8
She was prettier than a soufflé au chocolat drizzled with crème anglaise flavored by apricots, served in a Limoges cup on a Limoges plate on a silver charger, by candlelight.
The door had swung shut behind her and she had taken a few steps into the room before she realized that this was not a typical library tableau. She couldn’t see the dead man behind the desk, but she spotted the handcuffs dangling from my right wrist.
When she spoke, she had a wonderfully throaty voice, the effect of which was heightened by the fact that she addressed the killer in a stage whisper: “Is that a gun?”
“Doesn’t it look like a gun?”
“Well, it might be a toy,” she said. “I mean, is it a real gun?”
Gesturing at me with the weapon, he said, “You want to see me shoot him with it?”
I sensed that I’d just become the least desirable of available hostages.
“Gee,” she said, “that seems a little extreme.”
“I only need one hostage.”
“Nevertheless,” she said with an aplomb that dazzled me, “maybe you could just fire a shot into the ceiling.”
The killer smiled at her with all the expansive good humor that he had directed toward me earlier, in the street. In fact it was a warmer and even more adorable smile than the one I’d received.
“Why are you whispering?” he asked.
“It’s a library,” she whispered.
“The usual rules have been suspended.”
“Are you the librarian?” she asked him.
“Me—a librarian? No. In fact—”
“Then you can’t possibly have the authority to suspend the rules,” she said, speaking softly but no longer in a whisper.
“This gives me the authority,” he declared, and fired a round into the ceiling.
She glanced at the front windows, where the street was visible only in a succession of wedges between the half-closed Venetian blinds. When she looked next at me, I saw that she was disappointed, as I had been, by the pathetic volume of the shot. The walls, padded by books, absorbed the sound. Outside, it might have been not much louder than a muffled cough.
Giving no indication that his casual gunfire rattled her, she said, “May I put these books down somewhere? They’re quite an armful.”
With the pistol, he indicated a reading table. “There.”
As the woman put down the books, the killer went to the door and locked it, always keeping an eye on us.
“I don’t mean to criticize,” the woman said, “and I’m sure you know your business better than I do, but you’re wrong about needing only one hostage.”
She was so dangerously appealing to the eye that under other circumstances, she could have reduced any guy to his most deeply stupid state of desire. Already, however, I found myself more interested in what she had to say than I was in her figure, more fascinated by her chutzpah than by her radiant face.
The maniac seemed to share my fascination. By his expression, anyone could see that she had charmed him. His killer smile became more luminous.
When he spoke to her, his voice had no bite to it, no trace of sarcasm: “You have a theory or something about hostages?”
She shook her head. “Not a theory. Just a practical observation. If you wind up in a showdown with the police and you have only one hostage, how are you going to convince them you would actually kill the person, that you’re not bluffing?”
“How?” he and I asked simultaneously.
“You couldn’t make them believe you,” she said. “Not beyond a shadow of a doubt. So they might try to rush you, in which case both you and the hostage wind up dead.”
“I can be pretty convincing,” he assured her in a mellower tone that suggested he might be thinking of asking her for a date.
“If I was a cop, I wouldn’t believe you for a minute. You’re too cute to be a killer.” To me, she said, “Isn’t he too cute?”
I almost said I didn’t think he was that cute, so you can see what I mean by her bringing out the deeply stupid in a guy.
“But if you had two hostages,” she continued, “you could kill one to prove the sincerity of your threat, and after that the second would be a reliable shield. No cop would dare test you twice.”
He stared at her for a moment. “You’re some piece of work,” he said at last, and clearly meant to compliment her.
“Well,” she replied, indicating the stack of books that she had just returned, “I’m a reader and a thinker, that’s all.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lorrie.”
“Lorrie what?”
“Lorrie Lynn Hicks,” she said. “And you are?”
He opened his mouth, almost told her his name, then smiled and said, “I’m a man of mystery.”
“And a man with a mission, by the look of it.”
“I’ve already killed the librarian,” he told her, as if murder were a resumé enhancement.
“I was sort of afraid you had,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “My name is James.”
“Hi, Jimmy,” she said, and though she smiled, I saw in her eyes a terrible sadness and desperate calculation.
“Go stand beside him,” the maniac ordered.
Lorrie came to me. She smelled as good as she looked: fresh, clean, lemony.
“Cuff yourself to him.”
As she locked the empty ring around her left wrist, thereby linking our fates, I felt I should say something to comfort her, in response to the desperation I’d glimpsed in her eyes. Wit failed me, and I could only say, “You smell like lemons.”
“I’ve spent the day making homemade lemon marmalade. I intended to have the first of it tonight, on toasted English muffins.”
“I’ll brew a pot of bittersweet hot chocolate with a dash of cinnamon,” I told her. “That and your marmalade muffins will be the perfect thing to celebrate.”
Clearly she appreciated my confident assertion of our survival, but her eyes were no less troubled.
Checking his wristwatch, the maniac said, “This has
