Bindlestiff

BOOKS

I told the thin guy behind the desk what I wanted and started to show him the Examiner photo, but he said he hadn’t been on duty Tuesday afternoon; the person I wanted to see was Mrs. Kennedy, the head librarian. She was there, doing something over in the stacks, and he went and got her for me.

Mrs. Kennedy was about sixty, silver-haired, energetic, and garrulous. She peered at the photo through a pair of reading glasses and said immediately, “Oh yes, I remember him. Frankly, I was amazed when he came in. I mean, I could see that he was a tramp-the way he was dressed and the pack he was carrying and all.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“They just don’t come in here. I mean, the library is the last place you’d expect to find a hobo.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Do you know what it was he was looking for?”

“Well, that amazed me even more. I was at the desk and he stopped and the first thing he asked was if we keep microfilm files of old newspapers.”

“Old newspapers?”

“Yes. Well, I told him that we do, and he asked if the Los Angeles Times was one of them.”

“Is it?”

“Oh yes. Most libraries keep microfilms of at least one major daily newspaper, you know, and the Los Angeles Times is the standard one in small branches such as ours. We also have files of the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York — ”

“Yes, ma’am. Did he ask to see the Times files?”

“He did. The ones for the months of August and September of 1967.”

I ruminated about that for a couple of seconds. Screwier and screwier, I thought. “Did he give you any indication of what he wanted from those files?”

“No, he didn’t,” she said. “He studied them for twenty minutes or so, in our microfilm room. That was all.”

Twenty minutes was hardly enough time to wade through two months’ worth of issues of a thick daily newspaper. That being the case, it would seem that Bradford had to have known more or less what he was looking for.

“You said those files were the first thing he asked about,” I said. “Was there something else he was interested in seeing?”

Mrs. Kennedy nodded. “The Oroville city directories for the past fifteen years. He spent another few minutes with those. Isn’t that strange?”

“It is,” I agreed. “Very. I don’t suppose he told you why he wanted to look at the directories?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Did he ask for anything else?”

“No. As soon as he was finished with the directories, he practically ran out of the building. He almost knocked me down and he didn’t even bother to apologize. Well, I was speechless, I really was.”

I didn’t believe that for a minute. “Did you happen to see which direction he went?”

“No, I didn’t,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “I was too perplexed to pay any attention.”

I considered asking her for those same microfilm files of the L.A. Times for August and September 1967. But without more information, some clue as to what Bradford had been looking for, it would be like hunting the proverbial needle in a haystack. The same was true of the Oroville city directories. My best bet was to try to trace Bradford’s movements after he’d left the library.

He’d been on foot, and as far as I knew he wasn’t familiar with the layout of Oroville. If he’d been heading for some place here in town, as his study of the directories seemed to indicate, he might not have realized until after he’d rushed out that he needed directions to wherever it was. And he might have stopped somewhere else to ask how to get there.

I went to see if I could get there myself.