victims were being cast as murderers, to provide even more fun for the killer.
I wondered which category was scheduled for me. Surely finder-of-the-body would suffice.
I was still pondering this and other unpleasant related topics thirty minutes later when Perry Allison came in. I could hardly believe my luck at seeing Gifford and Perry in one evening. Two great guys. At least while Gifford had been here, so had a few other people, but in the intervening half hour Bankston and Melanie and the two other patrons had trickled out the door.
This time I quietly opened a drawer and slid out a pair of scissors. I checked my watch; only fifteen minutes to go till closing time.
“Roe!” he babbled. “Que pasa?” His hands beat a manic tattoo on the desk.
I felt a stirring of dismay. This wasn’t even the familiar unpleasant Perry, who had perhaps skipped some prescribed medication. Perry was on drugs no doctor had ever given him. The appeal of “recreational” drugs had completely passed me by, but I wasn’t totally naive.
“Nothing much, Perry,” I said cautiously.
“How can you say that? Things here are just
And Perry laughed and came around the desk in a few quick steps.
“Scissors?” He whooped. “Ssssssscissssors?” He experimented with hissing. I was so taken aback by his quick moves and jerky head movements, so unlike the Perry I worked with, that it took me by surprise when his hand shot out to grasp the wrist of my hand that was holding the scissors. He gripped with manic pressure.
“That hurts, Perry,” I said sharply. “Let go.”
But Perry laughed and laughed, never relaxing his grip. I knew in a minute I would drop the scissors and I could not imagine what would happen after that.
Abruptly, he turned enraged. “You were going to stab me,” he shouted furiously. “Not one of you wants me to make it! Not one of you knows what that hospital was like!”
He was right, and under other circumstances I would have listened with some sympathy. But I was in pain and terrified.
I could just barely feel the scissors still gripped in my numbing fingers.
In a day filled with strange incidents, this crazed man screaming at me, his emotional intensity spilling over me in this quiet and civilized building where people came to pick out nice quiet civilized books.
Then he began shaking me to get me to listen, his other hand gripping my shoulder like a vise, and he never stopped talking, angry, sad, full of pain and self-pity.
I began to get angry myself, and suddenly something in me just snapped. I raised my foot and stomped on his instep with every ounce of force I could summon. With a wail of pain, he let go of me, and in that instant I turned and raced for the front door.
I ran smack into Sally Allison.
“Oh my God,” she said hoarsely. “Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you?” Without waiting for an answer she shouted at her son over my head, “Perry, what in God’s name has gotten into you?”
“Oh, Mom,” he said hopelessly and began to cry.
“He’s on drugs, Sally,” I said raggedly. She held me away from her and scanned me for injuries, letting loose a visible sigh of relief when she saw no blood. She saw the scissors still in my hand and looked horrified. “You weren’t going to hurt him?” she asked incredulously.
“Sally, only a mother could say that,” I said. “Now, you get him out of here and take him home.”
“Listen to me, please, Roe,” Sally pleaded. I was still frightened, but I was acutely uncomfortable, too. I had never had anybody beg me, as Sally unmistakably was begging me now. “Listen, he didn’t take his medicine today. He’s okay when he takes his medicine, really. You know he can come to work and perform his job, no one’s complained about that, right? So please, please don’t tell anyone about this.”
“About what?” asked a quiet male voice above my head, and I realized Robin had come in quietly. I looked up to his craggy face, his now-serious crinkly mouth, and I was so glad to see him I could have wept. “I came to check up on you,” he said to me. “Mrs. Allison, I think I met you at the club meeting.”
“Yes,” Sally said, trying hard to pull herself together. “Perry! Come on!”
He walked over to her, his wet face blank and tired, his shoulders slumped.
“Let’s go home,” his mother suggested. “We have to talk about our agreement, about the promise you made me.”
Without looking at me or saying a word, Perry followed his mother out the door. I collapsed against Robin and cried a little, still holding the stupid scissors. His huge hand smoothed my hair. When the worst was over, I said, “I have to lock up, I’m closing now. I don’t care if Santa Claus comes to check out a book. This library is closed.”
“Going to tell me what happened?”
“You bet I am, but first I want to get out of this place.” I hated detaching myself from the comfortable chest and enfolding arms; it had been nice to feel protected by a big strong man for a few seconds. But I wanted to leave that building and go home more than I wanted anything else, and with luck, we could repeat the scene at my place with amenities handy.
Chapter 15
“Maybe,” Robin speculated between bites of a pretzel stick, “there’s more than one murderer.”
If we ever spent a night together, it wasn’t going to be tonight. The mood had faded.
“Oh, Robin! I can’t believe that for a minute. There couldn’t be two people that evil in Lawrenceton at the same time, doing the same thing!” One was bad enough; two would get us in the history books for sure.
He waved the pretzel stick at me emphatically. “Why not, Roe? A copycat killer. Maybe someone, for example, wanted the Buckleys out of the way for some reason, and after Mamie got killed he saw his chance. Or maybe someone wanted to do in Pettigrue, and killed Mamie and the Buckleys to cloud the issue.”
There was a certain amount of precedent for that, but more often in mystery novels than in real life, I thought.
“I guess it’s possible,” I conceded. “But Robin, I just don’t want to believe it.”
“Maybe, then, there’s more than one killer. I mean, a team of murderers.”
“Jane Engle said the same thing,” I recalled belatedly. “Two people? How could you look at anyone who knew you had done that, Robin?” I could truly not imagine saying,
“Hey, buddy, look at the way I socked Mamie!” I felt almost nauseated. That two people could agree on such a plan, and mutually carry it out…
“Hillside Stranglers,” Robin reminded me. “Burke and Hare.”
“But the Hillside Stranglers were sex murderers,” I objected, “and Burke and Hare wanted to sell the bodies to medical schools.”
“Well, true. These killings are apparently just for fun. Just to tease.”
I thought of Gifford and his hatchet. The killer was teasing in more than one way. “Wait till you hear this!” I exclaimed.
Robin felt better when I’d told him he and Melanie and Arthur had company in the category of Implicated Innocent. “Though it would be clever of this Gifford,” Robin cautioned, “to use his own ax, and then claim its use proved him innocent.”
“I wonder if Gifford is that clever,” I said. “Gifford is crafty, I think, but I believe he’s pretty limited in imagination.”
“And how well do you know him?” asked Robin, with a tiny edge to his voice.
