Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  I wanted to say, Back off! I wanted to say, I know what you did. I don’t have the details yet, but I know you did it, and I’m going to convince the police you did it, too. I wanted to say, You’re lying. Every sentence you’ve ever said in my presence was a lie. Except maybe in the Elkins Library. Maybe what you said in there about the place was true. But even then, I realized. Even then he was angry with Emily Fisher. I’d thought because she was usurping his role, but now I remembered. Linda had asked about the value of the books, and Emily had said something to the effect that these books were not for sale. Had said it emphatically. The message had been for this man, who’d gotten it, loud and clear. He’d been silent—resentful, I’d thought, of her speaking up when it was his turn. But it was much more than that. It was a warning given and received.

  And she was dead by that afternoon.

  I said none of this. I did nothing except walk briskly up the staircase.

  “What is it you’re researching?” he asked pleasantly. “Still involved with Henry James?”

  I shook my head. “No. This time it’s…Crime and Punishment.” I didn’t veer my sight line from straight ahead—and that very second I saw Adam on the landing, pacing near the statue, staring at it as if it might return his long-gone scarf.

  “Hey!” Labordeaux shouted. “You!”

  Adam looked without recognition.

  “It’s him!” Labordeaux shouted. “The kid who killed the librarian!” He took two steps. I grabbed him, screamed. “Run, Adam!”

  Luckily, the library-goers on the landing couldn’t decide who was the actual crazy one—the shouting man, the bruised woman, or the boy who looked panic-stricken. No one moved.

  “You crazy?” Labordeaux said, shrugging me off as if I were no more than an annoyance. “You nuts? You’ve got a killer here—again.”

  “No—no, I don’t No, you don’t. And you don’t have a victim here—again.” I pushed him, and he slipped, went down on one knee, but was up in a second, behind me, and we both raced.

  Adam wasn’t on the landing anymore.

  I saw a flash of black sweater in the social sciences room. It could have been anybody, but I had to hope it was Adam. “Adam,” I called, “stop! I’ll—”

  I ran through a sea of gaping expressions, of librarians standing up from where they’d been, ready to warn me, to stop Adam—and Labordeaux was right behind, shouting to get that kid! Get that killer kid!

  Adam wasn’t in sight. Not anywhere. I glared at Labordeaux, half furious, half relieved.

  “I’m getting the guards,” he said. “Call the police,” he told the librarian. “We’ll need them in a few minutes. He’s in here. They’ll get him.” He turned and ran down the stairs.

  I wheeled around, scanning the large room with its high, book-lined walls, the stacks midfloor, the wrought-iron balcony ringing the room one story up. No sign of Adam, who had to feel like a hunted animal now.

  Who was a hunted animal now. The librarian left to summon help, and in that second I saw him—he’d been behind the nearest stack, and now he darted into an open doorway behind the desk and was gone.

  I followed immediately, before the librarian was back and would stop me, for surely this was off-limits.

  It absolutely was. I went through the doorway and maneuvered down a narrow circular staircase, feeling like Alice—where the devil was I going? “Adam,” I whisper-shouted. “Adam, it’s me. To help you. Where are you?”

  Nothing. No one. Except a shout from above I could still hear: “In there! Get the guard!”

  We’d been seen. I reached the bottom of the winding staircase and was relieved I wasn’t in the basement or a frightening dark space. I was in a small, bookcase-lined room, or corridor, or series of rooms that were strung ahead of me as far as I could see. What was this? “Adam?” I called out. I couldn’t hear any noise from above anymore, and I felt safe calling for him. “Adam!”

  I heard steps ahead, labored breathing, and I followed the sound. The corridor’s contents changed—a computer, a desk, more and more and more books in stacks on shelves. A parallel corridor, glass doors, shelves in the middle and along the sides. Dividers and sections and I ran, and ran.

  Adam was gone. Disappeared down one of the alternative “roads”?

  I suddenly remembered the maintenance man in the basement telling me there were hidden passageways between the floors. He’d said not to bother looking for Adam mere because it was a maze. Impossible. A person could be lost there for weeks.

  I told myself I wasn’t lost. I’d come along a straight path—I thought—and I could go back the same way. I was not lost in passages that honeycombed the library between floors.

  I wasn’t alone. That much was for sure. I heard a thunk and a bang. Something overturned, a guttural curse. “Adam!” I shouted again.

  I reached the dead end of the passage, looked to a hallway running sideways from it, but he was nowhere.

  I had no choice. I had to turn back, to summon help, to hope someone would believe me when I said the real menace was not Adam but the gentle-looking librarian.

  I turned and hurried and only slowly became aware of a change in my surroundings. I hadn’t noticed the old-fashioned library catalogue cases. Maybe I’d been too intent on finding Adam. I simply hadn’t noticed. If I kept walking, I had to reach the glassed-in cases, the staircase, the social sciences room.

  Except that nothing was familiar—nothing was right, and there was no opening at the end of the passageway, no spiral staircase. The light felt as if it had dimmed. It wasn’t bright enough, it was a trap, and I was lost. I was somewhere else altogether, and I had no idea how I’d moved off track, where I was.

  The maintenance man had called these passageways a maze. He’d been right. I was turned around in my head, surrounded by muffled corridors, and the only other human being I knew to be down here had disappeared.

  I could be here forever. How could anybody find me? I couldn’t find me!

  I had to calm down. Had to stop this. Of course I would be found. There had to be people who knew how to claim the books stacked and stored here, the equipment. People who used the glass-paned cubicles. I would be found. Eventually. I stood still and took a deep breath, and then another, calming myself. I’d be fine. By morning, by next day—by tonight, if anyone had listened to the person who’d spotted us—somebody would form a posse and find me. Mackenzie would. The police had been called. I wasn’t in trouble, just in corridors and storage spaces I hadn’t known about. This wasn’t a frightening place—simply new and unknown.

  I was finding it increasingly difficult to listen to my stupid reassurances, but every time I imagined the enormous library and these narrow paths, like an ant colony beneath the departments, between those soaring double- or triple-height stories—every time I saw myself inside them, a dot in a maze, I found it difficult to breathe.

  “Adam!” I shouted. “Adam, where are you?”

  Nothing. It was as if my voice were absorbed by the walls, by the sighs and rustles of all the books waiting to be read, by all the words already written and said.

  And then I heard a step, a bump, a low curse. Behind, not in front of me. “Adam?” I said, but cautiously. He could have wound up behind me in this crazy-house, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know for sure which direction was behind me. I listened.

  I heard the shuffle of a shoe. A man’s dress shoe, not a sneaker. Not Adam.

  Calm down, I told myself again. It’s the guard. It’s the security person he summoned. “Hello?” I said.

  Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. A guard would call out a guard would say “Halt” or whatever they said. I turned to run—but where? Best bet was to wait and see where these footsteps came from.

  There. Closer. Closer still. And still in silence. I looked around, realized there weren’t many choices left. Only toward or away from.

  I saw the shoe come around a stack. Dark blue slacks. Then him, his face, his jacket, his whit
e shirt. I ran like hell. Away.

  What I’d seen caught up with me around the next bend.

  White shirt—no tie! Tie off—I hadn’t seen it but I did now, in my mind, ends wrapped around his hands, ready for another quick garroting. Ten seconds—why had Mackenzie ever told me that?

  I knocked over a box of something, left the clatter behind me.

  “For Christ’s sake!” He was panting between words. “Why are you running? Help me find him, that’s all!”

  Lies. Liar. We weren’t on the same side, and he had nothing to lose except a suspicious snoop by adding me to Adam’s supposed list of crimes. I said nothing. I didn’t have to help him locate me by telling him I wasn’t going to help him. I liked my neck, liked my life. I apologized to the cosmos for thinking of changing a thing. The status quo was perfect. Breathing was good. I wanted it.

  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.

  Twenty-Two

  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.