Tail Gait

May 1, 2015

Resting across from Lee Park, the main library in downtown Charlottesville was in the old post office at 201 East Market Street. Like all those post offices built from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, the building was imposing, restrained, and well made. Its white pillars lent the massive shape a bit of lightness. Having been converted to a library, the once lovely interior had been violated to serve a different kind of public. The décor is what passed for efficiency at the time (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) and did indeed serve the reading public well. Ugly though the interior was, the fantastic people who worked there more than made up for it.

Deputy Cooper sat at a computer screen in a cubicle off the center area. Those nearby and reading glanced up from time to time, keeping an eye on the blonde in uniform. A few vagrants walked in, spotted an officer, and walked out. Others, library patrons, searching for information, walked by, frankly stared, but kept walking.

After hearing Harry’s latest intelligence from Snoop, Cooper asked the head librarian if she could see what Frank had been reading. The Patriot Act allows law enforcement officials to pry into ordinary citizens’ reading habits, thinking they might not be ordinary citizens, but terrorists posing as same. Coop, a county officer, claimed no such privilege, but after speaking to one of the librarians who in fact recognized Frank, she was allowed to scan his records. Fallen though Frank was, a bit of that old masculine magic remained. All the women working in the library knew him, nodded to him, and were recognized in turn.

Now and then, Cooper took a break from the screen, which hurt her eyes. She looked over her notes. Frank preferred nineteenth-century literature, most of it out of fashion now. He’d checked out again and again all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, including the non–Sherlock Holmes books. He read the memoirs of any secretary of state who had written of foreign affairs of his or her time in office. He’d twice checked out the books of George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. He read everything Henry Kissinger ever wrote, along with masses of books on the American Revolution, some written from the British point of view. She scribbled down a few of these, scrolled down the screen more. When she saw Fifty Shades of Grey, she laughed out loud.

Frank did not incline toward fiction, but she found, after that initial shock, more soft-core books written for women. Poor Frank, late to the game.

—

She finished up and asked if she might interview a few of the staff who worked the floor. A young lady, perhaps in her mid-twenties, came into the small conference room, closing the door behind her.

“Emma Quayle?”

“Yes, Ma’am, Officer.”

“This won’t take long. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Frank Cresey. Your boss mentioned that you probably saw him more than anyone, as you often are in charge of the front desk.”

“I am.”

“How did he behave?”

She blinked, thought for a moment, then replied, “He was quiet, always polite.”

“Was he clean?”

“Yes. His clothes were torn and I worried about him in the winter. His jeans were thin, holes in them, and he wore old sweaters. The staff and I found a parka that would fit him and we gave it to him for Christmas.”

“So, Miss Quayle, you all liked him?”

“Oh, yes. He was never trouble, and if someone came in here off the mall, drunk or, I don’t know, just loud or bizarre, Frank would take them outside. He was protective of us.” She folded her hands together. “We were all so sad, upset, when we read what had happened.”

“I can imagine. Have you any idea who might have wished him ill? Did he ever mention a problem or a person who was a problem?”

She shook her head. “No. He was quiet. And he read a lot.”

“Yes, that I know.” Cooper smiled.

After dismissing Miss Quayle, she briefly questioned three other staff members, then spoke to the head librarian, Mrs. Deveraux, in her well-lit office.

“You have good people working here.”

“Thank you. Some might think that being a librarian is an easy job, a soft one, but these days, not hardly,” the slender lady observed.

“Well, I know, like the sheriff’s department, you all are constrained by budget.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Mrs. Deveraux smiled. “And like you all, we deal with the public day in, day out. A library is a community resource. There are lectures, meetings, outreach activities. The bookmobile, things like that. And we try to help those who can’t read very well. We do a lot of work with the various literacy programs. You would be shocked, Deputy, to know how many illiterate citizens live in Albemarle County, one of the richest counties in this country.”

Cooper blinked. She was surprised. “I had no idea. On the issue of serving all, you see a lot of the residents, for lack of a better word, who live on the mall?”

She nodded. “A few. Frank was our true reader. Some of the others come in and pretend to read on those cruelly cold days or when the weather is dreadful. When I first started my career, we had no training to deal with the homeless. We do now.” She stopped, then her voice lowered. “I think law enforcement, librarians, and postal workers see more than many others. Those without a home or much hope find us, if for nothing else, a brief touch of security.”

“I wish I had an answer,” Cooper responded.

“I wish I did, too.” Mrs. Deveraux brightened. “For all that, it’s a wonderful career, at least it has been for me. We are at the center of the community, we know so many people who are doing things. You learn a lot and you make good friends.”

“What was your opinion of Frank Cresey?”

“Lost. Carried a deep sense of failure. He had a curious mind, when it was clear. Like so many people with alcohol damage, he’d killed a lot of brain cells.”

“Ever troublesome?”

“Never.”

“Any ideas as to who might have wanted him dead?” the deputy asked.

“None.” Her mouth straightened, tight. “He’d ruined his life. He was a vagrant and, unfortunately, an alcoholic, but he didn’t deserve to be killed and stuck under a tree.”

Cooper looked into her eyes. “That’s why I am here, Mrs. Deveraux, to find his killer.”

—

That afternoon was breezy and warm, promising a wonderful first day of May. Snoop had been canvassed on the mall for labor. Given the good weather, people were landscaping like mad, a pent-up demand after a long, hard winter. Snoop and two other men from the mall were picked up by one of Paul Huber’s landscaping trucks, a four-door three-quarter-ton Ford, so they all fit in.

He sat in the backseat, bouncing down Garth Road toward The Barracks, out where a series of expensive houses were being constructed on a few acres. To the people buying these huge houses, ten acres seemed like quite a lot of land. At least they could protect themselves from their neighbors by planting rows of border trees, usually Leyland cypress, since they grew fast. Snoop figured that’s what they would be doing today, digging holes, lots of holes, in a straight line.

The truck pulled up to a humongous eight-thousand-square-foot brick, neo-Georgian mansion, nearly finished. Snoop was last out of the truck, and the flapping sole of his shoe became loose. Cursing, he looked down, his duct tape had worn through. Standing next to the truck’s open door, he placed the exhausted shoe back up on the stair rail, a shiny chrome tube, to see if he could rewrap the sole, but the tape was shot and not a thread of adhesive was left.

“Dammit.” He put his foot back on the brown pea-rock drive, when a familiar shape caught his eye.

Tucked under the truck’s front seat was his letter opener, the one Snoop gave to Frank.

Hastily, he pulled it out. Something covered the wooden blade. It looked like dried blood.