Death Sentences

by Otto Penzler

  When I finished, Patti remained silent for a few moments. Then she said, “I really can’t let anyone back to see the donations. It takes several days for us to sort them, and lots of people would like to get back there and see what we have before it goes on the floor.”

  “I understand,” I said, although I didn’t. Were people really in such a hurry to get their hands on Goodwill stuff?

  “It’s not unusual for this to happen,” Patti said. “Families donate things and then some other family member comes along and wants it back. It happens at least once a week.”

  “Of course. But …”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I had made my argument. I was at Patti’s mercy, and it looked like she was going to turn me away.

  “Did you say this book your dad wrote was a western?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” Patti said. “My grandpa read westerns all the time when I went to visit him. I can picture him in his chair reading Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey. Who was the other one? The one everyone used to read?”

  “Max Brand?” I said.

  “That’s it.” Patti looked lost in thought for a moment. I took that as a good sign. I wondered if she were back in her childhood somewhere, in her grandparents’ house, coloring on the floor or playing with dolls while her grandmother cooked in the kitchen and the old man sat in a chair lost on a cattle drive or a gunfight or a saloon brawl.

  “So what do you think?” I finally asked. “Can I take a peek?”

  She snapped out of her reverie. “Sure,” she said. “But don’t tell anyone I let you do this.”

  The back room was huge. The ceilings were high, the metal beams and girders exposed. The smell I noticed at the front of the store was even more intense back there, probably because the back room held things that weren’t good enough to be put out front. I didn’t want to think about what those things were.

  Patti led me through the racks of clothes, the shelves of toys, the clutter and refuse from who knew how many lives.

  “When were these items brought in?” she asked.

  “A couple of weeks, I guess.”

  “And you’re just looking for books?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think we keep the books over here before we sort them.”

  We went to the far back corner of the storeroom. There were boxes and boxes of books, and then more books that weren’t in boxes. Hardcovers and paperbacks. Books for kids and books for adults.

  “It’s a lot,” I said.

  “Take your time,” she said. “We’re open until nine.”

  I found a plastic stool and pulled it over by the boxes of books. I sat down and felt my shoulders slump a little.

  Did I really want to do this?

  I thought back over what I knew. A couple of people—one of them a murderer—believed my dad wrote a book. And published it. And it became the rarest book in the land.

  Did any of this make sense?

  I had already stayed an extra day. I thought of work and my life back at the university. I was already behind and overwhelmed. Did I need to spend more time on what very well may be a wild goose chase?

  But I couldn’t stop. I looked at those boxes of books … the potential that something belonging to and created by my father … I couldn’t turn away.

  I started opening boxes and looking. I looked until my back hurt, and I had to stand up and stretch. I discovered a few things: A lot of people acquired and then disposed of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. A lot of families apparently didn’t hold onto the potty training books they bought for their children. And a lot of people read mystery and romance novels. Loads and loads of them.

  Patti came by once to check on me. I told her I didn’t know how much longer I would keep looking, and she again told me that was just fine with her.

  “I wish I could get one of our employees to help you, but we’re short staffed.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Our business is up with the economy being so bad. More and more people shop here for their clothes and furniture.”

  “I hope they buy some books, too,” I said.

  “They do. Books and CDs and DVDs. We sell it all. People like to be entertained when times are bad.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll let you keep at it.”

  I did. For another hour after she left my side. When I first saw the box with my mother’s handwriting on the side, I almost went right past it. In a thick black marker, she had scrawled “Old Books.” My mother used a distinctive “d.” She always added a looping swirl to the end, her own personal version of a serif font.

  I pulled that box close to me and opened it. My father’s books. The big-dick books, mostly spy novels. Robert Ludlum. Ken Follett. Frederick Forsyth. Eric Ambler. I went on to the next box with my Mom’s writing on it. Same thing. Dad’s books, but not Dad’s book. I opened two more with the same results. I wanted to take them all. I wanted to tell Patti that they all belonged to me, and I was going to haul them away whether she wanted me to or not. I had no idea what I would do with them. I really didn’t want to read them. I just wanted to have them. I wanted them in my possession instead of someone else’s.

  And then I found the smaller box, also with Mom’s handwriting on it.

  The box was sealed with several layers of packing tape. The box looked old, worn, and a little beaten, like it had been shipped and moved around more than once without being opened. I couldn’t get the tape off of it. I had to use a key to dig into and slice open the thick tape. It required a lot of effort. I sliced and dug and pulled until the lid came open.

  The top of the box was stuffed with bubble wrap. I pulled that off. Then there was a layer of thin cardboard. I tossed that aside.

  And then I saw it. The cover showed a rugged cowboy on his horse. They stood on a ridge that overlooked a small western town. The cowboy packed a revolver on his hip, and the stock of a rifle protruded from a scabbard on his horse. The cowboy looked lean and tan and strong. He squinted into the distance, toward the town. He looked capable and alone.

  Across the top in thick, Western-style lettering, it said: Rides a Stranger a novel by Herbert Henry. I lifted up the copies on top. There were more below. Many more. I guessed the box held about twenty of them in clean, crackling new shape despite their age. They were well preserved and perfect. If what the book collectors and Detective Hyland told me was true, I was staring at a twenty thousand dollar box of books.

  I had found them.

  I picked up one of them, gently, like I was handling a bird’s egg. I paged to the back and looked for an author bio. There was a small one. It simply said, “Herbert Henry is an author who lives in the Midwest. This is his first novel.”

  I went back to the front and found the dedication, the one that had caused so much trouble. It was there, just as Hyland said. “For M.A. with love.”

  And that was it. No author photo. No acknowledgements. Just that little bio that could have been about anyone.

  None of this told me Dad wrote the book.

  I turned to the back and read the copy there:

  Brick Logan rides alone. He travels the western trail accompanied only by his horse and his Colt revolver. He rides to forget his past and the tragic loss of the woman he loved.

  But now he enters another western trail town, one more in a long line of stops he makes. And this time Brick finds himself drawn into the life of Chastity Haines, a beautiful widow and the mother of a young son. Brick helps save the town from the merciless influence of a ruthless cattle baron. But when the fight is done, will Brick choose the life of a family man and give up his fiddlefooting, trail-haunted days. Or will he forever remain alone … and a stranger.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Dad.”

  “Did you find what you wanted?”

  I nearly jumped. It was Patti. She stood over me, her smile hopeful.

  “I think so,” I said.
I gently put the copy of Rides a Stranger back into the box, and then I thought better of it. “I’ll take all of these.” I indicated the boxes that had belonged to my dad. I took my wallet out and grabbed all the cash I had. It amounted to about seventy-seven dollars. “Here. Just take this.”

  “We’d probably sell these for a dollar apiece. Fifty cents for the paperbacks.”

  “Just take it all,” I said. “For your time and trouble.”

  “Can we help you put them in your car?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. But I picked up the box of Rides a Stranger to carry on my own. Before I left with it, I reached into the top of the box and took one copy out. “Here,” I said. “It’s a book my dad wrote.”

  “Really?” she said. “Wow. I’m glad you found it.”

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Don’t put it out with the other books. Just take it. If you have the chance, look it up on the internet.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Consider it a donation as well. From my family.”

  Patti looked puzzled. “Okay,” she said. “If my grandpa were still alive, I’d give it to him. It looks like the kind of book he’d like.”

  I nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  I pulled up to the door of the Goodwill store, and the same bearded guy who had directed me to Patti lifted the five boxes of books that once belonged to my dad—and now belonged to me—into the trunk of my car. I had placed the other box, the valuable one, on the passenger seat, so I could keep a close eye on it.

  The Goodwill employee took being outside as an opportunity to light a cigarette. He leaned back against the side of the building while I finished situating the boxes in the trunk. I had one stop to make. I was going to go back to the police station and give a copy of the book to Mary Ann Compton. I didn’t know if they’d let her have it, but I would trust Hyland to let me know. If they wouldn’t take it or guarantee its safety, I intended to find her lawyer and pass the book along there. But I wanted Mary Ann to have one.

  “You live around here?” he asked.

  “I used to,” I said. “My parents do … well, my mom does.”

  My mom’s house. Mom lives around here. I had to get used to saying that.

  “Neighborhood’s changed a lot,” he said.

  “Sure.” I closed the trunk.

  “Houses are rundown now. People don’t take care of things.”

  “Well, thanks for your help,” I said.

  “My family used to shop here all the time when I was growing up.”

  I looked at him. “You mean at Goodwill?”

  “No,” he said. “I thought you grew up around here. Don’t you remember the old IGA grocery store that used to be here?”

  I looked at the building. It started to come back to me. There was a grocery store there when I was a kid, one we went to from time-to-time. To be accurate, I should say that my dad and I shopped there. Mom didn’t like it. She felt it was too small, too narrow in its selection. It was possible the store closed and became a Goodwill all those years ago because a lot of people shared my mom’s feelings. But Dad liked to go there. If Mom sent him out on some errand—buy a gallon of milk, buy a loaf of bread—or if he needed something for himself—shaving cream or a newspaper or—

  He always looked at the books when we went into IGA. They had a long rack of paperback books and magazines near the front of the store, and we always stopped there before we checked out. And Dad always bought a book. A spy novel, a mystery, and, yes, a western. Did he think about his own writing when he stood in front of that rack? Did he think about what might have been if he hadn’t given the whole thing up for Mom and me? He never showed anything. He always seemed perfectly content, but who knew what was really going on inside of him as he looked at all of those books?

  “There’s a parking lot behind here as well, right?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And it looks over the lot next door? There’s a fence, and you can see down into the next lot? Right?”

  The guy nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You used to come here when you were a kid. I used to come with my dad. And you know what? He used to show me the horses back there.”

  “Horses?”

  “Yes. There was an old, abandoned house next door. Apparently, the neighborhood wasn’t always great. And out back of that house, someone kept a couple of horses. They just wandered around in the yard over there, cropping grass or whatever. Do you remember that?”

  The guy ground out his cigarette and shook his head. “I don’t remember any horses.”

  “They were there,” I said.

  “Could be,” he said and then turned and went back inside.

  But I remembered. I remembered it very clearly. Dad and I used to come to the IGA, and when we came out to go the car, he would turn to me and say, “Do you want to look at the horses?”

  And I always said yes. I thought it was magic that Dad knew they were there. And how did he know I would want to see them?

  Did he contemplate all the western stories he could have written—should have written—as he looked at those horses that seemed so out of place in the middle of that neighborhood? So lonely and forgotten?

  I jumped in the car and drove around back. The parking lot looked pathetic, the asphalt cracked and stained. I drove over to the edge of the lot where the rusting and rickety chain-link fence still stood. I climbed out, taking one last look at that box of books. My dad’s legacy. Besides me, the most lasting mark he made on the world.

  I climbed out and walked over. I put my hands against the fence, felt the ragged and flaking metal beneath my hands. I searched.

  The remains of the house had sunk into the ground. Nothing remained but a pile of boards and a crumbling chimney. And no matter how long or hard I looked, the horses, of course, were long, long gone.

  XIV

  The Caxton Library & Book Depository

  John Connolly

  1

  LET US BEGIN with this:

  To those looking at his life from without, it would have seemed that Mr. Berger led a dull existence. In fact, Mr. Berger himself might well have concurred with this view.

  He worked for the housing department of a minor English council, with the job title of “Closed Accounts Registrar.” His task, from year to year, entailed compiling a list of those who had either relinquished or abandoned the housing provided for them by the council, and in doing so had left their accounts in arrears. Whether a week’s rent was owed, or a month’s, or even a year’s (for evictions were a difficult business and had a habit of dragging on until relations between council and tenant came to resemble those between a besieging army and a walled city), Mr. Berger would record the sum in question in a massive leather bound ledger known as the Closed Accounts Register. At year’s end, he would then be required to balance the rents received against the rents that should have been received. If he had performed his job correctly, the difference between the two sums would be the total amount contained in the register.

  Even Mr. Berger found his job tedious to explain. Rare was it for a cab driver, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus, to engage in a discussion of Mr. Berger’s livelihood for longer than it took for him to describe it. Mr. Berger didn’t mind. He had no illusions about himself or his work. He got on perfectly well with his colleagues, and was happy to join them for a pint of ale—but no more than that—at the end of the week. He contributed to retirement gifts, and wedding presents, and funeral wreaths. At one time it had seemed that he himself might become the cause of one such collection, for he entered into a state of cautious flirtation with a young woman in accounts. His advances appeared to be reciprocated, and the couple performed a mutual circling for the space of a year until someone less inhibited than Mr. Berger entered the fray, and the young woman, presumably weary of waiting for Mr. Berger to breach some perceived exclusion zone around her person, went off with his rival instead. It says much about Mr. B
erger than he contributed to their wedding collection without a hint of bitterness.

  His position as registrar paid neither badly nor particularly well, but enough to keep him clothed and fed, and maintain a roof above his head. Most of the remainder went on books. Mr. Berger led a life of the imagination, fed by stories. His flat was lined with shelves, and those shelves were filled with the books that he loved. There was no particular order to them. Oh, he kept the works of individual authors together, but he did not alphabetize, and neither did he congregate books by subject. He knew where to lay a hand on any title at any time, and that was enough. Order was for dull minds, and Mr. Berger was far less dull than he appeared (to those who are themselves unhappy, the contentment of others can sometimes be mistaken for tedium). Mr. Berger might sometimes have been a little lonely, but he was never bored, and never unhappy, and he counted his days by the books that he read.

  I suppose that, in telling this tale, I have made Mr. Berger sound old. He was not. He was thirty-five and, although in no danger of being mistaken for a matinée idol, was not unattractive. Yet perhaps there was in his interiority something that rendered him, if not sexless, then somewhat oblivious to the reality of relations with the opposite sex, an impression strengthened by the collective memory of what had occurred—or not occurred—with the girl from accounts. So it was that Mr. Berger found himself consigned to the dusty ranks of the council’s spinsters and bachelors, to the army of the closeted, the odd, and the sad, although he was none of these things. Well, perhaps just a little of the latter: although he never spoke of it, or even fully admitted it to himself, he regretted his failure to express properly his affection for the girl in accounts, and had quietly resigned himself to the possibility that a life shared with another might not be in his stars. Slowly he was becoming a kind of fixed object, and the books he read came to reflect his view of himself. He was not a great lover, and neither was he a tragic hero. Instead he resembled those narrators in fiction who observe the lives of others, existing as dowels upon which plots hang like coats until the time comes for the true actors of the book to assume them. Great and voracious reader that he was, Mr. Berger failed to realize that the life he was observing was his own.