The grass was sort of spooky, too. Sometimes it moved when there was no wind, and sometimes it didn’t when there was one. Something else was going on, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. There are plants that catch bugs, but there were no bugs where we were for the grass to catch. It moved anyway, and I never did figure out what it was up to.
Right here I guess I ought to lie and make up all kinds of weird stuff I could say happened. Nothing did right then, really. The grass and trees were weird enough all by themselves, and if you’ve never been in a place like that, where you shiver in spite of a warm wind, there’s no use my going on about it.
We camped that night, if you can call it camping when you haven’t got a tent or sleeping bags or even a couple of blankets. Katrine killed a skinny white tree with her pistol, and I chopped it up. When that was done—it seemed like it was all bones—I made a pile of chips and splinters that her pistol set on ablaze. Shoes and boots off, we lay with our feet nearest the fire and our heads as far from the smoke as we could get them. I think she was expecting me to try to rape her and was getting set to kill me when I did. So I didn’t. Maybe you won’t believe me, but I wouldn’t have done it anyhow.
That night I had a dream. I was sitting at a table in Alice’s Tea Room. Everything was terribly real except that the floor was glass. I could look right through it and see the traffic way far down below where buses, groundcars, and trucks were moving along a busy street a hundred stories down. It felt awfully real and somewhere the glass was cracking, an incessant, unmistakable sound like fingernails scratching at a whiteboard. Soon the floor would fall and I would fall with it, fall far, far down onto the pavement of the street below.
Next morning we found the man we had come through to arrest; he was standing over us with Katrine’s pistol stuck in his belt. When he gestured to tell us to roll over, it was with the short broad-bladed chopper in his right hand. We rolled and he started to tie us, me first.
That was a mistake. As soon as his hands were busy with me and the rope, Katrine jumped him.
He was a lot bigger than she was, and stronger, too. She was faster, and knew exactly what she was doing. I reached into the fight, grabbed her pistol out of his belt, and shot him with it.
After that, I reached out to Katrine, offering my hand to help her stand up. I was surprised when she took it.
For half a minute, maybe, she dusted herself off and adjusted her clothes; then she said, “That does it. We’re going back.”
I nodded and handed over her pistol, then we went back through the door together. When we’d had something to eat and were drinking kafe, I said, “Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me I ought to know what you’re going to tell your bosses. If they have somebody ask me questions, our stories ought to match.”
She grinned. “Because they’ll try to beat it out of you if they don’t.”
“All right, that’s part of it. Are we going to tell them about the door?”
She gave me the look. “Do you really think I’m that dumb?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Fair enough. No. If I thought they might send somebody to see if I told the truth, I might. They wouldn’t. They’d work on me and have a shrink work on me, and I’d probably end up shuffling papers for the rest of my life.”
“What’ll you tell them?”
“The truth.” She leaned back, enjoying her little rehearsal. “I found Dr. Fevre’s murderer, but I could never learn his real name. He resisted arrest, and I was forced to kill him. Case closed.”
I said, “If they do send someone I’ll back you.”
17
SHELF LIFE RESUMED
When we were back in Adah’s house, I explained to a couple of the ladies that I was overdue; eventually they nodded. Then I said, “I doubt that anybody will question me, but if they do it would be nice if you would back me up.”
After that Chandra and I strolled down the hill to the library. That short walk should have seemed familiar—but it felt terribly, terribly strange. Every step we took was rerunning a part of my life that I remembered much too vividly, running my life backward. I understood that, but my heart snatched at straws. For maybe half a minute, I thought we’d stop for cantaloupe smoothies, but Chandra vetoed that, so we didn’t. As we strolled along, she told me what a good idea it had been to check me out, and I explained to her what a bad idea it had been.
When she had returned me and my card had been stamped, she collected the deposit minus the overdue fee and gave me a kiss on the cheek; before I could think of a good way to say good-bye, she had gone.
“She enjoyed you.” One of the part-time librarians smiled.
I nodded and decided it would be safe for me to say that she was a good reader, so I did. Then I asked about Rose and Millie.
“That’s right, the three of you came together, didn’t you?”
I nodded, thinking about our ride in the truck and half a dozen other things.
“What is it?”
“I was just wondering about them. I happen to know that the patron who checked them out is dead.”
That got me Prentice, something I ought to have seen coming. She wanted to know exactly how I knew what I had said I knew.
I took my time telling her about it, trying to pronounce everything clearly while she stared at my lips. “The girl who came here to pick me up for her mother is the daughter of the man who checked out Rose and Millie,” I explained to Prentice. “He and his wife were separated but they were still married. No divorce.”
Prentice nodded. “Go on.”
“Naturally she and the daughter were notified when he passed away.” I wondered whether Prentice was getting most of those words.
After a second or two, she said, “His heirs ought to return both the resources he borrowed.”
I agreed and added that we could only hope they would do it.
“You know them. Will they?”
It’s not easy for one of us to be deceptive; deception is something we rarely require. I said I doubted that they knew where he lived.
“Do you?” That was Prentice in a nutshell—no extra words.
I shook my head.
She turned, her slurred words drifting over her shoulder. “Come to my off’ce, Smit.”
That sounded bad, but I had to do it. Like so many deaf people she made a good deal of noise opening windows, shutting doors, and so on. When she had settled herself behind her desk, she said, “When a library resource like Millie or Rose is overdue, we send a card urging that it be returned. No doubt you know.”
I seated myself on her desk and nodded.
“That is what we did in this case. Our card came back marked ‘deceased.’ Does that surprise you?”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t see that patron die, did you?”
I admitted that I had not, adding that I had spoken to his daughter and his widow and felt quite certain that he was in fact dead.
“I don’t suppose you know Charlotte Lang.”
The name rang a bell. After a moment I said, “I’ve met her. I don’t know her well.”
“She is a volunteer here at the library. Was that how you came to meet her?”