Lethal Legacy

THIRTY

I knew Mike well enough to do as he directed before I asked why. He was on his cell to Mercer, asking if he’d seen any sign of Travis Forbes from the alley behind the building.

“Well, he hasn’t come back out yet. Call if you spot him.”

“What’s a Collyer?” I asked as we waited in the quiet hallway, the door still ajar.

“Cops, firemen-all 911 responders-that’s the designated expression for a house so full of junk it’s treacherous to get inside, or back out,” Mike said, reaching up to pull newspapers off the top of the nearest pile. “Look at this. Dated three years ago. You never heard of the Collyer brothers?”

“No.”

“Two very rich guys who lived in Harlem in the 1930s. Well educated, from a prominent family, but really eccentric. They saved every piece of junk they could find on the street. Hoarders, they were. Hermit hoarders,” he said, reaching up to the second pile. “Here you go, catalogs from rare book auctions in London.”

Still no sign of Travis. Mike handed two of the catalogs to me. “ 2002,” I said. “A little late to put a bid in.”

“Homer Collyer, the older brother, went blind. So the younger one began to save newspapers,” Mike said, sweeping his arm across the piles of Forbes’s out-of-date dailies.

“Why?”

“In case Homer ever regained his sight, Coop. Then he’d have all the news that he’d missed to read. They even booby-trapped the whole place against thieves. So the younger one got stuck in one of his own traps and buried in the rubble, while Homer starved to death. Rats took care of the rest of him.”

“I get the point.”

“You get a call to a Collyer, you don’t know what to expect to find under the debris. Junk? Stolen books? Maybe a body or two?”

Mike’s phone rang. He listened and then repeated to me what Mercer told him. “Travis just peeped out the back. Made eye contact with Mercer. Maybe now he’ll move our way.”

“Hey!” Forbes called out from the far end of the hallway. “You can’t come in here. You can’t just break the lock.”

“I swear I didn’t,” Mike said. “I guess it just-just fell. What have you got here, Travis? You know how dangerous it is to keep paper jammed in here like this? A regular fire hazard.”

Travis Forbes was either embarrassed by Mike’s discovery or simply didn’t like to make eye contact. I guessed him to be in his late twenties, about my height, with a sad expression lingering within the intense gaze of his dark, bespectacled eyes.

“I understand,” he said.

“What’s with yesterday’s news?” Mike asked.

“I started saving things for Eddy. Things I didn’t think he could get in prison. It’s-it’s just a habit.”

“Somewhere along the way, I guess Eddy told you the federal can is like summer camp, no? The Times, the Journal-that’s all those swindlers and crooks read.”

“I told you, it’s a habit. It’s what I do.”

“You into rare books, too?” Mike asked, taking the catalog from my hand.

“No. No, I’m not. I-I was keeping that for Eddy.”

“This auction took place years before your brother’s arrest, years before he went to prison,” I said.

“Then he must have given it to me to hold for him,” Travis said, shrugging. “I’ve got lots of Eddy’s stuff.”

“The feds ever been here?” Mike asked.

“These things were released to me after Eddy got in trouble. He had to give up his apartment and had nowhere to store them. The FBI went through everything he owns. They know all about it.”

It was as obvious to Travis Forbes as it was to me that Mike wanted to get inside and ferret through every piece of paper, looking for stolen books and maps, or anything else of value. It was also obvious he didn’t have a leg to stand on, other than the one that was planted inside the door.

“Who lives here with you?” Mike asked.

There was a wooden board on a slice of the wall beside the door, with several jackets hanging on pegs.

“Nobody.”

“You collect clothes, too?” There were windbreakers in different colors and weights on top of one another, and a workman’s denim jacket with the label of a Maine utility company on the sleeve, covering the upper part of a white lab coat.

Forbes didn’t answer.

“When was the last time Eddy was in town?”

“He hasn’t been here since before he was sent away. I haven’t seen him.”

“Pets. You got pets?”

“Tropical fish. I have an aquarium.”

I imagined Forbes sitting alone in his fortress of useless papers and old books, staring at brightly colored fish in a tank. He seemed far too aloof and cold to be a companion to any warm-blooded animal.

“What do you do, Travis?”

“I wait tables.”

“Where?”

“Near the Columbia campus, on Broadway. Place called the Lion’s Pub.”

“How long have you been doing that?” I asked.

“Since I ran out of money to finish graduate school, a year and a half ago. I’m a neurobiologist. At least, I will be when I complete the program.”

“What are your hours there?”

“Eight p.m. till we close. Four in the morning.”

“And last night?” I asked.

“Same,” Travis said, while I tried to penetrate his blank stare. “What does this have to do with my brother?”

My exhaustion had me seeing suspects at every turn. If Travis Forbes had the same access to the library that his brother once enjoyed, he could have found his way to Tina on Wednesday evening, in the conservators’ office, and back again to move the body last night. But if his alibi held tight, he wouldn’t have been standing on a nearby street corner-with us in his sights-at the time the body was found and the ghoulish, laughing caller rang on Tina’s cell.

“Do you know a girl named Tina Barr?” Mike asked, refocusing the conversation.

“Who?”

“A friend of your brother’s.”

“Eddy’s a lot older than I am. We never really socialized together.”

“This is someone he worked with,” Mike said. “A conservator. Restores rare books and old maps.”

“I know what a conservator does, Detective,” Travis said, growing more churlish by the question. “Ask Eddy. You must have his number.”

“Why don’t you give it to me, just in case?” The ex-con was likely to have two phones-one that his probation officer used and one for his friends and family.

“I’ll have to ask him if he wants me to do that.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Not in here, you won’t,” Travis said, taking his hands out of his pockets to try to close his front door, dislodging Mike’s foot.

Mike tried to keep his balance by grabbing at the jamb with his left hand while his right one settled on Travis Forbes’s wrist. “Sorry. I get it. We’re out.”

Travis shook loose of Mike’s accidental grasp. At the same moment, we both saw the cuts on the back of Travis Forbes’s left hand. Long narrow strips of red-lined flesh protruded from both ends of a bandage strip.

“What’s with the scratches, pal?” Mike asked. “Your fish got fangs?”

The soft-spoken young man covered his bad hand with the good one. “Leave me alone.”

“You ought to have that looked at,” Mike said. “Could get yourself a nasty infection. I got a doc who’ll check it out for you.”

Mike wanted to see the injury, just as I did. He wanted to compare the size and shape of the wound to the marks on Tina Barr’s neck. Maybe she had tried to defend herself with one of the sharp tools from her own desk.

“I’ve already been treated,” he said, putting both hands back in his pants pocket.

“By whom?”

Footsteps charging down the staircase overhead signaled the reappearance of Shalik, on his way from Ms. Jenkins’s apartment to run her errands.

“How’d you get those cuts?” Mike asked. “You drop a steak knife on the job? I’m trying to help you out here.”

Now only Mike’s fingers on the door jamb prevented it from closing. “Who cut you?”

Shalik stopped to listen to the conversation, squatting on one of the steps, his nose between railings of the banister. But Travis Forbes didn’t speak.

Shalik let out a low hissing sound, and Forbes’s head snapped up to look at him.

“Quiet, kid,” Mike said. “I’m asking you once more, Travis, before I tell Ms. Cooper here to get me a subpoena to photograph your hand. Who cut you?”

“Hisself.”

Shalik repeated the word he had said the first time, when I had misheard him.

“Look in his pocket, man. He do it at night sometimes in the summer, sitting on the stoop. He crazy, Detective.”

“A subpoena for what?” Travis Forbes said, withdrawing his right hand from his pocket again. He spread it open and in it was a razor blade. “Talk to my shrink. I didn’t think my problem was illegal.”

Travis Forbes unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and started to roll up his sleeve. Scars lined his inner arm, and marks that looked like they’d been left by lighted cigarette butts dotted the skin on the outer side.

Mike’s hand dropped to his side.

“Take care of yourself, Travis,” he said, backing away. “Here’s my card if I can do anything to help.”