by Brad Meltzer
“Rrrkk! Rrrkk!” Benoni barked as they approached an old black SUV.
Ellis hit the brakes and kicked his door open. By now, Benoni was well accustomed to Cal’s scent.
Sure enough, as Ellis stepped toward the parked SUV and peered in at the backseat, he saw the blue backpack. Cal’s backpack. Of course he had to leave it behind. No packages or weapons inside. “You knew it, didn’t you, girl?”
Benoni barked again, and Ellis returned to his car. But just as he reached for the door handle, he spotted the reflection of his face and uniform in the driver’s-side window. His nose was definitely broken. He didn’t care. Not when he was this close. He reached up and smoothed his hair.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ellis asked as he slowly slid back into the front seat and parked right next to Cal’s SUV. Of course the Book was here—at a prison. It was the world’s first murder weapon. “How could it not make its way to such violence?”
Benoni barked again, and Ellis, to his own surprise, felt a swell of tears in his eyes. “Same here—I couldn’t do it without you, girl,” he said, adding a loving pat to Benoni. He meant every word. Like that Plato quote in his great-grandfather’s diary: “A dog has the soul of a philosopher.” Ellis knew it was true. It was all coming true. And once he had the Book—
Benoni let loose with another bark. This one was louder. Angry. She smelled someone.
Reaching for his gun, Ellis spun toward the window. It was already too late. The door to his car flew open and a sharp golden knife stabbed Ellis—chhhk . . . chhhk—once in the chest, then deep into his stomach. It happened so fast, Ellis didn’t even feel the pain. All he saw was the blood seeping through his uniform . . . and the knife still stuck in his belly.
The car door slammed shut just as fast, locking Ellis in with the now wildly barking and clawing Benoni.
“Hggh . . . hggh . . . hggh,” Ellis panted, slowly sinking in his seat and finally getting his first good look at his attacker.
“Oh, c’mon now,” the Prophet said. “How’d you think it was gonna end?”
73
Outside the chain-link fence that surrounds the prison, I glance over my shoulder, checking the thin path that leads back to the parking lot. As my father appears from around the corner, he’s moving slower than ever.
“What the hell took so long?” I hiss, careful to keep my voice down.
“It’s hard to pee in the cold,” he says, hustling to catch up but never making eye contact. It’s not until he gets close that I see what he’s looking at. Over my shoulder, I spin back and spot that nearly every one of the building’s narrow slit windows has someone staring down at us. The librarian at the Historical Society mentioned this was a supermax, which means inmates aren’t sharing cells and playing harmonica behind the standard prison bars. Supermax means solitary confinement—all alone in a concrete box—twenty-three hours a day.
The idea originated in the nineteenth century with the Philadelphia Quakers, who thought isolation would lead to a prisoner’s quiet contemplation. Instead, it leads to at least a few prisoners every year smearing feces on their teeth and insisting that heaven is attacking them. But from the look on my father’s face, it’s not the inmates who scare him. He was locked up for eight years. The terror in his heart is from the thought of going back.
“If you want, you can wait in the car,” I tell him.
“No.” He shakes his head, staring straight ahead. “I’m fine.”
“Listen, Lloyd . . .”
“Let’s just get it and go,” he insists, twisting the handle and opening the chain-link fence. As we step through, there’s another closed fence just a few feet in front of us. In law enforcement, they call it a “sally port”—the front door doesn’t open until the back door is closed. For us, it means that for at least the next minute, we’re trapped.
I think back to the fact that Naomi had to’ve put a lookout for us in the system. The only question now is, how hard are the guards here looking?
“Can I help you?” a soft male voice asks through the intercom.
“We’re here from the Western Reserve Historical Society. To see the librarian,” I call back. “We have an appointment.”
We don’t. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
“Hold on for me, sir,” the man says, leaving us in silence. My father’s standing barely a foot behind me. I can’t see him, but I hear the speed of his breathing. The inmates in the windows are still peering down at us. From the angle we’re at, we can’t see their faces. They’re just shadowy, opaque ghosts haunting from above.
“Come on up—I’m calling her now,” the voice announces as the metal gate clicks and we follow the walkway toward the front door of the building.
My father looks directly upward and takes one last look at the prisoners. Ghosts don’t go away that easy.
Inside the building, a thick-necked guard with a triangular face and delicate, spindly fingers stares down from a podium. “ID, please,” he says as we’re blinded by the sea-foam green walls and matching sea-foam tile floor of the waiting area. I’m assuming the colors were picked because they somehow soothe the savage beast. But as my dad fidgets with his wallet, fighting for his ID, it’s clearly not doing its job.
“We’re from the Historical Society,” I tell the guard as I hand over the two IDs we used to get on the plane. “We do the society’s book donations, and—”
“I’m sorry, can I help you?” a woman in a flat midwest accent calls out. She’s got boyish Buster Brown hair, a long knit skirt, and the strongest, most painful handshake I’ve ever received. “Ann Maura Spencer, prison librarian,” she adds as I spot the bright orange Chuck Taylor sneakers peeking out below her skirt. “They said you were from the Historical Society?”
“We do book donations,” I clarify. “And since we donate so many titles here—”
“Which we appreciate so much,” Ann Maura says.
“And we’d love to keep doing it,” I tell her. “That’s why we set up the appointment.” I stare straight at her, smiling like she should understand.
“I—I’m sorry,” she offers. “What appointment are we talking about?”
“To visit the library. Y’know, to see where all our books are going—to make sure your facilities can deal with and distribute them so we can keep—” I cut myself off. “No one told you we were coming, did they?”
“Oh, I bet you spoke to Elliot. In the morning, was it?”
“It was definitely early,” I say.
“That’s Elliot. He’s kinda—” She forces a laugh. “He kinda flounders with details.”
We all laugh together.
“Listen, we didn’t mean to catch you unprepared,” I say. “Why don’t we come back next week when you’re all ready for us?”
“No, don’t be silly—we’re ready—of course we’re ready,” she promises. Even the world’s toughest prison knows better than to disappoint one of its biggest donors.
I look at my dad, then back to Ann Maura. “You sure?”
“Positively.” Turning to the guard, she adds, “Kellis, can I get two passes, please?”
Up on his podium, the guard who’s still holding our IDs is now staring down at them. There’s a small laptop in front of him. Here’s where the fire starts to singe some skin. For most prison visitors, he’d do a LEADS check, putting us in the Law Enforcement Automated Data System to discover exactly who we are. But I know for a fact that most prisons don’t have the time to run it on every single delivery that comes through the door. Best of all, he’s heard our conversation. He knows we’re not here to see inmates. We’re here to see books.
So why isn’t he handing back our IDs?
The guard hits a button on his laptop, and I feel drops of sweat rolling down my stomach. He squints at his screen, and I swear it takes every muscle in my face to hold my grin.
“Here you go,” the guard says, passing us our IDs as he stuffs them into two visitor passes with small cutout
holes for our ID photos. “And thanks for the donations. The inmates really appreciate them.”
“I assume you left all your weapons at home?” Ann Maura laughs, pointing us toward an X-ray machine and a walk-through metal detector.
“Always do,” I tease, forcing another laugh and tossing my car keys onto the conveyor.
We’re moving quickly now—even my father’s excitedly keeping up—which is why I can’t help but hesitate. Last time things went this well was when Naomi ambushed us at the museum. I look back at the guard, who tosses me a friendly nod. In front of us, we bypass the elevators and the standard visitors entrance. Instead, we walk through a narrow doorway and stop at a thick steel door that could easily do the job at a bank vault.
“Step in,” Ann Maura says.
There’s a soft pneumatic hiss behind us, and I realize we’re in another sally port. From out of the wall, a matching steel door slides sideways, all set to seal us in this small, five-foot-long, bright white space.
My father motions to our left, and I spot the mirrored wall. Two-way glass. The key question is, who’s watching?
Behind us, the back door slides shut, clicking with the cold thunk of a meat locker. The sound echoes like the first clods of dirt hitting a fresh coffin.
This isn’t like the chain-link fence outside. With that back door shut, we’re officially in prison. Next to me, my father is as green as the fluorescent lighting.
“Say cheese,” Ann Maura says, tapping a finger against the two-way glass. “Just hold up your badges for the control center.”
As we do, my dad can barely lift his ID. I’m worried he’s about to pass out.
“I know . . . it can be a bit intimidating,” Ann Maura adds as she presses her palm into a hand scanner and waves her own ID. “What’s odd is how easily you get used to it.”
There’s another pneumatic hiss as the metal door in front of us slowly, slowly slides sideways, disappearing into the wall and revealing a long concrete hallway that runs down to our right. I’ve never been so happy to see sea-foam green in my life.
“And here’s our little island of literary freedom,” Ann Maura sings, stopping at room number H-277. The sign on the door says, “OSPLibrary.” “Now what can I show you first?”
“Whatever you like,” I reply.
My father’s not nearly as patient. He steps into the room, already eyeing the bookshelves. “Where do you keep your Bibles?”
74
Oh, believe me, we can always use Bibles,” Ann Maura says as we follow her through the prison library, which is centered around a large uncluttered worktable, with tall bookshelves lining all four walls and a small glass office in the far corner. Like the hallways, the room is a cheery, maddening sea-foam green, but as I look back to my dad, he can’t take his eyes off the library’s oddest pieces of decor: a collection of soda cans, bedsprings, peanut-butter jars, an empty spool of thread, a tiny cassette-tape motor, a set of chocolate Tootsie Roll Pop lollipops, a moon-shaped horn that soldiers used to carry gunpowder in, a rusted cigarette case, a zebra-print animal skin, and even rabbit ears from an old TV, all of which are glued directly to the wall and run like a junkyard border above the tops of the bookcases.
“What’re those?” my father asks.
She laughs. “The guards call it their trophy case—y’know, all the things they’ve confiscated over the years. See that cassette-tape motor? A prisoner ripped that out of a Walkman to make his own homemade tattoo gun. And those Tootsie Pops? They replaced the lollipops with tiny bags of heroin, then melted new candy around the bag so we wouldn’t find the prize inside. I’m telling you, you wouldn’t believe how viciously crafty these folks get.”
My dad nods. “I can only imagine.”
“Aren’t you worried about keeping the items on the wall?” I ask. “Won’t the prisoners grab them?”
“Oh, no—we don’t allow prisoners in here,” Ann Maura says, which explains why there are no cameras in the room. “With our population—no—we deliver the books directly to their cells.”
On my left, there’s a large industrial sink with two tall piles of paperbacks: one labeled “Clean,” the other “Unclean.”
“Some of the prisoners are a little . . . rough with our collection,” Ann Maura adds.
I look back at the piles. I don’t even want to think about it.
“So do you have enough Bibles for your entire population?” my dad asks as she approaches the reference desk on the right.
“Actually, standard Bibles are handled by Religious Services,” she explains as she realigns the stapler and the three-hole punch so they sit perfectly parallel on the reference desk. Librarians can’t help themselves. “We do foreign languages, other religions, things like that. In fact, if you have a few extra Korans, we’ve been getting lots of requests for those.”
“What about Russian?” I ask. “How’s your stock on those?”
“Y’know, it’s funny—I’m not sure if we have Russian.” At the card catalog that sits next to the reference desk, she kneels down on one knee and tugs open one of the lower drawers. “I know, I know—we need computers—card catalogs are dead—but I’d rather use our budget to acquire more books,” she explains. “The prisoners really are grateful.”
As her fingers flip through the card catalog, my dad can barely stand still. Once we find this book—
“Nope. Not here,” she announces.
“Sorry?” I ask.
“Chinese, Ukrainian, even Arabic,” she says, flipping forward through the cards, then back. “But no Bibles in Russian.”
“You sure?” my father asks. “At the Historical Society, someone said—” He cuts himself off. “A few years back, I could swear we sent an old Russian one your way.”
“Really?” she asks. “You don’t happen to remember the original call number, do you?”
“1.8.4 King,” we both say simultaneously.
Still on one knee, Ann Maura looks up at both of us.
“It’s fine if you can’t find it. It was sort of a curiosity—we just wanted to know where it went,” I offer.
“Of course,” she says. “Might as well take a look, right?” She closes one drawer and opens another that has a circular red sticker in the corner. Her fingers pick through the cards . . . and just as quickly come to a stop. “Here we go,” she announces.
“You have it?”
“We did. It arrived in 1998.”
“That’s the one!” my dad blurts. “Where’s it now?”
“Ah, that’s the thing. According to this, well . . . I hate to say it, but looks like we pulped it.”
“You what?” my father asks.
“You threw it away?” I add. “Why?”
“Doesn’t say. Sometimes a book gets worn apart—other times, an inmate rips their favorite section out, and the whole copy becomes unsalvageable. You have to understand, our clientele can be pretty selfish sometimes.”
“So it’s gone,” my dad says.
“Definitely gone,” Ann Maura says as she slides the card drawer shut. “I’m confused, though. Was there something special about that particular copy?”
“It was just— It was first donated to us by one of our board members, and we thought it might be nice to maybe track it down for him,” I say. “Sorta reunite him with his 1875 family Bible.”
“Hold on,” Ann Maura says. “Did you say 1875 or 1975?”
“1875.”
“So it’s an old book, not a new one.” Before I can even respond, she’s got that faraway look, like she’s checking the card catalog in her mind. “And it’s Russian,” she mutters. “Oh, how funny—I didn’t even think about that.”
I’m about to interrupt, but she’s already gone, dashing to the glassed-in office in the corner of the room. On the wall, she’s got framed head shots of the governor and lieutenant governor of Ohio, as well as a few other frames below those two. Staring down with her back to us, she grabs one of the lower frames from the wall.
She flips the frame around, revealing a crinkled sheet of paper that’s yellowed like parchment and split into two columns: On the right is Hebrew writing, on the left is . . .
“That’s Russian,” my father says excitedly, rushing forward.
But what’s most noticeable is the crescent-moon-shaped hole that’s cut out from the center of the page and is about the size of a banana.
“Don’t you see? That’s the reason it got pulped,” Ann Maura explains, pointing to the hole in the page. “Somewhere along the way, one of our prisoners must’ve sliced through the pages to smuggle something inside.”
Or Mitchell Siegel did it years earlier, I say with a look toward my dad.
But to my surprise, he’s not studying the framed page. Instead, he crosses behind the librarian and stares up at the trophy room items that’re glued to the far left wall above the bookcases—or, more specifically, at the moon-shaped horn that’s—
I squint hard and give it another look. The moon-shaped horn. That’s not— That’s not for gunpowder. That’s an animal horn.
I glance down at the cutout in the Bible. A perfect animal horn shape.
Oh, God.
When Jerry Siegel’s Bible got transferred to the prison . . . they confiscated what was hidden inside, then put it up as a trophy for—
There’s a choking sound behind me, like someone fighting for air.
I spin around just in time to see my father’s hands gripping the librarian’s neck from behind. His face is red from squeezing, and a thick vein swells across his forehead. She thrashes and kicks but doesn’t have a chance. Before I can even react, she drops to the floor like a cut puppet, her head sagging down and her orange sneakers pointing in toward each other.