For a minute I was very confused. Was I in a book about old murders that I was reading, or was this all happening to me now? It would be nice to have the distance a book would give me. But Gifford's one earring was all too real, and the leopard-like pacing of Reynaldo—in the prosaic library parking lot!—was all too real, too.

"Tell me about the ax," Gifford was demanding.

"It was a hatchet, Gifford. An ax wouldn't fit in a briefcase." I was immediately furious with myself for contradicting a scarey guy like Gifford; but then I consciously realized what my unconscious must have noted. Gifford Doakes was a man with a mission, and he was not interested in sidetracks. "This long?" He held his hands apart.

"Yes, about." Standard hatchet size.

"Wood handle with black tape wrapped around the grip?"

"Yes," I agreed. I had forgotten the tape until he mentioned it. "Damn," he hissed, and then he said a few other things, and his dark eyes blinked rapidly. Gifford Doakes was a frightened man and a furious one. I was scared as hell, too, not only of the murderer but more immediately of Gifford. Who was maybe also the murderer.

I gripped the stapler even harder, and felt like a fool planning to battle a crazy man with a stapler that even, I suddenly remembered, contained no staples. Well, strike that line of defense.

"Now I have to go to the police station," Gifford said unexpectedly. "That's my hatchet, I'm almost positive. Reynaldo found out it was missing yesterday." I laid down the stapler very gently on my desk, glanced upward and saw Bankston looking over the second-floor railing. He raised his eyebrows in a silent query. I shook my head. I didn't think I needed help anymore. I thought Gifford was just as nervous as the rest of us, and for good reason. At this moment, sophisticated pageboy and sharp clothes notwithstanding, Gifford was chewing on his thumbnail like a five-year-old facing a difficult world. "You'd better go to the police now," I said to him carefully. And he wheeled and was out the door before I could catch my breath. Gifford's hatchet, Robin's briefcase. Those not cast as victims were being cast as murderers, to provide even more fun for the killer. I wondered which category was scheduled for me. Surely finder-of-the-body would suffice.

I was still pondering this and other unpleasant related topics thirty minutes later when Perry Allison came in. I could hardly believe my luck at seeing Gifford and Perry in one evening. Two great guys. At least while Gifford had been here, so had a few other people, but in the intervening half hour Bankston and Melanie and the two other patrons had trickled out the door. This time I quietly opened a drawer and slid out a pair of scissors. I checked my watch; only fifteen minutes to go till closing time. "Roe!" he babbled. "Que pasa?" His hands beat a manic tattoo on the desk. I felt a stirring of dismay. This wasn't even the familiar unpleasant Perry, who had perhaps skipped some prescribed medication. Perry was on drugs no doctor had ever given him. The appeal of "recreational" drugs had completely passed me by, but I wasn't totally naive.

"Nothing much, Perry," I said cautiously.

"How can you say that? Things here are just hopping," he told me, his eyebrows flying all over his narrow face. "A murder a day, practically. Your honey, the cop, was at my place this afternoon. Asking questions. Making insinuations. About me! I couldn't hurt a fly!"

And Perry laughed and came around the desk in a few quick steps. "Scissors?" He whooped. "Ssssssscissssors?" He experimented with hissing. I was so taken aback by his quick moves and jerky head movements, so unlike the Perry I worked with, that it took me by surprise when his hand shot out to grasp the wrist of my hand that was holding the scissors. He gripped with manic pressure. "That hurts, Perry," I said sharply. "Let go."

But Perry laughed and laughed, never relaxing his grip. I knew in a minute I would drop the scissors and I could not imagine what would happen after that. Abruptly, he turned enraged. "You were going to stab me," he shouted furiously. "Not one of you wants me to make it! Not one of you knows what that hospital was like!"

He was right, and under other circumstances I would have listened with some sympathy. But I was in pain and terrified.

I could just barely feel the scissors still gripped in my numbing fingers. In a day filled with strange incidents, this crazed man screaming at me, his emotional intensity spilling over me in this quiet and civilized building where people came to pick out nice quiet civilized books. Then he began shaking me to get me to listen, his other hand gripping my shoulder like a vise, and he never stopped talking, angry, sad, full of pain and self-pity.

I began to get angry myself, and suddenly something in me just snapped. I raised my foot and stomped on his instep with every ounce of force I could summon. With a wail of pain, he let go of me, and in that instant I turned and raced for the front door.

I ran smack into Sally Allison.

"Oh my God," she said hoarsely. "Are you all right? He didn't hurt you?" Without waiting for an answer she shouted at her son over my head, "Perry, what in God's name has gotten into you?"

"Oh, Mom," he said hopelessly and began to cry. "He's on drugs, Sally," I said raggedly. She held me away from her and scanned me for injuries, letting loose a visible sigh of relief when she saw no blood. She saw the scissors still in my hand and looked horrified. "You weren't going to hurt him?" she asked incredulously.

"Sally, only a mother could say that," I said. "Now, you get him out of here and take him home."

"Listen to me, please, Roe," Sally pleaded. I was still frightened, but I was acutely uncomfortable, too. I had never had anybody beg me, as Sally unmistakably was begging me now. "Listen, he didn't take his medicine today. He's okay when he takes his medicine, really. You know he can come to work and perform his job, no one's complained about that, right? So please, please don't tell anyone about this."

"About what?" asked a quiet male voice above my head, and I realized Robin had come in quietly. I looked up to his craggy face, his now-serious crinkly mouth, and I was so glad to see him I could have wept. "I came to check up on you," he said to me. "Mrs. Allison, I think I met you at the club meeting." "Yes," Sally said, trying hard to pull herself together. "Perry! Come on!"

He walked over to her, his wet face blank and tired, his shoulders slumped. "Let's go home," his mother suggested. "We have to talk about our agreement, about the promise you made me."

Without looking at me or saying a word, Perry followed his mother out the door.

I collapsed against Robin and cried a little, still holding the stupid scissors. His huge hand smoothed my hair. When the worst was over, I said, "I have to lock up, I'm closing now. I don't care if Santa Claus comes to check out a book. This library is closed."

"Going to tell me what happened?"

"You bet I am, but first I want to get out of this place." I hated detaching myself from the comfortable chest and enfolding arms; it had been nice to feel protected by a big strong man for a few seconds. But I wanted to leave that building and go home more than I wanted anything else, and with luck, we could repeat the scene at my place with amenities handy.