Burning Books

by Sharon Gerlach

  It was barely a scrap, torn out of the center of the article so there was no headline to clue her in to the subject. No complete sentences, either, just a few words of the ends of a couple sentences:

  ective Harvey Cohen said Thursday regar

  of Molly McKinley in October last year. McK

  Her name again, this time in the news and linked with that of an unknown man. An inconnu, the French would call him. A stranger. Unknown.

  The scrap of paper fluttered. Her hand trembled. A door slammed in the house far below, the house that seemed a million miles away. A voice called to her, and for a moment, a name hovered on her tongue, a memory quivered at the edge of her mind.

  Then footsteps thudded up the attic stairs, and Magnus called to her.

  “Hey, Mol, you up here?”

  She put the newspaper scrap in her pocket. “Over here, by Mom and Dad’s things.”

  He came cautiously through the gloom, traveling through puddles of dim light and oceans of shadows with a palpable reluctance, approaching their parents’ artifacts with trepidation.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “Trying to get that trunk open. I think there are photographs in there. I wanted to look through them.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just time, that’s all. Magnus . . .”

  He scuffed a shoe along the dusty floorboards. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Joyce called, and she—”

  “I just felt everything closing in. Sometimes the darkness inside me, the depression, it seems like a living thing. Some days, it’s just too much to bear.”

  “You could talk to Dr. Ralston about medication.”

  “I don’t want medication. I want a cure.”

  “Oh, Magnus.” She reached for him. He moved away.

  “Let’s go get dinner or something. Annis didn’t make anything; she said she’s angry with me.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “No. You have to stop fighting my battles, Molly. I’ll make it up to her somehow. If I can figure out what I did.”

  “You ground oily, fish-smelling tapenade into the sitting-room carpet.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Well.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Do you think flowers would help?”

  “No, Magnus, I don’t think flowers would help. Maybe a gift card to Black Angus.”

  “Okay. Speaking of Black Angus, I could go for a steak. Wanna?”

  She let him draw her out of the attic, away from the memories. Plenty of time at lunch to tell him about Joyce’s friend. Plenty of time to decide whether to tell him about the news article. For now, it was enough that he was back and that his black mood had dissipated.

  The darkness is coming.

  Perhaps. But not today.

  ∞

  Magnus had her drop him off at the cinema after they ate, where he was meeting Cecily to see a movie. Cecily again. Molly contained herself on the drive, not wanting to ruin the day. Lunch had been pleasant, even though Magnus’s order had been delivered incorrectly. He’d simply glanced at the loaded baked potato that should have been clam chowder, shrugged philosophically, and gave their server a charming smile that made her blush. Magnus didn’t like the unexpected; his brain didn’t shift gears fast enough to roll with change. She rather thought he didn’t remember what he ordered; he seemed distracted. Everyone had secrets, though, and she allowed him his, lest she be accused of meddling again.

  She guided the car into an empty parking spot in the theater lot. He climbed out, then leaned back in to say goodbye.

  “Are you supposed to be socializing with people from your group?”

  Magnus’s lips twisted into a humorless smile. “She’s not from my group.”

  “You said the other day ‘Cecily from group,’ so I thought—”

  “She’s from another group. Hers meets at the same time in a different room.”

  “Oh. I just thought—”

  “Goodbye, Molly.” He shut the door.

  She powered down the window and called after him. “How are you getting home?”

  He didn’t bother turning around. She wouldn’t have heard him if the wind hadn’t carried his words to her. “Cess will bring me.”

  Hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious and oh-so-knowledgeable Cecily, she moved the car to another spot that afforded her a better view of the mall entrance Magnus was heading toward. He entered without greeting anyone. Damn it. Cecily must be meeting him inside, no doubt to curtail his sister’s curiosity.

  She took the scrap of newspaper out of her pocket. ective Harvey Cohen. Detective, perhaps? The easiest way to find out was to go to the police station, and since her name was mentioned, the most logical station to start was Normandy Park, where she lived.

  “No Harvey Cohen here,” the desk sergeant said. He leaned around her and hollered “Next!”

  “Wait, please.” He held up his hand to stop the next person in line from advancing. She laid the strip of newsprint on the counter between them and smoothed it flat, waiting while he read it. “I’m Molly McKinley. Since I live in Normandy Park, I assumed he worked at this station.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you know if you’d had dealings with the police?”

  “Not if it happened during the missing year. I have no memory of meeting him in any capacity, but there we are, mentioned in the same article.”

  “It would help if you’d brought the whole thing.”

  “It’s the only bit I found. Please, maybe someone else knows who Harvey Cohen is and how I can find him.”

  With a sweeping glance at his full lobby and an impatient sigh, he abandoned his post. His voice drifted to her from the cubicles behind the desk—“Anyone know a Detective Harvey Cohen?”—as he asked around. No one did, apparently, for he kept asking, and then fell silent. While she waited, she popped both of their names into an Internet search, but came up with nothing related to her. Lots of Molly McKinleys, but none of them her. Lots of Harvey Cohens, too, but none of them a police detective. Maybe he was a private detective, but if he were, he didn’t appear to have a web presence.

  The desk sergeant still hadn’t returned. She resigned herself to the fact that he wasn’t coming back. Great. She would have to call around to every department in the area to find him. Or perhaps he’d retired or moved away, in which case she’d probably never locate him.

  She shut down the browser and pocketed her phone. The woman behind her harrumphed. Molly glanced at her, meeting an irritated stare. Well, it wasn’t her fault the sergeant had disappeared. He’d probably seen this as an opportune time to slip off to the nearest Starbucks while she waited in vain.

  “Ma’am.” He’d come back while she wasn’t looking, a plainclothes officer in tow who said, “You’re looking for Harvey Cohen?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “He’s over in Maple Valley PD. What do you need him for? Do you know something about his daughter?”

  She shot a look at the desk sergeant, who shrugged without apology for not giving his colleague any details, and handed the other officer the newspaper clipping. “We’re mentioned in the same article, but I don’t know why. This is all I have of it. I was hoping he knew something I don’t.”

  He drew her off to the side so the desk sergeant could help the impatient woman behind her. “If it happened during the superstorm year, he probably knows as much as you do.”

  “Why did you ask if I know anything about his daughter? Should I?”

  “I don’t know that either, Miss McKinley. His daughter vanished during the missing year. You can imagine how traumatic that has been for Detective Cohen. I thought that maybe you knew her before the superstorm. Was there anything else?”

  No, there was nothing else, because nobody knew anything about the lost year. Harvey Cohen probably couldn’t answer her questions, either, but she drove to Maple Valley, anyway. Unlike the desk sergeant in Normandy Park, this one had taken the scrap of articl
e from her when he went to get Cohen. Eying the phone close at hand and the computer that more than likely had an instant-messaging system, Molly could only conclude the sergeant thought the detective would want to see the article before seeing her. She waited in the lobby until an officer with a stern face and greying blond hair called her name from a door off to the side and led her through a warren of low-walled cubicles. The hum of conversation reminded her of the buzz of a busy beehive. A phone rang, a muted warble that went unanswered and fell silent as they stopped at a desk. He sat down and motioned to the chair at the open end of the cube.

  “Have a seat, Miss McKinley. I’m Harvey Cohen.”

  The fragment of newsprint lay squarely in the center of his desk blotter. As Molly scooted into the chair, she scanned his cubicle for personal photographs. Perhaps she knew his daughter but didn’t realize it was his daughter. She had friends whose families she’d never met. He had nothing personal in his cube beyond a quote on a piece of plain white paper: Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. ~Desmond Tutu. His flat-screen computer monitor was dark.

  “Where did you find this article?”

  “It was on the floor in my parents’ attic, under an antique trunk.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

  A sharp, blue gazed pinned her in her chair, a scrutiny she might have found unnerving in different circumstances. From the crinkles around his eyes and the deep lines carved beside his mouth, she pegged his age at midfifties. He looked nice. He looked comforting. He looked like he would take no bullshit, so she hoped that’s not what she had brought him.

  He leaned forward and jabbed the “Power” button on his monitor. The screen resolved from black to the police department’s database, where he had entered her name into a search box. The words No results appeared below it.

  “I ran your name before I came out to get you. You have no idea how many crazies I’ve dealt with over the last year, bringing me so-called information about my daughter.”

  “The officer at the Normandy Park station said she vanished during the lost year. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at her without speaking for a moment, then tapped the newsprint on his blotter. “If anything happened to bring us together in some way, it must have been during the missing year.” Pulling his chair closer to hers, he turned his monitor toward her. “Nothing. If you’re in here, you’re stuck in the data we can’t access.”

  Molly frowned. “I thought the electromagnetic pulse from the superstorm erased all the data.”

  “That’s a common lie perpetuated by governments and corporations to keep the public off their backs and panic from spreading. The data is still in the computers. We could tell the data was still in the computers the first time we attempted to access it after the event. Forensic specialists are unable to recover it. Computer programmers are unable to recover it. The best hackers in the world are unable to recover it.”

  Cohen scraped the newsprint off his desk and handed it to her. “I copied it, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course. But shouldn’t you keep it? I mean, isn’t it evidence or something?”

  “It’s just an article, Miss McKinley. We only keep evidence, and what could it be evidence of?” He tapped the computer monitor. “This system is now full of reports of theft, missing persons, sexual assaults, abandoned children, all the result of the superstorm. I don’t want to make your curiosity or worry seem trivial, but in light of those other issues—it kind of is.”

  Molly stared at the screen. No results. Something linked them, and it lay hidden in that lost year. His daughter’s fate lurked in that lost year also. It seemed too great a coincidence.

  “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps I know her but don’t know that she’s your daughter.”

  His penetrating gaze bore down on her again. She thought he would refuse to show her, but then he clicked the icon to minimize the police database. A color photograph filled the screen, his desktop icons moved to the outer edges of the screen so as not to block her face. Frozen in pixels, with windblown blonde hair and vibrant blue eyes, the woman squatted between two grade-school-age children, grinning at the camera. Molly judged her to be roughly ten years older than she.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Not that I’m aware. What’s her name?”

  “She went by Lee. The superstorm happened, and when everything calmed down, she was nowhere to be found. Kids and clothes were left behind, so her husband doesn’t think she left him in that missing year. Besides, she’d have contacted me. She was . . . not emotionally well, and I can’t imagine she would ever leave behind her entire support system.”

  “Maybe she did leave him but is too ashamed about it to talk to you.”

  He shook his head. “She’d never have to be ashamed to tell me anything she’s done. She seemed happy with him. They seemed happy together. I know people always say that about couples who end in tragedy, but I have a cop’s instinct on this.” His chair creaked as he rose. She rose, too. He scanned the other cubes, buzzing with activity.

  “I’m sorry, Miss McKinley. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how to help anyone anymore.”

  ∞2∞

  Joyce called as Molly was passing the Quality Food Center.

  “Hang on, I’m on the road. Let me pull over.” She guided the car into the grocery-store parking lot and put it in “Park.” “Okay, I’m here.”

  “I’ve talked to my friend about your books. He wants to examine them. In fact, he says he urgently needs to examine them and wants me to pick them up today.”

  “I can drop them off to him. I’d like to meet him.”

  Joyce paused. “He’d rather I pick them up and drop them off. Please understand, Molly—he’s a chemistry professor. If his secret expertise in the occult were to become public knowledge, his credibility in his field would be irreparably damaged.”

  “I understand. I should be home in about ten minutes.”

  “Will you be there after dinner? I can’t make it until then. And how is your brother faring?”

  “I’ll be home. Magnus has calmed down. He went to a movie with a friend.”

  “That’s good. He seems to be a good young man, but the occult and mental illness are rarely compatible bedfellows. If the books are proven to be harmless, you should probably read them away from him.”

  “But you don’t think they will be, do you?”

  Joyce drew in a shaky breath. “After my discussion with my friend, I’m even more convinced that those books are more than they appear to be. Your admitted obsession with them, Magnus’s fear of them—I don’t know necessarily that they’re a magical trap, but I do believe we should be cautious.”

  “I still think it’s just a chemistry trick. Why my name is inside them, I don’t know—maybe someone had them made to freak me out or something. I have some oddball friends. But I think it’s just a parlor trick.”

  “Molly, the research for my dissertation took me into places I’d never even dreamed existed. I’ve seen things that defy any explanation other than supernatural. I’m not willing to risk your safety on assumptions. We should find out for certain before you dive farther into them. Oh, before I forget, wrap the books in silk.”

  For Magnus’s sake, Molly agreed not to read any farther, but she remained unconvinced there was any magic involved. She didn’t sew, so she didn’t have any silk fabric on hand, nor did she have time to stop by a fabric store before Joyce was due to arrive, so she wrapped the books in a cinnamon-colored silk blouse and set them on the accent table by her chair in the sitting room.

  They beckoned her, even when she went back up to the attic to try to open the trunk again. But the lock held as strong as if it had been welded shut, so she contented herself with sorting through some of her father’s boxes. Her mother and s
he had been close, so handling his things was less wrenching but still disquieting. He’d been a stoic, bookish man, Kenneth McKinley; physically strong and emotionally gentle, a bastion of wisdom in most subjects. His Achilles heel had been Magnus, his emotionally overwrought son whose behavior he had more often excused rather than corrected or treated.

  Their childhood seemed to be indexed with apologies. Apologies to the Winstons for Magnus’s outburst during Christmas dinner, when he’d become overly stimulated and flung the gravy boat full of caperberry gravy down the length of the table and then curled up under his chair, sobbing hysterically. Apologies to the Underhills at a Fourth of July barbeque because Magnus had punched their son repeatedly for touching his shoulder, inflicting injuries that required medical attention. Apologies to the Ingerssons for loudly proclaiming their Toast Skagen tasted like shit and smearing whitefish roe on their dining-hall draperies.

  Eventually, they had ceased taking Molly and Magnus, but by then the invitations were few and far between. And soon after, they stopped going out altogether, for even though Annis had kept their house for as long as the twins had been alive, Magnus turned into a terror when left in her care.

  She’d sorted through two boxes when she could stand it no more. The memories and the sandalwood scent of her father wafting from the crates was too much to bear. She abandoned her project and headed downstairs. Twilight had fallen while she was occupied in the attic, but Magnus hadn’t yet returned. In an attempt to ward off any speculation about what he and the mysterious Cecily engaged in for a whole afternoon, Molly made herself some tea, ate a bowl of the beef stew Annis left in the Crock-Pot, and retired to the sitting room. She selected a lighthearted romance from her shelves and curled into her chair.

  The antics of an accidental time-traveler couldn’t hold her attention. Molly found her mind wandering back to Idiot Woman and her sinister suitor. Before she quite realized it, her nose was buried in the second slim volume, the silk blouse puddled on the floor at her feet and her promise to Magnus—as well as Joyce’s caution—conveniently forgotten.