A Little Class on Murder by Carolyn G. Hart

Author:Carolyn G. Hart [Hart, Carolyn G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780553282085
Publisher: Crimeline
Published: 1988-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

11

A chalky billow of masonry grit eddied from the doorway to the Crier offices. The door hung crazily from one hinge.

“Emily!”

Brad Kelly pelted up the central hall through the roiling dust. The gritty particles clung to him, coating his clothes and face with gray. He stumbled to a stop by the dangling door, his face slack with shock. “Oh God, I just went to the john—” He reached out, grabbed Max’s arm. “I just went to the john. If I hadn’t, I’d have been in—” Frantically, he began to pull on the sagging door. “Emily! Emily! Where are you? Emily, answer, for Christ’s sake!”

The door came loose in his hands. He heaved it into the hallway and plunged into the newsroom. Glass from imploded video display terminal screens covered the floor, crunched beneath his steps. Desks and terminals leaned at precarious, unnatural angles. Broken joists and splintered lathes protruded from the shattered plaster walls. There was an acrid smell of smoke, dust, plaster, and singed plastic.

Max yelled after the frantic editor as he careened across the room. “Is somebody in there? Where?”

Kelly pointed at the far corner, now a tangle of construction rods and sagging ceiling tiles and mounds of bricks. The exterior wall was gone, and the remains of the office lay exposed to the outside. “My office. Emily. Emily Everett. Oh God, look!”

Choking from the dust, straining to see through the milky cloud, Annie and Max stared at the debris and at a bloated hand, gunpowder singed, sticking through a sheet of beaverboard. As they looked, blood seeped from the puckered edges of the wood.

Max gripped Annie’s elbow. “Quick. Go for help. We’ll see if we can get her free,” and he hurried after Kelly.

Annie darted a frantic glance at the unstable wall tilted over the corner office. But Max and the editor had to try. Whirling around, she bolted across the hall into the departmental office.

“Mr. Burke,” she shouted. “Mr. Burke!”

Even as she called, her mind was admonishing her for reacting so slowly. Obviously, Burke wasn’t in the building. If he had been in his office, the explosion would have brought him immediately to the scene.

Pushing through the swinging gate at the counter, Annie grabbed the telephone receiver and started to dial, then slammed it down. No sound. No tone. Nothing. The explosion must have blown out the lines. Then strong and high came the keen of a siren. It was one of the most welcome sounds she’d ever heard. Help was on the way. Of course it would be. It was a small campus, and the response to an explosion would be immediate and swift.

She was turning, ready to hurry back to help Max and Brad, praying the walls wouldn’t tumble down on them, when she saw the smear of red on the floor by the swinging gate.

Blood.

Odd how unmistakable it was.

Even the dried, dark splotches that had disfigured the Crier door the morning after the vandal’s attack had been immediately, unmistakably identifiable.

This, too, was blood.

But it wasn’t old and dried.

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