Free Adam and Evil by Gillian Roberts

as did Mackenzie of late. Besides, it was a ridiculous request. Even in his worst non-listening, Mackenzie hears incessant griping, complaining,and reiteration of a name. I speak as the complainer, griper, and as the one who reiterates.
    With courtly charm he managed to detach and send off his groupie, and then he looked directly at me. “An’ you, ma’am? Do you recall a woman screamin’ ‘Adam’?”
    “I had forgotten, but apparently, yes.”
    “Where is he? You brought your seniors, if I recall?”
    So he did listen. Selectively. That made it worse. He listened like somebody going through a cocktail mix and picking out the cashews, and most of what I said was peanuts. “I can’t find him,” I said.
    “Why’d you scream his name?”
    I have seldom felt worse than I did at that moment. I’d wanted to protect Adam all along, and it was glaringly apparent that I was instead constantly compounding his problems. “I couldn’t find him, thought maybe he was hurt, hurt himself—I didn’t know what had happened.” Might as well, I decided. I’d mentioned Adam’s daily wardrobe, and I bet Mackenzie had stored that away and would make the connection once he saw the statue. Might as well offer the information up myself. “I saw—there’s a scarf like the one he wears every day on the statue over there. And I thought that if he’d tossed it up, or even if somebody else had grabbed and tossed it, he’d be here, trying to get it back, and he wasn’t. So I thought it had fallen or been tossed from above, from where the alarm seemed to be coming. I don’t know what came over me. It was just that he’s been on my mind to the point of obsession. I’ve been so worried about him, and after yesterday’s fiasco with his parents—”
    Mackenzie looked confused. He hadn’t ignored that one— he hadn’t been home for the telling. I didn’t know which of our problems was worse.
    “I don’t know,” I said lamely. “Don’t give it another thought. Please.”
    “An’ the scarf on the statue?”
    “Kids do things like that. I’ve been here when there was a bra on the statue. And once, one big clunky shoe where feet should be. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
    “And the sound the woman said she heard?”
    I shook my head. “I didn’t hear it. But Mackenzie, about my calling out his name—it was nothing. A worried reflex. I wouldhave forgotten all about having done it if that—that wretched woman, that
suit
, hadn’t been desperate to impress you.”
    He lifted an eyebrow as I sputtered along. In my next life I’d aim for subtlety. It was too late even to hope for it in this one.
    We had acquired more gapers and observers, including two of my students, and before they burst forth and captured Mackenzie’s attention, I had to ask. “Who is it, can you tell me? And what happened?”
    He glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “Assistant librarian named Heidi Fisher.”
    “Fisher?”
    “You know her?”
    “A Ms. Fisher gave my class the tour.” I felt nauseous. “Took us around.” And chastised Adam, who glowered at her from then on. Would anybody else remember their interplay? And what should I do with my own memory of it?
    “She was strangled,” Mackenzie said. “Not manually. No fingerprint or nail marks on her, but no apparent ligature marks.”
    “Ligature?”
    “The thing that strangled her. It’d leave marks, and the marks would help identify the weapon. A narrow belt leaves a different sort of mark than a wire, or—”
    “Got it.” Each image was worse than the one before.
    “No ligature marks. Something soft—a towel, say— doesn’t leave marks if it’s removed right after being used.” He turned his head back toward the statue in the center.
    “That’s a scarf,” I said. “Only a woolen scarf. Surely a scarf couldn’t—”
    “Remember Isadora Duncan? Her scarf caught in the spokes of her car’s wheel and she—”
    “I know.” Isadora Duncan, strangled by her own