by Diane Hoh
She never got the chance.
The violin case was tossed to the floor.
Hands reached out and pushed, hard.
Toni stumbled. Her hands flailed out, clutching for the lace curtains, for something, anything, to keep her from sailing out the open window.
The wind picked up the lace curtains and cruelly whisked them out of her reach.
The hands pushed again, harder this time.
Without a sound beyond a terrified, breathless gasp, Toni flew backward out the window.
She was halfway to the ground before she screamed.
Chapter 17
MOLLOY AND DAISY, AT the kitchen window picking shards of glass from the white, wooden frame, heard the scream.
In one terrifying moment, their heads shot up, their eyes met briefly then flew to the darkness beyond the window. They watched in horror as a dark figure fell to the ground and lay motionless in a narrow puddle of muddy water, the arms and legs splayed out around it.
Daisy grabbed the flashlight, shone it through the window. “Oh, my God, it’s Toni!” Daisy said in a choked voice. “If she fell all the way from the attic …!” She would have jumped then, through the open window, if Molloy hadn’t grabbed her arm and, speechlessly, pointed to several large, jagged shards of glass still protruding from the white window frame.
Looking heartsick, Daisy’s eyes went back to Toni.
Paralyzed with shock, the two sat on the counter, unable to think, speak, or move. Then one of Toni’s hands moved. Only slightly. But it meant that she was alive.
Hope stirred Molloy to act. “The mud must have cushioned her fall,” she said. “She’s still alive. Let’s get this glass out of here and then we’ll go get her.”
There was no response from Daisy, who sat beside the window staring at Toni.
“Daisy,” Molloy pressed, “she’s alive! Come on, help me with this glass. Hurry!”
They worked on the remaining slices of glass together, but several were embedded in the frame so tightly, Daisy finally had to deliver a blow from the flashlight, smashing the stubborn chunks to pieces.
Then they had those pieces to contend with. Daisy cut her hand in a half dozen places, brushing and pushing them aside. Ignoring the cuts, she grabbed the flashlight, plunged through the hole and jumped to the ground. Molloy was right behind her.
“Over here!” Daisy shouted and dived into the thick curtain of rain. “She’s over here!”
But when she reached that spot and found nothing but mud, she turned and said, “No, I think she landed over this way a little,” and moved in that direction. There was nothing there, either.
Daisy did this three times, moving sideways in opposite directions, then in a circle, sending the flashlight in an arc that encompassed everything around her.
Toni wasn’t there.
They had seen her fall, seen her land, seen her lying motionless in a little river of muddy water.
But she was no longer there.
When they looked up, they saw the open window and the white lace curtains blowing wildly in the wind. Toni hadn’t fallen from the attic, after all. She’d fallen from the second story.
But that wasn’t much consolation now that she was missing.
Toni’s scream as she plummeted had reached Officer Jonah Reardon in the woods. A sinking feeling that he was already too late swept over him, and he struggled to speed up his uphill climb. He knew that scream should have sent him back down to the car. He should call for back-up before going into Nightingale Hall. But that would take forever, and there was that scream. He would have to wait to make the call.
Cursing the mud that sent him slipping and sliding sideways, he struggled up the hill, over its crest, and onto Nightingale Hall’s sloping back lawn.
The house was dark, but he could hear voices to the right of the house, and ran in that direction, one hand on his flashlight, aimed in front of him, the other on his gun. When he rounded a corner of the house, he saw two people in what struck him as bizarre clothing, their hair and clothes drenched, waving a flashlight around and screaming someone’s name. Their voices were frantic. The name sounded like “Tony.”
When they saw him, they began to scream.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” he said quickly, hurrying forward. “Police. Officer Jonah Reardon. What’s going on here? Do you live here?”
“It’s Toni,” the taller girl in the black skirt and white blouse said anxiously, “our friend. She … she was up there …” pointing up to an open window on the second floor, “and she fell. We saw her fall, but when we got out here, she was gone.”
The other girl, blonde, wearing a coat, shook her head and said, “She couldn’t be gone, she couldn’t! We saw her fall! She was up in the attic with Lynne, but she fell from that second-story window up there,” She pointed. “She couldn’t possibly have got up and walked away. Couldn’t have. … Besides, she didn’t fall, he pushed her, I know he did, only we don’t know where he is, and …”
They were both talking, shouting, so fast, and making so little sense, that Reardon knew his first job was to calm them down. He suddenly felt totally out of his depth. He hadn’t been on the force that long, these girls weren’t much younger than he was, and he had almost no experience in calming down hysterical, terrified people.
“Let’s just go inside, okay?” he said, “You can tell me all about it in the house. Here, I’ll get the door.”
“We can’t go in that way. It’s locked.”
“Locked? You stopped to lock the door after you saw your friend fall?”
“No!” Daisy pointed toward the window. “We broke the glass and jumped out through there. We were locked in. The windows are nailed shut and the doors are locked, the keys gone. To get back inside, we have to crawl in through that hole we made,”
Reardon knew he could force the back door open. But if Dr. Leo’s killer was here and he’d tampered with the door, the door was now evidence. Better leave it alone.
They overturned a metal pail and used it as a step to crawl back in through the window.
When the two girls allowed themselves to realize that a police officer was there, they were able to calm down somewhat and explain everything that had happened. Except where Toni was. That, they couldn’t explain.
“You’re sure you saw her fall?” he asked patiently when they had finished their tale. “I mean, from what you’ve told me, you have every reason to be pretty upset. Scared out of your wits, actually. Sometimes fear does funny things to our senses.”
“You mean our minds,” Daisy retorted sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with our minds, Officer, or our eyes. We saw Toni fall, and we heard her scream.”
Remembering the scream that he had heard, Reardon nodded. “I should go back to the car and call for help. When I make that call, we’ll have reinforcements here in seconds. Are your phones still out?”
Daisy nodded. “At least, they were. I’ll check again. But you come with me, both of you.”
The phones were still out.
Reardon wrestled with his choices. “My car’s down there next to yours on the back road. But I don’t want to leave you two alone while I go back down there.” He paused, then added, “I guess I could take you with me.”
“I’m not leaving Lynne,” Molloy said, shaking with cold now that her clothes were saturated again. “And Toni, wherever she is.”
“Me, either. Besides,” Daisy added, “going all the way back down there would take you forever. You have to do something now! Find Toni. Find whoever hurt Lynne.”
Making up his mind, the officer moved toward the hallway. “Look, you both stay right here, okay? I’ll just take a quick look around, check on your friend in the attic, see how she is, so I’ll know what to tell the paramedics when I call them. Then I’ll go back to the car and make that call.”
Chief will chew me out for coming in here without back-up, Reardon told himself. But he didn’t see what choice he had. He couldn’t leave thes
e girls here alone, and they were in such bad shape, they’d slow him down considerably on his trek back down the hill to the car. If the girl in the attic trunk was in as much trouble as they’d said, time was critical here.
Officer Jonah Reardon had seen with his own eyes what someone, who must have been very, very angry, had done to Dr. Milton Leo’s skull.
I guess I’m not as brave as I thought I was, he told himself wryly when he noticed his gun hand shaking as he moved up the first few stairs toward the second floor.
When he got to the second floor, he went to the open window and yanked it shut, locking it, knowing he was probably messing up a decent set of fingerprints. But he had a feeling there were plenty of other prints around this huge old place.
He found nothing on the second floor beyond various sizes of muddy footprints that he assumed belonged to the girls. The third floor was equally empty, and his stomach churned uneasily as he opened the door to the attic stairs. If the guy was still in the house, and he hadn’t been on the first, second or third floors, how many floors did that leave? Only one. The attic.
He could be down in the cellar, he thought, as he opened the attic door.
The girl in the trunk looked bad, but she was breathing. Whether she lived or died, it seemed to him as he stood at the trunk feeling her weak, thready pulse, depended upon how soon he could make that call and get an ambulance out here. Would they even be able to get through? They’d better, he thought grimly, or we’re going to have another death on our hands.
She moved then, one wrist, and only slightly, and made a sound that was half-groan, half-whisper.
If she awoke and saw the gun in his hand, she would be terrified. Laying it down on the bedspread covering her, he bent over the girl. What had they said her name was? Linda? Lynne, that was it. “Lynne?” he asked, checking her pulse again. “Lynne, can you hear me?”
He did hear the creak of a board behind him, it wasn’t as if he didn’t hear it, and he straightened up and reached for the gun, just like he’d been trained to do, but the bedspread was slippery, and so was the gun.
It slid out of his reach. It slipped and it slid on the old, faded chenille bedspread and then it was gone, disappearing into the dark depths of the trunk, and there was no time to dig down deep for it and pull it out. No time, because something made a whooshing sound behind his right ear and then something very, very hard hit the side of his head and his body flew to the right, crashing into a dress form and knocking it to the floor before he collapsed on top of it, A jagged piece of metal from the broken form drove itself into his chest as he landed.
Just before his eyes shut, Jonah Reardon saw again Dr. Milton Leo’s crushed skull and thought, I should have been a teacher, Ma, like you wanted. Too late now.
Too late …
Chapter 18
MOLLOY AND DAISY, WAITING for Officer Reardon in the first floor entry hall at the bottom of the stairs, heard the crash from above when he went down.
“What was that?” Daisy breathed, Molloy gasped and clutched the dark wooden stair railing.
“It might not mean anything,” she whispered in desperation. “Maybe he tripped over some of the stuff in the attic. It was so cluttered up there,”
“He had a flashlight,” Daisy said, beginning to back away from the stairs, her eyes on the second story landing, “He would have been able to see where he was going.” Her gaze went to Molloy’s face. “That killer is up there, Molloy, don’t pretend he isn’t. We wanted to know where he was, and now we know. Try the phone again. Hurry!”
Molloy fumbled for the phone, picked it up. Nothing. “No,” was all she said.
“Okay, I’m out of here,” Daisy said, and whirled toward the hallway.
“What?” Molloy ran after Daisy, already making her way down the hall toward the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
“Reardon said he parked his car down by ours. I’m going down there. It has to have a police radio. If I can figure out how to use it, I can call for help.”
“Daisy, at least wait and see if he comes back down. It was probably nothing. I don’t want you going out there by yourself.” They reached the kitchen, and Daisy strode purposefully toward the broken window. “And I don’t want to stay here by myself.”
“I know, Molloy. I don’t like it, either.” At the sink, Daisy turned to face Molloy. “But we really don’t have a lot of options here. That cop is down, and we both know it.”
Molloy knew she was right. The windows and doors were barred against them for a reason.
“We felt safer with a cop in the house,” Daisy continued, “but now that he can’t help us, we have to do this ourselves. And I don’t know any other way than getting down to that car. If I can’t make the radio work, I can drive for help.”
She climbed up on the counter. “The thing is, we only have one flashlight. I have to take it, Molloy. I’d never make my way through those woods without it. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I can see fine.” A lie, but at least she knew her way around the house pretty well now.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Find some place to hide and stay there until I get back. Remember,” Daisy added as she slid her legs through the windowframe, “the back staircase is barred, so he can’t come down that way. You could hide in the library and keep an eye on the front staircase.”
And if he does come down, then what? Molloy wondered, shivering with fear and an overwhelming feeling of abandonment as Daisy jumped to the ground and ran off into the storm. What do I do if he shows up at the foot of the stairs?
She could only pray that the killer didn’t have Officer Reardon’s gun.
Molloy’s legs were so weak, she had to lean against the kitchen sink. Her eyes kept going from the cellar door to the housemother’s bedroom door, to the kitchen archway. He was here. Inside the house. He could come through any one of those doors at any time. He had murdered that psychologist, tried to kill Lynne, thrown Toni from a second-story window, and done who knows what to Officer Reardon.
Tears of frustration stung her eyelids. If he hadn’t attacked Lynne, she told herself in fury, we would have left this house without ever knowing he was here. We couldn’t have told anyone where he was hiding, because we wouldn’t have known.
Then she remembered the noise they’d heard from upstairs, when they first arrived, and she knew that wasn’t true. Ernie would have said, “Someone was murdered tonight and the police think the killer is hiding out somewhere around here until the roads clear.” And then she and Lynne would have looked at each other, both thinking the same thing at the same time, and one of them would have said, “Nightingale Hall. He could be at Nightingale Hall. We heard a noise upstairs.”
That’s why he wasn’t about to let them out of here alive. He knew they’d heard him. He knew they’d tell.
Four of them had come into this house. One of them was lying unconscious in a trunk in the attic. One of them had been pushed from a second-story window and was missing. One had left the house to seek help.
That left only one other witness to report that a fugitive was hiding in Nightmare Hall. Molloy Book.
A sound from upstairs sent Molloy flying out of the kitchen and down the hall into the library, where she crouched behind the overstuffed couch, her panicked eyes searching the darkness for a better place to hide. She didn’t see one.
She hid there for what seemed like hours. She heard other sounds, faint scratching sounds and dull, distant thumpings, but she heard no footsteps on the front stairs leading from the upper floors down to the first floor. Telling herself the other noises could have been made by a squirrel or a mouse, wanting desperately to believe that, she wrapped her arms around her bent legs and huddled against the back of the couch, struggling to think through her fog of fear.
Daisy found the trek down the hill easier than climbing up it. She slid most of the way, as if she were sitting on a piece of cardboard on a snowy slope.
The creek was her biggest
problem. The water had risen several inches since they crossed it. Frothing and foaming like a mad dog, it churned through the woods like a raging river.
Daisy surveyed it with hopelessness in her eyes. On the other side, in the distance, she could see the police car, parked in the middle of the dirt road as if it had been waiting for her all this time. Had Reardon left the keys in the ignition? Probably not. But she could start it without a key. She knew how.
What she didn’t know how to do was swim. And the body of water in front of her, which was probably a harmless little creek in good weather, looked like it would swallow her up the second she stepped into it.
Daisy walked a little way to her left, then to her right, hoping for an opening, a place where the water seemed shallower, tamer.
Her only hope was the huge boulder that had nearly flattened them into mulch. It was lying peacefully now, in the middle of the creek, looming up out of the darkness like a large, gray hippopotamus seeking respite from the heat.
If she could get to that boulder …
With the aid of the flashlight, she located a long, thick tree branch lying on the ground. She picked it up, clutching it tightly.
Okay, here goes nothing, she told herself, taking a tentative step into the water, then another. If it hadn’t been for the tree branch, which she had implanted firmly in the bed of the creek, the swirling waters would have knocked her off balance instantly. The water rose to her hips, and its force took her breath away.
With the aid of the branch, which she repeatedly thrust into the creek bed just ahead of her, maintaining her grip on it, and then half-walking, half-floating forward until she was alongside it, she made her way to the boulder and clung to its rough, sharp edges, fighting to catch her breath. The rushing water tugged at her. Daisy held on, thinking of Lynne and Toni and Molloy.
The car, the car, I have to get to that car, she told herself over and over, and by doing so, managed to pull herself up, an inch at a time, to the top of the boulder. She lay there, wet and cold and shaking violently, until she had enough energy to stand upright.
