Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Daniel said. “Your Visitor doesn’t trust you. Maybe it was Ensor, after all. I thought this was a good plan, but I’m convinced now that nothing is going to flush this guy out.”

The four stared glumly into their drinks. They were seated along the bar, under the watchful gaze of the carved owls, and Tess felt mocked by their blinking amber gaze. She preferred the stained-glass owls, who were not so superior-looking.

“ ”The less he spoke, the more he heard,“” she murmured. “I wish I knew how that finishes up.”

“”Which is what makes him a wise old bird,“” Daniel said.

Tess looked at him. “You didn’t know the end of the poem the last time we were here.”

“I looked it up,” he said. “What’s the point of being a librarian if you don’t know how to look something up?”

“On the Internet?” Whitney asked.

“No, not on the Internet,” Daniel said, his tone dismissive. “I’m no Luddite, but half the stuff there is urban myth, linked and relinked, until you can’t be sure what the source is. I found this in a database from the Beacon-Light.”

“A newspaper?” Whitney’s hoot was perfect for the Owl Bar. “You don’t trust the Internet, but you think a newspaper gets things right? You are an innocent.”

“Maybe,” Daniel said. “But the newspaper computer databases have the corrections appended. That’s why I rely on them.”

“You’re assuming every error is corrected.” Whitney, never shy under any circumstances, leaned across Crow and wagged a finger in Daniel’s face. “Half the time, people don’t even bother to call, they just take it. Readers are the first to accept this ”first-draft-of-history‘ crap; they figure the first draft always has a few errors.“

“It wasn’t just the newspaper.” Daniel defended himself. “I found a travel guide about Baltimore that verified it.”

“Oh, a book,” Whitney said, sniffing. “That’s only marginally better. What if the book depended on the newspaper article? Books make mistakes, too. Give me primary documents every time.”

“The boooooks,” Tess said, giggling to herself, for the others weren’t in on this private joke. Only Gretchen knew about the video at the Poe House. And only Gretchen could say that word so disdainfully. “Look for me in the boooooks, Michael.”

Her laugh stopped as suddenly as it started, prompting a concerned look from Crow. He probably thought she had been drinking too much. Tess didn’t know how to tell him that her senses had never been sharper, her mind more acute. She should have figured it out long ago. All the answers were in plain sight. All the answers were in the books.

Outside the Belvedere Hotel, TeSS took Daniel aside.

“The titles that Bobby stole from the Pratt-could you get me a list?”

He needed a second to understand what she wanted. “There is no list, remember? Bobby would never admit to stealing the books, only the pillbox. Over the years, the staff has discovered that some rare titles are missing, but it’s not like we catalog them. What would be the point? They can’t be replaced.”

“Didn’t the library director ever make a report to the board? I assume the trustees would have had to be informed.”

“Maybe.” He rubbed his chin. “That never occurred to me. I guess I can poke around and see if there’s such a thing. When do you want it?”

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s bound to be a confidential document, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure I can just hand it over to you on the main floor of the Pratt.”

“I’ll come to your house tomorrow night. Then we can go over the titles together.”

“You think there’s a clue in the titles of the books Bobby stole?”

“Something like that.”

She returned to Daniel’s little carriage house shortly after eight the next night, bringing takeout from the Helmand, an Afghan restaurant, and a bottle of Chilean white wine. Daniel struggled to look brave, like a well-reared little boy who knew he must not make faces at the strange food on his plate. Tess had thought the meatballs of lamb and ground beef were a good compromise between his plebeian tastes and her need for something exotic.

“I told you I’d provide the food,” he said.

“Nonsense. You’re doing me a favor. Now let’s see the list.”

He looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t get it. I didn’t want to ask anyone for it, because it’s a confidential document and I couldn’t figure out where such things are kept. Probably in the director’s office.”

“I guess I could file a FOIA,” Tess said, sampling the aushak, raviolis filled with leeks. “But that would take forever.”

“A foya?”

“Freedom of Information Act. The library can’t sit on a document just because it’s embarrassing. We could force the board to release the list of the missing books, but that would take weeks.”

“You can’t do that,” he said, a nervous edge creeping into his voice. “They’d fire me. They’d know I was the one who told you.”

“But you told the cops, too, right? I mean, I could have learned about the list from someone else. And I’d have one of my newspaper friends put the request in. I think regular citizens can file FOIAs, but it packs more punch coming from a newspaper.”

“The thing is”-Daniel seemed calmer, now he knew the story of Bobby Hilliard’s thefts couldn’t be traced to him so easily-“the thing is, the existence of a list was pure conjecture on your part. Don’t you need to know a document exists before you can”-he paused, enjoying the new bit of jargon-“before you can FOIA it?”

“Good point.” Tess sipped a little of her wine, which Daniel had poured into an old jelly glass. He was drinking a Yuengling out of the bottle. She hated to be finicky, but the right stemware did help wine reach its full potential. What she really craved was a glass of water. Daniel had built a fire, but it was almost too hot; the small house felt ovenlike. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the spines of the books all around them seemed to swell slightly from the heat, which made the room feel that much smaller.

“You know what? I don’t need the list anyway. I’ll just start writing down the names of all the titles in your library here, then take them back to the Pratt and check to see how many of them were stolen.”

Daniel’s piece of aushak fell into his lap. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, I assume some of them really are from flea markets, while others were stolen from the library. But is it half? Only a third? It will take a while to put the list together, but I have plenty of time.”

A pounding sound filled her ears and she was tempted to believe it was Daniel’s telltale heart, the beat rising in a sudden, wild panic at the realization he had been found out. But the pounding was her own heart, her own blood. Daniel, if anything, had grown eerily calm, pushing away the plate of barely touched food and taking another swig of his beer.

“The last thing you have,” he said, “is time.”

Now it was her turn to say, “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have time. I would give you four hours at the outside, maybe three. After all, it’s not an exact science, burying someone alive.”

Tess stood up so quickly she knocked her chair over and backed away, her gun out of her trench-coat pocket. That was part of the reason she was so hot. She hadn’t dared remove her coat, because she might not have been able to get to her gun.

After all, she had known all along she was making a date with a killer. As the movie at the Poe Museum said, you could always find the answer in the books. Daniel had paraded his stolen goods, making them appear legitimate.