The Book of Lies

65

Where’sthevault? Isthebooktherenow? Canwegoseeit?” my dad, Serena, and I all ask simultaneously.

The husband and wife librarians look at each other. “Pretty important case you’re working on, huh?” the husband asks.

“Y’all are law enforcement?” the wife adds, suddenly excited. “Ooh, is this gonna be on the news?”

“Can we just see the book?” I plead.

“Sure, let me just—” The husband reads from the screen. “It’s a big one, too. Nearly six hundred pages.”

“What is it, Moby-Dick?” my father asks.

“No—but back to your Scripture—it is a Bible. A Hebrew one. Published 1875 by M. R. Romma. Says here ‘Russian.’ Poor condition. This book took a hell of a beating.”

“His father’s Bible,” I whisper to myself.

“You think this is it?” Serena asks, referring to Cain’s murder weapon.

“If it is—and he thought people were after it—maybe he donated it here to keep it safe,” I say as Serena nods.

“I’m confused,” says the wife librarian. “Why would someone be after a Bible?”

“We’re not exactly sure yet,” my father interrupts, doing his best to downplay. We’ve already got enough competition.

“Oh, and this is great,” the husband adds. “Says here the donor claimed the book was bound in . . . ready for this? . . . human skin.”

“Barf,” Serena says.

“I’ve heard of that,” his wife adds. “There was a seminar on it at the ALA last year. Back in the seventeenth century, they used to bind private anatomy books with skin,” she explains. “People are more twisted than people think.”

“Regardless, according to this, our reference team back then said that if it was anything, it was sheepskin or just cheap leather. They probably put it in Special Collections just to keep him happy.” Turning to us, he adds, “Everyone thinks their old books came straight from Gutenberg’s press. But if you tell ’em otherwise, they won’t donate the next year.”

Serena again tosses them a polite grin. But as my dad and I exchange glances, it’s clear what he’s thinking. According to the legends, Cain killed Abel with a book. According to the FBI, Jerry’s father had it. Whatever’s inside this skin book, it can’t be just a Russian Bible.

There’s a noise on our left. The turnstile again hiccups, and a new library visitor passes by us at the reference desk, heading for the microfiche room. None of us says a word until he leaves.

“We’d like to see the book now,” my dad insists.

“Yeah . . . no . . . that’s the pickle, isn’t it?” the husband replies, scanning the screen. “From what I can tell, it’s no longer part of our collection.”

“Someone checked it out?” Serena asks.

“Kinda.”

“What’s kinda?” I ask.

The librarian pauses, rechecking the screen. I lean my chest against the tall reference desk, squinting to read. He’s got the cursor on a text box that says:

DEACCESSIONED

7/27/98

“Deaccessioned?” my father asks. To my surprise, he’s back behind the reference desk, reading over the shoulder of the librarian. He’s swaying in place, even more nervous than the night I first found him. It’s not just from the computer. He’s now got a full view of the security monitors and cameras that overlook the various entrances to the building. He can see who’s coming.

“It means you gave it away, doesn’t it?” Serena asks, just as anxious.

“That’s part of running a library,” the husband explains, taking off his glasses. “Even with our offsite storage, there’s only so many copies of Harry Potter we need.”

“This isn’t Harry Potter—it’s a Russian Bible from the turn of the century,” my dad says. “How many of those can you possibly have?”

“Around here? You know how big the Jewish population used to be in this area? When those generations die, where do you think the kids give all their books? I told you, we’ve got thousands of Bibles. So if we had this old Russian one and then someone brought in a brand-new one, or even a few similar ones . . . Every year we have to pare down the collection. And it sounds like this copy was already in terrible condition.”

“So you destroyed it?” Serena asks in clear panic.

“Destroyed? We’re a historical society—no, never destroy,” he explains. “Old books get donated: to hospitals, churches, we used to do this big event with one of the local nursing homes.”

“Is there any record where this one went?” I ask.

He pauses to think about it, his fingertips flicking his goatee. “Y’know, that’s a fair question. Sometimes these older entries—especially the ones that used to be in the card catalog . . .” His fingers tap at the keyboard, and a new window opens on-screen.

He leans in to read it. “Ahh, yeah—that makes sense for a book like this, and that’s just when it opened.”

“Please just tell us where the book is now,” my father demands, still eyeing the views from the security cameras.

“You have to understand, most places won’t accept old Bibles. But there’s one place that goes through them like holy water.” With a kick of his foot, the librarian rolls backward in his chair and let’s us see the destination for ourselves.

O.S.P.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

“Trust me, you don’t want to,” the librarian warns. “But your Jerry Siegel book? From what it says here, in 1998, it became the official property of the Ohio State Penitentiary.”

“It’s in a prison?” Serena asks.

I wait for my father’s reaction, but he’s far too busy staring at the security monitors—and the familiar brown-haired woman who’s just appeared on-screen. Naomi’s here. Right outside the building.