by Diane Hoh
“Police report there is a list of suspects who will be questioned immediately. Those names have not been released.
“Dr. Leo’s only survivor is a daughter, Tanner Melissa Leo, a sophomore at the university.
“This station will provide more details on the incident as they arrive.”
Then, as abruptly as it had ended, music began again.
Murdered? Dr. Leo had been murdered?
Ernie, his hands still poised on the keyboard, felt sorry for Tanner, who had only recently reached some kind of peace with her father. Because of a divorce when she was very young, she hadn’t known him when she was growing up and had only come to Salem to live with him so she could go to college. They’d had some rough moments; everyone knew that Dr. Leo was a cold fish. Completely the opposite of Tanner. But was that reason enough to bash in the guy’s skull?
Ernie’s eyes moved to Molloy’s photograph. He thought of Molloy finally making it to Salem even though her parents didn’t approve,
“They’re never going to like me,” he told the photo matter-of-factly. “We both know that, Molloy. And it’s going to make for a pile of problems somewhere down the road.”
Didn’t matter. Well, it mattered, but they’d handle it. He wasn’t giving up Molloy. He’d put up with a lot of garbage in his life because he knew that was just the way things were.
But then, on a really rotten, cold, rainy day in October of his junior year of high school, he’d met Molloy Book.
At Christmastime of that year, Molloy had said, although he hadn’t asked how she felt about him because he hadn’t had the nerve, “I really like you a lot, Ernie Dodd. And I think I’m always going to.” And all he’d given her, all he could afford to give her, was a stupid tape he’d made of her favorite Christmas song, and his football sweater. She didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t a cashmere sweater or expensive jewelry.
He wasn’t giving up Molloy. Not for anything.
Thinking about her sent his eyes to the watch on his wrist. The placement of its hands jolted him upright. Eight-thirty! Eight-thirty? That couldn’t be right. If it was really eight-thirty, Molloy would be here by now. She had said six, and she was never late. Six o’clock, she’d said. Two-and-a-half hours ago?
Ernie got up and strode to the window, tried to look out. He saw nothing but a slick veneer of rain sliding down the glass.
Maybe that was why Molloy was late. Lynne was driving a car she’d hardly driven at all and with the roads so bad, they’d probably decided to take their time. Hadn’t Banion said something earlier on the radio about the highway between school and Twin Falls being flooded? Closed down temporarily? Lynne would have had to come that way from Briscoe. So maybe they’d stopped somewhere. That would have been smart. Waiting it out, until the rain let up.
Ernie went to the phone in the hall to check the time. His watch could be wrong. “The time is now eight-thirty-two p.m., Daylight Savings Time,” a smooth voice assured him.
He should have been paying attention, instead of getting so totally lost in his writing. It was a short story for his comp class, due Monday, and it was almost done. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed since he first sat down in front of the word processor.
“Aren’t you sick and tired of being poor?” his mother had said when he told her he wanted to become a writer. But his father, the person Ernie had expected to really be disappointed that he wasn’t shooting for lawyer or doctor or scientist, had said, “If that’s what you want, son, go for it. I can’t help you out much, you know that, but if you want it bad enough, you’ll get it yourself.”
And although Molloy’s father had said scornfully, “A writer? Aren’t you going to get a real job?,” Molloy herself had said, “Great! Reading is one of my favorite things and now I won’t have to buy the books, you can just write some for me.” As if she didn’t have the slightest doubt that if he wanted to be a writer, he would be.
But he wondered how she’d feel if he confessed that he hadn’t even known she was two and a half hours late because he’d been busy writing.
I should do something, he told himself, beginning to pace back and forth in the small room. But what?
Call Molloy’s house, see if she’d left when she said she was going to? If the weather was as bad in Briscoe as it was here, maybe they’d postponed their trip until tomorrow.
No. She would have called him. She knew how he hated calling her house. She wouldn’t make him do that if she could help it. If they’d started out and hadn’t been able to get through or had decided to wait it out somewhere, she’d have called.
Unless the telephone lines were down where she was. A distinct possibility.
Ernie hurried out into the hall again and lifted the receiver off the wall phone. It was still working, although there was a lot of static.
Ernie replaced the receiver and went back into his room. Just because the phones on campus were working, that didn’t mean all the phones in the area were.
He tried to relax, and couldn’t. The bad news about Dr. Leo had unsettled him, made his skin crawl. Bad things happened. Even to important people like Dr. Leo. He’d made someone mad and that someone had killed him.
So bad things could happen to Ernie Dodd, too. Already had, more than once. But the very worst thing that he could think of was something bad happening to Molloy Crandall Book. That, he couldn’t deal with. No way.
She was probably fine.
Of course, she was fine.
She had to be.
Chapter 4
“WHAT WAS THAT?” LYNNE whispered to the three girls flanking her. They stood as still as statues on the mud-slicked slope, listening to see if the rustling in the woods above them came again. They had been glad to leave the ditched car, but they hadn’t expected the woods to be so dark.
“Maybe it’s someone looking for us,” Toni said, her eyes searching the crest of the hill.
“They wouldn’t be looking here,” Daisy said. “Why would they be looking for us in the woods? We’re supposed to be on the highway!”
“Maybe someone found the car in the ditch, and figured out that we hiked up the hill,” Molloy suggested. “Should we call out or something?”
“No.” Lynn waved the flashlight around, but the beam, steadily growing dimmer, revealed only dripping trees and bushes. “Not yet. Let’s just listen for a minute. It’s probably a raccoon or a squirrel.”
“It’s just so dark,” Toni said, her voice quavering slightly. “They don’t have bears around here, do they?”
Even Lynne blinked. “Bears?” She waved the flashlight more aggressively, playing it in a circle around them. She had just completed the circle when the pale yellow beam blinked out.
Toni gasped, and Daisy said, “Oh, great. I don’t suppose anyone happens to be carrying extra flashlight batteries, do they?”
This time, the sound, still above them, was louder. They could hear it clearly over the rain beating down upon the trees and bushes and leaf-covered ground.
Someone or something was up there.
“That did not sound like a raccoon,” Molloy whispered, one hand reaching out to clutch the sleeve of Daisy’s windbreaker. “And if it was someone looking for us, they’d be calling out to see if we were in here.”
“Let’s go back down,” Toni said, her words rushing together with urgency. “Come on, it’ll be easier going downhill. We’ll go back to the car and wait there for someone to find us.”
“I’m too tired to turn around now.” Lynne shook the flashlight vigorously, but it refused to come back to life. “Besides, that road is probably an ocean by now. And do you really want to tackle that creek again? I don’t. We’re almost to the top, and there’s a house up there. I can see it. A nice, warm, cozy house, with a telephone. Come on, guys, don’t wimp out on me now. There are four of us and we don’t even know what’s making that noise. It could be a raccoon. A big one.”
“I’m with Lynne,” Molloy said. “I am soaked to the b
one, I’m cold, my legs feel like rubber from all this climbing, and I can’t face that creek again. Come on, girls, we are women, hear us roar. Whatever that is up there, we can deal with it, right?”
“Absolutely right,” Daisy said, turning to face the top of the hill.
“Well, I’m not going back down by myself,” Toni said grudgingly. “If you’re all going up, I’m coming, too. But could we please stay very close together, now that we don’t have any light at all?”
They had all turned toward the top of the hill and joined hands, when they heard a rumbling sound above them. It sounded a little like a large truck moving across the ground,
“What …?” Lynne began, but before she could finish the thought, the deep grumble became an ominous thundering, and the earth seemed to shake beneath their feet.
The boulder came at them from above, shooting out of the thick, dark underbrush like a cannonball, aiming straight at the group holding hands on the muddy, slippery slope.
Chapter 5
THE HUGE BOULDER THUNDERED down the hill toward them, spraying mud and leaves in its path. Too paralyzed with fear to move, the four girls, still clutching hands and stricken mute with shock, formed a petrified human chain directly in its path.
It was Molloy who screamed, “Move out of the way!”
The sound of her voice spurred them to action. Hands tore free of other hands, bodies flew to the left and to the right, voices cried out in pain as a leg slammed into a fallen log, an elbow cracked against a stone on the ground.
The boulder, which Daisy would describe later with her usual hyperbole as being “the size of a small house,” thundered on down the hill, past them, landing, finally, in the creek far below them with a splash that resounded through the woods.
Molloy, weak with relief, lay sprawled on the spongy ground, her head against the rough bark of a fallen tree. She could already feel a lump beginning to rise on the back of her skull. But a lump was nothing in comparison to being squashed flatter than a pancake by a giant rock,
Lynne, holding her left elbow, was lying right beside Molloy. Her face was twisted in pain. “I think it might be broken,” she told Molloy.
Molloy helped her up and checked the elbow, as Daisy and Toni, brushing wet dirt and leaves from their clothing, joined them. Toni was holding the flashlight. It was dim, but it was on. Toni was shaking so violently, it swung back and forth like a lantern sending a signal in Morse code. The left side of her face was an angry red. “Rock,” she whispered. “Hurts.”
Lynne’s elbow wasn’t broken, after all. She could move the arm back and forth, and when she spotted the baseball bat lying on the ground, she bent to scoop it up, gripping it firmly around the neck, proving that the arm was no more than bruised. She had decided in the car to bring the bat along for protection.
Daisy was intact, although she was thoroughly soaked and covered in mud. “Of course I landed right in the middle of one of those torrents of water gushing down the hill,” she said shakily. “But I figure that’s better than landing underneath that boulder, right?” Her thin, heart-shaped face, yellow in the flashlight’s glow, looked bleak,
“The ground must have given way up there,” Lynne said, picking wet leaves from her jeans. “Like during those mudslides in California. If Molloy hadn’t screamed, we’d all be leaf mold now.”
“How do we know there aren’t more boulders up there?” Toni asked, her eyes nervously scanning the top of the hill. “I told you we should have gone back down to the car.”
“Oh, right.” Daisy bent, twig in hand, to scrape a thick layer of mud from her sneakers. “That way, we just would have been mowed down from behind. When they put us in our coffins, we’d have these weird expressions of total surprise on our faces, as if we were saying, ‘Whoa! What was that?’”
“Daisy, stop talking about coffins,” Lynne commanded. “Nobody died. Nobody’s even hurt. And what are the odds that a second boulder is going to break loose of its moorings and come charging down the hill toward us? Probably nonexistent.” Rain dripped from her hair, her eyebrows, her nose, and her chin. Her pink cotton T-shirt was plastered to her body like a second skin. “Come on! It’s not that much farther.”
“See? What did I tell you?” Lynne cried triumphantly as they came over the rise and found themselves in a clearing occupied by three buildings. There were no lights in any of the windows, but their eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. With the help of the flashlight, they could see on the left side of the clearing a square, squat barn or shed, and on the right, a two-story garage with a set of narrow outside steps leading upward to a door. In the center of the clearing at the top of the hill stood a huge, four-story, old brick building with a small enclosed back porch and a metal fire escape clinging to a side wall. The brick looked almost black, and was nearly invisible in the darkness. The branches of huge, ancient oak trees rose like giant umbrellas over the house, as if they were intent on protecting it.
There were other boulders circling the lawn, all smaller than the one that had attacked them, but there was no sign that any of them were precariously perched.
“You said you saw a light up here,” Toni told Lynne accusingly. “I don’t see any lights. The place looks deserted. Gives me the creeps.”
“Are you kidding?” Daisy cried, moving quickly toward the back of the house. “Ever hear the expression, beggars can’t be choosers? It’s shelter, isn’t it? I wouldn’t care if it was Dracula’s castle, it’s got a roof and four walls and unless that roof leaks, it’s dry inside. Let’s go!”
“It’ll be locked,” Molloy said, but she hurried after Daisy. The rain was coming down hard again, pounding on her slicker as if it wanted to get in. Every step she took in her mud-encrusted flats was like sloshing through the creek all over again. “But if we can get in, I can use the phone to call Ernie and he’ll come and get us. He’ll take us back to the car to get our stuff, and then to the dorm. The thought of a hot shower, warm towels, and dry clothing seems like heaven. Let’s just hope this back door isn’t locked.”
It was. Firmly. There was no screen door, but the wooden door, the upper half glass, the frame freshly painted white, was unyielding.
Lynne groaned in disappointment. Molloy shrugged as if to say, Well, of course it’s locked. Who would go away and leave their doors unlocked? Toni said from behind them, “I don’t see how we could just walk into someone’s house, anyway. Why don’t we go out front and see if there’s a main road out there that’s not flooded?”
“I am not,” Daisy said, moving away from them, “going anywhere until I dry off, is that clear?” She was back a moment later, a large rock in her right hand. Daisy gave the windowpane closest to the doorknob a sharp rap with the rock. The glass cracked evenly down the middle of the pane. Another tap, and the glass caved inward, tinkling gently as the broken pieces landed on the floor inside the house.
The hole Daisy had created in the door window was relatively free of jagged edges. She stuck her hand inside without hesitation. “There’s a chain, too,” she said when she had turned the latch. “That’ll be trickier, but I think I can get it.”
A moment later they were standing inside a long, narrow, dark kitchen, in a house so quiet, the sound of the rain attacking the windows seemed as loud as a dentist’s drill.
“It’s empty,” Lynne said almost in a whisper. “I can tell. It smells empty, like no one’s cooked any food in this kitchen for a while. And it feels empty. You know, like when you’re the last person riding on a bus late at night? That kind of empty.”
“We shouldn’t be in here,” Toni said, glancing around anxiously. “We’re breaking the law.”
“We’re cold and we’re wet and we’re lost,” Daisy replied, moving around the kitchen in search of a towel, “so the laws don’t apply to us right now. When I am wearing dry clothes, I will once again become the law-abiding, responsible citizen I have always been. Somebody find a light switch. I can’t see a thing. This is a kitchen; it
has to have at least one towel.”
Using her flashlight, the beam dying again, Lynne found an oversized denim jacket hanging on a hook just inside the back door. She plucked it from the rack with glee, then turned to ask if anyone else wanted it.
Everyone was wet and cold. But Lynne looked worse than anyone else, in her thin, saturated T-shirt. “No,” they all said in a chorus, “you put it on.”
Lynne found a bedroom door just off the kitchen, handed Molloy the fading flashlight, and went inside. When she came back out a moment later, she was wearing the dry denim jacket over an ugly, print, cotton dress. “I found it hanging on the back of the door,” she said, laughing and holding the hem of the dress away from her sides, “Horrendous, isn’t it? But it was dry, and frankly, it feels wonderful.” On her feet, she wore equally ugly black felt slippers. “Anybody got a camera?” she joked. “We could do one of those ‘Don’t’ pictures for a fashion magazine.”
“Are there other clothes in there?” Daisy asked, heading for the door.
Although the bedroom closet and dresser drawers were stripped almost bare, everyone found something dry to wear. Molloy shed her dripping clothing, replacing it with a bulky, worn gray cardigan with two missing buttons, and a pair of gray pants so large she had to tie the cord from Daisy’s windbreaker hood around her waist to hold them up. Daisy unearthed a long-sleeved, wine velvet dress from a trunk at the foot of the bed. It was a good deal smaller than the clothes Molloy and Lynne had found, and smelled as if it had been in the trunk a very long time. Toni had to settle for a long-sleeved white shirt that hung to her knees.
Their most welcome discovery was a drawer stuffed full of old socks. Every sock had at least one hole in it, but they were warm and dry, and no one complained.
Thus attired, they left the bedroom, their spirits refreshed by the dry, if bizarre, clothing.