The Book of Mayhem

by Melissa McShane

  Judy left early, explaining that she needed to be home for a meeting her father was hosting. “I keep telling him it doesn’t look good, me playing hostess at a Nicollien gathering, but he always claims he’s not doing anything partisan. I think he just likes having me around, like a security blanket.”

  “Or a teddy bear.”

  “Thanks, Helena, I’ve always wanted to be compared to a stuffed toy.” She pretended to snarl at me and left by the front door.

  I spent the last hour alternately prowling the shelves, hopelessly trying to identify the stolen books, and sitting behind the counter playing with the antique cash register. My thoughts kept drifting to Malcolm, wondering where he was, whether he’d found the killer yet, if he was thinking of me at all…Every time I drifted too far, I yanked myself back. Now was definitely not the time for daydreaming, not while he was in so much danger.

  Once again I thought about the Accords and what they really said. Was it laid out in black and white that a custodian of a Neutrality couldn’t be romantically involved with a member of a faction? Were there rules about strong friendships, too? Why shouldn’t those be as forbidden as romance? Either way, you ran the risk of being partisan, using your Neutrality’s powers on behalf of your lover or your friend. I pounded the glass top of the counter once with my fist. It was just so unfair. Hadn’t I proved I could be impartial? I was going to find a copy of the Accords and I was going to go over it with a highlighter and a magnifying glass. I was tired of living my life in fear.

  The door jangled open. “Ms. Davies,” Detective Acosta said. “I’m glad we’re not too late.”

  I checked my phone. “We close in ten minutes.”

  “We won’t keep you long,” Detective Green said. He walked a few paces toward the first bookcase and surveyed its contents.

  “Did you bring a warrant?”

  “Now, there’s a funny thing,” Acosta said. “There have been…difficulties…in getting a warrant to search this store. Abernathy’s has some powerful lawyers, it seems. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “I don’t know. I just run the store. The owners don’t tell me anything.”

  “I think it’s odd.” Acosta leaned against the cracked glass of the countertop. “We’re glad you were able to find some of the stolen books.”

  Wow, those lawyers work fast. “They hadn’t been shelved yet. I’m afraid I don’t know if there are any others.”

  “We’ll find them, if they’re here.”

  Good luck with that. “Did you have any other questions?”

  “Just one. Did Mr. Hallstrom give a mailing address when he purchased the books?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I wish I could help you with that.” I was totally sincere. If I knew Hallstrom’s address, I could get Lucia to send someone to roust him.

  “I appreciate that. I believe you do want to help us, Ms. Davies. So anything you know—anything at all—it would be best if you shared that with us voluntarily.”

  “What else do you think I know?” His words had me genuinely puzzled. I had no idea what he thought I knew, unless he thought I was actually a fence and the frequent recipient of stolen books.

  “I know about small businesses like this one. You get to know your customers quite well, don’t you?”

  Light dawned. “Oh, you think I know something about Mr. Hallstrom I’m not telling you because we’re friends! I never met him before last week. Trust me, detective, I want you to catch the guy. Think about it from my perspective. He brought me stolen books, and he’s probably taken stolen books to other stores. I paid good money for the ones I gave the police, money I’m not going to get back. Mr. Hallstrom cheated me, and I want him behind bars.”

  “That’s a rousing speech.”

  “I meant every word. How did you even find out about Mr. Hallstrom to know he’d stolen the books? I wouldn’t think book theft was a high priority case.”

  “It is when the books are as valuable as these. But we found him accidentally. He was camping illegally in the Powell Butte park and someone reported him.”

  “But—then didn’t you capture him?” I wouldn’t have thought there was anywhere in Powell Butte Nature Park that someone could secretly camp out.

  Acosta smiled grimly. “We found his campsite, along with a box of stolen books and the receipt I showed you. He wasn’t there and he hasn’t come back. So we owe you thanks for putting a name to our thief.”

  “Um…you’re welcome.”

  Acosta pushed upright and nodded. “Sure there’s nothing you want to tell us?”

  “Detective, can I ask you an insulting question?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Ask away.”

  “Is there something about me that screams ‘suspicious character’?”

  To my surprise, he laughed. “Good night, Ms. Davies,” he said, and beckoned to Green. As the two of them left the store, I stared after them in disbelief. That had been a non-answer for sure. And yet Acosta had told me more than he had to…was it information I could use?

  I locked up and turned the sign to CLOSED, then grabbed my car keys and purse and drove to a nearby convenience store. They had a display of maps near the cash register, and I bought one that showed Portland and nearby cities. It was probably too big for what I had in mind, but it was unlikely I’d find a map showing just east Portland.

  I returned home and ran up the steps to my office, where I moved my laptop off Silas’s desk and spread out the map. Powell Butte Nature Park was off-center and slightly toward the bottom of the map. I got out a red Sharpie and marked the location where Bannister had been killed, close to her house off Foster Road. It was the only address I remembered. I had to go downstairs to look up the other two addresses, then trudge back down a second time to look up the fourth victim, Sydney Eason, in the database for her address. I didn’t know the exact locations they’d been killed, but the map was big enough it could handle a discrepancy of no more than a mile.

  With my Sharpie I marked the other three deaths on the map and took a step backward to get the big picture. It was possible to draw a circle centered on the park that had all those dots within its circumference, but just as possible to draw a different circle centered somewhere else. I needed more data.

  I drew a dot where Tiffany’s house was, at roughly Powell and 122nd, and immediately felt heartened: it fit inside the rough circle centered on the park. Still not proof. I fired up my laptop and started doing some White Pages searches on the other victims’ names. I only found four of the six, but all four fit within my circle. Either this was a huge coincidence, or I’d found solid evidence that someone based out of Powell Butte park had killed the victims.

  I went for my phone, but hesitated to call Lucia. She was likely to blow me off again if this was all I had, as certain as I was of my conclusion. What I needed was to locate Hallstrom so I could have Lucia pick him up for questioning. I just wasn’t sure how. If he came into the store…no, it would be too dangerous for me to try to apprehend him myself. And it would be too much to hope that he’d suddenly decide he needed a mail-in augury, complete with mailing address.

  I folded the map and logged off. Maybe Judy would have an answer. For now, I was going to eat something and read Silas’s diary. When you put it that way, it sounded more like snooping. But I couldn’t imagine him not wanting people to read it if he’d left it in the store. Now I’d finally learn the story behind moving the oracle from England to the United States. It was almost enough to make me forget my fears for Malcolm. Almost.

  18

  July 16, 1938

  Fifteen auguries today, and all of them received the same book: Atlas of the Western States, in varying conditions, but all with broken spines. All, when allowed to fall open freely, revealed the same page, a map of the city of Portland, Oregon. This is not the strangest thing the oracle has ever done, but it qualifies as peculiar as far as I am concerned.

  Events in Germany continue to disturb. Adolf Hitler in control of the G
erman army is the sort of thing one fears happening, but auguries are silent on the question of what he intends to do with those armies. If he and Mussolini make common cause…but my business is that of the oracle, not of prophesying doom. (A little light humor never hurt anyone.)

  I set the diary aside and stretched. It was almost ten and Abernathy’s would be opening soon, but even though I’d overslept, I still felt weary. I’d stayed up far too late reading Silas’s diary, and now that it was getting to the good part, I couldn’t bear to leave it behind. I’d just sneak some reading in between auguries.

  July 18, 1938

  All of today’s auguries were for the same Atlas of the Western States as Saturday’s. I wish I dared search the shelves to see how many more of these books we have. But that would be against the rules, and I think it might damage the oracle. We do not understand the principles it operates by, only that organization of any kind reduces its effectiveness, and knowing what is on the shelves makes an augury take longer to produce. So long as the auguries continue to be accurate, knowing whether there are a hundred such volumes doesn’t matter.

  “Are you reading Silas’s diary?” Judy said, closing the front door behind her. “Anything interesting?”

  “I managed to stop reading last night just at the part where the oracle started giving auguries leading to its moving here. It’s fascinating stuff—at least, fascinating to me. How was the meeting?”

  “Boring, and frightening, which I realize sounds contradictory. Father is talking about mobilizing his forces to actively defend against Ambrosite aggression. I think it might come to blows again.”

  “I hope Lucia is on alert to deal with that. I feel sorry for her right now, what with the factions fighting and the serial killer still out there.” That reminded me of my map. “Wait a minute. Stay right there.”

  I raced upstairs and grabbed the map. Judy stood where I’d left her, tapping her toe impatiently. “Look at this.”

  “It’s a big, lopsided red circle. Is it supposed to mean something to me?”

  “The detectives came back after you left yesterday. They told me Hallstrom was camping illegally in Powell Butte Nature Park—that’s where they found the receipt and some of the stolen books. These dots are all the places where people have been killed, more or less, and if you draw a circle encompassing them, it’s about two and a half miles across and Powell Butte is near the middle of it.”

  Judy chewed a fingernail thoughtfully. “It’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think? There are a lot of things inside that circle.”

  “But only one associated with a suspicious character. I think Hallstrom is the killer, and the next person who dies—assuming no one stops him—will be in this circle.”

  “So tell Lucia.”

  “Judy, what is Lucia going to say if I call and tell her this?”

  Judy cleared her throat. “‘Davies, I don’t need speculation, I need facts. Stick to selling overpriced books and let me do my job.’”

  “That was eerie.”

  “And accurate.” Judy set her purse on the glass-topped counter. “So how do we get facts for her?”

  “I was thinking, if we could find Hallstrom and give his location to Lucia, she could take him in for questioning the way she was going to do Mr. Washburn.”

  “Jeremiah? She can’t suspect him!”

  “She suspects everyone. And he’s a wood magus. That would be another fact, if we could prove what kind of magus Hallstrom is.”

  “I don’t know how to do the latter, but glass magi have magic that can locate a person. The Kellers did it for us back in April when we were trying to figure out why the oracle kept giving wrong auguries, remember?”

  “I do now. I should have thought of that.”

  Judy took her phone out of her purse. “I’ll call Harriet and see if they can help us. You—” She jerked her head at the front door—“can deal with the slavering masses.”

  I looked in that direction. The line wasn’t quite as long as it had been on Saturday, but it was more restless, more in motion. Possibly that was the familiars butting up against the plate glass of the window. I shuddered and opened the door.

  It should have been a relief that the number of augury requests for hunting Malcolm had dropped significantly. Unfortunately, the auguries that replaced them weren’t cheering. They were all questions about how to hurt the Ambrosite cause. Nothing the oracle would reject, nothing criminal, but barely skirting the edges of what was acceptable. Things like Where will the Ambrosite leader be at 2 p.m. tomorrow? or What action will have the greatest negative impact on the Ambrosites? My temper, which had been soothed by reading Silas’s diary, began heating up, until by noon I could barely stay civil with my customers. They, in turn, became nervous, as if waiting for an eruption.

  Finally, I slapped the final book into the waiting young man’s hands and snapped, “$3000. Make it quick. I want my lunch.”

  Nodding, the young man fumbled for his wallet. He had thick, messy brown hair and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed every time he swallowed, which was often. “And I hope you don’t have any luck with that,” I added, slapping the cover of Cardenio. I’d never heard of the play and hoped it wasn’t some ultra-rare lost edition of Shakespeare I was giving the guy in answer to the question Where is Malcolm Campbell?

  “I thought you were supposed to be impartial,” he said, swallowing again.

  “I’m impartially hoping you don’t have any luck with that.” I turned away and strode to the break room, where I slammed a container of shepherd’s pie into the microwave and stabbed the Quick Cook button. I watched the plastic container rotate and tried to still my thoughts to match the hum of the microwave.

  “He’s not a bad kid,” Judy said from the doorway. “Just easily led.”

  “Well, if he does get lucky and finds Malcolm, how likely do you think it is he’ll survive that meeting? So I was telling the truth. I hope he has no luck for both their sakes.”

  “I think you’re pushing it, but okay. I talked to Harriet, by the way. They won’t have time to get here before two o’clock, so she asked if we could stop by and have dinner with them.”

  I slammed my fist against the top of the microwave, making Judy jump, and swore loudly. “This is idiotic. Harry and Harriet are well-known in the community. Everyone likes them, even Ambrosites. They shouldn’t have to be afraid to come in here just because it’s the wrong time of day!”

  “Harry was going to come anyway. Harriet wouldn’t let him.”

  “I never thought she was a coward.”

  “She isn’t. She’s just seen fighting in the Middle East, before the area became a no-go zone for foreign magi, and she doesn’t want to see any more. I don’t want to be responsible for the two of them being attacked by some scared kid or a magus with a vendetta.”

  The microwave beeped. I took out my pie and sat down heavily at the table. “I wish you didn’t make so much sense.”

  Judy began heating up her own meal. “So do I.”

  I read more of Silas’s diary, not caring that it was a little rude to do so with Judy there. I didn’t want any more of my bad mood spilling over onto Judy.

  July 21, 1938

  Solomon Marchuk’s ritual confirmed what the oracle has been trying to communicate. I find the art of the stone magus fascinating, particularly this one. Solomon attuned a stone torus to the stone of northwestern Oregon and used the hole at its center as a magnifier. When he rotated the torus clockwise, the magnification increased. Truly astonishing!

  More astonishing, though, was what I perceived through this magnifier as I looked at the map in the atlas. Tiny houses, miniature businesses, all perfect in every way. And then, a spot on the map that glowed with the light of the oracle, and in that spot, an empty store. I think I understand what the oracle wants, but it is too unexpected, too incredible to believe. More magic is required, this time that of the bone magus, as the oracle is alive in some sense.

  “I wonder
why Silas didn’t use a glass magus to figure out what the oracle wanted,” I murmured around a mouthful of shepherd’s pie.

  “There were no glass magi before 1941,” Judy said. “And you have truly disgusting eating habits.”

  “Sorry.” I chewed and swallowed. “I forgot. They were invented—do you say ‘invented’ if it’s people?”

  “Glass magi were developed. By Hitler.”

  “Ooh, I remember that.” I made a face. “It’s so weird to think of something positive coming from the Nazis.”

  “It was the last time Nicolliens and Ambrosites worked together on anything. Allied and Axis were a more important distinction than factions. But when the war was over, and the war tribunals were in the past, the factions went back to hating each other. It’s sad, really.”

  “Yeah.”

  July 23, 1938

  I can draw no other conclusion from this but that the oracle insists on being moved. I haven’t told the Board of Neutralities yet. What can I say that will convince them? I will have to hope my reputation as custodian is enough. To move the oracle not within London, but out of the city and across the ocean, then across a continent to a city that is…rough is probably the kindest word I can use to describe Portland, Oregon. It has a reputation for being violent and dangerous, a hub of criminal activity, and I can’t think of any place less likely for a Neutrality to situate itself. But the oracle is clear, and I must obey, even if I haven’t the slightest idea how one moves a creature (?) with no physical form outside its thousands and thousands of books.

  “Wasn’t the Gunther Node here before Abernathy’s?”

  Judy shook her head. “Yes and no. The magi who settled in the Pacific Northwest as a result of Abernathy’s being here discovered it…I think around 1949 or 1950. It shut up the last remaining naysayers who thought moving the oracle was a bad idea—you know, serendipitous finds and all that. The Gunther Node is the richest source of magic in the western United States.”