Michael Guillebeau - MAD Librarian - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Library

There was a moment of silence before Tavana laughed. Once he laughed, Serenity joined in as loud as she dared.

“Okay,” Joe said, “we’ve talked some. How about you talk some?”

“Not much to tell. Kendall was a strange bird: too private to really get to know him, but competent and stubborn as a mule when he thought he was right about something. He has—had—a small horse farm in Maddington. He had been pushing the bosses here for a long time about something he thought was going on in Maddington. The bosses view was that there was no proof, it was too political, and it was a local matter anyway. Every time they told him ‘no,’ he’d walk out of the meeting and schedule another meeting, tell them the same damned thing all over. I was at the last meeting. He got about ten words into a speech that they seemed to have heard a hundred times, and the big boss shut him down, told him he didn’t want to hear it anymore. Kendall stood there in front of the room for a long time. Hard to read him with those Coke-bottle glasses of his. Finally, he said, ‘I got my forty years in. More than all of you experts put together. Believe I’ll put my papers in. Go to the horse farm, where horses’ heads and horses’ asses come in a one-to-one proportion.’ Walked out, and I never saw him again.”

Joe said, “So you don’t know what he was doing with Bentley?”

“No. But that’s a strange combination. A couple of years ago a local mob boss was running a protection ring on all the corporations in Jericho. Kendall was working it, but before he could bust it some mysterious giant—I’m not making this up—killed them all and broke the whole thing up.”

“I remember that one,” Joe said. “Always thought that was kind of a myth.”

Tavana shrugged. “Something happened. Any case, the ring was pulling in a ton of money until a bunch of folks died and it stopped. But here’s the thing: Kendall thought something much bigger was going on now, with ten times the money. But we could never find anything in Jericho.”

“Any idea what could squeeze more money out of corporations than the mob?” Joe asked.

“No. But it doesn’t sound like a library.” Tavana laughed and turned to Serenity. “So he came in, asked for the books, then what?”

Serenity said, “We printed him a copy and gave him a place to work. A few minutes later, a volunteer found him face-down and couldn’t wake him up.”

Joe said, “Ice pick in the back of the neck. ME says whoever did it was either very smart or very lucky. You don’t catch it just right, the pick’ll either bounce off bone or just damage muscle.”

“Huh.” Tavana turned to Serenity. “So your librarians have taken to carrying ice picks?”

They all laughed. Serenity tried to study both their faces. Saw that they were studying hers.

She needed a joke. “Don’t know about ice picks, but I may start carrying my Smith and Wesson if I’m going to help Joe find out who did this.”

“Ain’t happening,” said Joe.

“Actually,” Tavana said, “it might be good to keep Serenity involved. I know you’re partnerless right now, Joe. Might be good to have another head to bounce ideas off of. And nobody knows more about what’s going on at the library than Serenity. And nobody has more contacts in the community.”

Joe grunted.

“Keep me posted, too, Joe. Kendall was a smart guy, no matter what the big boys here thought. You find anything out there, I might want to press on it.” He laughed. “Even if I have to buy me a horse farm to get the parts to line up.”

RIDING BACK TO MADDINGTON in the Charger, Joe said, “Don’t know what else to say to you, Serenity, but I’m sorry about stuff between us.”

They were on the west-bound interstate, crowded with Suburus and Chevys coming home to Maddington from day jobs at the Jericho tech giants. They were driving dead into a red-hot crimson sun that was hanging on the horizon, blinding them and every other driver, and turning the inside of the cars blood-red.

Serenity looked at Joe’s dark sunglasses, at his hat pulled low, his head pushed forward almost to the windshield in concentration, and waited. He didn’t say anything more. She knew it wasn’t a good time for a serious talk, but the silence drove her to talk anyway.

“What’s that supposed to be, one of those rote prayers from the Book of Male? When things go to shit, just say, ‘Honey, I’m sorry.’ Hope she’ll know what you’re sorry for because you sure as shit don’t, and you sure as shit aren’t sorry, you’re just hoping that somehow it gets things back on track so you can get back in her pants again?”

A shapeless blue car slashed into Joe’s lane, neither Joe nor the other driver seeing each other at first, due to the glare. Joe popped the brakes to let the car in, then got back to speed before anyone could hit them from behind.

He thought about Serenity’s question. “Pretty much.”

A few more buildings slid by.

“Let me put a better spin on that,” he said. “Just wanted you to know that I feel like shit about where we are. I’m tired of trying to figure out why we’re there. And I wanted you to know that I can change if I need to.”

“But the law is the law and you are what you are.”

They turned away from the sun and he shot her a quick glance. “Maybe. And maybe you might be surprised at what I can be.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. They pulled into the parking lot of the library and Serenity said, “What’s next?”

“We both go back to work. Me out here, you in there.”

“You wish. You need me on this. So what are you planning to do next?”

He exhaled and looked at his watch. “May go by and see Bentley, catch him after Steve got to him earlier. Should catch him at about the end of his day, thinking he’s about to get the last patient or the last errand taken care of before he gets to go home. People tend to get irritated when you catch them like that and they make mistakes.”

“See, that’s why you need me. Nobody can irritate Bentley like I can.”

He looked out the window. “Sometimes,” he said, “I can understand his point of view.”

Bentley’s receptionist, Sharon, put down her phone and smiled a weak apology up to Joe and Serenity. “Doctor Bentley says to come back tomorrow. He’s busy with a patient and then he’s going home.”

“Who’s the patient?” said Joe.

Sharon didn’t even have to look at her computer. “The last patient was Danny O’Keefe. You know, Charlie’s boy. At three o’clock.”

Joe said, “To hell with that,” and went through the door with Serenity a step behind.

“Madison PD, Councilman,” Joe said as he stepped into Bentley’s office.

Bentley looked up from the magazine he was studying, one with a beautiful deer on the cover, staring into the camera and probably thinking what an honor it was that he was about to be shot and mounted on some redneck’s wall.

“Keeping up with your medical journals?” said Serenity. “The one that compares deer anatomy to children?”

Bentley put the magazine down. “Two government employees with no respect for a businessman’s time. What a surprise.”

“Sorry, Councilman.” Joe stood in front of Bentley’s desk. Serenity slid by him and took one of the visitor’s chairs. “This is business. Police business. You hired a man named Kendall to look into the books of the library?”

“Told the last cop. It’s my right, the right of any citizen to question public records. And I ought to be able to do it without the lie-brarian getting her husband to come down here and strong arm me.”