The Book of Lies

by Brad Meltzer

  “No one’s there,” my dad insists.

  I check the garage a third time. Maybe it’s just nerves, but ever since we left the motel—

  “If Naomi were here, we’d already be in handcuffs,” my dad points out.

  He’s right. But Serena wasn’t wrong yesterday. The human body can sense when danger’s nearby. It knows it. Just like I know when I’m being followed.

  “Let’s just get inside,” Serena says, grabbing my hand and tugging me forward. “Do we know which building it is?” she asks my dad.

  As we turn the corner, my dad doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. There’s only one building in sight: the spare 1960s-ugly structure that’s home to Ohio’s oldest and largest historical society.

  “You sure they have it?” Serena asks as we dart across the street and head for the building’s wide glass doors.

  “According to their online catalog, it’s in here,” my father says.

  A small sign out front tells us the building doesn’t open for another hour. But inside, a young janitor with a mop bucket and music earbuds proves otherwise.

  It takes two taps on the glass to get his attention.

  “We open at nine!” he calls back.

  “No. You don’t,” I tell him, pulling out the federal ID Timothy gave me and slapping it against the glass. As with the guard at the port, that’s all the janitor needs.

  With the turn of a key and a low thunk, the door opens, bathing us with warm air as we hop inside. I stare over my shoulder as we kick flecks of wet snow onto the wide welcome mat. The streets are empty. No one’s there. But it’s not until I turn around that I finally see exactly where we’ve run to.

  The wide beige room has a World War II biplane hanging from the ceiling. Across the floor, there’re at least a dozen antique cars, including, according to a sign, a 1898 Winton Phaeton on loan from the Smithsonian. On the left, I see brochures and a donation box for the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum.

  “I thought this was a library,” my father says.

  “We all share the building. Library’s down the hall, just past the gift shop,” the janitor explains as we take off. “By the way,” he calls out behind us, “welcome to the Western Reserve Historical Society!”

  Two minutes later, the long narrow hall descends and winds around to a set of turnstiles that dumps us into a tall, breathtaking reading room filled with shelf after shelf stacked with volumes of old books.

  “Did Jacobs leave that door open again?” a lean thirtysomething with an argyle sweater asks on our left. He’s handsome, with crisp brown eyes, a pointy goatee, and (this could be a winner) a gold cross hanging from his neck. According to his name tag, he’s “Michael Johnson—Librarian.” “Sorry—we don’t open till nine,” he says.

  I flash the ID, stepping close enough so he can read it. “How’d you like to help your government?”

  63

  They’re wrong,” Naomi said into her earpiece as she eased the steering wheel to the right and struggled to leave the three-lane roundabout that was filled with early morning traffic.

  “Nomi, I know you had a head injury, but listen to me: Satellites aren’t wrong,” Scotty replied in her ear. “People are wrong. Rental car companies are wrong. But LoJack tracking systems hidden in some secret spot below a rental car? Never wrong.”

  With a long honk of her horn, Naomi tried shoving her way past a silver minivan, but the van wouldn’t budge. “You think I don’t know the hell of morning carpool!?” Naomi screamed through her closed window. Ignoring her, the driver of the minivan pretended to scratch her head while giving Naomi the finger.

  “I hope your kid has disciplinary problems!” Naomi shouted back, now making her second lap around the roundabout.

  “Nomi, you need to calm down.”

  “This is calm,” she said as the VA hospital once again appeared in front of her. “I’m just saying: Why would Cal be here? They had full access to a hospital when they dropped me off last night.”

  “Maybe something happened. Maybe one of them got hurt.”

  “Yeah, but a VA hospital? Cal . . . Cal’s father . . . neither of them was military. Something’s not right.”

  “Just head for the parking garage around back. Based on the records and their LoJack signal, you’re looking for a white Pontiac parked near the southeast corner stairwell.”

  Eventually exiting the roundabout at East Boulevard, Naomi passed the VA hospital on her left and followed the signs for the parking garage around back. But just as she made the turn, she noticed, out of her passenger-side window, the wide set of short sandstone and taller red-brick buildings that overlooked the hospital’s parking garage . . . exactly at the southeast corner.

  “Scotty, you looking at a map?”

  “With a little blinking LoJack logo on it.”

  “Fine. Tell me what those buildings are across the street from the VA.”

  “Looks like . . . one’s an auto museum, there’s an Ohio historical society, plus a pretty big library.”

  The car bucked and bumped as Naomi climbed over the speed bumps in the VA’s parking garage. “What kinda library?” she asked, peering in her rearview.

  “You see something?” Scotty asked.

  “Not yet. But it makes a damn lot more sense than a VA hospital.”

  Half a block back, as Ellis drove past the hospital, he studied the taillights on Naomi’s car, then tapped his own brakes to make sure he stayed far enough away. To be safe, he kept a strong hand on Benoni in the passenger seat, scratching her neck just to ensure she kept her head down. Yesterday, he lost so much by listening to the Prophet . . . by not trusting himself. The bloody red spot in his right eye—the result of a broken blood vessel from the fall through the window—was a reminder of that. But as he’d realized when Naomi ran out of the hospital last night, there was no need for him to attack, or threaten, or do anything else to scare her away.

  To be moving this early, Cal had cracked the Map. The Book was close. And since Naomi was so much faster than the Judge—as long as she was doing her job, as long as she had their LoJack signal, Ellis was about to get a whole lot closer.

  64

  According to their Web site, even when it was founded back in 1867, the Western Reserve Historical Society has never been just an Ohio library. It’s a storehouse and research center dedicated to documenting and preserving over twenty million items—from the very first area phone books, to old wills, telegrams, birth certificates, even naturalization papers—that trace the earliest days of the state. They also have a hell of a map collection.

  Not that it’s doing us any good.

  “We’re missing something,” my dad insists. “We have to be missing something.”

  “What’s to miss?” asks the librarian with the pointy goatee, motioning at the wide mahogany reference table that’s now lost under the sea of maps, atlases, and original city plats. “I even pulled the guides from when Ohio was still owned by Connecticut. Trust me on this: King Avenue, King Court, Kings Highway, even King’s Cross back during the late 1800s. But near as I can tell, we’ve never had a King Street.”

  “And this map here,” I say, leaning both elbows on the table and scanning a small yellowed foldout entitled Official Vest Pocket Street Guide of Cleveland. “This is from 1932, right?”

  “Thirty-one or thirty-two,” the librarian says, nodding as Serena reads over my shoulder. She knows what I’m looking for: This is exactly what Jerry Siegel’s hometown looked like when his father was shot. But according to the map, still no 184 King Street.

  “Maybe it’s not an address,” Serena says.

  “What else would it be?” my father asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s someone’s name. Martin Luther King. Larry King. A famous King.”

  “King James,” the librarian blurts.

  “Y’mean like the Bible?” I ask.

  “Actually, I was talking about LeBron,” the librarian laughs. We all stare at him blankly. �
�Y’know, in basketball? The Cavs?” We still stare. “You’re not from Ohio, are you?” he asks.

  “Wait . . . go back to the Bible,” my father says. “There’s a section called Kings, right? Maybe the numbers . . .”

  “184 King Street,” Serena says, quickly hopping aboard. “Kings, chapter 18, verse 4.”

  “Or chapter 1, verse 84,” my father says, his voice already quickening. He searches around, glancing at the rows of books. “You got a Bible handy?” he asks the librarian.

  The librarian grins. “You kidding? We got three thousand of ’em.”

  As Pointy Goatee goes to fish one from the reference desk, there’s a metal kuh-kuunk behind us. I jump at the sound. Through the turnstile, a young, petite woman with a round face unzips her long, dirty-white winter coat and reveals stylish pink reading glasses around her neck.

  “Jacobs left the door open again?” she asks in a southern accent that’s well past annoyed.

  “They’re with me,” Pointy Goatee calls out, approaching the woman and giving her a quick kiss. “My wife,” he explains, turning our way as she hands him one of the two coffees she’s carrying.

  My dad and Serena force hello smiles. I don’t. It’s nearly nine a.m. If Naomi’s doing her job, our faces are minutes away from showing up on the local morning news. We’ve already been here too long.

  “Take a breath,” Serena says, still standing behind me and scratching my shoulder. My father works hard pretending not to notice.

  “Okay, so 1 Kings, chapter 18, verse 4,” the librarian announces as he puts his reading glasses to use. “Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water. That sound like anything familiar?”

  I look at my father. He’s looking at Serena. The word Prophet, plus a cave, where Mitchell Siegel supposedly found the Book of Truth. There’s no ignoring the coincidence. But even with that, it still means nothing.

  “I don’t think that’s it,” my father says, trying hard to keep it calm. But he’s right. Just another dead end.

  “What y’all working on, anyway?” Pink Glasses asks as she approaches the table, warming her hands around her cup of coffee.

  “184 King Street. Mean anything important to you?” her husband asks.

  “I know King Avenue,” she says.

  “Nope. King Street.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s funny, though—almost sounds like the vault.”

  We all turn toward her. “What vault?” I ask.

  “Our vault—for our rare book collection,” she begins.

  “Y’know, I never thought of those,” her husband interrupts. “That’s not a bad—”

  “Just let her say it!” my father insists. I shoot him a look to cool down.

  “It’s not— These days, we’re on the Library of Congress system,” she explains, “but in the early 1900s, back before Dewey decimal was widely accepted, we used to file rare book collections under the names of big donors.”

  “This was way before everyone wanted their name on a brass plaque,” her husband points out.

  “Exactly. So when the Silver family donated all their correspondence with President Garfield, they got a whole section in the rare book room with call numbers 1.0.0 Silv . . . 1.0.1 Silv . . . 1.0.2 Silv. Paula and Mark Cook got 1.0.0 Cook. And I think—I could be wrong—but I think the Kingston family, when they donated the glass windows at the front of the building, got a section starting with 1.0.0 King.”

  “So there very well could be a 1.8.4 King as a call number in your collection,” my father says.

  “Only way to find is to seek,” her husband replies, pushing back from the table, heading behind the reference desk, and flicking on a computer terminal marked “Internal Catalog.” On our right, the turnstile again kuh-kuunks as the first library visitor—a bald man with Buddy Holly glasses—arrives.

  “Morning, June. Morning, Mike,” he calls out, headed to the magazine section. Serena shoots me a look. Time is, most definitely, not on our side.

  “Is there any way we can speed this up?” I ask.

  Behind the desk, the husband is clicking at the keyboard and humming the theme to Jeopardy!

  “Junebug, how is it possible to always be right?” he announces as a wide smile takes his face. “There most definitely is a King collection. And when you put in 1.8.4 as the call number . . .” He studies the screen. “Oh, that’s curious. . . .”

  “What?” I blurt as the turnstile delivers yet another visitor.

  “Back then, they used to keep such meticulous records for the rare books. Anyway, it was filed with the Kingston family because they had a spectacular Russian book collection. But when you look at the actual path of ownership . . .” He turns to us, and his gold cross sways from his neck. “According to these records, 1.8.4 King was a book donated by someone named Jerry Siegel.”

  65

  Where’sthevault? Isthebooktherenow? Canwegoseeit?” my dad, Serena, and I all ask simultaneously.

  The husband and wife librarians look at each other. “Pretty important case you’re working on, huh?” the husband asks.

  “Y’all are law enforcement?” the wife adds, suddenly excited. “Ooh, is this gonna be on the news?”

  “Can we just see the book?” I plead.

  “Sure, let me just—” The husband reads from the screen. “It’s a big one, too. Nearly six hundred pages.”

  “What is it, Moby-Dick?” my father asks.

  “No—but back to your Scripture—it is a Bible. A Hebrew one. Published 1875 by M. R. Romma. Says here ‘Russian.’ Poor condition. This book took a hell of a beating.”

  “His father’s Bible,” I whisper to myself.

  “You think this is it?” Serena asks, referring to Cain’s murder weapon.

  “If it is—and he thought people were after it—maybe he donated it here to keep it safe,” I say as Serena nods.

  “I’m confused,” says the wife librarian. “Why would someone be after a Bible?”

  “We’re not exactly sure yet,” my father interrupts, doing his best to downplay. We’ve already got enough competition.

  “Oh, and this is great,” the husband adds. “Says here the donor claimed the book was bound in . . . ready for this? . . . human skin.”

  “Barf,” Serena says.

  “I’ve heard of that,” his wife adds. “There was a seminar on it at the ALA last year. Back in the seventeenth century, they used to bind private anatomy books with skin,” she explains. “People are more twisted than people think.”

  “Regardless, according to this, our reference team back then said that if it was anything, it was sheepskin or just cheap leather. They probably put it in Special Collections just to keep him happy.” Turning to us, he adds, “Everyone thinks their old books came straight from Gutenberg’s press. But if you tell ’em otherwise, they won’t donate the next year.”

  Serena again tosses them a polite grin. But as my dad and I exchange glances, it’s clear what he’s thinking. According to the legends, Cain killed Abel with a book. According to the FBI, Jerry’s father had it. Whatever’s inside this skin book, it can’t be just a Russian Bible.

  There’s a noise on our left. The turnstile again hiccups, and a new library visitor passes by us at the reference desk, heading for the microfiche room. None of us says a word until he leaves.

  “We’d like to see the book now,” my dad insists.

  “Yeah . . . no . . . that’s the pickle, isn’t it?” the husband replies, scanning the screen. “From what I can tell, it’s no longer part of our collection.”

  “Someone checked it out?” Serena asks.

  “Kinda.”

  “What’s kinda?” I ask.

  The librarian pauses, rechecking the screen. I lean my chest against the tall reference desk, squinting to read. He’s got the cursor on a text box that says:

  DEACCESSIONED

  7/27/98

  “Deaccessioned?” my father asks. To my surp
rise, he’s back behind the reference desk, reading over the shoulder of the librarian. He’s swaying in place, even more nervous than the night I first found him. It’s not just from the computer. He’s now got a full view of the security monitors and cameras that overlook the various entrances to the building. He can see who’s coming.

  “It means you gave it away, doesn’t it?” Serena asks, just as anxious.

  “That’s part of running a library,” the husband explains, taking off his glasses. “Even with our offsite storage, there’s only so many copies of Harry Potter we need.”

  “This isn’t Harry Potter—it’s a Russian Bible from the turn of the century,” my dad says. “How many of those can you possibly have?”

  “Around here? You know how big the Jewish population used to be in this area? When those generations die, where do you think the kids give all their books? I told you, we’ve got thousands of Bibles. So if we had this old Russian one and then someone brought in a brand-new one, or even a few similar ones . . . Every year we have to pare down the collection. And it sounds like this copy was already in terrible condition.”

  “So you destroyed it?” Serena asks in clear panic.

  “Destroyed? We’re a historical society—no, never destroy,” he explains. “Old books get donated: to hospitals, churches, we used to do this big event with one of the local nursing homes.”

  “Is there any record where this one went?” I ask.

  He pauses to think about it, his fingertips flicking his goatee. “Y’know, that’s a fair question. Sometimes these older entries—especially the ones that used to be in the card catalog . . .” His fingers tap at the keyboard, and a new window opens on-screen.

  He leans in to read it. “Ahh, yeah—that makes sense for a book like this, and that’s just when it opened.”

  “Please just tell us where the book is now,” my father demands, still eyeing the views from the security cameras.

  “You have to understand, most places won’t accept old Bibles. But there’s one place that goes through them like holy water.” With a kick of his foot, the librarian rolls backward in his chair and let’s us see the destination for ourselves.