Lethal Legacy

TWENTY-ONE

Bea Dutton and Jill Gibson sat together at the farthest table from the reference desk, staring off in different directions, like two schoolkids in detention. I had used the landline to call Paul Battaglia, to tell him the latest developments and get his help with Commissioner Scully.

Mercer returned within minutes. “You’re growing quite a crowd outside, Mike.”

“Front steps?”

“The employees come in through the service entrance on Fortieth Street. Seems like most of them hadn’t heard any news reports about the body in the park.”

“Is the detail in place?”

“Yeah. Chief of d’s has everything covered. A fresh Crime Scene crew is unloading now. They should be in the lobby in five.”

Mike walked to where Bea and Jill were sitting. “Bea, I’m going to have a uniformed cop sitting here with you for the day. Just to make sure no one gets past the door and tries to come in.”

She smiled at him wanly. “You mean just so I don’t start doing my own treasure hunt, don’t you?”

“A little of both.”

“I’ve got an appointment-some engineers from the city due at eleven.”

“Why?”

“There’s a problem under the old Penn Station railroad tunnels. They need a footprint-a vertical search-before there’s any structural damage. It sounds pretty urgent.”

“What can you do for them?”

Bea Dutton explained. “I can search the particular property or plot of land back before the time of the Civil War, when maps of the city were created for insurance companies. You can see exactly what structures existed at any location over time, and what the topographical conditions are. There was flooding in the sub-basement of the Empire State Building last spring-”

“Flooding from what?” Mike asked.

“There’s a stream that cuts through the southwest quadrant of the building, way underground. It shows on the old maps, before midtown was built up. Because of all the snow last winter, the stream swelled with the spring melt and dumped six inches of water into that sub-basement. The engineers need to get into the train tunnels before the snowstorms start, to make sure they can prevent any potential for collapse.”

“And you can help them with that, Bea?”

“Like I said, the old maps give you a historical footprint of every inch of the city.”

“They’ll have to wait another day,” Mike said, rolling his eyes at her request as he walked back to the desk. “Give the guy a call and cancel your date. We may need you as we go along.”

“What did the DA say?” Mercer asked.

“Expect this place to be swarming with cops within the hour,” I said. “Between Scully and the mayor, we’ll have everything we need.”

“Let’s get moving,” Mike said to me. “Mercer, you mind going back out to get one of the rookies to babysit Bea?”

“Done.”

“Keep yourself busy, Bea, baby. Do me a historical footprint of Bryant Park. Where the murder was,” Mike said, trying to make her smile again, while he summoned Jill to the desk. “So where exactly was Tina Barr working when she was here?”

“Well, most recently she spent time upstairs in the reading room. And of course she had access to some of the special collections.”

“We’ve been upstairs, Jill. Which collections?” Mike was tapping his fingers on the countertop.

“I can’t be certain. We’ll have to talk with the curators.”

“How about the conservation laboratory?” I asked.

“Well, yes. Tina used to have access there, when she worked here.”

“Do all your employees?”

“Oh, no. It’s kept quite secure. Very few people have clearance to get in there.”

“Why?” Mike asked, heading for the door and waving at Jill and me to follow.

“It’s where the most fragile items in the library are taken for repair. They’re often left out on worktables overnight, with strict environmental controls. We’ve got only four conservators working in there, and a lot of expensive equipment.”

“Take us in,” Mike said, holding open the door.

“I-I can’t. If none of the conservators is inside, I’d have to have the code in my library identification tag to be swiped at the entrance. I’ve no reason to have one.”

“I’ve got Tina’s.” Mike reached into his jacket pocket and removed Barr’s ID-the one he had found with her body the night before. “Just lead the way.”

“That won’t work,” Jill said, clutching at her own plastic card dangling from the chain around her neck. “She was supposed to have surrendered it when she quit. It should have been deactivated.”

“Let’s give it a try.” Mike took out his cell and called Mercer. “We’re going down to the conservation lab. Before you come back in, check at the employees’ entrance, where all the staff is waiting. See if you can scoop up a conservator to give us a guided tour.”

Jill moved into the dark hallway and started a reluctant march to the far end of the building. Uniformed cops had taken up positions inside the front door and at the bottom of each of the grand staircases. We continued to the end of the corridor, and through an exit that led to steep steps down to the basement.

As we descended, I could see where the white marble and granite of the library foundation rested upon the actual rough red brick of the old reservoir walls, built almost two centuries ago.

If there were lights in the corridor, Jill didn’t know where the controls were, so we made our way slowly through this windowless subterranean maze. Metal trolleys and dollies were everywhere, parked on angles against the wall like dozens of abandoned cars. They were obviously used to transport books of every size, and could easily accommodate something larger.

Jill stopped in front of the double doors marked with the conservation lab sign. Mike raised Tina’s pass to the small electronic pad below the bell. As he moved it back and forth, the buzzer sounded, and Mike turned the knob to open the door.

Jill hesitated before stepping over the threshold and flipping on the light switch.

I followed her in and looked around. The grace and elegance of the library rooms above bore no resemblance to this workhorse in the underbelly of the building. Large tables, most covered with tools of all shapes and sizes, filled the center, and along the sides were smaller cubicles that appeared to be stations for the staff.

“Why does it smell so bad?”

“Chemicals, Mike. There are a lot of toxic materials used in this work. Solvents of all kinds, ammonium hydroxide-things that draw acids out of old paper. The students actually have to study organic chemistry before they’re accepted into a conservators’ program.”

Mike was snooping around all the machinery in the room.

“This was the library’s original bindery,” Jill said, pointing to an enormous wooden table straight ahead of us, “so when they have to repair the spine of an eighteenth-century rare book, they’ve still got to dissolve a block of animal glue. Hot animal glue, layers of it, from cattle, rabbits, tigers-more than a century’s worth-adds to the foul odor in here.”

The doorbell rang and Mike turned back to admit Mercer, who was accompanied by a young woman. She was slightly built, with auburn hair, and a long fringed scarf doubled around her neck.

“Good morning, Lucy,” Jill said. “You’ve met Mr. Wallace. This is Alex Cooper, from the DA’s Office, and Mike Chapman, another detective.”

“It’s true about Tina?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, completing our introductions to Lucy Tannis.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“The detectives need to understand what goes on down here, and whatever you know about what Tina was working on.”

“Or who she was working with,” Mike said.

“I don’t know very much. It’s not like she confided in any of us.”

“Had you known her very long?”

Lucy shrugged. “A few years. There aren’t many of us trained in this field, Detective. The four of us who work here full-time, we’re a pretty tight-knit group. Spend most of our days together in this little hole below ground, which seems odd to most outsiders. But we get to touch some of the most exquisite works on paper ever created.”

“And Tina?” Mike asked.

“She just didn’t fit. Good at what she did, no question about that. But she was cold as ice and never really seemed to enjoy her work the way the rest of us do. At least not lately.”

“Did you see her this week?”

Lucy thought for a moment and then nodded. “Twice. Tina was here twice. She was in for a little while on Monday morning. I remember that because I was sort of surprised to see her. She was working for some rich guy-from England, I think-and she needed to pick up some supplies.”

That would have been a day before she was attacked in her apartment.

“And Wednesday. I’m sure it was Wednesday. She got here right as I was cleaning up to leave. But you’d know that, Jill?”

“Sorry? Why would I know?” Jill said, looking surprised.

“Tina told me she was here to see you that evening. That you had asked her to come in for a meeting. She seemed pretty nervous about it.”

“I told you, Alex. I-I wanted her to come in, but she never showed up,” Jill said, turning to me to protest Lucy’s suggestion that she had actually seen Tina on Wednesday. “But that was to make sure she was okay after-well, after Tuesday’s break-in.”

“Well, she was still here when the three of us left, shortly after five,” Lucy said.

I couldn’t get a fix on Jill Gibson. I wanted to trust her, but as fragments of information developed, I wasn’t sure that I could.

“Can you give me a sense of what you’ve been working on recently?” Mike asked Lucy, trying to make her more comfortable before he went back to the details of her last encounter with Tina.

Lucy waited for Jill to nod at her and started to explain. “Sure. You can see on this table over here, I’ve been doing some restoration on a copy of the Declaration of Independence.”

Mike was on top of it in a second, leaning over to study the document. “In Jefferson ’s hand?”

“Yes, one of two that survived. And repairing a tear in the last letter that Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne.”

I tried to make out words in the script that the dying poet had penned to the lover he left behind in London when he ran off to Rome.

“Most of the time we’re working on a dozen things at once. There are tidemarks on this manuscript of Native Son that I’ve got to get started on today.”

“Tidemarks?” I asked.

“Water stains. I’ve got to try to remove them. And foxing is the probably the most common thing we see. That’s mildew to you. It occurs when ferrous oxide-F Ox in chemistry-is attracted to the paper and activated by humidity.”

“I can see why you love this,” I said. “I realize it’s very hard work, but I envy the opportunity you have to enjoy these riches every day. And the other conservators?”

“One is rehousing some sixteenth-century prints on the far side of the room, and another is working on new bindings for books in which the bindings have failed. See this?” Lucy asked. “Post-it notes are the bane of my existence.”

“How so? I couldn’t live without them,” I said. “I wouldn’t remember half the things I have to do.”

“What holds them in place are little globules of adhesive that explode when you stick them to a page. The adhesive is stronger than the paper, so it eats away and makes the paper translucent if left there too long. That’s a constant problem for us. We go from the excitement of saving documents of great historical importance to the tedium of repairing everyday damage caused by a reader’s carelessness.”

“What was Tina doing?” Mike asked.

“Same stuff as us, when she worked for the library,” Lucy said. “Right now, I’m not sure. She was given permission to use the lab-as long as someone else from staff was in here-’cause she was doing private consulting with some of the big donors.”

“Did you see her with any maps? Atlases?”

“From time to time, Detective. She liked working on maps. She had a great talent for that.”

“And recently? In the last few weeks?”

“No. I’m sure of that.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I would have noticed. Old maps are so beautiful, so visual-none of us would have missed seeing them in these close quarters.”

“Where did she work?”

“Whatever table was free. Sort of depended on what she was handling.”

Mercer was more interested in the tools that were mounted on the walls and grouped in coffee mugs on shelves above each cubicle. “Tell us about these.”

Lucy loosened her scarf and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. I looked at the clear skin on her neck and flashed back to the sight of the deep wounds that brought Tina Barr’s life to an end. No wonder Mercer was examining the array of knives displayed above the workstations.

“About what? My tools?”

“Yeah.”

“Each of us has a set, Mr. Wallace,” Lucy said, walking to her desk in the next alcove. “Part of the conservation process is that we each create our own tools, to fit our styles, the size of our hands, the kind of work we do. Mine are over here.”

She picked up an ivory-colored piece about the size of a ruler with a sharp, pointed end. “This is a bone folder. It’s made from the bones of a cow’s leg.”

So much for the refined life of a library conservator-animal glue and spare body parts.

“I bought it at an art supply store, then ground and burned it until it fit exactly the shape I like to work with.”

“What do you use it for?” I asked.

“It’s got thousands of functions here. Leather bruises very easily when it’s wet, so if I’m working on an old binding, I’ll smooth it carefully with this. Or turn damp pages of a book that’s got water damage.” Lucy began to point out her equipment with the tapered end of the bone folder.

Above her head were mason jars and coffee mugs filled with a mix of household objects and art tools. Pens, pencils, and brushes were clustered in some, while others held tweezers and an assortment of dental picks.

Then there were knives, several dozen of them in all sizes in a large plastic tub on her shelf. “Why so many knives?” I asked.

“They look like weapons, not tools,” Mike said. “Sharp?”

“Razor sharp,” Lucy said, reaching for one to hand to Mike. “We have to keep them that way. We’re cutting all the time-from fine paper to edging the leather on bindings.”

“Mercer, check those shapes,” Mike said.

Lucy described their importance. “These are lifting knives, and these are scalpels I use to carve fine lines. These are skifes, and the blades that go with them.”

“Skifes?”

Lucy slowed down and smiled at me. “Taxidermists’ tools. They’re used to skin dead animals. Gets the top layer off without puncturing the flesh. Serves the same purpose on book bindings. And these are paring knives.”

“May I see one?” Mike asked.

“Sure,” Lucy said, standing on tiptoe to remove one from the mug in which it was standing.

The knife was about seven inches long, with an angled steel blade and wooden handle. Mike held it in his left hand and with his right thumb tested the cutting edge. “Wicked.”

He passed it to Mercer, who studied the beveled edge. “We ought to take a few of these to the morgue. They’d make a pretty distinctive cut.”

“Was Tina…?” Lucy couldn’t finish the sentence.

“We’re not sure what happened to her yet,” Mike said. “We’re just trying to help the medical examiner out. Did Tina keep her tools here?”

“Some of them,” Lucy said. “They’re in this next cubicle.”

The three of us followed her to the desktop at which Tina had been working. Her station had been left in perfect order. It was a smaller space than Lucy’s, and there were fewer tools displayed, but Tina had been spending only part of her time at the library.

“Would you know if any of her knives or scalpels was missing?” Mike asked.

“I haven’t any idea. These things are our security blankets. I can look at my shelves in the morning and be able to tell you exactly where everything is. But that’s unique to each conservator, and we never touch each other’s tools.”

“Visitors,” Mercer said. “Did anyone visit Tina while she was here?”

Lucy thought for a few seconds. “When she was on staff, of course people from other departments dropped in to talk about their needs, or just take a break. Lately? The usual people coming by to queue up their projects, beg us to jump the line. Some of them know Tina, so they chatted.”

“Any outsiders?”

“Just one that I can think of, several weeks ago.”

“Do you know who he was?” Mike asked.

“She, actually. It was a woman. And I didn’t know her.”

“Can you describe her?”

Lucy closed her eyes and pulled up an image. “An attractive woman, about fifty years old. Tall and really thin, a little overdressed and jeweled for eleven in the morning.”

A good shot Tina’s visitor was Minerva Hunt. “Did they arrive together?”

“No. She rang the bell and one of my colleagues let her in. She asked to see Tina, so I assumed it was someone she was working with.”

“Do you know any of the Hunts?” Mike asked.

Lucy looked over her shoulder to see whether Jill was in earshot, and when it seemed she was far enough away, Lucy leaned back against one of the worktables.

“Not personally,” she said. “Sometimes we joke about the collectors. We know some of their books so well, we feel like we’ve lived with them. In my imagination, I’ve been talking to Jasper Hunt the Third for years, even though we’ve never been introduced. His father had exquisite taste, that’s for sure.”

“Have you met either of his children?” Mike asked. “Talbot or Minerva?”

“Just his leather-bound babies, Detective.”

“The woman who came to see Tina,” I said. “Do you remember how long she stayed?”

“I don’t think she was there more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

“What did she want?”

Lucy looked away from me. “None of my business. I don’t know.”

“But your desks are so close to each other. They’re back to back.”

“They argued, okay? That’s all I know. The woman seemed to have a bad temper. I didn’t hear words, but she was displeased about something Tina had done. She sort of chewed Tina out, and then she left.”

“Did Tina talk about it at all?”

“Not to me. Not to any of us, I’d guess,” Lucy said. “But as soon as the woman left, Tina broke down and started crying. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was just upset and needed to go outside for some fresh air. That’s all I know.”

“What day that was?” Mercer asked.

Lucy was beginning to understand there was some importance to what she had observed. I wondered if that would jog her memory.

“Two, maybe three weeks ago. You can ask my colleagues if they can place it. The only other person who engaged Tina in any kind of-well, personal conversation was Mr. Krauss. But he actually came to see me. Sort of surprised him that she was here, and I guess he asked her what she was doing.”

“Krauss?” Mike asked, looking at me for help in placing the name.

“Would that be Jonah Krauss?” I asked Lucy. I remembered that Alger Herrick had mentioned his name to us.

“Exactly. He’s on our board. Drops in every now and then-a lot of the trustees do-to see what we’re working on and what we might need.”

“Did Krauss know Tina?”

Lucy pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “He certainly seemed to. I can’t imagine he has a clue who I am, but once he caught sight of her, he made a beeline right for her and called her by name.”

“Did you-?”

“I didn’t hear a word, Detective, and it all seemed very cordial. I just thought it was strange that they knew each other.”

There was an index card tacked to the wall on the side of Tina’s desk. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Might be the list of things she had in the works. I track mine on my laptop, but everyone does it differently.”

I pulled the thumbtack and the card came off with it.

“Is this Tina’s handwriting?” I asked.

Lucy glanced at the card. “Yes. She always printed.”

I thought of the call slip that had been in Tina’s pocket. This was not written in the same style. I read the list to Mike as Mercer walked off, making his way around the far end of the large room.

“‘The Nijinksy Diaries-Performing Arts Collection. The Grunwald Correspondence-Rare Books. The Whistler Sketches-drypoint-Art and Architecture.’”

Lucy Tannis interrupted me. “That can’t be current, Ms. Cooper. Those are all items from collections in this library. Tina had finished those projects. I saw the papers down here when they were assigned to her. She’s only doing private work now.”

I skipped to the bottom of the list. “What does this mean, Lucy? ‘The Hunt Legacy.’ What’s that?”

She squinted to look at the words, then shook her head. “I’m pretty familiar with the Hunt Collection. I’ve never seen that expression before.”

I passed the card to Mike, who pocketed it as Mercer called his name.

“Wassup?”

“In here, in the back room. You and Alex come quick. Leave the girl.”

Mercer’s voice had an urgency to it that I rarely heard. I broke into a trot and made my way around the old wooden tables that filled the room.

There was an archway into the adjacent space, a darkened work area that had large mechanical equipment-paper cutters and a standing book press-and along one side of the room, where Mercer was waiting, three huge stainless steel chests were lined up end to end.

“These are freezers,” he said, lifting the lid of the first one to show us the books-four of them-inside. “Remember how cool Tina’s body was?”

“Yes, but this doesn’t look like it’s been disturbed at all,” I said.

Mercer lifted the closure of the second one and revealed a single volume, folio size, resting in its icy storage container.

When he shifted to the third freezer and hoisted its heavy lid, I gasped. The book inside was small and slim, its gold calf binding elaborately decorated with gilt designs and lettering: The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The cold blast of air from within the chest couldn’t hide the dark red stain, most likely blood, that had seeped into the pale calfskin-and three strands of brown hair that had frozen onto the cover of the old book.