The Jinx

Twenty-Eight

W idener Library was a looming white stone edifice smack in the middle of Harvard Yard. Shallow steps led up to its pillared entrance. I’d once read that the steps were built to accommodate the hobble skirts that had been fashionable ninety years ago, when the library was endowed, but that had never made sense to me. Harvard hadn’t done much embracing of women at that point in time, much less worked to accommodate their fashion needs.

Hilary had told me she’d be in the library stacks, one of her favorite haunts in college. She prided herself on having racked up a number of encounters there that hovered on the border line between NC-17 and XXX ratings, but she’d assured me that her only objective today was to dig up a couple of esoteric books about the history of violent crime and spend some quiet time reviewing her notes.

A Harvard ID was required to obtain entrance to the stacks, but I flashed my Winslow, Brown security pass to the student at security. He was sufficiently absorbed in his reading that he didn’t seem to notice the difference. Hilary had said to meet her on the C level, and I rode the rickety elevator down two flights. My navigational abilities hadn’t improved since earlier that afternoon, but I remembered the basic layout of Widener sufficiently well, having spent more time than I cared to recall in the stacks as an undergrad on those occasions when I couldn’t afford any sort of distractions. The floors were dimly lit, but there were study carrels lining many of the walls, and you could tuck yourself away in a corner and work undisturbed for hours, assuming you had the foresight to smuggle in a supply of Diet Coke and M &Ms for sustenance. Of course, what had been for me the perfect place to power through exam prep or thesis research had been for Hilary the perfect place for illicit sexual encounters.

Today, however, I found her alone in one of those study carrels, surrounded by heavy, dusty texts and an assortment of papers. My heels echoed on the hard cement floors, alerting her to my arrival.

“So, tell me,” she demanded. “I can’t believe you held out on me like this.” She seemed to have run out of gratitude in the last fifteen minutes. Forced patience never had a good effect on Hilary.

“Grant Crocker.”

“No way. I thought he was the Creepy Stalker.”

“He is. But it turns out he’s violent, and a serial killer to boot.” I related what Gabrielle had told Jonathan and me. “It sounds like a fit, doesn’t it? I mean, with the newspaper clippings and souvenirs and everything.”

“Absolutely. Amazing. And you used to work with him. Unbelievable. I’ll have to put you in the book, too. You can talk about his creepiness when he was at Winslow, Bro-oh my God!”

“What?”

“I just realized something.” She began shuffling through the papers on the desk. “I’d printed out some stuff off the Internet about another uncaught serial killer. There was an article in one of the Boston papers about how the killings here were similar to a series of killings in New York City a couple of years ago. They took place over the course of about eighteen months, and then they just stopped. But they probably happened when Grant Crocker was at your firm, right? Before business school. Here, check this out.” She found the pages she was looking for and handed them to me. I quickly skimmed the articles.

“The dates sound like they match,” I said, my excitement nearly matching Hilary’s own.

“Even better, the articles from the New York papers talk about how the police thought the killer was using a scarf to strangle his victims,” she continued. “And here’s the clincher.” She paused, as if to heighten the drama of her revelation.

“I’m waiting.”

“Work with me, Rach. This is called building tension so the climax is all the more stunning. It’s a writer thing.”

“Whatever. What’s the clincher?”

“From the fibers they found, the police thought the scarf was red and gold.”

“And how is that a clincher?”

“Those are the colors of the Marine Corps. And Crocker was a marine, right?”

I had to admit, that was a pretty good clincher. “Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember Grant having a red-and-gold-striped scarf that he seemed to wear everywhere in the winter months. That is pretty good.”

“Good? It’s brilliant.”

“You should tell O’Connell.”

“I’m going to. I mean, he must know about the New York killings, and I guess Gabrielle will tell him what she told you, but being able to point out that Crocker was in both places and was a marine has got to be helpful. I’ll go call him right now. The reception down here is lousy, so I’m going to have to go out into the main lobby. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we can go up to Jane’s together.” She took her phone and strode off, the stiletto heels of her boots echoing in the empty hallway.

I took the chair Hilary had vacated and began reading more carefully through the pages she’d printed out. There had been five murders in New York during the killer’s eighteen-month spree, and they did all sound exactly like the murders here in Boston. I was immersed in one of the articles when a drop of water splattered on the page. I wiped it away with my sleeve and looked up, wondering if there was a leaky pipe somewhere in the building.

But there was no leaky pipe. Instead there was Grant Crocker, looming behind me and reading over my shoulder. A few melting snowflakes adorned his crew cut.

“Hello, Rachel. What are you reading?”

I screamed. This scream was even more bloodcurdling than my earlier scream in the Coop, because the acoustics of the stacks amplified the sound. It echoed against the concrete floors and metal shelving. But no one came to see what the problem was. For once I wished the stacks were a bit more heavily trafficked. They were lonesome enough during normal hours; early on a Saturday evening they were deserted.

“What-what are you doing here?” I stuttered, twisting in my seat to face him.

He chuckled. “Well, I’d been following our friend, Ms. LeFavre, and I was hoping to get her alone. But she drove off with Professor Beasley. So I thought I’d see what lies she might have been spreading about me.”

“I don’t think they’re lies,” I countered, playing for time.

He smiled, the sort of smile the psycho always gives in bad horror movies just before he attacks his next victim. And then he lunged for me.

Without thinking, I grabbed one of Hilary’s books and swung it like a bat. It crashed into Grant’s nose with a satisfying crunch. “Oof,” I heard him say.

He was bent over double, holding his nose with both hands, and I used this opportunity to shove him aside and make a run for it. But while I knew where the elevator was, I wasn’t eager to wait for its arrival since I doubted that I’d incapacitated Grant for more than a few moments. I needed to find the stairwell, and quickly, but with yet another sense of déjà vu I realized I couldn’t remember where it was. I didn’t see a soul as I tore along the hallway, looking in vain for a sign that would point me to the stairs.

I heard heavy pounding footsteps behind me, and I tried to pick up the pace, but while I’d had lots of practice running in heels, primarily while sprinting for planes, the floor was slippery and I was sliding more than I was running. I careered around a corner, only to see yet more endless rows of books and no sign for the stairs. If I got out of this alive, I vowed never again to go into a bookstore, library or other venue where books were housed without a bodyguard, attack dog and sensible shoes.

“You’re not going to get away, Rachel!” I heard Grant yell, and his voice was discomfitingly close, albeit its newly nasal twang indicated that I might have done some serious damage to his nose.

I wasn’t going to be able to outrun him, I realized as I skated around another corner, catching hold of a bookshelf to prevent myself from wiping out. I was going to have to outsmart him.

I stopped running, dragged a foot against the floor so it made a squealing noise, and shrieked, as if I’d fallen. Only a couple of seconds passed before Grant appeared around the corner of the row into which I’d turned, running at full tilt.

He’d probably expected to find me in a heap on the floor, nursing a twisted ankle or a broken heel. He probably hadn’t expected me to be pressed against the shelves with my foot strategically stretched into the aisle. His speed put him at a disadvantage. He tripped over my foot and was promptly airborne, sailing down the aisle headfirst. He hit the floor a good ten feet from where I was before sliding several more yards.

I grabbed several books from the nearest shelves and began pelting them at him with all of the force I could muster. But like the horror-movie monster that just won’t die, he was pulling himself upright, apparently immune to the onslaught. Blood was gushing out of his nose, and combined with the black eye, he was a pretty unpleasant sight. I pulled another book from the shelf and threw it with all my strength, aiming for his head. It got him in the neck instead, but it seemed to wind him. He grabbed at his throat and opened his mouth, but all that came out was a croak. Still he kept moving toward me.

There was only one thing left to do. Something I’d always dreamed of doing. And my shoes may have lacked the appropriate traction for high-speed chases down slippery hallways, but their pointy toes had to be good for something.

I ran at Grant, closing the gap between us with a few steps. I swung my leg back, and then forward, putting all my weight into the kick. My foot connected with his groin as if it had been shot from a cannon. I won’t describe what, exactly, it felt like on my end, but based on Grant’s reaction, on his end it wasn’t good.

His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, revealing their white undersides. Soundlessly, he crumpled to the floor.