Linda Fairstein - Lethal Legacy

“What she said is that it’s the only entrance from within the library. I’ll never look at the park the same way again,” Mike said. “I want to see if there’s an exit near the Sixth Avenue side.”

“Why don’t we wait for someone to guide us through it?” I asked.

“You and your damn claustrophobia again. Let’s go over it fast, kid, before we’ve got the whole department tied up here,” Mike said, brushing past me. “You’re looking for blood, a weapon, clothing. Any sign this was part of the killer’s escape route. And another staircase.”

Mike headed off down the first row to our right. I watched him as he loped along, ignoring the books shelved from floor to ceiling on both sides of him, looking instead at the floor, pausing to pick up a scrap of paper, which he eyeballed and then slipped into his pocket.

I took the left half, setting off on a slow jog to look for anything out of place. By the time I reached the end of the third row, I was coughing so badly from the dust that I had to stop and clear my throat.

“You okay?” Mike shouted.

“I’ll be fine. Why do you sound so far away?”

“I got smart, Coop. I’m going down to the other end, closer to Sixth Avenue. I’ll work my way back from there. Meet you in the middle. You just keep going.”

Every now and then I bent over to pick up a blank call slip that had fallen out of book, but none had any writing on it.

I trolled through the Slavic and Baltic sections and was in the middle of an archive of Islamic manuscripts from the Asian and Middle Eastern collection when I saw something shiny on the floor, between two of the tall racks of books. From a distance, it appeared to be shaped like one of the scalpels I had seen at Lucy Tannis’s desk.

I stepped out of the aisle between the already overcrowded mechanically operated shelves to get closer to the object so that I could better tell if it was something for the Crime Scene cops to pick up. But as I knelt down, I could see that it was a silver-colored ballpoint pen, its body matted with enough dust for me to know that it had been on the floor there for some time.

Another two rows farther on and something else caught my eye. Also metallic, but this was shorter in length and much flatter than the pen.

It was a few yards in from the long aisle, and I got right on top of it, kneeling again to inspect it. It was a small key, and it wasn’t covered with dust. I had no idea if it had any significance to our search.

I held on to the edge of a divider to steady myself, making a mental note of what row I was in-between large folios of the designs for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and watercolor plates illustrating dress during America’s colonial period-when the entire bookshelf behind me began to move, quickly and quietly, pinning me against the one that I had grasped.

Someone was trying to crush me between the heavy compact movable shelves, and I screamed for Mike as my wrist twisted and I fell onto my side.

Yuri-the engineer who had taken us up to the attic this morning-was the first person to reach me. “Was accident, miss. Was my accident.”

“What are you doing down here, Yuri?” Mike asked. “What hurts, Coop?”

I was sitting up, massaging the fingers of my left hand. “My tailbone, my wrist, and mostly my pride. You think everybody on Forty-second Street heard me scream?”

“Miss Jill send me. Miss Jill make me come.”

“You moved the shelves? Why’d you do that?” Mike shouted at Yuri.

The man was flustered and struggling to express himself. “I don’t see nobody in aisle. Shelves not on line.”

“On line?”

Jill Gibson walked up behind Mike in the company of two uniformed cops. “He means aligned. I’m sure he means aligned.”

“Let him tell me what he means,” Mike said. “Why’d you touch the controls?”

“Is my job, Mr. Mike. In morning, I check things and make even again.”

At the end of each long row was a round handle, like the steering wheel of a car. I had passed scores of them in the last few minutes, and knew when cranked they compacted the shelves to allow more inventory. But I never gave a thought to anyone’s activating them while one of us was between the densely packed bookcases.

“Alex couldn’t have gotten trapped in there,” Jill said. “I’m sure the movement just frightened her. There are motion sensors that won’t let the shelves close completely if something-someone-is in between them.”

“Is there a way to override that?” Mike asked.

“Well, I guess any system can be meddled with,” Jill said. “There’s probably an override. Yuri, you didn’t happen to do anything-?”

“Everybody’s got a dose of Columbo in him,” Mike said. “Just jump in with your questions, Jill. Then you can lift the fingerprints and pick up the evidence and find the little double helixes. You’ve seen it all on television and it looks so easy, doesn’t it? Well, you know what? My buddies in blue here will take Yuri upstairs and he’ll have a chance to explain exactly what happened. How’s that for law and order?”

Mike stooped beside me and lifted my chin to look me in the eye. “You ready to dance yet, kid?” he said. Then he reached out to take my right hand to pull me up.

“Just about. I need your handkerchief for a minute.”

I didn’t want Jill or Yuri to see the key I had stopped to pick up, but I didn’t want to touch it either. I dabbed at my nose and then reached under my calf to adjust my shoe, palming the key inside the white cotton square Mike had given me.

“Alley-oop, Blondie.”

I stood up and brushed myself off.

“I came down here because I thought I could save you some trouble,” Jill said. “I didn’t know quite what you were looking for, but I can certainly tell you about the emergency exit.”

“Maybe Bea should have thought of that,” Mike said, annoyed with Jill Gibson.

“She doesn’t know about it. Most people who work here have no reason to know. The space was designed and built with a single entrance-the way you came in-to better protect the books against both theft and the elements,” Jill said. “But we failed all the fire department codes on the first inspection.”

“So what did you do?”

“Yuri can show you, if you’ll allow him. Down at the far end-”

“Near Sixth Avenue?” Mike asked.

“Yes. There are two emergency hatches, small steel plates, just about two foot square, that were dug into the ceiling.”

“Are they kept locked?”

“Just latched on the inside. That’s the whole point. No one can get them open from above, but theoretically, whoever was down here could be evacuated. If someone was working and, say, a fire broke out-worst-case scenario-he’d have to be able to push the hatch up. There’s a short folding ladder that drops down.”

“And bingo-you’re in Bryant Park. Watching the Yankees give up a five-run lead,” Mike said. “And from up top?”

“The plates are camouflaged with dirt and shrubbery this time of year. No one can get close enough to walk on them because of the little railing around the plants, and yet the bushes are light enough to let you lift the lid beneath them.”

I remembered arriving at the park last night and noting the disarray of the greenery in the area where all the heavy equipment was standing.

Mike took me aside while he talked to the two young officers who were waiting for an assignment. “We’re killing the Crime Scene Unit with this case. They’re working another part of the library now, so one of you needs to stay put till they arrive. Keep this guy Yuri with you. Let him show you these hatches Ms. Gibson is talking about, so they can check them over, inside and out, okay?”