Murder at the Library of Congress (31 page)

“Yes. These final pages don’t reflect what was on the end of the fifth disc.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let me look again.”

After another fast perusal, Annabel said, “That material isn’t here.”

“Dolores must have forgotten in the rush to print that portion of it,” Consuela offered.

“Probably,” Annabel said, “or didn’t include them with the other pages. I’ll go back and see if she knows what happened.”

“Sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. In fact, if she didn’t print those pages for some reason, I will from the duplicate discs we put in my locker.”

Annabel was glad she’d worn flat, comfortable shoes as she almost ran through the tunnel leading to the Jefferson Building. She used her card to gain access to the stacks and stairway, went to her area next to what had been Michele Paul’s space, squinted in the dim light provided by her desk lamp and a couple of low-wattage bulbs, opened the locker, removed her laptop, printer, and the envelope containing the duplicate set of the five discs, booted up the computer, slipped disc number five into the slot, opened the final file on it, and waited for it to appear on the screen.

What came up puzzled her. It wasn’t the final file as she remembered it. Instead, what was on the screen was a long section preceding the final set of files. She sat back and bit her lip. The hard copy she and Consuela delivered to Broadhurst’s office had obviously been printed from this duplicate set of discs. The missing pages should
be on the original set back at Broadhurst’s office, unless they’d been deleted from them, too.

She was certain of one thing: The disc on which she’d made selected copies of material from the floppy discs found in the Aaronsen collection contained those pages. She took it from her blazer pocket, substituted it for the other disc, and scrolled to the end. The missing fifteen pages started to come to life on the screen.

She connected her ink jet printer to the laptop and sent it into motion, each page slowly emerging like toothpaste squeezed from a broad tube. As the words were transformed from computer images to black-on-white, Annabel sat back and closed her eyes. This was no careless mistake, she silently, and unhappily, told herself. Those pages had deliberately been deleted.

The printing stopped. Annabel opened her eyes, picked up the printout, and scanned the pages once again. This time, her attention was directed at the initials sprinkled throughout the text—“LC,” “BE,” “WA,” “DM.” They were all there, as she remembered them to be. But what appeared on the pages she held was different from what had been on the screen when she ran the fifth disc from the envelope. It took her a moment to realize what the difference was.

A pervasive feeling of sadness gripped her as she again inserted the fifth of the five discs that had been copied from the original set and activated the Find and Replace function, instructing it to scan the disc for the initials “DM.” It found none. Annabel ran the search again. The same result.

Until that moment, it had all been speculation, conjecture on Annabel’s part. At first, the initials “DM” meant nothing to her, nor did many others contained on the discs. But then she began to wonder—when that moment occurred she couldn’t remember—whether they referred
to Dolores Marwede. It was plausible. Dolores had worked in the Hispanic-Portuguese division during John Bitteman and Michele Paul’s tenure there. She’d reacted strongly at the mention of Paul’s name, and had made disparaging remarks about Bitteman.

“One more time,” Annabel said, distinctly recalling that those initials had come up at least six times on that disc when she first examined it.

She swapped discs again, inserted the single one on which she’d duplicated selected sections, and ran Find and Replace. The initials “DM” were highlighted.

“Damn,” she muttered as she popped in other discs from the duplicate set and searched for “DM.” Nothing. Those initials were gone, deleted, erased from the computer’s memory.

Annabel sorted out what she’d just learned. The final fifteen pages on the fifth of five discs had been deleted when the duplicates were made, and the printout reflected that. Any mention of “DM” had been removed from the discs, which, by extension, meant it wasn’t on the printed hard copy. The same thing undoubtedly was true of the original set of discs, which would easily be determined by returning to Broadhurst’s office and using a computer there to view them.

Annabel put the disc of selected portions into her blazer pocket, returned the duplicate set of five to the envelope, and placed it on top of the fifteen pages she’d just printed.

She drew a deep breath in anticipation of leaving the area and returning to the meeting in the Librarian’s office, started to get up, then settled back in her chair and thumbed through an internal phone directory until she found Cale Broadhurst’s extension and dialed it. His secretary answered.

“This is Annabel Reed-Smith, Pamela. I need to speak with Chief Lapin.”

“He’s in a meeting with Dr. Broadhurst and—”

“I know that. I just left that meeting. This is an emergency.”

“I’ll get him for you.”

Annabel’s right foot tapped out her impatience as she waited for Lapin to come on the line. She was so intensely focused on what she would say to him, that the building should be sealed off and Dolores Marwede found and detained, that she failed to realize someone had come up behind her. When she did, it wasn’t a sound that alerted her; it was more a sense that another person was there.

“Hang up!”

Annabel slowly swiveled in her chair and looked up at Dolores Marwede, whose expression was as frightening as the razor-sharp curved box cutter she held close to the back of Annabel’s neck. Her face was distorted, a twisted mask of both fright and fear, pleading and threatening at once.

“Hang up!” Dolores repeated, grabbing the receiver from Annabel and slamming it down into its cradle just as Andre Lapin’s voice could be heard through the instrument: “Mrs. Reed-Smith?”

“Give me that envelope,” Dolores said. When Annabel didn’t immediately comply, Dolores reached over her and swiped it from the desk.

Annabel attempted to collect herself, to will her breathing to slow down. “Dolores, I’m not your enemy,” she said, knowing only too well that, at that moment, she was precisely that.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Dolores said. “Damn you!”

“I didn’t do anything, Dolores, certainly nothing to
hurt you. Put that knife down before you make another mistake. We can talk about this and—”

The ringing of the phone was deafening, causing both of them to jump.

“Don’t answer it.”

“The security chief knows I tried to reach him. I told Dr. Broadhurst’s secretary it was an emergency. They’ll be here, Dolores, any minute.”

The phone continued to ring. Dolores took a few steps back, away from Annabel, the envelope pressed tightly to her bosom with one hand, the box cutter in the other.

“Dolores, listen to me,” Annabel said, her voice not sounding familiar to her. “There’s nothing to be gained by doing this, hurting me. I know it was you who deleted the material from those discs, those fifteen pages, your initials. But you can’t delete the truth. Don’t do something you’ll regret. We can talk about it. Maybe I can help you.”

The ringing stopped, the silence as jarring as the sound had been.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dolores said.

“I can try.”

Dolores looked uncertain of what to do next, whether to use the box cutter to attack Annabel and cut away the threat she posed, or to bolt, to run somewhere, anywhere in search of safe haven. Annabel extended a hand; instead of calming Dolores as intended, it caused her to stiffen and to thrust the box cutter at Annabel.

“Please, Dolores, put that down. It’s over. What’s important now is for you to acknowledge the pain you’re in and to help others understand.”

Annabel’s quiet, nonthreatening voice appeared to be having the desired effect. Dolores let out a sustained breath and seemed to sag before Annabel’s eyes. Annabel
had so many questions but asked only one: “Why, Dolores? Why did you kill Michele?”

Dolores spoke absently, matter-of-factly. “You didn’t know him. You don’t know how cruel he could be.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Annabel said. “I knew his reputation.”

“I wanted to be everything for him. He told me I was. He told me I was the only woman who deserved to be with him. He said I’d earned his love.”

“ ‘Earned’ his love? How did you ‘earn’ his love, Dolores?”

“When he killed John, I was there to help him.”

“John Bitteman? Michele killed John Bitteman?”

“I hated John because Michele hated him. Michele was right. I wouldn’t have killed John, and I didn’t. I didn’t know what Michele had done until he called me that night from John’s apartment. He needed my help and I … I wanted so much to be there for him.”

Annabel looked away for a moment, then back at her. “You wanted to help him to
earn
his love?” she asked, trying with only some success to keep the bathos from her tone.

“Yes.”

“What did you do, Dolores, help him get rid of the body?”

They both turned their heads at the sound of people entering the Hispanic reading room below. The fright, the confusion was again etched in Dolores’s face. Annabel slowly stood as someone opened the door at the foot of the narrow stairs. Dolores retreated as Annabel again offered her hand.

“Give me the box cutter, Dolores, and—”

Dolores’s response was to wield the box cutter in a wide arc, missing Annabel’s face by inches. With that, she ran from the area and disappeared into the stacks as
Chief Lapin appeared at the top of the stairs. Consuela was behind him.

“Mrs. Smith, are you all right?” Lapin asked, coming to where Annabel stood, trembling.

“Annie, what happened?” Consuela asked.

“Dolores killed Michele Paul,” Annabel said, suddenly feeling faint and having to sit.

“Dolores?” Consuela said.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?” Lapin asked as two uniformed LC police joined them.

“Somewhere back there in the stacks. You’d better seal off the building.”

Lapin spoke into his digital remote radio: “This is Lapin. Secure the building. No one leaves. We’re looking for a library employee, Dolores Marwede. She’s probably in the Hispanic stacks, but I can’t be sure. Once the building’s secured, send every available man to Hispanic.” To Annabel: “Is she armed?”

“Yes, she has a box cutter, but don’t hurt her, please. She’s been hurt enough.”

Lapin said to the uniformed officers, “Come on. Let’s find her.” The officers, guns drawn, entered the stacks.

Annabel stood. “I’m going with you.”

“Ma’am, I think it’s better if you don’t,” Lapin said.

“Help!”

They all turned to see Sue Gomara come up the stairs two at a time, out of breath, frantic.

“What’s the matter, Sue?” Consuela said as the intern stumbled into their midst and grabbed Consuela’s arm.

“I know him,” she said.

“You know who?” Consuela asked.

“The stalker. The guy who’s been after me.”

Lapin said to Consuela, “Why don’t you take the
young lady down to your office and calm her down. I’ll be there after we find Ms. Marwede.”

“Dolores?” Sue said. “Find her?”

Consuela put her arm around her intern. “Come on, Sue, let’s do what he suggests. You can tell me about it in my office.”

Annabel watched Consuela lead Sue Gomara to the stairs, then turned to see Lapin follow his officers. For a moment, she was tempted to join Consuela and Sue, but she shook off that decision and trailed after Lapin into the stacks, hundreds of floor-to-ceiling steel shelves housing the Hispanic division’s vast collection of books. A series of low-wattage bulbs strung along the ceiling, dimmed each night by timers, provided barely enough light to see, everything in shadow, murky, lacking distinctive shape and form.

She saw that the two uniformed members of the library police had split up, coordinating their movements through their radios, light from their flashlights creating bizarre, erratic patterns on the ceiling. Lapin was a dozen yards ahead in one of the main aisles, off which hundreds of narrower aisles extended, each a cul-de-sac. He moved slowly, tentatively, radio in one hand, a revolver in the other, pausing as he reached each cross-aisle, weapon held vertically next to his right ear, a quick glance, then on to the next.

Annabel followed in Lapin’s footsteps, her steps silent, holding her breathing in check. She stopped at an aisle veering off to her left that she’d been down more than once in search of books bearing upon Las Casas. She remembered that at its end was a short jog, no more than six feet long, running parallel to the main aisle and not visible from where she stood—or from the route taken by Lapin.

She turned into the aisle and moved with care, the faint light from the widely spaced bulbs above providing only gloomy illumination. Everything was bathed in gray; she ran the fingertips of her right hand along books as though that would help her see. Her eyes went to the floor and saw the box cutter where it had been discarded, half exposed, jutting out from beneath a bottom shelf. She picked it up, took the few remaining steps to where the aisles intersected, stopped, and raised her head, prompting her hearing into heightened acuity. The sound was a tight whine, animal in nature, wrenching.

“Dolores,” Annabel said, pressing her back against the books and carefully peering around the corner. Dolores stood at the end of the short aisle, in a corner, barely discernible in the dismal lighting. Annabel fully exposed herself and took a few steps in the direction of the researcher-librarian.

“Please, don’t,” Dolores said. “Stay away.”

Annabel extended her hands in a nonthreatening gesture. As she did, Dolores slowly sank to her knees, almost in slow motion, arms pressing the envelope containing the discs to her chest, that ethereal whine of a few moments earlier now reduced to a series of whimpers.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Dolores said. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, turning from Annabel and vomiting.