Michael Guillebeau - MAD Librarian - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Library

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.

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.

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.

“Nobody’s touched anything,” she said.

You’re lucky your lying tongue isn’t jumping out of your head and scampering away like a big pink inchworm on speed.

Joe touched Kendall’s throat and shook his head. Then he looked up and studied her. “Good to have someone here who’s spent enough time around cops that we can trust them to take care of things.”

“Yeah.”

“Crime scene secure?”

“Should be. I was here fifteen seconds after the volunteer who found the body screamed. I checked him for a pulse, like you just did. Then I had a nurse check him and sent everybody to the other side and told them to wait for you. The volunteer who found the body is over there, waiting at the front desk. Figured you’d want to start with her.”

“Good.” He took his hand away from Kendall’s throat. “Serenity, it’s good to know that when it comes to something important like this, we can still work together.”

She tried a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “Yeah,” was all she could say.

More blue shirts came in, followed by a man in a suit. Joe turned to them all. “You two, rope off this side of the library. Steve, can you talk to…” He looked at Serenity.

“Ms. Hellier.”

“Ms. Hellier at the front desk. She found the body.” He nodded at another blue shirt. “Can you get names and contact info for everybody who was in the library at the time?”

They all nodded and walked off.

Joe pulled out his notepad and turned back to Serenity.

“Okay, what do you know about this?”

“Not much more than you,” she said. “You met this guy about the same time I did, and you seemed to know more about him than I did. He came in this morning, said he worked for Bentley, and demanded to see a copy of our books. I printed him one and parked him here. When I left him here twenty minutes ago, he was going over them and making notes.”

“Bentley had him auditing your books?” He looked at her evenly. “You don’t see many requests to audit the books of a library.” He paused. “You don’t see many murders in a library, either.”

He waited. When she didn’t say anything, he said. “Fortunately, we’ve got two experts here. You know everything there is to know about libraries—particularly this one. And I know how to catch killers.”

“Lucky us,” she said.

“Anybody besides you talk to him?”

“I know he talked to Seth Burroughs, the contractor outside. And he talked to Joy a little.” She paused. “Nobody else I can think of.”