MOLLY LAY ON THE FLOOR, stunned, conscious of sharp, stinging sensations on the backs of her legs and on her hands. Behind her, there were cries of alarm and of pain.
Phoebe lay beside her, closest to the piano. Her eyes were closed.
She hit her head on the piano leg, Molly thought dully.
Hank was at her side then, bending to see how Molly was. She saw blood on his left wrist, more on his left cheek. “Look at Phoebe’s hands,” she whispered as he leaned over her. “Are Phoebe’s hands okay?”
Confused by the question, Hank took a quick look. “Yes,” he said, “they’re fine. A few scratches, nothing more.”
With his help, Molly sat up. The room spun like a carousel. When her vision cleared, she seemed to see nothing but glass. Large and small fragments, scattered all about the room, as if glass had rained down from the sky.
As, she thought, it had.
Everyone had cuts of varying sizes and seriousness. Tommie’s was the worst, a long, jagged gash across her left arm. The cut was bleeding heavily. Dana was trying awkwardly to bandage it with her sweater. “I didn’t see it falling,” Tommie cried, looking at the cut on her arm with horrified eyes, “I didn’t see it! I would have moved if I’d seen it.”
“Wouldn’t have done you any good to move,” Donovan pointed out. His forehead was dotted with tiny red spots of blood, like measles. “That glass went everywhere.”
Ken, who had only a small cut on his left ear, ran for help.
“At least her hands are okay,” Molly kept repeating. “Phoebe’s hands are okay. That’s the important thing.”
No one understood what she meant.
Ken came back with a maintenance man and two freshmen on duty at the infirmary, carrying a stretcher. A security guard brought up the rear.
He was the same officer Molly had spoken to the night before. “I told you!” she wanted to scream, “didn’t I tell you that picture was a warning? Now look what’s happened!”
But she was much more concerned with seeing that Phoebe, who was just beginning to awaken, was taken care of.
When Phoebe saw what had happened, when she had taken in the full extent of the danger to her, she sagged against the piano leg, her face completely drained of color. “My hands,” she whispered, her eyes meeting Molly’s, “my hands could have been cut to ribbons.”
“I just put a new bulb in that fixture,” the maintenance man declared, surveying the mess. “Wasn’t loose. Couldn’t have been loose. Put it in myself, last Friday.” He frowned at Hank. “You young people monkeyin’ around with that light?”
“No, sir, we were not.”
The maintenance man moved toward the ladder leaning against the wall. “Told them they shouldn’t be lettin’ young people in here,” he muttered as he walked away. “Nothin’ but trouble, that’s all, nothin’ but trouble.”
Hank looked at Molly and rolled his eyes heavenward.
“What did happen here?” the security officer asked, taking out a small notepad and a pen.
Molly didn’t want him mentioning the photographs in front of Phoebe. “Could we talk about that at the infirmary?” she asked as she and Hank helped Phoebe to her feet. “Right now, I think we should all have our cuts taken care of, don’t you, officer?”
At the infirmary, while Phoebe and the others were being treated, Molly spoke with the officer.
“I think that light was tampered with,” she said insistently. “You heard the maintenance man. He just replaced the bulb. It shouldn’t have been loose.”
“How much noise were you making up there?”
“Noise? What does noise have to do with it? If noise yanked light bulbs out of the ceiling, this entire campus would be littered with glass. I’m telling you, the bulb was loosened. Deliberately. Somebody has to do something. Listen, I want you to check out someone on campus. His name is Norman Oakes, and …”
“Already did,” the officer said, tapping his notepad with his pen.
Molly stared at him. “Already did what?”
“Already checked out Oakes. Clean as a whistle. Wasn’t anywhere near the paddlewheel when that girl took a header off that ledge. Has an alibi for that whole day.”
“Well, of course he wasn’t on the boat,” Molly said impatiently. “But he has people … why did you check him out?”
“What?”
“Why were you checking out Norman Oakes? Who told you to?” She hadn’t mentioned his name. She’d been afraid to, without proof. So … who had?
He shrugged. “Got a tip he might have something to do with it.”
A tip? “An anonymous tip?”
“Right.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You know this Oakes? Wasn’t you made the call, was it?”
“No.” But who had? Who else on campus suspected Norman? Hank, maybe?
She asked him later, when they had all been treated and released and he was saying goodnight to her at Phoebe’s door. Phoebe, her face pale and drained, had already gone inside.
“Me? No, I didn’t sic the police on Norman. Why would I? Did you want me to?”
“No. But I wonder who did.”
Hank reached out and drew her in toward his chest. “Man,” he said softly into her hair, “you really scared me. When you tackled Phoebe and that light fell, I thought you were both going to be sliced to ribbons. You’ve got guts, kid.”
“Well, she’s my friend. I had to,” Molly said. “I need to be at that recital tomorrow night. Are you going?”
“If you are, I am.”
The first thought that crossed Molly’s mind the next morning when she awoke was that Stacey’s photograph had been mutilated … and something bad had happened to Stacey. Then Phoebe’s picture had been defaced, and something bad had almost happened to Phoebe. The third ruined picture delivered to Molly’s room was … Molly’s.
It was her turn now.
She didn’t want to get out of bed. Maybe she’d be safe if she stayed in bed.
Molly sat up. Sitting around waiting for something to happen to her was stupid. She was going to classes, and she was going to the Odyssey office, and she was definitely going to Phoebe’s recital.
She did all of those things. And although she felt as she walked from building to building through a thin, cold rain, that there was someone out there, watching, she kept her head up and her shoulders back as if she were daring the person to jump out of the bushes and attack her.
Phoebe, looking beautiful in her new dress, her hair piled high on top of her head, had played three pieces when Molly spotted Norman. He was sitting off to her left, his eyes on the stage. He wasn’t smiling.
Probably really ticked off that she’s up there, unharmed, Molly thought angrily.
She wondered if he’d driven from his dorm. The music complex was far enough from Lester that Norman might not have been willing to walk. And it was raining.
If he’d driven, his truck just might be sitting outside in the parking lot.
It wouldn’t hurt to check out that truck, would it? There might be some evidence …
“I’ll be right back,” Molly whispered to Hank.
“Wait, where are you going …?”
But Molly had already rushed up the aisle.
The parking lot wasn’t crowded. Most people had walked to the concert, in spite of the light rain. Norman probably had, too. But it was worth a shot, wasn’t it? If she could find something, anything, linking him to any of the things that had gone on, she’d have something to show the police. In time to keep him from doing to her what he’d done to Stacey and tried to do to Phoebe.
Norman, she prayed as she wove her way swiftly in and out of parked cars in the dimly lit lot, let’s hope you were too lazy to walk tonight.
Norman had been too lazy to walk. Because at last she spotted his truck. Small, red, a Salem sticker on the door. It was his, all right.
Molly ran around to the bed and looked inside. A huge, black tarpaulin covered whatever was in there. Protecting it from the rain? Or hiding it from curious eyes?
She climbed up on the rear bumper. Then, bending over the tailgate, she reached in and lifted one end of the tarp, pulling it aside.
She found what she was looking for.
A shovel, thick with dried mud.
Two black plastic pails coated, like the shovel, with hardened gray mud-cement.
And half a dozen issues of the year’s first Odyssey,
It was all there, staring back up at her from the bed of the truck. All she had to do now was find a policeman …
She was about to toss the tarpaulin back into place when a voice from below cried out, “Get down from there. Now!”
Norman’s voice, icy and full of hate.