A Fugitive Truth (21 page)

“This was eerie,” I repeated. I didn’t yet have the words to explain what convinced me that she was on the wrong track.

“I wonder,” the detective mused. “Everyone knows that those mirrors are two-way. It was probably just a little performance for whoever was back there. You told me what he was like. And I’ll be able to review it on the videotape, too.”

I shivered. “I don’t know. I know I might have said I remembered that he had been calculating, but I don’t think anyone is that good a liar. Something was going on there, something that we don’t entirely understand yet.”

Kobrinski waved my doubts aside. “In any case, it will all be cleared up when I speak to the folks in Michigan. Look, Ms. Russo will be done with her statement in a minute, and the two of you can get back to Shrewsbury.” She put her hand on my arm and looked genuinely touched for the first time, not evasive, not sarcastic. “Emma. You’ve done really well with this. It’s been a big help. Thank you.”

I wasn’t convinced I’d done anything at all, so I just nodded and sat down where she told me to wait. I was aching from my fall, and I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to stop thinking about what I saw, but that wasn’t going to happen. A subdued scuffling in the hallway caught my attention and when I saw it was Paul, I found myself automatically shrinking back, trying to press myself into the wall. He walked by unresisting, led by Officer Campbell, but he started to balk when he recognized me for the second time that day.

“You!” he called, as if searching to place me. “I remember you! You tell me! Is Faith really dead? I’ll believe
you
.”

It was no compliment that Paul should believe me. The implication of course was that I was too stupid or unimaginative to lie.

I really didn’t want to answer him, but Officer Campbell stopped, obviously wanting to watch Paul’s reaction.

“Faith’s dead.” Then the absolute burning need in Paul’s eyes drove me to say more than I meant to. “I found her.”

He looked stunned, the way he did when I first saw him in the interview room, until Campbell said, “C’mon, you,” and yanked his arm brusquely. When he looked back at me, Paul’s eyes were dull and dead again.

Sasha emerged hesitantly as soon as Paul was gone. “I wasn’t coming out while
he
was here.” She was still pale, her eyes red and puffy. “Are you okay? You look kind of green. Is your head bothering you?”

I sighed. “It’s been a rough day, Sasha. How about you?”

She shrugged and smiled wanly. “I’m okay. It all happened so fast. That’s all.”

When we reached my parked car, I paused to fish out my keys.

Sasha blurted out, “I didn’t press charges.”

That surprised me. “Oh?”

She fiddled with her hair, trying repeatedly to get one short strand to stay behind her ear. “I mean, I don’t think it was really
assault
or anything—”

I was unable to quash an impatient impulse to explain the niceties of the law as I had learned it first hand. “Yes, it
was
—”

“—and besides, they’ve got bigger things than me to worry about with him. I just came along to tell the detective sergeant my side of what happened. What I knew.”

We got into the car. I wanted to know, too. “Did Paul say anything to you? Anything at all?”

Sasha paused before she said, “It was creepy. When he grabbed me he said, ‘You promised.’ That’s all. Then he got a good look at me and seemed really surprised. Then he saw you and ran.”

“Yeah, he recognized me, but I don’t think he remembered who I was right away.” After a couple of tries, I got old Bessy to turn over and catch. I pulled out of the parking lot, and headed us back toward Shrewsbury. “What did he mean, ‘you promised’?” I said almost to myself.

The librarian shrugged. “How should I know? I never saw him before. That’s all he said.”

“He was after Faith, I bet,” I said. “Must have been. I mean, your collar was up, you and she have a similar build, close to the same hair color…”

We drove along in silence until I noticed that Sasha was weeping again. “Hey! Hey, what is it, Sasha?” I pulled over onto the side of the road, just shy of the Shrewsbury gates. The sound of the tires was muffled by the fallen pine needles on the gravel.

Sasha covered her face with her hand and leaned against the window, unable to stop. I cast about for a Kleenex, but the last of my stock of fast-food napkins had been used to wipe off the windows days ago. I settled for patting her arm, and she startled me by grabbing onto my hand and holding on desperately. She pulled out a handkerchief of her own and wiped her face but couldn’t seem to stop crying. It took about five minutes before she calmed down, then let my hand go. I was glad, not only because I hoped she would tell me what had been troubling her, but also because I had been leaning against the shift, and my leg was going to sleep.

Her first words chilled me. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” It was almost like an echo of the beginning of Faith’s story.

I waited what seemed like an eternity before she took a deep breath and continued. I couldn’t seem to get one myself, half of me dying to hear, half of me wishing that she’d reconsider and clam up.

“Everything was supposed to be so much better, you know, once I got this job, moved up here. But now it seems like everything just gets more and more confused and stressful, and—” She sighed. “I don’t know. Even on top of everything else that’s going on. The libraries going through a really big shake-up. There will probably be cuts.”

“What’s been stressful, Sasha?” I knew I had to tread carefully here: I thought that “everything else” probably meant the deaths, but I didn’t know for sure. The part of me that wanted to hear won out, but I don’t think it was entirely a matter of moral fortitude or compassion. Call it professional curiosity, the lure of an impromptu interview that insinuates you into the middle of something. You could also call it a part of my avocational interests.

She leaned back against the black vinyl headrest and closed her eyes to collect herself. “The books, the manuscripts we can’t find. I’m just so afraid I’ll be blamed for it, since I was the most recent hire. Harry thinks that it was the former head librarian, Mr. Talbot, but even he seems unsure about that lately, and of course, he’s got even more to lose than I do, so I can’t blame him for being cautious about it. I mean, Director Whitlow and Mr. Talbot were—are—great friends, and if there are jobs on the line, no one wants to stick out too much. But I don’t think they were deaccessioned, I don’t think they were misplaced. I think…I think someone’s, right now, stealing them.”

I sat, amazed. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” she answered wearily. “Someone with access, someone who knows how our security system works. Someone who knows how much these things are worth.” Sasha suddenly giggled, then opened her eyes. “Of course, we spend an
awful
lot of money on brochures telling everyone just how rare and valuable our collections are, then we invite total strangers to come in and see things for themselves.” There was an uncharacteristically bitter note in her voice.

“Come on,” I protested. I knew she was right to some extent, but she touched a nerve in me. “You do security checks, you keep track of everything that gets examined. Unless you want to keep the materials locked up and never allow them to see the light of day, there’s always going to be some risk. Otherwise, you should just call yourself a storage facility and not a research library.”

This was the eternal conflict between scholars and the people who had the works they needed to study. What good was it to preserve these things if no one got any use from them? What good would they be if they were lost or destroyed?

“You’re right, you’re right,” she answered, less sad now and more angry. “I’m just tired, I’m scared—people have been dying around here! That’s not supposed to
happen
, and it
keeps
happening! Can we go?” she asked impatiently. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got work to do.”

“We’re going.” I started the car up again, and pulled onto the road. A brief skid on the sandy verge was the only betrayal of my annoyance with her moodiness. My head ached. I’d been assaulted, disbelieved, then had that followed by an episode straight out of a bad dream, and no one seemed to care. Sasha didn’t even recognize that I’d actually come to her rescue.

The icing on the cake came when I drew up to the guardhouse at the entrance, and one of the older guards told me that Mr. Constantino wanted to see me right away.

“Any idea why?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. His nervous tone suggested he could and wasn’t going to.

“I’ll stop by presently,” I said. “I’ve got a few things to take care of.” What I really needed was a little time alone to pull myself together. I turned to Sasha as we neared the library annex. “I’m going to drop you off here, okay? I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Great. Fine.” She shut the passenger side door with such force that it shook my poor little car. “See you later.”

“Not if I see you first,” I mumbled under my breath. “Thanks for the ride, Emma. Thanks for listening, Emma, you’re so sympathetic. You were right there, when I couldn’t even turn to my boyfriend. Oh, no problem, Sash, happy to do it.” I didn’t bother watching her walk away, I didn’t care if she was okay. Well, I did, really; I was just willing to take the dose of guilt later on for being angry with her now. I don’t know why I should have felt guilty, I hadn’t done anything to justify it. But that never seemed to matter.

Once I got to my room, I wondered what to do. I knew I should get back to the library to wait on the letters or work on transcribing more of the encoded parts of Madam Chandler’s diary, but I didn’t want to. Not yet. I continued to change into a pair of clean jeans and one of Brian’s flannel shirts, for no better reason than I wanted to shed my skin, put the scene at the police station behind me, and maybe in doing so, take a little comfort in the order of the universe.

Calling Brian, I was chagrined to find that he was not in his office, and I took it out on his voice mail. “Hi, it’s me. Paul Burnes, Faith’s ex, was just arrested. So you can relax. Stop worrying about me. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Call me tonight. I love you. Bye.”

A glance at the clock in the hall told me that even if I didn’t want to get any more work done, I was going to have to move it if I was going to rescue my computer and notes from the library before the reading room closed for the evening. Everything was still in a panic, even though there was a chance now that the mystery was solved, I thought.

But it wasn’t all solved, I remembered with a frown as I drove down to the library annex. I still needed to find out whether Jack’s death was an accident. And now Sasha admitted that books were going missing as well.

As I locked up Bessy, I suddenly realized there was an undue amount of noise and bustle that I couldn’t attribute to the ongoing repair work—the Martini brothers usually knocked off around three. I got close enough to see a couple of police cruisers, radios squawking, and the sirens now off, but lights were still whirling, parked in front of the library.

Then I watched as Pam Kobrinski was leading Michael Glasscock out the front doors.

Drawing closer, I realized that she wasn’t leading him, but that he was talking and she was taking notes. I had just reached them when the real center of excitement emerged beside us. Two very burly officers, who might have been clones of Officer Campbell, were having a hard time holding onto their prisoner, who was screaming at the top of his lungs and thrashing violently against them.

“—bullshit! Fucking bullshit! It’s a fucking setup! I didn’t—”

I didn’t immediately recognize Gary Conner in his civilian clothes, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. That lasted only a split second before he hurled himself toward me, and if the two policemen hadn’t kept their grip, he would have made it. The fact that he was handcuffed didn’t seem to make any difference at all, and he nearly dragged them along with him.

“This is your goddamned fault!”

I stepped back involuntarily against the force of his accusation.

The cops dragged him along toward one of the cruisers, and Gary managed to get his feet up against the side of the car, preventing them from stuffing him into the back seat. They struggled a while longer, and he twisted around just long enough to spit venomously at me.

“You watch yourself, cunt!” he screamed. “I’ll be back for you!”

Stunned, I stared at the spit as it soaked into the pine needles by my feet, trying to make sense of all this. I was glad for the number of cops that was there, and wished for a few dozen more.

The door to the cruiser was finally slammed shut. Gary, now incarcerated in the back, had swung around on the seat and began kicking a rear window with both feet. After a few warnings, the two cops got in the front of the car and started the engine.

I could still hear the dull thumps as Gary hurled himself at the windows and doors. It must hurt, I thought. It must hurt him to do that. Good. And still, he persisted. What the hell had happened? What did he think was my fault?

Pam Kobrinski was saying something, but I didn’t comprehend a word of it, as I watched the police car start slowly back toward town.

“Y
OU KNOW,”
P
AM
K
OBRINSKI WAS SAYING
, “I think we just Mirandized our last loose end.”

“Hang on a second,” I said. “What the hell just happened?”

“Gary Conner quit,” she answered with satisfaction. “And when he went to clean out his locker, Dr. Glasscock here noticed something Gary shouldn’t have had.”

Michael was drooping against the doorway, eyes closed, big black overcoat almost hanging off his shoulders in a hugely Byronic display of world weariness. “I was walking past the security office. He had a stack of books in his locker. Books from the library.”

“So you put him in a headlock and called the cops, there, Batman?” I asked, skeptical. The image of Michael hanging by his ankles for his preprandial nap seemed to make more sense than the thought of him tangling with Gary physically.

“I could have, if I wanted to,” he said with an adolescent shrug, eyes still closed. “Instead, prudence being the better part et cetera, et cetera., I slunk away and squealed on him to
les flics
. I’m no fool.”

“So, wait, I’m confused.” I turned to Pam. “
Gary
didn’t kill…?”

Pam shook her head violently. “No, no. There are two separate situations here—”

“Situations.” Michael covered his face with one hand, shook his head, and blew a wet raspberry by way of editorial comment. “I love your use of the language. I must check my dictionary to find out when
situation
became a synonym for
murder
.”

Kobrinski smiled patiently at the unkempt man; she could afford to be indulgent now. “Let’s start at the beginning. I believe Paul Burnes was responsible for drowning his ex-wife. A crime of passion. Then Dr. Miner, because Burnes was afraid Miner had seen him. According to our medical examiner, Dr. Bambury, Jack Miner died of alcohol poisoning all right, but it was probably a substantial amount of iso-proponol—like rubbing alcohol—in his booze. There were lesions, eruptions, all over his trachea. I suspect that Paul Burnes saw Miner spying on him as he carried his ex-wife’s body to the stream that morning and decided that no one else should know about it.”

“Where
was
Faith killed?” I asked. “I know she didn’t die in the stream where she was found.”

“We found traces of cement mortar in her lungs,” came the grim reply. “She was probably killed over by—”

“The library,” I interrupted automatically. Kobrinski stared at me, agape, and Michael really seemed to wake up and take notice for the first time. “There’s been a big tub of water out there for the repairs, the whole time I’ve been here.”

“Right,” Pam said slowly. “I think that she agreed to meet Paul by the fence behind the library—it’s hidden by all these trees and it’s close to the road, as you well know from our little race the other day. But I’ll bet Paul Burnes was waiting for her on the wrong side of the fence and drowned her there.”

I thought about what Dr. Theresa Moretti had told me about the sort of strength and the emotional coldness that it took to hold someone under water until they stopped breathing forever. After Paul’s performance behind the two-way mirror, I was convinced he could have done it. He could have seduced the Sphinx, he could have outwitted Loki. And Jack would have taken a drink from Guyana Jim Jones; Paul certainly would have had no problem talking him into a little outdoor party for two and poisoning the bottle.

The Detective Sergeant continued. “But both of these deaths are different situ…er…circumstances from the theft of the books, which I understand has been going on for some time. I think we can safely say that Gary Conner was responsible for that.”

That news surprised me. “I didn’t know that the library had reported the thefts,” I said slowly.

“They didn’t,” the detective replied tartly. “So how did
you
know about them?”

“Sasha confided in me this afternoon. On the way home from the station.”

Pam scrutinized me a moment longer, until she apparently decided that I was telling the truth. “Oka-aay,” she said reluctantly. “Well, when I was called this afternoon, I asked Mr. Saunders about the books we found in the locker, and he admitted that he was about to call me. Apparently, the staff had been trying to determine whether the materials that were missing were actually gone or simply misplaced because of the change in…ah…accessioning policies. That’s whether they keep or sell or buy books,” she explained.

“I know what accessioning means,” I snapped. “So you’re saying
Gary
stole the
books
?” I shook my head vehemently. “That doesn’t work for me, not at all. No way.”

“Henry Saunders identified the books as being some of the missing ones and has also furnished me with a list of the ones we haven’t recovered yet.” She smiled confidently. “But I suspect that we’ll uncover the rest in Gary Conner’s apartment.

“The theft from the library, and don’t forget, the vandalism of your room, Emma,” Pam Kobrinski continued, “seems to fit in with Conner’s being the disgruntled employee—”

“He wasn’t disgruntled last I heard,” I interrupted. “And I would say my room was searched rather than vandalized. There’s a big difference, I think. What happened with Conner?”

“He quit after your complaints. Said something about a letter, that he didn’t have to take it…”

“That much does make sense, Emma,” Michael pointed out. “Rather coincides with your accident this morning.”

I turned on him—what did
he
know about it? “It doesn’t make
any
sense. This doesn’t jibe with whoever tossed my room. That letter from Brian had nothing to do with Gary, and nothing to do with
me
.
That
was all about Constantino.” I described Brian’s encounter with the head of security.

“The letter aside,” she answered, “you’d already had a couple of nasty encounters with Gary, and that makes this make sense. Whoever we were chasing was pretty familiar with the grounds here, whoever stole the books was able to get past the security system.” Kobrinski flipped the cover over her notebook and buttoned it away with a sigh. Contented with the outcome as she seemed to be, she still took out a Tums and started to chew, crunching away like she was grinding Conner’s bones between her teeth. “Well, that’s it for me. I’m heading back to town. I’ll probably be in touch with you tomorrow, depending on what we get tonight. Gonna be another long one.”

We watched in silence as she started up the cruiser and headed down the road. “She’ll be back,” Michael said, as the headlights of the police car snapped on.

I raised one eyebrow and he shook his head, eyes open with disbelief that I should doubt him.

“She
craves
me. Couldn’t take her eyes
off
me. You saw it, I practically had to restrain her from climbing up my leg.”

“Get ahold of yourself, Michael.” I couldn’t help laughing at his sincerity, though. It was hard to resist his charming self-involvement.

“I won’t need to, if our valiant maid in blue returns as soon as I think she will,” he said smugly.

“For your information, she’s got a boyfriend the size of a refrigerator,” I told him. “He could snap you like a twig.”

“He’d have to catch me first. And I’m thin but wiry.”

“Try spineless but obnoxious.”

Michael shook his head, dismissing my barb. “I’m heading back to the house. You coming, or are you just going to stand there and malign me?”

“Just let me get my stuff.” I ran in, decided to ignore Mr. Constantino’s request for an audience, and returned within the minute.

“She really has got it all wrong,” Michael said more seriously, once we were in my car and starting down the road. “I hope she figures it out in time.”

“Why do you think that?” I thought so too, but I wasn’t going to say anything to him, yet. Not until I had my thoughts sorted out enough to go straight to Pam Kobrinski with them.

“The books in Gary’s locker didn’t work for me. For one thing, I didn’t see any of the missing manuscripts that I’d needed—”

“They could be long gone by now—” I offered, but Michael just ignored me and plowed on.

“—and there was an encyclopedia in there. Volume GLO–HOP, to be exact. Tucked in all snug and cozy with a first edition of Cotton Mather’s
Magnalia Christi Americana
and a copy of a ‘Treatise Concerning Religious Affections’ by Jonathan Edwards.”

Michael mentioned all this so pointedly and was so unbearably smug about it that I just had to let him know I knew what he was saying. “Right. I can see Gary walking by and grabbing a random book, just a little ‘screw you’ on his way out. But I doubt that he’d be bothered with two works of important Early American religious writers. I mean, how would he know about them? Though he might have been working with someone who was telling him what to steal, I suppose.” I thought about it, chewing my lip.

Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. That would mean he knew his way around the library well enough to find the volumes that were locked up—”

“What about the problems with the alarm? That would explain it.”

Michael looked pained. “I can’t believe you think it was Gary, too. You’re killing me, Emma.”

“I don’t think it was Gary, and neither do you,” I retorted. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

“Well?” he challenged.

“It’s all focused around the library,” I explained. “I don’t think that Faith’s death has to do with her freaky relationship with Paul; not that I feel I can trust what she said anymore, after what I saw today…. I just don’t know what to think about that. But I do think she saw something she shouldn’t have. She was killed near the library. And then the murderer killed Jack, because he saw the note he left me. In the library.”

“Why do you say
library
? I mean,
he
?” Michael asked. He kept his face carefully blank, but there was an intense gruffness to his voice that caught my attention. “It could be a woman.”

“Could be
she
,” I agreed slowly. “I’m just using the impersonal pronoun. Unless you prefer
shim
or
he/she
?”

“I do not. I just think…” He trailed off, and for once seemed to be gripped with real uncertainty, and genuine distress.

“Michael, what is it?” I waited for him to speak up.

“I don’t like to say it before I know for sure, but neither do I want to find myself with an icepick between my shoulders because of prudence.” He looked up and grinned crookedly. “Veronica, Ayeesha, Marian, yes, but never Prudence.” Michael sobered again and sighed. “This sort of thing seems to be following me around. You may have heard about the theft from Van Helst Library in Philadelphia about a month, six weeks ago?”

My breath caught and I nodded dumbly, recalling what Harry had told me just this morning.

“Well, I was there at the time it happened, though I don’t think the detective knew that, or she wouldn’t have scampered off so happily.” He shook off his distraction. “It was the same thing, a couple of rare manuscripts, Early Americana, priceless. Or at least they had so many zeroes to the left of the decimal point as to make no difference.”

I nodded again, my heart pounding as he confirmed what
I
already knew about his proximity to that theft. “Go on.”

“I was there,” he said slowly, scratching his chin, “but someone else was there too. Someone who is also here. Now. At the library.”

That
made me forget to inhale. So much for what I thought I knew.

Michael polished his glasses thoughtfully, taking a long time to do it. “Like I said. I don’t like to say anything. It’s all so circumstantial.”

“Michael! Will you just tell me!”

Finally he put his glasses back in his pocket and looked straight at me. “Sasha. Sasha was there, working at Philly when I was there.”

“How can that be?” I said, amazed. “She’s been here for at least a year.”

He nodded. “And how do you know that?”

“I know it because…” Now it was my turn to hesitate. “I just had the impression that she was new, but not that new. I guess it was because I thought she and Henry had some history, if you know what I mean.” I parked, and we got out of the car.

Michael began to fumble through his pockets for the keys to the kitchen door as we climbed the steps to the house. “I do know what you mean,” he resumed, “but I can only tell you that I know what I know. I saw Sasha Russo working at the rare book room in Van Helst Library when I was there, when those manuscripts were stolen. And now she’s here. In time for me to find her standing over your prostrate body, in time for more manuscripts and books to go missing, in time for far too many things!”

Even with the door open, neither of us went into the house yet. The cool breeze picked up suddenly, the gust dramatically whipping Michael’s overcoat.

“Are you sure it was Sasha you saw there?” I finally said.

Michael brushed past me into the hallway with a look of pure pity. “My dear Dr. Fielding. I collect women. I am entranced by them in every instance, even when they are dancing a collective fandango on my all-too-susceptible heart. I yearn for them, I worship them, I admire what extremes they are capable of making me feel. How could
I
forget someone who looks like
Sasha
?”

I remembered the humbling effect that standing next to the Viking Goddess for the first time had on me, in spite of my insusceptibility. “All right, all right, if you say so.”

“I do. Here, let’s settle this right now. The Philadelphia library is open until six. I’ll call.” He dropped his briefcase with a thump and started to dial.

I took off my coat. Michael didn’t bother, of course; bedtime wasn’t for hours yet. “You can remember the number? Just like that?”

He tapped the side of his head meaningfully. “All right here. Everything, always.” He listened briefly, then turned mischievous, suddenly thrusting the receiver into my hand. “Here! You’re the one who’s so curious!”