The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders by Mignon F. Ballard Read Free Book Online Page A

charge arrived. I thought the poor woman was going to break down and cry.
    The officer in charge, I was relieved to learn, was not that doofus police chief, Elmer Harris, but someone new to the force, Captain Alonzo Hardy, who looked to be somewhere in his mid-forties. By the time Captain Hardy arrived, our clothes had been delivered and I was glad of something to wear, although Joy Ellen’s warm-up pants were a little snug in areas I won’t mention. The captain had jack-o’-lantern hair and a good-neighbor kind of face, but I doubted if much would get past his observant green eyes.
    The first thing the captain did was get rid of the college big-wigs who had accumulated as if by magic and disperse the collection of curious students gathered in the hallway around Blythe Cornelius’s door. Willene and Ellis were allowed to leave, but the captain asked Joy Ellen and me to wait while they interviewed the two students separately. Blythe excused herself from the room, but since we didn’t know where else to go, Joy Ellen and I remained and tried to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. The captain didn’t object and I think it put the girls a little more at ease to have us there.
    My hands were still cold in spite of the hot shower and I wrapped them around the warm cup, sipping the tea slowly and wishing Augusta were there. I had never seen her look as despondent as when I saw her last, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to put what had happened behind her until the person responsible was brought to justice.
    The sergeant, who looked to be about twenty-eight or -nine, talked with Paula in the breakfast room. He had a clean-cut college-boy appearance and she didn’t seem intimidated, although I did hear her giggle nervously once or twice. Captain Hardy sat on the flowered sofa with Miriam and advised her just to take her time—even close her eyes if it helped—and tell him how they had happened to go inside the old stone shed.
    â€œI don’t want to close my eyes,” Miriam said, kneading a ruffle-trimmed pillow in her lap. “I don’t want to ever see it again, but I know I will. I’ll never be able to forget it as long as I live.”
    She and Paula had run for the stone building when it started lightning, she said. “I’d forgotten the old place was there, it’s buried so far back in the vines, but Paula remembered seeing it last winter when she went out to the back campus to jog.”
    Miriam clutched the pillow to her chest. “We should’ve known something awful was wrong by the smell as soon as we pulled open that door, but I thought it was…you know, a dead rat or a possum or something. We were soaking wet, and just then it sounded like the lightning struck something really close. I’m scared to death of lightning!”
    Captain Hardy nodded. “Do you remember who opened the door? You or your friend?”
    â€œPaula. Paula did, and then we started to go inside.” Miriam covered her face. “We didn’t get very far.”
    â€œI know this is difficult for you, but we have to know. Tell me exactly what you saw, every detail you can remember.” The captain reminded me of Dr. Beasley the time I fell off Ellis’s garage roof and broke my arm when I was ten. He prodded softly but with words.
    Miriam grabbed a tissue and continued. “It—she was lying there on her back, kind of like she’d fallen from those steps, only it looked like she’d been cut.”
    He frowned. “What steps?”
    â€œThere were steps to a loft or something. It was too dark to see, and we didn’t stick around.”
    â€œWhy do you think she’d been cut?”
    â€œBecause there was a gash. Well, it looked like a gash…oh, God! And there was all this dark stuff—blood, I guess, and that curved blade farmers used to use to cut grain. You know, that thing that’s on the old Russian