NOS4A2(162)

The paper was spattered with water stains, as if long ago someone had read this message and wept.

Vic heard one of the voices in the next room: Hank, we got a light. This was followed, a moment later, by a crackle of voices on a walkie-talkie, a dispatcher passing along a message in numbered code. There was a 10-57 at the public library, six officers responding, victim dead on the scene. Vic had bent to put out the candle, but “victim dead” stopped her. She leaned forward, lips pursed, but had forgotten what she’d intended to do.

The door behind her moved, wood scraping against stone, hitting some loose glass and sending it tinkling.

“Excuse me,” came the voice behind her. “Ma’am, could you step over here? Please keep your hands in full sight.”

Vic picked up Chekhov’s gun and turned around with it and pointed it at his chest. “No.”

There were two of them. Neither had his gun out, and she was not surprised. She doubted if most police officers unsnapped their holsters in the line of duty even once in an average year. Chubby white boys, the both of them. The one in front pointed a powerful penlight at her. The other was stuck in the doorway behind him, still half in the children’s library.

“Ay!” squeaked the boy with the light. “Gun! Gun!”

“Shut up. Stay where you are,” she said. “Keep your hands away from your belts. And drop that flashlight. It’s right in my f*cking eyes.”

The cop dropped it. It shut off the moment it fell from his hand, clattered across the floor.

They stood there, freckled and dumpy and scared, the candlelight rising and falling over their faces. One of them was probably coaching his son’s Little League team tomorrow. The other probably liked being a cop because it meant free milkshakes at McDonald’s. They reminded her of kids playing dress-up.

“Who’s dead?” she said.

“Ma’am, you need to put that gun down. No one wants to get hurt tonight,” he said. His voice wavered and cracked like an adolescent boy’s.

“Who?” she said, her voice choking up on her, wavering at the edge of a scream. “Your radio said someone is dead. Who? Tell me now.”

“Some woman,” said the guy in back, stuck in the doorway. The guy in front had raised his hands, palms out. She couldn’t see what the other guy was doing with his hands—probably drawing his gun—but he didn’t matter yet. He was jammed behind his partner, would have to shoot through him to get her. “No ID.”

“What color was her hair?” Vic cried.

The second man said, “Did you know her?”

“What color was her f*cking hair?”

“It had orange sprayed into it. Like, orange-soda-colored. You know her?” asked the second cop, the one who probably had his gun out.

It was difficult to work the fact of Maggie’s death into her mind. It was like being asked to multiply fractions while suffering from a head cold—too much work, too baffling. Only a moment ago, they had been stretched out on the couch together, Maggie’s arm over her waist and her legs against the backs of Vic’s thighs. The heat of her had put Vic right to sleep. It amazed Vic that Maggie had slipped off to die someplace while Vic herself slept on. It was bad enough that only a few days before, Vic had yelled at Maggie, had cursed and threatened her. This seemed far worse, graceless and inconsiderate, for Vic to sleep peacefully while Maggie died somewhere out in a street.

“How?” Vic asked.

“Car, maybe. Looks like she got clipped by a car. Jesus. Just put the gun down. Put the gun down and let’s talk.”

“Let’s not,” Vic said, and turned her head and blew out the candle, dropping all three of them into





The Dark


VIC DIDN’T TRY TO RUN. MIGHT AS WELL TRY TO FLY.

Instead she stepped rapidly backward, around the desk and against the wall, keeping the cops in front of her. The blackness was absolute, was a geography of blindness. One of the cops shouted, stumbled in the dark. There was a scuffle of boot heels. Vic believed that the one in back had pushed the other out of his way.

She tossed the paperweight. It made a banging, sliding, rattling thud as it skidded away from her across the floor. Something for them to think about, confuse them about where she was. Vic began to move, keeping the left leg stiff, trying not to put much weight on it. She sensed rather than saw an iron bookshelf on her left and slipped behind it. Somewhere in the blind nightworld, a cop knocked over the broom leaning against the wall. It fell with a bang, followed by a yelp of fright.

Her foot found the edge of a step. If you ever need to get out in a hurry, stay right and keep going down the steps, Maggie had told her, Vic couldn’t remember when. There was a way out of all this darkness, somewhere at the bottom of an unguessable number of stairs. Vic descended.

She moved in a hop, and once her heel came down on a wet, spongy book and she nearly landed on her ass. Vic fell against the wall, steadied herself, and continued. Somewhere behind her she heard shouts, more than two men now. Her breath rasped in her throat, and it occurred to her again that Maggie was dead. Vic wanted to cry for her, but her eyes were so dry they hurt. She wanted Maggie’s death to make everything quiet and still—the way it was supposed to be in a library—but instead everything was bellowing cops and whistling breath and the knocking of her own pulse.