Chapter 32

Outside the Belvedere Hotel, TeSS took Daniel aside.

“The titles that Bobby stole from the Pratt-could you get me a list?”

He needed a second to understand what she wanted. “There is no list, remember? Bobby would never admit to stealing the books, only the pillbox. Over the years, the staff has discovered that some rare titles are missing, but it’s not like we catalog them. What would be the point? They can’t be replaced.”

“Didn’t the library director ever make a report to the board? I assume the trustees would have had to be informed.”

“Maybe.” He rubbed his chin. “That never occurred to me. I guess I can poke around and see if there’s such a thing. When do you want it?”

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s bound to be a confidential document, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure I can just hand it over to you on the main floor of the Pratt.”

“I’ll come to your house tomorrow night. Then we can go over the titles together.”

“You think there’s a clue in the titles of the books Bobby stole?”

“Something like that.”

She returned to Daniel’s little carriage house shortly after eight the next night, bringing takeout from the Helmand, an Afghan restaurant, and a bottle of Chilean white wine. Daniel struggled to look brave, like a well-reared little boy who knew he must not make faces at the strange food on his plate. Tess had thought the meatballs of lamb and ground beef were a good compromise between his plebeian tastes and her need for something exotic.

“I told you I’d provide the food,” he said.

“Nonsense. You’re doing me a favor. Now let’s see the list.”

He looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t get it. I didn’t want to ask anyone for it, because it’s a confidential document and I couldn’t figure out where such things are kept. Probably in the director’s office.”

“I guess I could file a FOIA,” Tess said, sampling the aushak, raviolis filled with leeks. “But that would take forever.”

“A foya?”

“Freedom of Information Act. The library can’t sit on a document just because it’s embarrassing. We could force the board to release the list of the missing books, but that would take weeks.”

“You can’t do that,” he said, a nervous edge creeping into his voice. “They’d fire me. They’d know I was the one who told you.”

“But you told the cops, too, right? I mean, I could have learned about the list from someone else. And I’d have one of my newspaper friends put the request in. I think regular citizens can file FOIAs, but it packs more punch coming from a newspaper.”

“The thing is”-Daniel seemed calmer, now he knew the story of Bobby Hilliard’s thefts couldn’t be traced to him so easily-“the thing is, the existence of a list was pure conjecture on your part. Don’t you need to know a document exists before you can”-he paused, enjoying the new bit of jargon-“before you can FOIA it?”

“Good point.” Tess sipped a little of her wine, which Daniel had poured into an old jelly glass. He was drinking a Yuengling out of the bottle. She hated to be finicky, but the right stemware did help wine reach its full potential. What she really craved was a glass of water. Daniel had built a fire, but it was almost too hot; the small house felt ovenlike. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the spines of the books all around them seemed to swell slightly from the heat, which made the room feel that much smaller.

“You know what? I don’t need the list anyway. I’ll just start writing down the names of all the titles in your library here, then take them back to the Pratt and check to see how many of them were stolen.”

Daniel’s piece of aushak fell into his lap. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, I assume some of them really are from flea markets, while others were stolen from the library. But is it half? Only a third? It will take a while to put the list together, but I have plenty of time.”

A pounding sound filled her ears and she was tempted to believe it was Daniel’s telltale heart, the beat rising in a sudden, wild panic at the realization he had been found out. But the pounding was her own heart, her own blood. Daniel, if anything, had grown eerily calm, pushing away the plate of barely touched food and taking another swig of his beer.

“The last thing you have,” he said, “is time.”

Now it was her turn to say, “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have time. I would give you four hours at the outside, maybe three. After all, it’s not an exact science, burying someone alive.”

Tess stood up so quickly she knocked her chair over and backed away, her gun out of her trench-coat pocket. That was part of the reason she was so hot. She hadn’t dared remove her coat, because she might not have been able to get to her gun.

After all, she had known all along she was making a date with a killer. As the movie at the Poe Museum said, you could always find the answer in the books. Daniel had paraded his stolen goods, making them appear legitimate.

“You’re not burying anyone, alive or otherwise, Daniel. You’re going to go to your phone, call nine-one-one, and say you want to turn yourself in.”

He looked up, his boyish features as mild and bemused as ever. “Too late.”

“It’s not too late, it’s your only choice. People know I’m here, Daniel. I wouldn’t have come here without telling someone what I suspected.”

“No, I mean it’s too late because I’ve already buried her. I had to take the day off-I called in sick, because I knew you were on to me, or going to be-and put her someplace where she should keep for a few hours. She’s my insurance policy.”

“Who?” Tess had visions of a small child, snatched from the streets in some urban neighborhood where such a disappearance wouldn’t merit the attention it might receive in more suburban climes.

“Cecilia. I would have preferred Crow, or even Whitney, because I think you care more for them. But I needed someone I could overpower. Besides, I liked Cecilia the least. I don’t much like noisy people, people who call attention to themselves. Never have.”

Tess continued to hold her gun on him, wishing her experience at bluffing was based on more than card games with her family. “There’s nothing to be gained by harming someone else, Daniel. You’re flirting with the death penalty now. I told Rainer and Tull that I think you killed Yeager and Bobby. You attacked Shawn Hayes, too, didn’t you? Like the purloined letter, you left everything in plain sight. The books you stole-not Bobby, you-even the weapon used to beat Hayes. It’s over there, in the corner, and I bet anything Shawn Hayes’s blood is still on it. I thought it was a walking stick the first time I was here.”

They both looked to the corner, where the six-foot pike leaned against the wall, as innocent as any object could be-considering it had almost killed a man.

“A six-foot walking stick with a point on one end? I thought you were smarter than that, Tess.”

“But that was your intention, wasn’t it? Put a Winans pike next to your cross-country skis and your bicycle, and it takes on the cover of its companions. Put your stolen goods on display, and everyone assumes they must be yours. A lawyer once told me that drunks work in bars, child abusers work in day-care centers, and elephant fetishists join the circus. I guess book thieves inevitably are drawn to libraries. Then again, you said as much, the first time I met you.”

Daniel clasped his hands and leaned forward. Tess reflexively took a few steps back.

“I’m not silly enough to wrestle you for your gun,” he said. “As I said, I have my insurance policy. I went over to the Medical Arts building, where Cecilia keeps an office. I told her I wanted to talk about some discrimination issues at the Pratt and asked her to come outside with me so I could show her the documentation I had in the trunk. It was so easy to push her in and then to take her-well, to take her to the place I had prepared for her. I wonder if her girlfriend has started to miss her yet.”