First, he shot Lionel Davis in the head.
The pistol made a hard flat noise not half as loud as I would have expected.
Crazily, I thought how in the movies they didn’t fire real bullets, but blanks, so this sound would have to be enhanced in post-production.
I almost looked around for the cameras, the crew. The shooter was movie-star handsome, the gunshot didn’t sound right, and no one would have any reason to kill a sweet man like Lionel Davis, which must mean that all this had been scripted and that the finished film would be in theaters nationwide next summer.
“How many flies do you swallow on the average day, standing around with your mouth hanging open?” asked the killer. “Is your mouth ever not hanging open?”
He appeared to be amused by me, to have already forgotten Lionel, as if killing the librarian had been an act of no more consequence than stepping on an ant.
I heard my voice turn hollow with stunned incomprehension, brittle with anger: “What did he ever do to you?”
“Who?”
Though you will think his perplexity must have been an act, tough-guy bravura meant to impress me with his cruelty, I assure you that it was not. I knew at once that he didn’t relate my question to the man whom he had just murdered.
The word insane did not entirely describe him, but it was a good adjective with which to begin.
Surprised that fear remained absent from my voice even as more anger crowded into it, I said, “Lionel. He was a good man, gentle.”
“Oh, him.”
“Lionel Davis. He had a name, you know. He had a life, friends, he was somebody.”
Genuinely puzzled, his smile turning uneasy, he said, “Wasn’t he just a librarian?”
“You sick son of a bitch.”
As the smile stiffened, his features grew pale, grew hard, as though flesh might transform into a plaster death mask. He raised the pistol, pointed it at my chest, and said with utmost seriousness, “Don’t you dare insult my mother.”
The offense he took at my language, so out of proportion to the indifference with which he committed murder, struck me as darkly funny. If a laugh, even one of shocked disbelief, had escaped me then, I’m sure he would have killed me.
Confronted by the muzzle of the handgun, I felt fear enter the halls of my mind, but I didn’t give it the keys to every room.
Earlier in the street, the prospect of a sniper had paralyzed me with dread. I realized now that I’d not been afraid of a rifleman in some high concealment but that I’d been petrified because I did not know if the sniper was real or if instead the mortal threat might be any of a thousand other things. When danger can be sensed but not identified, then everyone and everything becomes a source of concern; the world from horizon to horizon seems hostile.
Fear of the unknown is the most purely distilled and potent terror.
Now I had identified my enemy. Although he might be a sociopath capable of any atrocity, I felt some relief because I knew his face. The uncountable threats in my imagination had evaporated, replaced by this one real danger.
His hard expression softened. He lowered the pistol.
With perhaps fifteen feet between us, I didn’t dare rush him. I could only repeat, “What did he ever do to you?”
He smiled and shrugged. “I wouldn’t have shot him if you hadn’t come in.”
Like a slowly turning auger, the pain of Lionel’s death drilled deeper into me. The tremor in my voice was grief, not fear. “What’re you talking about?”
“By myself, I can’t manage two hostages. He was here alone. The assistant librarian is out sick. There were no patrons at the moment. He was going to lock the doors—then you came in.”
“Don’t tell me I’m responsible.”
“Oh, no, not at all,” he assured me with what sounded like genuine concern for my feelings. “Not your fault. It was just one of those things.”
“Just one of those things,” I repeated with some astonishment, unable to comprehend a mind that could be so casual about murder.
“I might have shot you instead,” he said, “but having met you earlier in the street, I figured you’d be more interesting company than a boring old librarian.”
“What do you need a hostage for?”
“In case things go wrong.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see.”
His sport coat was cut stylishly full. From one of the roomy interior pockets he withdrew a pair of handcuffs. “I’m going to throw these to you.”
“I don’t want them.”
He smiled. “You are going to be fun. Catch them. Lock one cuff around your right wrist. Then lie on the floor with both hands behind your back, so I can finish the job.”
When he threw the cuffs, I sidestepped them. They rattled off a reading table, clattered to the floor.
He’d been holding the pistol at his side. He aimed at me again.
Although I’d stared down that muzzle before, I didn’t find it any less disconcerting the second time.
I’d never held a handgun, let alone fired one. In my line of work, the closest thing to a weapon is a cake knife. Maybe a rolling pin. We bakers, however, tend not to carry rolling pins in shoulder holsters and are therefore defenseless in situations like this.
“Pick them up, big fella.”
Big fella. He was approximately my size.
“Pick them up, or I’ll do a Lionel on you and just wait for another hostage to walk through that door.”
I had been using my grief and my anger over Lionel’s death to suppress my terror. Fear could diminish and defeat me, but now I realized that fearlessness could get me killed.
Wisely giving recognition to the coward in me, I stooped, picked up the cuffs, and clamped one steel circlet around my right wrist.
Snaring a set of keys off the librarian’s desk, he said, “Don’t lie down yet. Stay on your feet where I can see you while I lock the door.”
When he was halfway between the main desk and the portrait of Cornelius Rutherford Snow, the door opened. A young woman, a stranger to me, entered with a stack of books.
She was prettier than a gâteau à l’orange with chocolate-butter icing decorated with candied orange
