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

Serenity gave her formal statement to one of the blue suits and then wandered around the still-open side of the library, randomly shelving books and trying to listen in on as many statements as she could. No one had seen the murder.

She found Joy sitting alone at the checkout counter. “What have you heard?”

Joy looked bored, “Nothing worth repeating. Somebody saw Kendall sitting up reading the report. Then Hellier saw Kendall slumped down. Couldn’t get a pulse, and screamed.”

“Nothing else?” Serenity took a breath. “No reports of a tall, skinny, young, black librarian stabbing anyone?”

Joy lost her boredom and studied her boss. “C’mon. You don’t think our excitable girl did this?”

Serenity looked back at her for a long second and then said, “Of course not. Just a joke. You know Doom and all her by-any-means-necessary crap.”

They both looked at each other for another long second before they said in unison. “Of course not.”

“I just wondered how Doom seemed when you told her to high-tail it out of here,” Serenity said.

Joy hesitated a beat. “Let’s get this straight,” she said. “From this moment on, I don’t remember telling her to do any such thing. And you don’t remember telling me to get her out of here. She was gone before the first scream.”

“Yeah.”

“But, just so you know, if I had actually gone looking for her, I might have found her with her head down in an adult coloring book, coloring furiously like she does when she’s mad. And if I had told her you said to get out, she might have flown out the door like a bat out of hell, without even bothering to argue about it.”

“Shit,” said Serenity. “I’m going to my office. I’ve got to think.”

Joy started to stand up. For her that was a complicated, multi-part exercise of arms unfolding in slow motion, back shoved out of the chair and into the air, with her head raised last and slowest, accompanied by stage-voiced grunts and curses. When her head was finally solidly atop her body, she gave what passed for a smile and said, “Might come with you. I need some of that thinking juice of yours.”

“Not this time,” Serenity said. “We don’t need to be drinking now, and we don’t need to talk to the cops with rum on our breath. I’m just going to sit at my desk and stare at the wall and try to make some sense of all this.”

Joy gave her a nasty look that clearly said, “I stood up for nothing” and collapsed back into her chair.

“Fine,” she said.

“But come find me if you hear anything.”

Joy looked at her like she’d asked her to run a marathon. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

As Serenity went to her office, the faces of her patrons all seemed to be begging for answers she didn’t have. She felt like she needed to give them a reassuring smile, but all she could do was look away without letting anyone make eye contact. She still had her eyes high when she closed her door behind her, leaned back against it, and sighed.

As the sigh finished, she saw the woman sitting in her chair smiling weakly at her. Two very polite children were sitting in her visitor chairs, noses buried in books, pretending that they weren’t sitting in a strange office and a strange woman hadn’t just walked in.

“Oh,” said Serenity. She now remembered sending them to her office but somehow didn’t expect them to, you know, actually be there.

She put on a warm, non-threatening smile as she remembered why they were there.

“I hope you’ve been all right,” she said.

“Thanks to you. Thank you so much for letting us use your office and for keeping the children out of the madhouse out there.”

“Certainly. And what wonderfully well-behaved children they are.” She smiled at them but the children didn’t look up.

The two women smiled at each other for a second.

“So,” said Serenity, “has anyone disturbed you?”

“No. I don’t think they even know we’re here.”

“No reason for them to care. Not like you have any real information for them.”

“No. My children and I didn’t actually see the… unpleasantness.”

“No.”

“Really, we’d just as soon be left out of this.”

“Of course,” said Serenity. “For the children. So, no one’s asked you for your name or anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are you parked?”

“Around to the side. Away from the construction.”

And away from the police cars, thought Serenity.

“Why don’t I show you the back door? We can avoid the unpleasantness.”

“Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.”

After she closed the back door behind them, Serenity walked to the murder side of the library and wondered if that was how she would always think of that side. Joe was talking to the medical examiner. They stood front of a long black body bag lying on a gurney while two techs waited for permission to take the body away. Joe saw Serenity, nodded a curt goodbye to the ME, and the gurney was wheeled out. Joe came over to her.

“This is your fault,” he said.

She caught her breath. “No, I…”

He smiled a small smile. “Since when do you allow people to come into your library with an ice pick?”

“An ice pick?”

“That’s what the ME says it looks like the murder weapon was.”

She tried to respond without a pause. “Have you found it?”

“No. Right now, it looks like a guy walked in carrying an ice pick, stabbed Kendall at just the right spot in the back of his neck, and walked out carrying the bloody pick—without anybody seeing a thing.”

“Random?”

He laughed a harsh laugh and pushed his hat back. “Knowing how to kill someone that way usually means a pro, maybe a superpro. Hard to believe anyone just happened to be carrying an ice pick in their pocket and said, ‘I think I’ll kill that random stranger.’ On the other hand, why would a pro kill someone in a place as public as this—and then take the pick with him? Right now, I’ve got a lot more questions than I’ve got answers.”

“So where you going to start looking for answers?”

“Right now, I think I’m going to ride over to the FBI office in Jericho. See if they knew what Kendall was up to.”

“Not Bentley?”

“No, I’ve got Steve on the way over to talk to him, catch him before he’s heard the news. I’ll follow up with him later. But my experience is that politicians are the last to know anything worthwhile, and the first to give you canned speeches.”

“Okay,” said Serenity, “let me get my purse.”

Joe took his time looking at her. “Why do you need your purse?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Like hell. This is my case.”

“Your case. My library.”

THE RIDE TO JERICHO, the bigger city next door to Maddington, had always seemed short to Serenity.

Not today.

Mile markers were the only things breaking up the pine trees and soybean fields. It was a long, muttering ride with no intelligible words between them until Serenity said, “Three.”

Joe grunted and said, “Three what?”

“Three words in a single mile. That’s the first time you’ve said more than two words since we left the library.”

“Could have been thinking.”

“Could have been. Not sure what internal train of thought ends up with the words, ‘Hell, no’ being so important they had to come out under your breath. Over and over.”

They were passing the Saturn rocket that marked the edge of Jericho, the rocket itself built in North Alabama for the Apollo program years ago but left behind when the moon program was abandoned. He cut his eyes at her.