Lethal Legacy

by Linda Fairstein

  “I mean, did he display them, or did he hide them inside other volumes?”

  “He was a bookman, Mr. Chapman. Ten, twenty, thirty years after he bought the world map, there had never been another peep about the original one. Nothing about its existence or its value since the first news accounts of its discovery. My father told me that Grandpapa lost interest in it, just like everyone else.”

  “So Jasper Hunt bought this map a hundred years ago,” Mike asked, “let me guess-for sport?”

  “Why do very rich men collect rare objects, Mr. Chapman? Paintings, coins, motor yachts, Arabian stallions, Ming vases?”

  “Got me on that one. I gave up on collecting when my mother threw out nine shoe boxes full of my baseball cards after I moved out of the house.”

  “So other very rich men can’t claim the ultimate prize,” Hunt said. “If there were two of these maps in the world, and a reclusive prince owned one of them, then Jasper Hunt Jr. wanted the other. It sat in his library, in a specially made leather box, for thirty years after the idea of owning it had captured his fancy, and by then no one in the world seemed to give a damn about it. He was long onto other, more talked-about treasures. He didn’t live long enough to see the revived interest in his forgotten map.”

  “Does anyone-perhaps your father-understand why the twelve panels of your grandfather’s map became separated?” I asked.

  Talbot Hunt cleared his throat. “You can’t make sense of an eccentric. If my father knows why, he’s never told me.”

  Either that was true or Hunt wasn’t letting go of any other family secrets in front of Bea Dutton and Jill Gibson.

  “Did your grandfather own a first edition set of this Na poleonic expedition?”

  “Yes, he did, Mr. Chapman,” Hunt said. “But my father gave that to the library-oh, I’d say twenty years ago or more. Our curator-and the accountants-will have a record of that gift.”

  “Bea,” Mike said, standing up and rapping on the trestle table with his fisted hand. “So where’s the atlas? Let’s have a look.”

  “We can locate it for you, certainly. And pull it,” Jill said. “Why do you ask?”

  “That’s the volume in which Prince Albert found his copy of the map. Maybe Jasper was playing on that fact, if he was such a prankster. This panel we just found,” Mike said, sweeping his arm over the trestle table, “was nested inside the Audubon folio, which used to belong to Grandpa Hunt. Maybe the killer was looking for places the map might have been concealed by the old man as one of his tricks, in another one of his books. Was that his brand of eccentricity?”

  Talbot Hunt nodded. “Grandpapa wanted to keep my father on a leash, never assuming he would inherit everything without working at it.”

  “Wouldn’t an atlas be part of the collection in this very room?” Mike asked.

  “You want to know how things disappear, Mr. Chapman?” Hunt said, almost bellowing. “Certainly there are maps and atlases in here. But there are more maps in the general stacks, and yet again others in the various rare-book rooms. We’ve got one collection in the building-the Spencer-that’s just about rare bindings. The curator there doesn’t give a damn if he’s got roadways or rodents between the covers-it’s all about the leather and decoration on the outside of the books. If there’s even a drawing of a tobacco leaf-say, in a depiction of the Virginia colony-in one of the cartouches, then that map might be housed in the Arents Collection. The maps are spread out everywhere throughout the library.”

  “Why isn’t the Hunt Collection all in one room, like most of the others?” I asked.

  “Because the library didn’t have enough space to maintain it that way by the time his gift was made,” Hunt went on. “The Audubons, for example, and the Egyptian expedition volumes-well, he agreed to the library’s plan to let them reside where its curators deemed they were most appropriate.”

  “So where are these particular books?” Mike asked.

  Jill Gibson spoke more calmly. “At the time of Napoleon’s travels, Egypt was considered part of the Orient. So they’re in our Orientalia section-Asian and Middle Eastern.”

  “You see what I mean, Chapman? They run these great libraries like a shell game,” Hunt said, walking to the far side of the room. “I can’t tell you how many millions we’ve given to these people over the years. I’ve got every damn right to pull the plug and demand an accounting immediately.”

  “Surely the card catalogs have-” I started to say.

  “They tell us nothing, Ms. Cooper,” Hunt said. “Maps are rarely mentioned in library catalogs, and those within the atlases aren’t ever individually described. Take a razor to a page and it’s hard to prove what was ever there. They’re unmoored, maps. Unmoored and generally ignored. Not like books at all.”

  Jill looked at her watch. “Perhaps some of the curators have arrived. I can call and have someone bring us the Egyptian atlas.”

  “I don’t think you understand the plan,” Mike said. “There are cops at every door of this place by now. No one is touching any of these books unless we’re along for the ride. And no one’s entering the building until the crime scene detectives have been over every inch of this place.”

  “That could take days. You can’t close the public library.”

  “Faster than you can say Dewey decimal system, lady,” Mike said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Coop, call Battaglia. Tell him to get on the horn with the commissioner. The pair of them can shut this mother down in a minute.”

  “I’ll wait in Jill’s office, then,” Talbot Hunt said.

  “Mercer, why don’t you escort Mr. Hunt to the nearest exit?”

  “These are my books, Chapman.”

  “That’s not so,” Jill said. “You’ve got no personal claim to any of the things your grandfather gave to us.”

  “Don’t embarrass yourself, Mr. Hunt,” Mike said, pointing at the neatly embroidered letters-TH-on Hunt’s shirt, just visible below the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t have monogrammed handcuffs. You wouldn’t want to be photographed when I eject you wearing metal bracelets.”

  “I’ll hold you personally responsible, Detective,” Hunt said, turning his back to us.

  “For what?”

  Hunt’s freshly polished loafers snapped like gunshots on the bare floor as he stomped toward the exit of the map room. He was furious, but couldn’t express a reason that made any sense. “For the loss of…of…of any valuable property that should have been rightfully restored to me.”

  “Shoulda, woulda, coulda. You didn’t even know the frigging map existed for most of your life,” Mike said as Mercer followed after Hunt. “Tell me the real story about it, why don’t you? Or sue me. Maybe you actually need all the savings I got in my piggy bank.”

  “Would you mind telling us where you spent the evening last night?” I asked as Hunt pulled open the door.

  “I wasn’t in Bryant Park, Ms. Cooper. I’m not a baseball aficionado.”

  “Strikes me as a much more sporting type, Blondie, doesn’t he?” Mike said, sneering at Hunt. “Cold-blooded and calculating. Fox hunting, deer shooting, and all those genteel upper-class pastimes where you kill things for the fun of it.”

  “Tina Barr isn’t worth anything to me dead, Mr. Chapman,” Talbot Hunt said, glancing back over his shoulder. “You ought to talk to my sister, Minerva. There’s a girl who knows how to hold a grudge.”

  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 detai
l 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. “Tw
ice. 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.”