Second Honeymoon

Chapter 38

THE WAY HUMMEL acted after closing the door to his office, Sarah was thinking that maybe his comment about her leaving town within the hour was meant to be some kind of joke. Either that or the guy suffered from a serious case of short-term memory loss. She was definitely confused—but curious.

Hummel offered no explanation. Instead, he walked directly to a drawer behind his desk, opened it, and removed two disposable latex gloves and an evidence bag containing the paperback copy of Ulysses.

“I suppose you want to see this first,” he said.

Sarah put on the gloves and flipped through the book. Indeed, it was exactly as advertised—a library copy with nothing highlighted, no notes added, and, as Driesen had stated, “not even a dog-ear.”

Hummel leaned back in the chair behind his desk, clasping his hands behind his head. “I remember having to read it in college,” he said. “Hell, I barely understood the CliffsNotes.”

“I know what you mean,” said Sarah. “It’s not exactly a beach read, is it?”

“I’m pretty sure of one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“It didn’t belong to the victim.”

“Okay. How do you know?”

“Because I knew John O’Hara,” he said. “How does the saying go? Guys wanted to be him, girls wanted to be with him? He was a helluva good guy. But one thing he wasn’t was—” Hummel paused, searching for the right, or maybe most respectful, way of putting it. “Let’s just say the only thing I ever saw John read was a menu.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“Not with a nine-hundred-page book steeped in Irish dialect that reads like a pretzel, classic or no classic,” he said. “John was no James Joyce fan. Hell, he wasn’t even a Stephen King fan.”

Sarah nodded. Fair point.

Like Hummel, she’d read Ulysses in college as well. That was more than a decade ago. Before the flight out that morning, she’d downloaded it on her Kindle and started to read it again after takeoff. Somewhere over Kansas she waved the white flag and surrendered to her iPod.

Why couldn’t the killer have left behind the latest Patricia Cornwell novel instead?

“Assuming the killer did leave the book behind, do you have any thoughts on what it might mean?” asked Hummel.

“Not yet. Do you?”

He smiled. “Funny you should ask. Actually, I think I do.”