Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  “I heard a shout, Ms. Pepper. A weird noise.” I turned and saw a subdued Troy Bloester. “I was near the computers, I mean, I was doing my project and all—”

  “Yes,” I said, encouraging him. “Speak up. That alarm—”

  “I heard this noise,” he said, his cheeks reddening with the effort to out-decibel the alarm. “Before the alarm.”

  “Where? Where did the sound come from?”

  He shook his head. “Hard to tell. Maybe…upstairs? But I don’t know.”

  “What was shouted?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. No words. It was like a horror-movie sound. Like a monster. It didn’t sound human.”

  “It was, Troy,” I said. “That much I’ll guarantee.”

  He actually looked relieved. I wished such a simple truth could ease my rising anxiety, but it didn’t. Human wasn’t enough. Or rather, human was enough. Enough trouble.

  The library was busy with people, but all I cared about was finding my charges, and finding them safe—the selfsame group of young people I’d been trying to purge from my mind and heart. All I could imagine was one of them hurting, in terrible distress, if indeed alive. So much for pulling away and not caring.

  What had happened while I studied grad schools in the hopes of escaping from the kids? It felt tawdry, shameful—like having a secret tryst while your mate was in danger. I couldn’t handle the guilt. Even though I knew I couldn’t have monitored the whereabouts of eighteen high-school seniors doing independent research, I also knew I could have done more of it had I not been busy looking for my own private exit.

  The alarm stopped. The sudden silence was almost painful, and then it was filled with overlying voices, questions, statements—everyone, including me, milling, looking up and down, finding nothing and no one to say what had happened.

  I finally spotted some of my students in a protective huddle and headed toward them, beginning a head count. Sam and Melody and Tara and Nikki were safe. And over there was sweet, dim Cassie, and with her, four others.

  Counting my flock took a while, but after some time I reached sixteen. Two Adamses missing—Adam Evans and Sarah Adams.

  Only then did I notice the sculpture of the reader in the tree. It sat where it had been, the stylized branches like hands, reaching. But one of the “hands” had caught something. A blotch. A dark bird that had alighted there. Or something else, familiar.

  Fabric, bunched, dangling. Woolly and fringed. Black. A winter scarf on an unseasonably warm day.

  It looked as ominous as a corpse would have. Full-throttle fear possessed me.

  Had it been tossed up onto the sculpture or dropped from above? And where was the boy who was never separated from the scarf? Why wasn’t he retrieving it?

  I looked up, heart racing so hard I could barely catch my breath, but the balcony wall was too high. I could see nothing above except the pink reflection of light on its curved ceiling. But I could see the scarf, and something bad must have happened—or why the alarm, and why this mark of Adam here, now?

  My pressure-locked fear broke loose. I overreacted. I behaved inappropriately, unwisely, out of panic and protective instinct. Where was he? “Adam!” I screamed. “Adam, where are you? Adam!”

  I don’t know what I’d expected, if I’d expected anything—besides having people stare and back off from me. I turned toward the Philly Prep students. “Have you seen Adam?” I asked. “Do you know where he is? What topic did he choose? Maybe if I knew that, I’d know…”

  They shook their heads and shrugged, as well they might. As the ability to think slowly returned to me, I realized how stupid my assumptions had been. Why would I imagine he’d consult with or inform his classmates of his whereabouts? Why would I imagine he’d do the assignment? Do sick people suffer sudden bursts of wellness? Would Adam have had a siege of rational behavior?

  I’d asked him what he wanted to do for his project. “About an actor,” he’d said. “An actor maybe in Shakespeare’s time, maybe. Yeah, that’s it—an actor. Maybe. Or Jack the Ripper.” And then he’d sat in a department that had nothing to do with any of his ideas.

  Not helpful. But I had to unfixate on him. Sarah Adams, a tiny, vulnerable-looking creature, was also not accounted for. Why not fear for her? Why think of Adam at all? Talking myself down was impossible. Months of worry had etched Adam tracks in my brain. I couldn’t unthink him, unimagine him.

  Troy had said he’d heard a monster’s roar. Whatever it might have been, it wasn’t a sound a ninety-pound girl was likely to make. But her attacker might.

  I pushed through the crowd, heading for the elevator, wishing there were stairs to the next floor up, the way there were from the ground floor to this level. The elevator doors finally opened, but a man stepped out. “Please,” he said to the ten or so of us who were waiting. “Access denied to the third and fourth floors right now. If you’ll stay where you were, please. There’s been an—” He cleared his throat. “There’s a woman awaiting medical attention upstairs, and we want to keep entry open. The police will need your cooperation,” he continued in a louder voice, “so please return to whatever part of the library you were in and remain there.”

  His words were relayed back, across the landing, down the stairs, and into the great solemn rooms ringing us. Echoes and questions came from everywhere—“Who is it? What happened? Police? Why police? Did he say an accident?”

  But a woman! How politically correct was he—would he use that term for a diminutive high-school senior? “Excuse me,” I said. The man looked distinctly uncomfortable with his role as traffic cop. “The person up there who needs attention—I’m here with my high-school students, and I can’t account for one of my girls. Is she a redhead? A teenager? Her name is Sarah.”

  He was shaking his head before I had finished the question. “No, no,” he said. “Relax. Not yours. Ours. We know the woman.”

  All right, then. Not Sarah. No reason for me to feel anything but impersonal sympathy. But my pulse did not agree. What had happened to the woman? Who’d sounded like a monster? I had to find him.

  And Sarah, too, of course.

  I couldn’t go upstairs, but I figured that if Adam were on that off-limits turf, they’d know it and have him safely somewhere. So I went downstairs, to the circulating library, usually my idea of heaven—thousands of novels mine for the asking. But today real-life stories had taken precedence over made-up ones.

  Neither Adam nor Sarah was in there. Nor were they in the music room.

  Finally I found Sarah on the ground floor, in the relatively peaceful children’s section, where a happy accident of floor plan had protected the youngest readers from hearing the ruckus above. The alarm must have been located at the other end of the building, because nobody seemed aware that anything might be seriously out of the ordinary.

  The table in front of Sarah was covered with books. “I’m writing about an artist—an illustrator,” she said. “Like a hundred years ago. A woman illustrator. That’s what I want to be, too. The librarian said if I called ahead next time, she’d have lots more to show me. And then I thought I’d go to the print room and see what maybe it looked like—I think I’d like mine to be an American lady.”

  Sarah had been snagged. Hooked. “You have a bit more time,” I said.

  “My mom’s picking me up at five, so I have a lot of time. I’m staying later.”

  Joy surged and flared in me—so I poured emotional ice water on it. Wouldn’t do to get reinvolved in teaching-lust. I was about to amputate that part of me. It was dead and gangrenous and I no longer cared about it. Still and all, the thought of Sarah’s enthusiasm made my walk back upstairs less hopeless.

  But there was still the heavy knowledge that Adam was missing.

  I stood on the second-floor landing near the statue of the reader, looking down at William Pepper’s head, watching for who might ascend those stairs after I had. I’d heard sirens while I was with Sarah. Medical personnel, probably.

&n
bsp; A man walked up the first half of the stairs, approaching Dr. Pepper’s statue. I knew that back.

  I felt a voyeuristic thrill secretly observing him. But the thrill was accompanied by the chilly realization that his presence meant that woman hadn’t really needed medical attention. Whatever had happened to her had been fatal. And not necessarily of her own making.

  If he was here, there was suspicion of a murder in the library, where it seemed especially sickening and grotesque—not only a crime against humanity, but a crime against what civilization hopes for.

  In short, insane.

  I told myself Adam had nothing to do with this, that it was likely that he’d left the building before anything began. He was mixed up, but a mixed-up good kid, not a killer.

  Mackenzie reached the landing with the statue and walked to the side to climb the remaining stairs, facing me.

  I waved.

  He stopped in midstride and did a classic double take, once again demonstrating that he didn’t listen to me anymore. I’d told him where I’d be.

  His rating plummeted into the danger zone.

  “I don’t believe this,” he said. “Why are you here? What is it with you and crime scenes?”

  “I told you my seniors—”

  He fanned me off. Once upon a time he’d listened. Really listened, with such intensity it was sensual, like a stroke on the soul, and a prime component of his charm. Now it was obvious that the honeymoon was over and we hadn’t ever married. “The body’s upstairs,” I said.

  He nodded. “Not goin’ anywhere, either. You been here the whole time?”

  “Out here? No. I was back there.” I waved in the general direction of all the collections, not wanting to say where I’d been or what I was doing. I hadn’t yet mentioned my mother’s offer. I was letting the ideas simmer until I knew what I wanted to say. What I wanted. “An alarm went off. I thought there might be a fire.” In this most fireproof of buildings—but Mackenzie hadn’t heard the spiel.

  “Anything else?”

  “I came out here, along with everybody else, and nobody knew what was going on. One of my students who’d been nearer said he heard a sound like in a monster movie, whatever that means.”

  A woman in a suit with a jacket a tad too tight and a skirt a tad too short, a closed book in her hand, walked by us, then doubled around and hovered, openly eavesdropping. Checking out the man who didn’t listen. “Are you a police officer?” she asked after Mackenzie had said something that suggested his role there. Her voice nearly choked with adulation trying to utter the words police and officer. “I could help you.”

  I noticed that she didn’t say in what way. I couldn’t tell if Mackenzie noticed. Or cared. I didn’t blame her for butting in. He’s gorgeous in an unflashy way. I am not living with him as a public service. You have to give him a second look to catch the shock of the blue eyes, the good lines time had etched, the total effect with the salt-and-pepper hair, his lanky rightness. Some of his charm is built into his features. The rest takes time to discover, but the invitation to the trip is all over him.

  Or maybe that’s just my take on it. More likely the woman in the business suit had a thing for cops. For whatever reasons, she was enraptured by his existence, and when he nodded that yes, he was an officer, she looked on the verge of a swoon.

  “I was a witness,” she said.

  “Ah’m to take it you saw the event firsthand?” He purposely intensified his Louisiana drawl. It should make him sound less professional, but it doesn’t. It makes his listener want to provide information just to hear more of that honeyed voice. Particularly in a city with as unmelodic an accent as Philadelphia, where ears get tired and in need of a smooth infusion.

  “Yes!” she said, nodding so hard her hair quivered. Then she pursed her mouth and shook her head sideways, again rearranging her do. “No!” she said just as emphatically. “But I heard the worst sound before the alarm went off!”

  “Ma’am, where precisely were you at the time?”

  Ma’am, tahm…each given at least three syllables. Assaulting an officer was a crime, so I controlled myself.

  “I was walking right about here—where you’re standing—and this sound! Like a jungle sound—a shout, but insane, inhuman!”

  “You see or hear anythin’ else that could be relevant?”

  “Just that… I was pretty much alone out here for a minute. Scared.” Her eyes threatened to take over her entire face as she searched her memory bins for something more relevant than her emotions at the time, then sadly shook her head.

  “Then I thank you kindly for—”

  “Don’t you want my name? In case you need to follow up? Or need more clarification?”

  Or need a date? A life companion? A love slave?

  “Ma’am, I believe that when you leave the library, they’ll be askin’ for a name and number where we could contact you if necessary.”

  She looked saddened by this, but only momentarily. “Wait!” she said. “There was something else. I remember now. After—After the alarm went off, everybody came out here, just about everybody in the entire library was looking around and nobody knew what was going on, if there was a fire, or a robbery, and that’s what everybody was saying, not all that loudly, except one person, some woman, who screamed ‘Adam’ over and over. I remember because at first I thought she was saying ‘at him,’ but then I realized it was the name.”

  Let him not make the connection, I begged the curlicued plaster ceiling. But the gods in charge of granting me wishes had as little talent for listening to me as did Mackenzie of late. Besides, it was a ridiculous request. Even in his worst non-listening, Mackenzie hears incessant griping, complaining, and reiteration of a name. I speak as the complainer, griper, and as the one who reiterates.

  With courtly charm he managed to detach and send off his groupie, and then he looked directly at me. “An’ you, ma’am? Do you recall a woman screamin’ ‘Adam’?”

  “I had forgotten, but apparently, yes.”

  “Where is he? You brought your seniors, if I recall?”

  So he did listen. Selectively. That made it worse. He listened like somebody going through a cocktail mix and picking out the cashews, and most of what I said was peanuts. “I can’t find him,” I said.

  “Why’d you scream his name?”

  I have seldom felt worse than I did at that moment. I’d wanted to protect Adam all along, and it was glaringly apparent that I was instead constantly compounding his problems. “I couldn’t find him, thought maybe he was hurt, hurt himself—I didn’t know what had happened.” Might as well, I decided. I’d mentioned Adam’s daily wardrobe, and I bet Mackenzie had stored that away and would make the connection once he saw the statue. Might as well offer the information up myself. “I saw—there’s a scarf like the one he wears every day on the statue over there. And I thought that if he’d tossed it up, or even if somebody else had grabbed and tossed it, he’d be here, trying to get it back, and he wasn’t. So I thought it had fallen or been tossed from above, from where the alarm seemed to be coming. I don’t know what came over me. It was just that he’s been on my mind to the point of obsession. I’ve been so worried about him, and after yesterday’s fiasco with his parents—”

  Mackenzie looked confused. He hadn’t ignored that one—he hadn’t been home for the telling. I didn’t know which of our problems was worse.

  “I don’t know,” I said lamely. “Don’t give it another thought. Please.”

  “An’ the scarf on the statue?”

  “Kids do things like that. I’ve been here when there was a bra on the statue. And once, one big clunky shoe where feet should be. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “And the sound the woman said she heard?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t hear it. But Mackenzie, about my calling out his name—it was nothing. A worried reflex. I would have forgotten all about having done it if that—that wretched woman, that suit, hadn’t been desperate to impress you.�
��

  He lifted an eyebrow as I sputtered along. In my next life I’d aim for subtlety. It was too late even to hope for it in this one.

  We had acquired more gapers and observers, including two of my students, and before they burst forth and captured Mackenzie’s attention, I had to ask. “Who is it, can you tell me? And what happened?”

  He glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “Assistant librarian named Heidi Fisher.”

  “Fisher?”

  “You know her?”

  “A Ms. Fisher gave my class the tour.” I felt nauseous. “Took us around.” And chastised Adam, who glowered at her from then on. Would anybody else remember their interplay? And what should I do with my own memory of it?

  “She was strangled,” Mackenzie said. “Not manually. No fingerprint or nail marks on her, but no apparent ligature marks.”

  “Ligature?”

  “The thing that strangled her. It’d leave marks, and the marks would help identify the weapon. A narrow belt leaves a different sort of mark than a wire, or—”

  “Got it.” Each image was worse than the one before.

  “No ligature marks. Something soft—a towel, say—doesn’t leave marks if it’s removed right after being used.” He turned his head back toward the statue in the center.

  “That’s a scarf,” I said. “Only a woolen scarf. Surely a scarf couldn’t—”

  “Remember Isadora Duncan? Her scarf caught in the spokes of her car’s wheel and she—”

  “I know.” Isadora Duncan, strangled by her own scarf. Very dramatic finale, very famous story.

  I looked back at the reader in the tree on which its dark intruder, the black scarf, roosted like a bird of prey.

  Six

  I rounded up my class and made sure everybody was using the mode of transportation that their parents had stipulated—feet, bus, commuter train, car pool—all without undue conversation with anyone about today’s library events.

  All no longer present but accounted for. Except Adam.