“That’s okay. See you then,” I said, and hung up. I suppose I should have called the dispatcher or someone, but I just sat on the sofa, feet together, hands in my lap, and waited.
I wasn’t sure who or what I was waiting for. Tammy? Mom? Travis?
Forty-five long minutes later, when it was close to eight o’clock and as dark as it could possibly get, I heard the dogs bark. As usual, it began with the Lab, baying a warning to whoever dared to pass the fence that stood between them. The German shepherd picked up the warning, and soon the rottweiler added his snarls and deep-throated barks.
My hands were so clammy they could hardly hold the phone, but I managed to dial the number of the sheriff’s office. “I think someone’s on our road,” I babbled at the dispatcher. “The neighbors’ dogs are barking, which means someone’s coming, and—”
“Okay, lady,” he said in a hurried voice. “I’ll make a note of it.”
“My name is Katherine Gillian,” I told him, “and I live at—” I realized that he’d hung up and I was talking to myself.
With the outside lights on, at least I could see if someone came into our yard. I sneaked back the drapes to peer outside, but let them fall when I heard the shot.
I dropped to the floor and lay there, with my arms over my head, until I realized that the shot hadn’t been meant for me. Two of the dogs continued their frantic barking, but the Lab was still.
“No!” I whispered, so horrified I couldn’t move. “He wouldn’t shoot the dogs!” But I heard another shot, and the German shepherd was abruptly silent.
I froze, too numb to move or think until the third shot came and I heard someone running toward our house.
Terrified, I stumbled to the phone, jabbing at the buttons long after I realized there was no dial tone. He’d cut the telephone line.
Suddenly the lights went out, and I cried out in fear. He had access to the breaker box, and he had a gun. Soon he’d smash his way into our house, and I’d have no way of protecting myself!
Oh, Travis! For a while you made me believe you! How could I have been so stupid?
I scrambled along the floor, mindlessly searching for a place to hide, until my mind cleared and I realized I couldn’t hide. Not in this little house, which he knew so well. Hadn’t Travis told me I should be glad we had such a small house to clean, with only four rooms and a bath? I’d heard him say it, yet I’d been so befuddled with Travis himself, I hadn’t realized at the time what his words meant.
The answer to the only possible way of protecting myself came as I heard a fumbling at the kitchen door. The attic! I’d hide in the attic! Bouncing off the walls in my haste, I ran into the hall and groped until I felt the rope. I tugged at it, pulled down the attic door, and stumbled up the steps. The moment I reached the attic floor I pulled the stairs up behind me.
How I wished I had a flashlight! Behind me were little scuttling sounds, but below me was the crash of broken window glass, and I was caught in the middle.
I could hear one pair of footsteps, and doors opening and shutting, as the murderer searched for me. He knew I was somewhere in the house. I wished I’d had the presence of mind to open the door to the porch so he might think I’d run down the beach, but it was too late for wishes. It was just a matter of time until he pulled down the stairs to the attic.
I heard him walk into the hallway and stop directly below the stairs. As he chuckled gleefully, I froze. Terrified, startled into a new and sharp awareness, I began to remember things I had heard and seen and tucked away, unheeded. In my mind I could clearly visualize the murderer, his eyes glinting as he smiled. Any moment now, he’d be coming after me.
I did the only thing possible. Heedless of the noise I made, I picked up the portable television set, shivering so violently it nearly fell out of my arms.
The door, with its attached stairs, slid downward slowly, a flickering light around the opening showing me he had a flashlight—maybe my own flashlight. There was a soft thump as the stairs dropped into place, and shadows stretched upward like giant fingers reaching to peel me out of my hiding place.
He chuckled again and whispered, “I know you’re up there, Katie, and I’m coming to get you.”
I didn’t wait until he reached the attic. The moment he began to climb the stairs I did the only thing left for me to do. I dropped the television set on his head.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The dispatcher may have thought I was some nervous nut, scared of the dark, but when he laughingly told the sheriff about someone calling because dogs were barking on her road, the sheriff knew what to do. At least, that’s what he told me after he’d called an ambulance to take B.J. to the hospital.
“Check the television set and the microwave in the attic for fingerprints,” I told him. “And B.J.’s gun too. Ballistics will match his gun with the bullet that killed the carnival worker.”
“You through tellin’ me how to do my job?” he asked, then seemed to relent as he added, “We got us a good case. Travis turned up with Duke and Delmar, all of ’em scared puppies, yippin’ out everythin’ they know about B.J. gettin’ ’em into all this. According to what they told me, the robbery got out of hand, and B.J. panicked, pullin’ the trigger. Far as Lana Jean’s concerned, the others didn’t know what B.J. had done until afterward.”
“They’re just as guilty as he is,” I said.
“Maybe, if you’re talkin’ about being morally wrong,” he said, “but turnin’ state’s evidence, they won’t get near the same sentence as B.J.” He paused and thought a moment. “B.J.’s family came to Kluney around the late fifties, from New Jersey, as I remember.”
I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “So that makes them outsiders,” I said. “But B.J. was born in Kluney.”
Sheriff Granger threw me a suspicious look, but he said, “When young people choose evil over good it’s a terrible waste. Edmund Burke wrote, ‘What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.’ ”
And what shadows we create, I thought. B.J.—so desperate to feel important that he’d conceived the idea of Blitz, and so furious at being mislabeled a tagalong in class, instead of the instigator of the crimes, that he’d almost given it away by saying, “It was my …” My idea.
The sheriff said he’d stay with me until my mama came home, but I wasn’t frightened any longer, just terribly, terribly angry that because four guys had been so stupid two innocent people had been killed.
In spite of all that had happened, I went to the Future Farmers dance with Billy Don. I actually had a good time. It felt good to be doing some normal high school stuff. I told Billy Don I’d be leaving Kluney, and yet, I felt happy to have a good memory of the place, because the dance was fun.
During August, Mom finished her novel, and we moved back to Houston. I returned to the High School for the Performing Arts and my wonderful ballet instructor.
Finally, I was honest with Mom. “The way your love of writing gets inside you and you can’t think of anything else—that’s how my dancing makes me feel.”
“You never told me,” Mom said.
“If I had, you wouldn’t have moved to Kluney and written your novel.” I grinned and asked, “Aren’t you glad now I didn’t?”
At first I was happy to be home, relieved to be far away from the shadowmakers and all the fear and pain they’d caused. But almost immediately Mom became involved in investigating a huge housing development that had been built in northeast Houston on landfill that covered a toxic waste dump, and last weekend eight people in Houston were killed in drive-by shootings, fights, and robberies at gunpoint.
I realized there are shadowmakers of all kinds, and you can’t hide from them. They’re everywhere.
Can something be done about them?
Only if we try.
JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for B
est Young Adult Novel. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Is Murder, and The Other Side of Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.
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