Diane Davidson - The Cereal Murders

“Julian!” I shrieked again. My flashlight beam washed across the carpet to the steps.

And then I saw something out of place that made my heart freeze. Near the steps there was a large, dark splotch on the carpet. I dashed toward it, then stopped and swayed backward. Blood in a bookstore. But wait.

What had I just said to myself? Something out of place.

My mind reeled.

What had the woman in Lakewood said? Something it was too late for, something that was out of place… What had Arch said? You can’t see Andromeda in the summer… and, of course, I couldn’t buy a Good Humor bar from the ice cream man in the winter, now, could I? And I wouldn’t see a spider in an immaculate kitchen, would I? Tom Schulz had always told me: If you see anything that’s out of place…

And now I knew. The crimes, the perpetrator, even the methods… I knew. I sank against a bookshelf, sickened.

Move, I ordered myself. Down the wide, carpeted stairs I went, flashing the light ahead of me, until I reached the second floor. The scents were different on this level – more people had been here, more sweat hung in the air. There had been no sound since the two shots.

“Julian?”

“Goldy!” came a bloodcurdling call from somewhere below me. “Goldy! Help!” Julian’s voice.

“Where are you?” I yelled, but heard only shuffling, someone running, thudding footsteps. I nearly tripped running down the last flight of stairs.

Here, on the first floor, there was more light. It poured through the first-floor windows from the street lamps on First Avenue and Milwaukee Street.

“Agh!” came Julian’s muffled voice again. And then there was a scuffling sound from… where? From over by Business books.

I ran through the shadows to where I thought he was, near the exit to Milwaukee Street. I swept the flashlight across the rug… nothing. When I was almost to the first-floor cash registers, something slammed against me. I fell forward with a great crash, sending the flashlight skittering across the carpet. I came to my knees and leapt for it just as the body hit me again. I grabbed the flashlight and whirled around. The light shone on the furious, leathery face of Hank Dawson.

“You son of a bitch!” I screamed, and swung wildly with my flashlight. “Where’s Julian?”

He leapt for me, but I sidestepped him. With a curse, he drew back, then lunged for me again. Frantically, I grabbed for a wire display of oversize paperbacks and tipped it over in front of him. Hank tripped and fell hard. Desperately, I reached for books, any books, on nearby shelves and flung them on top of him.

To my amazement, his sprawled body remained motionless. I scuttled around the corner to Business books.

“Julian,” I called into the shelves, “it’s me! You have to come out quickly.” Which one of these godforsaken shelves was the one that opened outward? I couldn’t remember. But slowly, absurdly, as if I were in a horror movie, I saw a shelf begin to move. Books wobbled, then toppled out to the floor. A face peeked out of the vacant shelf.

“Is Mr. Dawson… dead?” It was Julian.

“Down but not out,” I said when I had caught my breath. “Oh, God, Julian, is that blood on your face? I’m so glad you’re alive. The police are on their way, but we’ve got to get out.”

“I can t move, he whimpered. He shot me … “

Hank Dawson groaned and moved under the pile of books.

“Go!” Julian whispered desperately. “Get out!”

“Scoot back in there,” I ordered. He groaned, then inched back into the tiny space. I shoved the wall of books back in place just as Hank Dawson came around the corner of shelves.

“Hi, Goldy,” he said absurdly. I might have been there, in a darkened bookstore, to cater a Bronco brunch.

“Hank?”

“I want what I came for,” he told me with enormous, terrifying calm. “I want the kid.”

“Hank – “

“Should I just start shooting into these shelves? I know he’s in here somewhere.”

“Wait!” I yelled. “There’s something else you’re going to need. Something you wanted before.”

He shone his flashlight into my face. The light blinded me. “What?”

“Miss Ferrell’s grade book. You were looking for it in her room, weren’t you? And… in my van? I have it here in the store.” I added fiercely, “You’ll never be able to prove Greer’s high class rank without it.” I had to get him away from Julian. Julian was the key.

Hank was breathing hard. “The book,” he said. “Where is it?”

“Here in the store. I hid it, I was going to … to give it to the police,” I sputtered. I was afraid. I was also passionately, blindly angry. Hank glanced at the unmoving bookshelves. Satisfied that Julian was immobilized, he growled, “All right, let’s go get it.” He shifted to one side of the shelves; I pushed past him. He stank of sweat.

My feet shuffled across the carpet. Hank clomped close behind. Where was my damn flashlight? I wanted to look at him. I wanted to look into the eyes of a man who had murdered a teenager, a teacher, and a woman in Lakewood all to get his daughter into a top school.

“Don’t stall!” He swung his flashlight up and caught me under the chin. Pain flashed up through my skull. I staggered, and Hank shoved me into the cash register counter.

I reeled away from him. Damn you, damn you, damn you. I had to find a way to get him. But for now I had to think, to walk, to do what he wanted until I could figure out how to escape. “I’m not going to be able to find the grade book unless I get my light. Okay if I get it?” I said to the stinking form behind me.

“Walk ahead of me with it. You so much as move an inch out of line and I’ll put a bullet through your back.”

I did as directed, walking slowly and trying not to think of Julian. Or of Hank’s gun.

I bent and slowly, very slowly, picked up my flashlight. “Why did you kill Keith Andrews?” I asked, straightening slowly.

“He was in the way,” Hank muttered. “Pompous little creep.”

“You sure planned it out. Break his windshield so he’ll mess up with the Princeton rep. Psych him out. Just like in the NFL. But Keith didn’t psych easily. So you looked up someone with the same initial and last name and stole her credit card so you could plant it in one of the Marenskys’ coats and try to psych them out. But Kathy Andrews caught you stealing her mail, so you had to kill her.”

“I didn’t care about that Lakewood woman. You haven’t had to listen to the Marenskys brag for eighteen years. Getting them arrested for Keith Andrews’ murder would have killed two birds with one stone.” He chuckled. “Too bad it didn’t work out that way.”

“Someone saw the van you used, Greer Dawson the Hammer’s van, down in Lakewood, with the initials GD HMR,” I ventured. “All the person who saw it could think of was, too early, something out of place in October. That person thought the initials stood for Good Humor, but I didn’t figure that out until tonight. I saw” – I gritted my teeth – “something out of place, and I thought how out of place an ice cream truck was in the fall.”

“Brilliant,” he snapped. “Put you in the fucking Ivy League.”

We were half a room away from the window display. “And then you tried to intimidate Julian. Number two kid in the class, you figured if you scared Arch and me, you could get to Julian, right? Shake him up badly enough so that he’d blow his aptitude tests. And you almost succeeded, throwing a rock through our window, putting a snake in Arch’s locker, stopping up our chimney, planting a spider in your own immaculate drawer, manufacturing a conflict with Audrey tonight to get rid of me – “

“Shut up!” Again he chuckled horribly. “You know what they always say, Goldy. You gotta make the other team sweat, make them think they’re going to lose. It was going well until the cops started watching your house.”