“That two people were flayed by two different sick fucks,” she said firmly. “There are five hundred years between the cases. But I’m thinking that we shouldn’t view this type of sadistic murder as a purely modern phenomenon. Europe in the fifteen hundreds was a much more violent place. There were vicious, wacko criminals back then, too. But I can’t see the connection between the cases.”
“A phantom from the past,” said Morris with a smile, taking another bite of carrot. “It’s almost in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe. A psychotic killer is reanimated from the spine of a book.”
“The flayer returns,” she laughed with gallows humor. “But to be serious, we have to consider the distinct possibility that the murderer knew about this book and was somehow inspired by it. And if there’s anyone who ought to be familiar with the books in the museum and the material they were bound with, it’s definitely the curator.”
“True enough. But for the moment, let’s consider it merely a hypothesis. I want to have the curator on our side, at least to start with.”
“Certainly. A woman is entitled to voice her opinions, that’s all,” said Felicia Stone, and she left.
Naturally, it was more than merely opinions. She was actually thinking that a man with a shithead for a son is probably a sick bastard himself. Such thoughts ought to have convinced her to leave the interview to someone else. But this was precisely why she wanted to do it herself. This investigation would eventually lead them to a pitiful sociopath. And she had gotten wind of one. If only she could follow the trail.
* * *
Boatwright Memorial Library was a big, redbrick building that overlooked the small Westhampton Lake located at the heart of the university campus. Like most of the other buildings, the library was built in the neo-Gothic style. For many Americans this style symbolized the height of old, venerable academe. The building itself was erected in the 1950s to organize a book collection that was about to get out of control. So even though the building was venerable, it wasn’t particularly old. Felicia also knew that the big, ostentatious bell tower was equipped with a digital carillon that entertained students and teachers in deep concentration with music twice a day.
She parked in the lot closest to the lake and took the path past the bell tower and into the library. On the third floor she found the office of Nevins Sr. She knocked on the door and was invited in by a deep bass voice.
Nevins’s office obviously belonged to someone who used books as a status symbol as much as a source of knowledge. All the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Nevins stood in front of a large, heavy desk and held out his hand. To Felicia’s great surprise, he looked friendly. He was dressed informally in a short-sleeved shirt with the top button undone and beige chinos. His hair was completely gray but still thick. The furrows in his brow and the bags under his eyes made him look peaceful and grandfatherly. He looked like a man who would be utterly incapable of raising a crowbar to strike someone, let alone flay someone alive. She shook his hand and noticed that he had a pleasantly firm grip. She reluctantly had to admit that she had a good first impression of him.
Reynolds had interviewed Nevins earlier, so they didn’t need to go through the formal details. Felicia Stone had also called in advance to tell him what she wanted to discuss.
“The book by Byron that Poe owned, well, that was actually a bit of a mystery. Nobody knows where he got it from. It’s a valuable treasure, of course. A first edition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a rarity under any circumstance. But this one had several things about it that were especially interesting. First of all, there’s the spine. I always thought that it had a unique quality about it; look at the color, almost grayish white. But human skin? That’s horrible. A few months ago we discovered that the spine is most probably a palimpsest.”
“And by that you mean that something was written on it earlier?” she asked, proud of what she’d learned recently. At the same time she was annoyed that she felt she had something to prove to Shaun Nevins’s father.
“That’s right,” said Nevins, impressed. “Do you have it with you?”
She opened a briefcase she’d been carrying as a shoulder bag and took out a clear plastic bag containing the book spine made of human skin. She also took out the book itself and placed both of them on Nevins’s desk.
“May I?” he asked politely, picking up the bag to remove the spine.
“Do you have gloves?”
“Of course, that’s basic equipment for a curator,” he said with a smile, taking a pair of white silk gloves from a desk drawer. He put them on, and then took the spine out of the plastic bag.
“Come over here,” he said, going over to a high white table in one corner of the room. He placed the spine on the table and smoothed it out. Then he turned on the work lamp and picked up a magnifying glass. He held it over the skin and let her look through it. It was possible to see letters, as if printed on the skin. But she couldn’t decipher any of the words.
“It’s in Latin,” said Nevins. “But I’m afraid that this palimpsest hasn’t resulted in great interest among scholars yet. It was newly discovered, and no one has begun any systematic work to interpret it. Most likely because it was viewed for so long as a rarity in Poe’s collection and not a possible historical source.”
“But is it possible to read the words?”
“Yes, probably. There are various techniques to discern this type of text, such as X-rays or photographs exposed in different light spectra to amplify the contrast in the washed-out ink. That’s what made it possible to read eighty percent of the underlying text on the famous Archimedes palimpsest at Johns Hopkins University. The subtext in that case turned out to be an unknown text by the Greek scientist Archimedes.”
“The one who said ‘Eureka!’?”
“Precisely. And did you know that Eureka was the title of Edgar Allan Poe’s only scientific work?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t have much of anything to do with the present matter, but it’s an obvious example of what a literary scholar would call ‘transtextuality.’ The idea that text can move from one work to another, and that old bits of text remain as a kind of subtext in new texts.”
“So when we say a text is deep, it only means that it contains things that were written before?” she asked.
“That’s one way to look at it,” said Nevins with a hearty laugh. “The concept of a palimpsest can be viewed as a prime example of that very idea. The fact that all texts are in a sense written over their predecessors. But to get back to your question: At present, the Archimedes palimpsest is kept at the Walters Arts Museum. There they used fluorescent X-ray photography to try and read the rest of the palimpsest. But on our palimpsest, I think there are indications that the skin has been written on more than twice, maybe as many as four or five times. That will make it more difficult to interpret the text, of course. But not impossible.”
“Haven’t you ever considered getting it analyzed?” Felicia Stone asked.
“I don’t have the authority. The book is the property of the museum, after all. It was Bond who made the discovery of the palimpsest this past spring. I got the impression that he initiated some investigations, but I don’t know much about it. But I did enter the new information about the book in the relevant databases. I also informed several appropriate scholars. I even mentioned the spine of the book at a conference I attended. But as I said, no one has taken the bait yet. That’s what often happens in academia. You wouldn’t believe how many discoveries have yet to be made. People no longer invest their time or risk their prestige on anything that might not pan out. Most likely it’s just some nonsense from the Middle Ages that’s written on the spine. Something for a master’s thesis, possibly.”
“But it could also be an important historical source, right?”
“Perhaps. In this instance it’s a problem that we don’t know where the spine of the book came from. But there happens to be a good clue that someone cou
ld follow up on if they were interested. There’s a name on the title page of the book.”
Nevins went back to his desk and held up the interior of the Byron book. She saw something written on the title page but thought it was illegible.
“I don’t know how this name is pronounced,” said Nevins. “I’ll write it down for you.” He wrote something on a Post-It note and gave it to her.
It said: “Broder Lysholm Knudtzon.”
“I’d guess it’s Scandinavian,” said Nevins.
“You’re something of a book collector yourself, Mr. Nevins,” she said, putting the note in her briefcase.
“I am, yes,” Nevins replied.
She looked around the room.
“The books in here, are they yours, or do they belong to the library?”
“Most of them are mine,” he said. “But they’re not as valuable as they might appear. These are books that I use in my work.”
“But you do own valuable books, too?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And where do you keep them?”
“At home,” said Nevins, noticeably more laconic.
“Is that safe?” she wanted to know.
“I have an alarm system. Tell me, is this relevant to the matter at hand?”
“No, I’m sorry, I was just making small talk.” But she thought to herself that she had somehow struck a nerve. Although she didn’t know what it might mean.
“You don’t have a safe where you keep your most valuable books, do you?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ve read about collectors who lock up their most valuable treasures, and I’ve always wondered what the point was in collecting something if you’re just going to hide it away from the rest of the world.”
“Yes, you might well ask,” Nevins chuckled. Felicia wondered if he sounded tense?
“You probably know a great deal about other book collections besides your own, I would think,” Felicia went on, trying for a more innocent tone.
“Yes, that’s true,” he said, apparently relaxing a bit now that the conversation had turned away from himself.
“Would you say that you’re familiar with collections abroad?”
“Yes, I go to Europe frequently.”
“And you go there to buy books for your personal collection?”
“Yes, if I’m not there for a conference related to my job, which does happen sometimes. I also take occasional assignments doing appraisals for insurance companies.”
“So if someone like you doesn’t know who this Broder Lysholm Knudtzon is, that must mean that Knudtzon doesn’t or didn’t have a particularly important book collection. Would you agree?”
She studied his face. She’d struck a nerve. He hesitated. Then he said, “I wouldn’t say that. The book world is huge, and I really don’t know that much about Scandinavian collections,” he said at last.
“I see,” she said. “But I assume you wouldn’t object to finding out more about it. Something tells me that you could work a lot faster regarding this matter than we could. The police need to find out as much as possible about this book, both about the spine and the text inside.”
“I’ll do my best.” Nevins thought for a moment. Then he said, “Actually, I’m taking a trip to Europe next week.”
“Really? Where are you going?”
“Frankfurt,” he said.
“Isn’t there a book fair there every year?” she asked, surprised at her own knowledge.
“There is, but I’m not going to a fair. I’m going to appraise a private book collection. The owner wants to insure it with an American company, and the company is sending me over to evaluate it.”
“I see.”
“I’ll also be meeting with some German colleagues over there. They may be able to help us with this Knudtzon.”
Felicia took the book spine and put it back in the plastic bag, which she placed in her briefcase. Then she thanked Nevins. As she was on her way out of the office, he suddenly said: “Felicia Stone. I think I’ve heard that name before. Tell me, weren’t you in the same class as my son, Shaun Nevins? In high school?”
She gave a start.
“I think you’re right,” she said, and felt like adding: You don’t forget somebody who’s raped you in the mouth. Instead, she said, “How is Shaun doing?” She wished she could say that she wasn’t the least bit interested in the answer to that question. But even though she’d spent her whole adult life trying not to think about it, or him, he’d gotten under her skin, and it would have made her happy to hear that things weren’t going well for him. She knew there was little chance of that.
“Shaun is married and has two sweet little girls. He’s a corporate attorney in New York,” said Nevins.
What did she expect?
“Good for him,” she remarked, then closed the door behind her and left.
On her way out of the library she thought to herself, Didn’t he seem a little too restrained about that book spine? Wouldn’t a newly discovered palimpsest be for a book curator what an undiscovered city is for an archaeologist? No matter if it’s some nonsense from the Middle Ages? Was the good Mr. Nevins holding something back?
* * *
When she got to her car, she took out her iPhone before she climbed in, and called Laubach. He picked up at once.
“What is it, sweetheart?” he asked.
“When you found that book,” said Stone, getting right to the point, “how much other paperwork did you get a chance to look through in Bond’s office?”
“Most of it, really, but just superficially. We were mostly looking for that book. Otherwise we gave priority to technical finds. You tacticians get to take the reading material after we’ve gone over it with our magnifying glasses. You know the drill.”
“Yes, I do. But do you know if anyone noticed any photographs, or even X-rays, in Bond’s office?”
Laubach answered at once. “No, not that I know of.”
“All right then,” she said, disappointed.
“Should there have been something like that there?” he asked. “Would that have made things fall into place for you?”
“I don’t know. Right now, it feels like the more I find out, the less it makes sense.”
“I know what you mean. But since you’re younger than me you should remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Most photos these days aren’t lying around on paper.”
“No, of course not. But I was thinking of big X-ray negatives, the kind they hang up on a light box.”
“You’ve been watching too many doctor shows on TV.”
“Could be. Has your team gone through Bond’s cell phone and PC?” she asked.
“His cell was an archaic model without a lot of storage. He was old. Many people his age don’t even have a cell phone. He had a PC in his office, but none at home. Preliminary examinations of the PC showed that nothing was encrypted or password-protected. We haven’t studied the individual files yet.”
“Could you put somebody on it? I think it’s important. Look for photos or X-ray pictures with text—possibly fuzzy, erased text.”
“X-rays of text? Are we looking for a hidden message here?” Laubach joked.
“You might say that,” she said, and ended the call.
Felicia Stone got into her car and turned on the ignition. The radio came on. And there was Chris Isaak, like a ghost from the past. Before she could turn it off, the song had crept under her skin. Yes, that’s how it felt. Literally. As if the lyrics were etched into her skin word for word. Like ink on parchment. She sat there paralyzed, listening until the song faded out. Then she looked down at her arm. Was something written there, under her skin? Wasn’t there an almost illegible impression of words? “Nobody loves no one.” She was having a hard time breathing. I’ve been working too hard, she thought. It’s only a reaction from having met the father of that pig. And then this song. What a creepy coincidence. She looked at her
arm again. Inspected her skin. Veins were all she saw. Naturally there was nothing written there. Then came the dangerous thought: I need a drink. And after that the even more dangerous rationalization: It wasn’t alcohol I was dependent on. It was pills. I can handle a drink.
She turned off the engine, and the radio was quiet before the DJ introduced the next song. Then she got out of the car. Dizzy, she stood there looking out over the calm lake. She recalled that once it had been her dream to attend this university. She was going to study literature and history, try to answer the big questions in life. She knew that each year the students who graduated would gather around this lake in the evening with candles lit in a beautiful farewell ceremony. At one time she was hoping to experience that herself. Instead her life had taken her to detox and rehab. Alaska, and then the police academy. Did she have regrets? She felt that her path was not of her own choosing. So how could she regret it?
Slowly she walked down to the shore of the lake. There she bent down and filled her hands with water and washed her face. It’s not a drink I need, she thought suddenly with a clear head. I need to go home.
By home she meant the apartment in Monument Avenue Park where her father still lived after her mother had died several years ago.
She parked on the sidewalk outside Brad Davis’s house. She knew that he still lived there, too, even though she hadn’t seen him in years. Sometime after she left home, he had stopped dealing. Most likely because his clientele had never included anyone but his friends in high school, and most of them went off to college. Evidently at some point he also cut back on smoking weed. He got married, at any rate. Got through college somehow and became an advertising executive. He had two kids, a boy and a girl, who played in the yard sometimes. Felicia could see that he had helped the kids to rehabilitate the tree house where she once upon a time had experienced her first, wet kiss. She’d never met Brad’s wife. This morning the Davis family’s house stood empty.
She fished out the key she still had and let herself into the stairwell leading to her father’s apartment. When she got inside she stopped and stared at the basement door. She looked at it whenever she came here, but she could never bring herself to go downstairs—not since that last time. She was breathing hard.
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