“I can see why you love this,” I said. “I realize it’s very hard work, but I envy the opportunity you have to enjoy these riches every day. And the other conservators?”
“One is rehousing some sixteenth-century prints on the far side of the room, and another is working on new bindings for books in which the bindings have failed. See this?” Lucy asked. “Post-it notes are the bane of my existence.”
“How so? I couldn’t live without them,” I said. “I wouldn’t remember half the things I have to do.”
“What holds them in place are little globules of adhesive that explode when you stick them to a page. The adhesive is stronger than the paper, so it eats away and makes the paper translucent if left there too long. That’s a constant problem for us. We go from the excitement of saving documents of great historical importance to the tedium of repairing everyday damage caused by a reader’s carelessness.”
“What was Tina doing?” Mike asked.
“Same stuff as us, when she worked for the library,” Lucy said. “Right now, I’m not sure. She was given permission to use the lab-as long as someone else from staff was in here-’cause she was doing private consulting with some of the big donors.”
“Did you see her with any maps? Atlases?”
“From time to time, Detective. She liked working on maps. She had a great talent for that.”
“And recently? In the last few weeks?”
“No. I’m sure of that.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I would have noticed. Old maps are so beautiful, so visual-none of us would have missed seeing them in these close quarters.”
“Where did she work?”
“Whatever table was free. Sort of depended on what she was handling.”
Mercer was more interested in the tools that were mounted on the walls and grouped in coffee mugs on shelves above each cubicle. “Tell us about these.”
Lucy loosened her scarf and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. I looked at the clear skin on her neck and flashed back to the sight of the deep wounds that brought Tina Barr’s life to an end. No wonder Mercer was examining the array of knives displayed above the workstations.
“About what? My tools?”
“Yeah.”
“Each of us has a set, Mr. Wallace,” Lucy said, walking to her desk in the next alcove. “Part of the conservation process is that we each create our own tools, to fit our styles, the size of our hands, the kind of work we do. Mine are over here.”
She picked up an ivory-colored piece about the size of a ruler with a sharp, pointed end. “This is a bone folder. It’s made from the bones of a cow’s leg.”
So much for the refined life of a library conservator-animal glue and spare body parts.
“I bought it at an art supply store, then ground and burned it until it fit exactly the shape I like to work with.”
“What do you use it for?” I asked.
“It’s got thousands of functions here. Leather bruises very easily when it’s wet, so if I’m working on an old binding, I’ll smooth it carefully with this. Or turn damp pages of a book that’s got water damage.” Lucy began to point out her equipment with the tapered end of the bone folder.
Above her head were mason jars and coffee mugs filled with a mix of household objects and art tools. Pens, pencils, and brushes were clustered in some, while others held tweezers and an assortment of dental picks.
Then there were knives, several dozen of them in all sizes in a large plastic tub on her shelf. “Why so many knives?” I asked.
“They look like weapons, not tools,” Mike said. “Sharp?”
“Razor sharp,” Lucy said, reaching for one to hand to Mike. “We have to keep them that way. We’re cutting all the time-from fine paper to edging the leather on bindings.”
“Mercer, check those shapes,” Mike said.
Lucy described their importance. “These are lifting knives, and these are scalpels I use to carve fine lines. These are skifes, and the blades that go with them.”
“Skifes?”
Lucy slowed down and smiled at me. “Taxidermists’ tools. They’re used to skin dead animals. Gets the top layer off without puncturing the flesh. Serves the same purpose on book bindings. And these are paring knives.”
“May I see one?” Mike asked.
“Sure,” Lucy said, standing on tiptoe to remove one from the mug in which it was standing.
The knife was about seven inches long, with an angled steel blade and wooden handle. Mike held it in his left hand and with his right thumb tested the cutting edge. “Wicked.”
He passed it to Mercer, who studied the beveled edge. “We ought to take a few of these to the morgue. They’d make a pretty distinctive cut.”
“Was Tina…?” Lucy couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We’re not sure what happened to her yet,” Mike said. “We’re just trying to help the medical examiner out. Did Tina keep her tools here?”
“Some of them,” Lucy said. “They’re in this next cubicle.”
The three of us followed her to the desktop at which Tina had been working. Her station had been left in perfect order. It was a smaller space than Lucy’s, and there were fewer tools displayed, but Tina had been spending only part of her time at the library.
“Would you know if any of her knives or scalpels was missing?” Mike asked.
“I haven’t any idea. These things are our security blankets. I can look at my shelves in the morning and be able to tell you exactly where everything is. But that’s unique to each conservator, and we never touch each other’s tools.”
“Visitors,” Mercer said. “Did anyone visit Tina while she was here?”
Lucy thought for a few seconds. “When she was on staff, of course people from other departments dropped in to talk about their needs, or just take a break. Lately? The usual people coming by to queue up their projects, beg us to jump the line. Some of them know Tina, so they chatted.”
“Any outsiders?”
“Just one that I can think of, several weeks ago.”
“Do you know who he was?” Mike asked.
“She, actually. It was a woman. And I didn’t know her.”
“Can you describe her?”
Lucy closed her eyes and pulled up an image. “An attractive woman, about fifty years old. Tall and really thin, a little overdressed and jeweled for eleven in the morning.”
A good shot Tina’s visitor was Minerva Hunt. “Did they arrive together?”
“No. She rang the bell and one of my colleagues let her in. She asked to see Tina, so I assumed it was someone she was working with.”
“Do you know any of the Hunts?” Mike asked.
Lucy looked over her shoulder to see whether Jill was in earshot, and when it seemed she was far enough away, Lucy leaned back against one of the worktables.
“Not personally,” she said. “Sometimes we joke about the collectors. We know some of their books so well, we feel like we’ve lived with them. In my imagination, I’ve been talking to Jasper Hunt the Third for years, even though we’ve never been introduced. His father had exquisite taste, that’s for sure.”
“Have you met either of his children?” Mike asked. “Talbot or Minerva?”
“Just his leather-bound babies, Detective.”
“The woman who came to see Tina,” I said. “Do you remember how long she stayed?”
“I don’t think she was there more than ten or fifteen minutes.”
“What did she want?”
Lucy looked away from me. “None of my business. I don’t know.”
“But your desks are so close to each other. They’re back to back.”
“They argued, okay? That’s all I know. The woman seemed to have a bad temper. I didn’t hear words, but she was displeased about something Tina had done. She sort of chewed Tina out, and then she left.”
“Did Tina talk about it at all?”
“Not to me. Not to any of us, I’d guess,” Lucy sai
d. “But as soon as the woman left, Tina broke down and started crying. I asked if she was okay, and she said she was just upset and needed to go outside for some fresh air. That’s all I know.”
“What day that was?” Mercer asked.
Lucy was beginning to understand there was some importance to what she had observed. I wondered if that would jog her memory.
“Two, maybe three weeks ago. You can ask my colleagues if they can place it. The only other person who engaged Tina in any kind of-well, personal conversation was Mr. Krauss. But he actually came to see me. Sort of surprised him that she was here, and I guess he asked her what she was doing.”
“Krauss?” Mike asked, looking at me for help in placing the name.
“Would that be Jonah Krauss?” I asked Lucy. I remembered that Alger Herrick had mentioned his name to us.
“Exactly. He’s on our board. Drops in every now and then-a lot of the trustees do-to see what we’re working on and what we might need.”
“Did Krauss know Tina?”
Lucy pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “He certainly seemed to. I can’t imagine he has a clue who I am, but once he caught sight of her, he made a beeline right for her and called her by name.”
“Did you-?”
“I didn’t hear a word, Detective, and it all seemed very cordial. I just thought it was strange that they knew each other.”
There was an index card tacked to the wall on the side of Tina’s desk. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Might be the list of things she had in the works. I track mine on my laptop, but everyone does it differently.”
I pulled the thumbtack and the card came off with it.
“Is this Tina’s handwriting?” I asked.
Lucy glanced at the card. “Yes. She always printed.”
I thought of the call slip that had been in Tina’s pocket. This was not written in the same style. I read the list to Mike as Mercer walked off, making his way around the far end of the large room.
“‘The Nijinksy Diaries-Performing Arts Collection. The Grunwald Correspondence-Rare Books. The Whistler Sketches-drypoint-Art and Architecture.’”
Lucy Tannis interrupted me. “That can’t be current, Ms. Cooper. Those are all items from collections in this library. Tina had finished those projects. I saw the papers down here when they were assigned to her. She’s only doing private work now.”
I skipped to the bottom of the list. “What does this mean, Lucy? ‘The Hunt Legacy.’ What’s that?”
She squinted to look at the words, then shook her head. “I’m pretty familiar with the Hunt Collection. I’ve never seen that expression before.”
I passed the card to Mike, who pocketed it as Mercer called his name.
“Wassup?”
“In here, in the back room. You and Alex come quick. Leave the girl.”
Mercer’s voice had an urgency to it that I rarely heard. I broke into a trot and made my way around the old wooden tables that filled the room.
There was an archway into the adjacent space, a darkened work area that had large mechanical equipment-paper cutters and a standing book press-and along one side of the room, where Mercer was waiting, three huge stainless steel chests were lined up end to end.
“These are freezers,” he said, lifting the lid of the first one to show us the books-four of them-inside. “Remember how cool Tina’s body was?”
“Yes, but this doesn’t look like it’s been disturbed at all,” I said.
Mercer lifted the closure of the second one and revealed a single volume, folio size, resting in its icy storage container.
When he shifted to the third freezer and hoisted its heavy lid, I gasped. The book inside was small and slim, its gold calf binding elaborately decorated with gilt designs and lettering: The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The cold blast of air from within the chest couldn’t hide the dark red stain, most likely blood, that had seeped into the pale calfskin-and three strands of brown hair that had frozen onto the cover of the old book.
TWENTY-TWO
“What’s with the freezers?” Mike asked Lucy.
“Why? Do you think…?”
Jill had gone over to Lucy when she heard us run to the back. She was standing with her arm around the girl, who seemed to be trying to absorb the fact that Tina’s body may have been concealed right under her nose.
“How often do you open them?”
“Not-not often. Not for months at a time,” Lucy said.
“What are they for?”
“Disaster recovery. Freezing the books stops mold from doing more destruction. It kills insects that have infested them. You want to do some damage control to a hurt volume, you put it in the freezer, record that in the log in the back room, and nobody opens it again for six months.”
“And everybody working down here knows that?” Mike asked.
“Yes. But not just us. All the curators upstairs know it, too. So do most of the collectors we deal with,” Lucy said, wide-eyed with concern, as though Mike were accusing her of Tina’s murder.
“Frozen coffins,” Mike said to none of us in particular. He was trying to get a signal on his phone. “How frigging convenient. Plenty of room for a short broad. Odor proof-and it already stinks in here. An unwelcoming basement room with no windows for anyone to peek inside. Whoever killed her could have kept her on ice for weeks, if the mayor hadn’t made the evening so convenient for a nearby disposal.”
“The thermostat’s right on top,” Mercer said. “I imagine he turned up the temperature till he took the body out.”
“Same effect. Cool but not so stiff he couldn’t move her after the rigor passed,” Mike said. “By the time somebody discovered a body, there’d be so much contamination in this room that no forensics would be of any value.”
“Cell phones don’t work down here,” Lucy Tannis said. “You can use the landline near the door.”
“Why don’t you wait here with Lucy while I grab the Crime Scene crew?” Mike said to Mercer. His impatience was palpable. “She can explain this place to the guys. You show them what you found. I’ll take Coop and Jill with me. We’ll make that map room the command post.”
Mike took the stairs three at a time, yelling back at us to wait for him in Bea Dutton’s office.
There was no reason for me to separate Jill and Bea at this point. I walked to a corner of the room, away from them, to call Pat McKinney and give him an update. I was unlikely to get any goodwill out of letting him be the one to tell Battaglia about the developments, but it was worth a try.
By the time I finished answering McKinney ’s questions, Mike had returned.
“Did you catch up with the guys?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re going to process the conservation lab first. You going downtown to your office?”
“That makes the most sense. If you need a warrant drafted or any subpoenas, I’ll be at my desk.”
“Excuse me, Mike,” Bea said as she approached us. “Are you going to keep me locked up all day? I don’t want to be a nuisance, but if your plan is just to make me sit here, I’ll go stir-crazy.”
I could tell that he liked her manner-feisty and direct.
“Now how about that assignment I gave you? That should keep you busy.”
She laughed at him. “A historical footprint of Bryant Park? Who do you think prepared the one that was actually used when the place was restored twenty years ago?”
Mike walked me to the door, and I turned to thank Jill for her cooperation.
“Dead bodies, right? Like I told Alex, nothing but dead bodies down there.”
“Dead wrong, Detective,” Bea said, wagging a finger at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Books. Eighty-eight miles of books.”
“What happened to the bodies?” Mike asked.
I stopped in the doorway, thinking about the spot near Sixth Avenue where Tina Barr’s body was found. It was a long city block away from the c
onservation lab just below us on the Fifth Avenue side of the library. “What do you mean, there are books under the park?”
“The entire piece of land below Bryant Park was turned into an underground extension of the library a while back.”
I let go of the door and it closed behind me. Mike rubbed his hands together and then scratched his head. “Connected to this building?”
“By a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot-long tunnel,” Bea said, coming alive again as she explained the setup to us. “They couldn’t build an extension that would change the appearance of the main library, because that’s landmarked. So when the park was closed for restoration, the old Revolutionary War battleground and the potter’s field were dug up. Originally, the stacks were right beneath us in this section, but we outgrew that space ages ago. The Bryant Park extension has greater capacity than this entire library.”
“How do we get there?” he asked, ready to dash off to the nearest stairwell.
It had never occurred to any of us when Barr’s body was found the night before that below the park was a cavernous structure that coupled with this one.
“May I show them, Jill?” Bea turned to ask.
“Yes, of course. Whatever they need.”
“Does anyone work in there?”
“There are two levels underground. That’s where the conveyor system that takes books up to the call desk winds up, so there are always a few staffers on the first floor throughout the day to pull the requested volumes and ship them back upstairs. The lower floor is usually deserted.”
“And books?”
“Just a few million of them,” Bea said as I held open the door.
“Valuable ones?”
“Everything here is valuable to somebody.”
Her short legs couldn’t move fast enough for Mike. This time, she led us down the other direction of the long corridor to a service elevator, trying to keep up with Mike’s pace. She had to catch her breath as we waited for the doors to open, and then waited again for the old lift as it creaked and groaned to deliver us down to the north end of the basement.
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