Annabel sat at her desk in the Hispanic section and found that she couldn’t keep from staring at the empty seat to her right and thinking what an abrupt end Michele Paul’s life had come to. And in another hour she would be going to his apartment to, in a way, plunder the bounty of his research for her own article.
She decided to get some air. On her way out of the library, she ran into Lucianne. “Hi again. Did you learn anything new from public relations?”
“No, not a thing. I asked about the John Bitteman disappearance, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Said it was never officially labeled a murder.”
“Consuela told me a little about him and his disappearance. Do you think there could be a connection between Michele’s murder and what happened to Bitteman?”
“I don’t know. Bitteman and Michele were rivals, I’m told, both trying to be the first to land the Las Casas diaries or the map. They barely spoke.”
“Did Bitteman leave a family?” Annabel asked.
“They say he was openly homosexual. The police theorized it might have been a gay love affair gone awry.”
“I was hoping to see Bitteman’s files on Las Casas.”
“Good luck. Paranoia seems to run in Las Casas scholars. Bitteman took most things home, too, like Michele.”
“But surely he left something.”
“Check with your buddy, Consuela. Sure you want to go rummaging through a dead man’s apartment?”
“Not on my wish list, but sharing a cramped space with someone who’s murdered two days after I got here wasn’t either.”
19
The two MPD officers who picked up Consuela and Annabel were talkative types. The driver was in uniform, the other in plainclothes. Getting into a marked police cruiser was unsettling for both women, but the officers’ banter soon made them forget what was painted on the vehicle’s doors.
They pulled up in front of the Bethesda apartment building that had been Paul’s home until his murder, one of hundreds of such buildings in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, all so similar that they might have been designed and built by a single individual.
The plainclothes detective found the super, who led the officers, Consuela, and Annabel to the top floor, where he let them into Paul’s apartment. The super, a portly gentleman who spoke with a Slavic accent, lingered.
“Thanks,” the detective told him. “I’ll let you know when we’re leaving.”
“Do you know who killed Dr. Paul?” the super asked on his way out.
“No,” the detective answered, “but you’ll be the first to know.”
“It’s a lovely apartment,” Annabel said, going to sliding glass doors leading to the terrace.
Consuela agreed.
“You knew this man pretty well,” one detective, Simmons, said.
“Yes,” Consuela said. “We worked together.”
“He was what, a professor?”
“A researcher. Hispanic and Portuguese history.”
“Impressive,” Simmons said. “Looks like it pays pretty well.”
“Where do we start?” Annabel asked.
“In here.”
Detective Simmons led them into the largest of three bedrooms, which Paul had set up as his office. On their way, Annabel glanced into the other two smaller bedrooms. One had obviously been where Paul slept. The other served as a storeroom of sorts, with floor-to-ceiling steel shelving on which at least a hundred file boxes, labeled with an electronic labeling device, were neatly arranged.
“Do you think that’s all library materials, too?” Annabel asked Consuela.
“We’ll have to see.” She looked to Simmons: “Can we examine what’s in this room, too?”
“Sure. My orders are to let you look at anything you want. We’ve already gone
over the apartment.”
“It’s going to be awhile,” Consuela said.
“Take your time. You’ve got us for the rest of the day, whatever’s left of it.”
“Where do we start?” Consuela asked when she and Annabel were alone in the office.
“Those four two-drawer file cabinets, I suppose,” Annabel said. “We’re looking for anything bearing upon or belonging to LC?”
“Uh huh,” Consuela said, opening the top drawer of one of the units.
Annabel pulled out another drawer. Five minutes after she’d begun, she said to Consuela, “Everything in here is related to his research. I assume the police removed anything of a personal nature for their investigation.”
“Looks that way,” Consuela said, opening another drawer. “Let’s see if we can arrange to have all this shipped back to the library. We’ll be days if we have to go through it here.”
While the Hispanic division chief conferred with Simmons, Annabel went into the storage room and perused the labels on boxes. It appeared that everything in that room was linked to Michele Paul’s professional life, too.
“What did he say?” Annabel asked when Consuela returned.
“He said that’s up to us. I’ll call Helen Kelly and see if she can arrange for a truck and personnel to get everything out of here. In the meantime, we might as well go through what’s in his office. The most recent work he’d been doing is probably there. We can carry some of that back to LC ourselves.”
They worked silently, examining each file folder in the drawers, occasionally commenting on what they’d found, and placing selected folders on the floor next to them. One file labeled SEVILLE-REYES caught Annabel’s eye. She took it to a black leather sling chair in the corner and began reading.
“What do you have?” Consuela asked.
“Handwritten notes, in Michele’s hand, I assume. It’s about some artist from Seville named Fernando Reyes.”
“Not familiar with him.”
“I don’t think I am, either, although for some reason his name rings a bell. That’s why I picked it up.”
“What’s it say about him?”
“Sort of a biography, a list of paintings attributed to him, family background, influences, that sort of thing. Looks like Michele did this research fairly recently when he was in Seville, according to dates in his notes.”
“He spent a lot of time in Seville over the past couple of years,” Consuela said.
“Makes sense,” said Annabel, continuing to read. “Michele seems to have gotten most of his material about the artist from someone he refers to as Sebastian. Familiar?”
“No.”
“Look at this.” Annabel handed Consuela a group of papers attached to one another with a paper clip.
“A list of paintings by Reyes.”
“Yes. And a second list of paintings by others, all depicting that famous scene
where Columbus presents his Book of Privileges to Fernando and Isabella.”
Annabel laid the folder on the floor and went to the living and dining rooms, where the walls were covered with Hispanic art. “There’s no painting in the apartment depicting that scene,” she said when she returned to the office.
“It says Reyes painted in the nineteenth century,” Consuela said. “Aside from the scene, I can’t imagine what it would have to do with Las Casas.”
“I can’t either,” Annabel said, inserting the list she’d given Consuela into the folder and adding it to others on the floor.
At five, Annabel took out her cell phone. “I have to call Mac.”
“Where are you?” her husband asked. “I called the library. Someone in Hispanic said you’d left for the afternoon.”
“I’m at Michele Paul’s apartment.”
“Why?”
“Going over materials he had here that should be returned to the library. I’m with Consuela.”
“How long will you be there?”
“We’re about to leave. Consuela and I are carrying back some of the files. They’re sending a truck tomorrow for the rest. There’s a room full of file boxes.”
“Home for dinner?”
“Yes. I’d say about six-thirty
.”
“I’ll have it waiting.”
“Don’t fuss. How was school?”
“Pretty good. I’m impressed with some of my students this term, at least I was today. Tomorrow’s another matter.”
“And how’s your knee?”
“It’s, ah—hurting today. I took a wrong step leaving the building. Must have twisted it.”
“Stay off it. We’ll order in from the hotel.”
“I’ll play it by ear. Or by knee. Safe home.”
Annabel and Consuela, each carrying an armload of file folders, were driven back to LC by Detective Simmons and his uniformed colleague. They went directly to the Hispanic and Portuguese section, where they spread the folders on a small conference table in a room adjacent to Consuela’s office.
“What are you going to do with them overnight?” Annabel asked.
“Lock them in my office, I suppose, unless you want to stay awhile and keep going through them.”
“No, thanks,” Annabel said. “I’ve got to head home.”
She went to her desk space on the upper gallery and gathered her belongings. She’d come down the stairs and had said good night to Consuela when Lucianne Huston entered the reading room. “I was looking for you,” she said.
“I was out for the afternoon.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just out. Part of my research. Did you get the interviews you wanted?”
“The security chief, but he didn’t have much to add to what I already know. That
Prussian, Ms. Graves, says she’s got me set up tomorrow with the lawyer, name’s
Mullin. I hate interviewing lawyers, party of the first part and that crap. I’m on my way to our D.C. affiliate to file a report for the seven o’clock news. Want to come with me?”
“Thanks, no.”
“I’m leading with the Bitteman story. Two murders here, both victims chasing the elusive Las Casas. You know John Vogler?”
“Yes.”
“Seems he had a fistfight with Michele Paul over an affair Paul had with Vogler’s wife.”
Annabel said nothing.
“Getting juicier all the time. Or at least live. Well, take it easy, and thanks for lunch.”
“Sure.”
Annabel watched Huston walk toward Consuela’s office.
“Lucianne.”
The journalist turned. “What?”
“You told me you were sent here because there had been an art theft and murder in Miami.”
“Not because of that, but it started the process. Why?”
“The artist? Did you say his name was Reyes?”
“That’s right. Fernando Reyes.”
“Oh.”
“Why do I get the feeling this is meaningful?” Lucianne asked.
“Beats me. Somebody mentioned him, that’s all. Just a coincidence.”
Lucianne’s expression was probing.
“See you tomorrow,” Annabel said. “I have a husband with a bad knee limping around our apartment getting dinner ready. Got to run.”
“If he ever gets tired of cooking for you, send him down to me. I haven’t had a man cook for me in a long time.”
Fat chance, Annabel thought, smiling and walking away. Get your own man, tiger.
20
Sue Gomara looked out over the vast main reading room from her position at the central desk. Directly above was the famed domed ceiling, a hundred and sixty feet high, the female figure in its cupola representing human understanding. Surrounding that woman were a dozen other paintings saluting the countries or epochs that had contributed most to the development of Western civilization.
The room itself was inspiring, especially since its reopening in June of 1991 after being closed to the public for more than three years of renovation. The card catalogs, part of the decor for eighty-nine years, rendered outmoded by LC’s computer system but still used by some, had been moved to another location. Reader desks now
completely encircled the raised central desk. All the desks had been wired for laptop
computers. Soundproof carpeting, its design based upon the room’s architectural elements, had been installed, providing the sort of voluptuous quietude expected of libraries. The visitor’s gallery and alcoves on the second-floor-gallery level had been glassed in to further reduce noise.
Peaceful, contemplative, dignified—those were words Sue often used to describe where she was interning to friends who viewed the Library of Congress as only something to add to out-of-town visitors’ sight-seeing lists.
Until recently.
Until the breathy, vile calls started a month ago.
Her eyes went to the magnificent John Flanagan clock above the room’s main entrance. Five-thirty. Time to pack up that stint, go back to Hispanic to change clothes, and head home.
“Sure I can’t buy you a drink?” a colleague at the central desk asked as Sue tidied up her station. Ken Silvestrie had been asking her out ever since he started working the main reading room six months ago. He was attracted to Sue the moment he first saw her, especially her eyes, large, oval brown eyes filled with compassion—and passion?
“Ken,” she said pleasantly and quietly, “I told you my boyfriend wouldn’t appreciate my going out with you, or anybody else for that matter. Besides, you’re working till nine-thirty.”
Silvestrie’s smile was boyish. “When I get off, I mean. You’re not married to the guy, Sue. I mean, what’s the harm of us having a drink together? We work together. Just a drink to talk—”
Sue laughed, something else he was attracted to, her easy laugh and her large, white teeth.
“Talk business?” she said, touching his arm.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Thanks for the offer but I can’t.”
“He’s always out of town.”
Which was true. Sue’s live-in boyfriend of the past seven months, Rick Holt, was a junior auditor for the Senate Financial Institutions and Regulatory Relief Subcommittee of the full Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Long title, simple job—travel the country and audit federally chartered banks to ensure their compliance with federal regulations. He was gone three weeks out of each month.
There were times when she considered accepting other men’s offers of a drink or dinner, but she’d resisted those urges, spawned by loneliness, because Sue Gomara could be as much of a pragmatist as she was a dreamer. She envisioned a future with Rick Holt and wasn’t about to jeopardize it. Too, having fallen in love with him meant being able to leave campus housing for a more grown-up life in an apartment. Her parents hadn’t been pleased at first, but soon accepted their daughter’s decision and continued to help support her college work and career aspirations.
“See you tomorrow, Ken,” she said, stepping down from the circular desk and heading for the main entrance.
The reading room was filled to capacity that early evening, and she’d fulfilled hundreds of requests for books since coming on duty at noon after spending the morning in Hispanic. She was tired, yet satisfied with the way the afternoon had gone. Few days disappointed her since beginning her internship in conjunction with her postgraduate library science studies at the University of Maryland.
She kept her eyes straight ahead but took in selected readers’ desks with her peripheral vision. Most men and women using the room were serious about whatever it was they researched, and were pleasant, too. Normal people.
But there was the predictable cadre of strange-o’s who showed up each day for their own particular reasons. The Bride of Christ sat at the desk she usually grabbed first thing in the morning, poring over yet another Bible. A man with blazing eyes, insane eyes, and who always wore a black cape sat at another desk going through a pile of telephone directories from around the world in search of the name of the person who’d placed a curse on him. And there was the street person Sue had been told by her supervisor to ask to leave a few days earlier because of complaints from other patrons about his body
odor. She’d expected she’d need the help of an LC police officer, but was pleasantly surprised when the scruffy man didn’t mount a protest and simply left the room. He was back, hopefully having found a working shower.
She wondered as she walked from the main reading room whether one of the men seated at a desk in that vast space, dedicated to knowledge and enlightenment, was the one who’d been making the calls. Was one of those normal-looking persons the pervert?
“Remember,” she’d been told during regularly scheduled security briefings, “the person who’s likely to try and steal a book, or deface a book, is probably the most normal-looking man or woman in the room. The kooks are annoying but they tend not to be destructive, to property or persons. It’s the scholarly gentleman or woman, half-glasses perched on his or her nose, nicely dressed and polite—that’s the person to keep an eye on.”
After fairly trotting back to Hispanic—she seldom did anything in low gear—and changing into jeans and a U. of Maryland sweatshirt, she went to the main entrance, removed her upside-down badge from around her neck and placed it in her handbag, handed the bag to the officer, returned a “have a pleasant evening,” and stepped out onto First Street. It was indeed a lovely evening, cool and dry and with a huge full moon beaming down on the city where the nation’s business was conducted.
Murder at the Library of Congress Page 13
