Linda Fairstein - Lethal Legacy

The doorbell rang and Mike turned back to admit Mercer, who was accompanied by a young woman. She was slightly built, with auburn hair, and a long fringed scarf doubled around her neck.

“Good morning, Lucy,” Jill said. “You’ve met Mr. Wallace. This is Alex Cooper, from the DA’s Office, and Mike Chapman, another detective.”

“It’s true about Tina?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, completing our introductions to Lucy Tannis.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“The detectives need to understand what goes on down here, and whatever you know about what Tina was working on.”

“Or who she was working with,” Mike said.

“I don’t know very much. It’s not like she confided in any of us.”

“Had you known her very long?”

Lucy shrugged. “A few years. There aren’t many of us trained in this field, Detective. The four of us who work here full-time, we’re a pretty tight-knit group. Spend most of our days together in this little hole below ground, which seems odd to most outsiders. But we get to touch some of the most exquisite works on paper ever created.”

“And Tina?” Mike asked.

“She just didn’t fit. Good at what she did, no question about that. But she was cold as ice and never really seemed to enjoy her work the way the rest of us do. At least not lately.”

“Did you see her this week?”

Lucy thought for a moment and then nodded. “Twice. Tina was here twice. She was in for a little while on Monday morning. I remember that because I was sort of surprised to see her. She was working for some rich guy-from England, I think-and she needed to pick up some supplies.”

That would have been a day before she was attacked in her apartment.

“And Wednesday. I’m sure it was Wednesday. She got here right as I was cleaning up to leave. But you’d know that, Jill?”

“Sorry? Why would I know?” Jill said, looking surprised.

“Tina told me she was here to see you that evening. That you had asked her to come in for a meeting. She seemed pretty nervous about it.”

“I told you, Alex. I-I wanted her to come in, but she never showed up,” Jill said, turning to me to protest Lucy’s suggestion that she had actually seen Tina on Wednesday. “But that was to make sure she was okay after-well, after Tuesday’s break-in.”

“Well, she was still here when the three of us left, shortly after five,” Lucy said.

I couldn’t get a fix on Jill Gibson. I wanted to trust her, but as fragments of information developed, I wasn’t sure that I could.

“Can you give me a sense of what you’ve been working on recently?” Mike asked Lucy, trying to make her more comfortable before he went back to the details of her last encounter with Tina.

Lucy waited for Jill to nod at her and started to explain. “Sure. You can see on this table over here, I’ve been doing some restoration on a copy of the Declaration of Independence.”

Mike was on top of it in a second, leaning over to study the document. “In Jefferson ’s hand?”

“Yes, one of two that survived. And repairing a tear in the last letter that Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne.”

I tried to make out words in the script that the dying poet had penned to the lover he left behind in London when he ran off to Rome.

“Most of the time we’re working on a dozen things at once. There are tidemarks on this manuscript of Native Son that I’ve got to get started on today.”

“Tidemarks?” I asked.

“Water stains. I’ve got to try to remove them. And foxing is the probably the most common thing we see. That’s mildew to you. It occurs when ferrous oxide-F Ox in chemistry-is attracted to the paper and activated by humidity.”

“I can see why you love this,” I said. “I realize it’s very hard work, but I envy the opportunity you have to enjoy these riches every day. And the other conservators?”

“One is rehousing some sixteenth-century prints on the far side of the room, and another is working on new bindings for books in which the bindings have failed. See this?” Lucy asked. “Post-it notes are the bane of my existence.”

“How so? I couldn’t live without them,” I said. “I wouldn’t remember half the things I have to do.”

“What holds them in place are little globules of adhesive that explode when you stick them to a page. The adhesive is stronger than the paper, so it eats away and makes the paper translucent if left there too long. That’s a constant problem for us. We go from the excitement of saving documents of great historical importance to the tedium of repairing everyday damage caused by a reader’s carelessness.”

“What was Tina doing?” Mike asked.

“Same stuff as us, when she worked for the library,” Lucy said. “Right now, I’m not sure. She was given permission to use the lab-as long as someone else from staff was in here-’cause she was doing private consulting with some of the big donors.”

“Did you see her with any maps? Atlases?”

“From time to time, Detective. She liked working on maps. She had a great talent for that.”

“And recently? In the last few weeks?”

“No. I’m sure of that.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I would have noticed. Old maps are so beautiful, so visual-none of us would have missed seeing them in these close quarters.”

“Where did she work?”

“Whatever table was free. Sort of depended on what she was handling.”

Mercer was more interested in the tools that were mounted on the walls and grouped in coffee mugs on shelves above each cubicle. “Tell us about these.”

Lucy loosened her scarf and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. I looked at the clear skin on her neck and flashed back to the sight of the deep wounds that brought Tina Barr’s life to an end. No wonder Mercer was examining the array of knives displayed above the workstations.

“About what? My tools?”

“Yeah.”

“Each of us has a set, Mr. Wallace,” Lucy said, walking to her desk in the next alcove. “Part of the conservation process is that we each create our own tools, to fit our styles, the size of our hands, the kind of work we do. Mine are over here.”

She picked up an ivory-colored piece about the size of a ruler with a sharp, pointed end. “This is a bone folder. It’s made from the bones of a cow’s leg.”

So much for the refined life of a library conservator-animal glue and spare body parts.

“I bought it at an art supply store, then ground and burned it until it fit exactly the shape I like to work with.”

“What do you use it for?” I asked.

“It’s got thousands of functions here. Leather bruises very easily when it’s wet, so if I’m working on an old binding, I’ll smooth it carefully with this. Or turn damp pages of a book that’s got water damage.” Lucy began to point out her equipment with the tapered end of the bone folder.

Above her head were mason jars and coffee mugs filled with a mix of household objects and art tools. Pens, pencils, and brushes were clustered in some, while others held tweezers and an assortment of dental picks.

Then there were knives, several dozen of them in all sizes in a large plastic tub on her shelf. “Why so many knives?” I asked.

“They look like weapons, not tools,” Mike said. “Sharp?”

“Razor sharp,” Lucy said, reaching for one to hand to Mike. “We have to keep them that way. We’re cutting all the time-from fine paper to edging the leather on bindings.”

“Mercer, check those shapes,” Mike said.

Lucy described their importance. “These are lifting knives, and these are scalpels I use to carve fine lines. These are skifes, and the blades that go with them.”

“Skifes?”