“Calm down, Supergirl. Go fly around the building a couple of times to burn off some anger.”
“Calm down my ass. The time for playing it safe is over. If we don’t act now, he’s going to take that to Bentley and in a matter of hours everything we’ve worked for will be shut down.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? Being shut down? Not going to jail, your life ruined, that sort of stuff?”
Doom tossed her long black hair. “Jail doesn’t scare me. Jail didn’t break Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Angela Davis. They were heroes to their generations because they were passionate enough to go to jail.” She raised her fist. “Power to the people! Power to the books! This generation needs a hero, and I can’t back away if it needs to be me.”
“You may be getting a little carried away here.”
“You think King got carried away when he wrote the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’? Or Morgan Freeman when he changed the world from a South African jail?”
“Technically, I think that was Nelson Mandela.”
Doom thought about it a minute. “Whatever. That man out there has got to be stopped. By any means necessary.”
“But we’ve got to draw a line somewhere, Doom.”
Doom pointed to the front door. “You see that sidewalk out front? That’s my line. Enemies of the library cross it; they get what they deserve. I am Justice.”
Serenity looked at the phone, which wasn’t ringing from the callback from the real estate lawyer who couldn’t give her any good advice anyway. So, if she couldn’t get good advice at least she could make bad promises.
“Okay,” Serenity said, “get out of here and let me handle it. I promise I’ll take care of this. And protect the library. And you.”
Doom opened her mouth to say something but Serenity pushed her out the door.
“And Doom—switch to decaf.”
Doom made an un-superheroish “mmph” sound and spun out of the room.
Serenity decided to switch to super-decaf herself and opened the left-side desk drawer. She took out the fresh bottle of Myers and broke the seal. As she was pouring, Faulkner stuck his head out of the stacks.
“Oh, hell, no,” she said. “I’m not feeding you anymore.”
She sat sipping and staring at the phone. Promised herself she’d call Joe after one sip. After that sip, she promised she’d call when the cup was half-empty (nothing seemed half-full right now.) Then maybe after the cup was all empty.
Then her choices were either another cup or pick up the phone and get this over with.
She picked up the phone.
“Joe, I’m ready to talk, and it’s important.”
“Good,” he said.
Then a woman screamed somewhere in the library.
forty-seven
how to spike a story
SERENITY STEPPED OUT of her office with the phone still in her hand.
“Jesus, Doom, what now?” She pulled the phone up to her mouth and said, “Hold on, Joe.”
The screaming grew louder and broke into a series of breathless yelps. She saw faces turned to Doom’s side of the library. The closest ones had their mouths open. Serenity broke into a run.
She turned the corner and saw a screaming volunteer in front of Doom’s desk. The desk sat empty, but in the cubicle next to it lay Kendall, face down.
“He’s not moving, Ms. Hammer,” she said. “Not moving, and the back of his neck is bleeding. I came over to see if he needed anything and saw that his head was down. I touched him on the shoulder and his arm just fell out. I think—”
Serenity put her hand on the front of his neck. Still warm, but she could find no pulse. She turned back to the crowd that was starting to gather. “Is there a nurse here?”
A blonde woman with a blue ball cap stepped forward and put her hand on Kendall’s neck, then leaned down to listen to his nose with her hand on his back. She started to turn him over, but noticed blood on the back of his neck. She turned to Serenity, pointed to the hole in the back of Kendall’s neck and shook her head, no.
Serenity raised the phone to her mouth. “Joe, you still there?”
“What the hell do you think? I’m going to hang up a phone with people screaming? What’s going on there?”
“You need to get here,” she said. “Run code. And bring backup. This is official.”
She could hear him trying to say something but she hung up.
“Clarisse,” she said to the volunteer.
“Ms. Hammer, he’s—”
“I know. Clarisse, I need you to sit at the front desk until the police get here.”
She turned to look at the gathering crowd. “Did anyone see what happened?”
No one answered.
“Okay. All of you go over to the other side of the library and take a seat until the police get here.”
She saw another volunteer at the edge of the crowd. “And tell Amanda Doom I need her here right now.”
Serenity looked back at the body. The desk under Kendall’s head was empty. No papers, no report.
Most of the crowd was drifting away, but a woman with two young kids hung back and approached Serenity as close as she could while shielding her children.
“Ms. Hammer,” she said. “I think Ms. Doom is in the back. She and this man got into a fight and she hit him in the back of the head and said something like, ‘This will not stand’ and took off toward the back.”
“What happened then?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want the kids to see anymore, so I took them to the storytelling area.”
Surely not.
But this woman made Doom the prime suspect.
She said to the woman, “Why don’t you take your family to my office and get them away from all this? Close the door behind you.”
The woman nodded and left.
Serenity looked at Doom’s desk. The library spike sat on the corner of the desk, covered in blood. Next to it was the book Doom was researching for her murder group, Fifty Ways to Kill Your Lover, or Any Other Enemy, with a page bookmarked.
Joy came around the corner, and Serenity heard sirens in the not-too distance.
She grabbed Joy. “Get the keys to the bookmobile. Then find Doom. Someone said she was headed to the back. Tell her to get the bookmobile, right now, and take it to New Horizon Elementary School for the rest of the afternoon. Tell her not to come back inside for anything, not even her purse. And tell her that she left fifteen minutes ago.”
Serenity picked up a book bag from the box beside Doom’s desk and swept both the spike and the book into it.
forty-eight
good girls don’t kill
SERENITY HAD NEVER IMAGINED her library as a crime scene.
She stood ten feet away from the desk and the body, watching out the front glass doors. When she saw Doom and the bookmobile leave the lot, she started counting “Mississippis” until the first black-and-white pulled in with Joe’s Charger right behind.
Eighty-three Mississippis. A little over a minute. Maybe enough—if Doom turned the right way and didn’t drive right past them. If, if, if.
If Doom even needed protecting. Surely not. Surely there was a simple explanation for the bloody spike… and the body of the man Doom had just fought with… and the missing report that only she and Doom knew about… Surely, she’d get an explanation and be able to tell Joe about the spike. And the fight. And the Special Projects fund. All without ruining the life of a youngster under her protection. Maybe one she inspired to murder.
Maybe even without putting herself in jail and shutting down her library. Or helping a killer walk free.
Jesus.
A patrolman held the door open and Joe burst through it. Serenity pointed at Kendall.