“Put it back,” Plath said.
“One copy of Grace Paley will not break the bank.”
“The bank? The fucking bank gave up on us years ago. But never mind them, and for that matter, never mind us. Think instead about where your BookFrogs will be if we become a Niketown.”
“They’re my BookFrogs now?”
“They’ve always been.”
Lydia groaned and continued to browse through the cart.
“What are you looking for anyway?” Plath said.
Lydia hesitated for a moment, then pulled from her back pocket the small sunflower notebook where she’d written lists of Joey’s labels.
“These.”
Over the past few days, she’d managed to cross six or seven off the list and enter their corresponding messages but was still having difficulty finding the remaining titles. Lydia explained to Plath that most of the books on the list were still in the inventory, yet they hadn’t been on the shelves when she’d looked.
“And they may be missing labels,” she added. “There’s that.”
Plath glared. “What’re you up to, you little snake?”
For a moment Lydia considered telling Plath about the cut-up books that Joey had bequeathed her, but she was hoping to make it to Moberg’s cabin in the mountains by the afternoon so she wouldn’t have to drive back to Denver in the dark. She bit her thumbnail until it tore right off, then she stuck it into the corner pocket of her jeans. Plath was staring at her when she looked up. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Can I ask you something?” Lydia said. “Joey never said anything about being married, did he? I’m trying to figure out if there was a girl, you know, in his life. In his past.”
“Besides you, you mean?”
“I’m serious.”
“Listen up, heartbreaker. Joey was absolutely not married,” Plath said. “He was pretty adorable, sure, in a cuckoo’s-nest kind of way, but he didn’t wear a wedding ring, and you could tell by the lone-wolf look on his face that he wasn’t entangled.”
“Well,” Lydia said, “someone sure broke his heart.”
Plath gestured at the notebook in Lydia’s hands. “Check backstage for your list of books,” she said. “If they’ve come through without labels, they’re probably sitting on a shelf back there, waiting to be processed. And enjoy your trip today. You know what they say: the answer is in the mountains.”
“Not to this question,” Lydia said, waving her notebook as she walked toward the swinging doors that led to the bookstore’s warehouse.
Unofficially called the store’s backstage, the area beyond the doors was a different world altogether, a shambolic cavern of wooden tables and cardboard boxes and ubiquitous piles of books. Lydia had learned early on at Bright Ideas that stepping back here ensured an amplification of both intelligence and surliness. Many of her backstage comrades were bibliophiles who’d been so disappointed by people that they now sought as little human interaction as possible. Other comrades disappeared backstage gradually, one shift at a time, when their faces hurt from smiling too much and they could no longer take responsibility for what they might do to the next person who asked for directions to the bathroom. They were like flight attendants who’d bumped their hips on the seat back one too many times; like English teachers who’d graded one too many essays. Lydia thought someday she might find her own home back here.
She drifted until she spotted Ernest taping boxes closed at a table. She’d only seen him in passing since the night of the hanging, just over two weeks ago, when he’d stood on the stool and unspooled Joey’s noose. He was wearing overalls and a gold nose ring and the kind of puffy plastic earphones that her dad’s library patrons used to plug into record players. The moment he spotted her he tugged the headphones off and looked around to make sure they were alone, then dove right into a hug that was both unexpected and gruff.
When he stepped back he seemed flustered, embarrassed.
“Have you had a wink of sleep?” he said, unabashedly desperate. “I mean since Joey. ’Cause I can’t fucking sleep.”
“It’s been spotty for me, too,” she said. “I’ve been trying to stay occupied.”
“I can’t even go out there,” he said, gesturing to the store. “Fucking Joey. Thanks, dude. What did I ever do to him?”
Lydia gave his shoulder a squeeze.
“What can I help you with, Lydia?”
“I’m looking for books that are missing their labels,” she said. She’d been expecting some skepticism, or a barrage of questions, but Ernest just nodded.
“They’ve been piling up,” he said, talking as he walked her around a large wooden table and pulled a stack of books off a shelf that flanked it. “I’ve been flaking on printing new labels. They’ve been showing up back here all week, one at a time, like debris from a plane crash.”
“More than normal?”
“I don’t know what normal means anymore,” he said.
“Can I see?”
Ernest stepped aside as Lydia studied their spines. In the pile she found four that were from her list—four that she needed to fill in Joey’s cut-up pages.
“I’m going to take these,” she said, lifting them sideways so he could see their spines, a Scooby sandwich of titles, “but I’ll bring them back tomorrow.” As she tucked the books into her satchel, she turned to Ernest. “Joey didn’t mean you any harm.”
“I know,” he said, “but that doesn’t make it go away.” Then he disappeared into his earphones and rested his head atop the table, facedown, as if to stake his claim on this space backstage—as if to prove that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Although Lydia was now over sixty miles southwest of Denver, climbing toward the snowy peaks of the Continental Divide in the rattling Volvo she’d borrowed this morning from Plath, she didn’t sense the usual nourishment brought on by a drive to the mountains. Maybe because all of her focus was on the postcard of Pikes Peak tucked into the defroster vent, right in her line of sight: just if ever you want more, it said.
For the past hour, Lydia had been puttering in the right lane with the truckers and the poor, feeling nostalgic about all the times in her teens and twenties that she’d climbed onto a bus alone with a backpack full of books, bananas, and a change of clothes, eager for the tremble of the road. Back then these journeys had always been about the one-way exit, the awareness that her environment needed to change, that there was substance and freedom in abandonment. But this journey felt like it was leading her straight into those very things she’d always headed away from, and much of the pleasure of the road was gone, replaced by overflowing ashtrays and anxiety. She felt uncertain about what she’d do when she arrived at Moberg’s cabin, but one thing she knew for sure: of all that had been troubling her lately, the detail that made the least sense was learning that Moberg had visited the doughnut shop to quiz Raj about her father. What did her dad have to do with the Hammerman investigation, especially months after they’d gone into hiding in Rio Vista? It didn’t make sense.
As she drove alongside the Platte, watching its currents curl and splash over rocks and logs, Lydia realized that she hadn’t seen Moberg in person in over twenty years. Back then, her father had made arrangements with him for full cooperation in the ongoing Hammerman investigation, as long as Little Lydia didn’t have to make any more trips into Denver. He didn’t want her to be traumatized any more than she’d already been. Luckily, Moberg owned a weekend cabin in Murphy, a small town midway between Denver and Rio Vista that could act as their meeting point. She and her father had only gone to Moberg’s getaway once, when despite her insistence that she hadn’t seen the Hammerman’s face, she’d been called to his cabin to look at yet another album of police department mug shots—lopsided men with facial hair and missing teeth, none of whom she recognized. Moberg had seemed forlorn that day when he sent her on her way.
Her hands were tight on the wheel as she veered through town and up the snowy back roads. She’d just spen
t twenty minutes at the Murphy Police Department using her postcard and her persistence to convince the cop on duty to give her directions to Moberg’s cabin. When she finally made it up his overgrown road, she recognized the place with the dim glimmer of something only ever seen in a dream, and she knew she never would have found it on her own.
The wagon wheel. The wooden chicken. The rusty wheelbarrow in the snow.
The small cabin, creosote and pine, was built against a steep mountainside. Its windows were blocked by foam panels, and a thin ribbon of smoke rose from the stovepipe.
From the moment Moberg yanked open the door and squinted into the winter sun, wearing black jeans and no shirt, Lydia knew she’d ended up on this splintered porch for a good reason: she was facing the mountain-man equivalent of a BookFrog. She remembered Moberg as massive, well over six feet tall, with corduroy suits, wavy brown hair, and sideburns that spread along his jawline. Now he was entirely bald. No eyebrows, no eyelashes, not a hair that she could see on his chest or belly. An image of Brando playing Kurtz trickled through her mind. His eyes bulged like boiled eggs.
“I would’ve called,” she said, “but your number is unlisted.”
“No shit. What do you want?”
She held up the postcard and said, “More, I guess.”
Moberg squinted through a rip in the screen.
“I saw your picture in the paper,” he said. “I shouldn’t have sent that.”
“But you did. Can I come in?” she asked, attempting a smile.
“I don’t have anything for you.”
“Don’t you at least have coffee?”
“Coffee,” he said. He thought for a moment. “I do have that.”
Moberg didn’t invite her in, but he did turn around and walk purposefully down the hallway. Lydia took this as an invitation and pulled open the screen door. The floor was industrial linoleum so filthy with grime that for a moment she thought it was gray carpet. The wood-paneled hall bowed with water damage. She could hear him clicking on a gas stove and opening cupboards. Out of politeness she heeled off her snowy sneakers and left them by the door.
“Wait in there,” he said from behind a wall.
In there, past the kitchen, was a single room with a small wooden table and two wooden chairs. A woodstove hunkered near the table. An empty aquarium sat on the floor. Books—mass-market mysteries—were stacked eye-high against all four walls.
Moberg appeared, holding a weathered spiral notebook.
“Be a few minutes on the coffee,” he said.
He smirked at something above her head.
“You here for you?” he said.
“I guess so.”
“It’s yes or no. Is this for some newspaper article or true-crime book? My Night with the Hammerman. Or you here for you?”
“Just for me.”
“Not to solve it, I hope.”
“To solve it?”
“Are you playing detective or just sorting out your head?”
“I don’t know that there’s a difference.”
“Shit,” he laughed, then laughed harder. “Shit!”
When the coffee was ready Moberg presented it on an orange plastic cafeteria tray. He offered her sugar cubes.
“You want answers,” he said, “but if I had answers the case would be closed instead of twenty years cold. Can I just tell you that during my whole career I saw maybe five murders get solved this long after? Time passes. People forget. Evidence is tainted. Once a murder loses its context it’s nearly impossible to find anything new. Sometimes science will catch up but don’t count on it here. DNA this and DNA that. Everyone wants it. Worse than faith healers. Snake handlers. I hope you’re not counting on anything like that.”
“I’m not sure what I’m counting on,” she said.
“Maybe just peace of mind. You won’t get it but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeking. I’ll give you all I got. Then you go.”
And he did. As easy as that, Lydia was listening to Moberg recall his memories of working what he called the O’Toole Family Murders. His tone was cold but his words were clear. Not a story, but a case. Not an experience, but a file. The act of watching him scan through his notebook, then comment on his notes out loud was unlike anything Lydia had ever been through. She appreciated his rationality because it allowed her to view the evening, for the first time ever, with something close to detachment, and she periodically had to remind herself that she’d been there, in the house, on the night when all of these details gained relevance.
Like the talcum powder: traces of it on the O’Tooles’ back doorknob, the light switches, the kitchen counter. Likely from latex gloves, packaged with talc to keep them from sticking together. No viable prints, so he apparently wore the gloves the whole time, even as he rinsed his hands after. Probably didn’t take them off until he was well outside the house.
The murder weapon: A standard twenty-ounce claw hammer, manufactured at a plant in Gary, Indiana, and owned by one of the victims, Bart O’Toole. He’d scratched his initials on its oval base, just as he had on most of his tools: beo. The hammer had likely been removed from the metal toolbox on the covered back porch, or possibly from the victim’s plumbing truck, or even his unlocked garage, at some point before the murders.
The pot: two grams of low-grade marijuana found in Dottie O’Toole’s dresser drawer, along with a film canister of seeds and a Proto Pipe.
The boom box, or whatever you want to call it: sitting atop the fridge, no longer working. Nothing immediately peculiar about it, but under closer inspection it was discovered to be wet inside: drips tipped out of it when it was tilted to the side. Possibly it had been brought inside after being left in the snow.
The footprints: Left by a pair of Sears & Roebuck work boots, steel toe, heavy traction, size 10½. Common size. Footprints throughout the house showed no irregularities in the soles. Investigators found that no fewer than 116 pairs of that boot, in that size, had been sold at locations around the city in the six months before the attack, and an exhaustive series of interviews found that not a single clerk had noticed anything anomalous about any of said transactions.
The coat: Bart O’Toole’s hooded utility jacket, which turned up in a roadside ditch on the north side of the city two months after the killings. The jogger who discovered it found O’Toole’s name on a receipt inside a pocket and called the police. Trace bloodstains on the sheepskin lining suggested the Hammerman put it on before leaving the house to cover up the blood staining his own clothing. All of the blood could be traced to the three deceased.
The flashlight: an Eveready economy model, ribbed aluminum, well used, found on the kitchen floor. No initials, but like the hammer, the flashlight could have been taken from the toolbox or plumbing truck or garage. According to the survivor (“That would be you”), the Hammerman turned off the only light before beginning his attack, leaving the house entirely dark. Inconclusive whether he used his flashlight to illuminate the killings.
The hole in the drywall in the hallway: Not so odd, except the presence of gypsum dust along the top of the baseboards below and granules on the carpet showed that the hole had likely been made within a week or so of the attack and the dust had been mostly, if not effectively, vacuumed up. Someone had hung a framed family photo over the hole, but the picture of course shattered and fell that night, leaving shards of glass in the hall.
The survivor, specifically the survivor’s blood: Drips of it found in a smudged path on part of the living room carpet and across the kitchen floor. Blood came from the forehead laceration suffered when she was crawling to hide and bashed into the corner of the coffee table. Much of the blood trail had been smeared around by the time the police arrived, but that night, when the drips were fresh, the killer had somehow missed seeing them. Even with the aforementioned flashlight—
“Wait,” Lydia said. “What are you saying exactly?”
Moberg looked up from his notebook.
“Just that you cut you
r head pretty bad and bled a path from the living room to the kitchen sink. But somehow the Hammerman didn’t notice it.”
“Because otherwise he would have found me?”
“Presumably. The rest of the place was a slaughterhouse. Bloody footprints up and down. Pools and spatters like I’d never seen. But none of the victims had been killed in the kitchen, so it’s just a bit far-fetched that he didn’t notice a trail of fresh blood leading directly under the sink where you were hidden. That’s all.”
Lydia felt her belly lurch as she attempted to process Moberg’s implication.
“Shall I continue?” Moberg said, then did so before she could respond.
Lydia listened to Moberg’s clinical voice, able to stomach all of it, until he began to share the autopsy notes about Carol: one solid blow to the frontal, two solid blows to the maxilla, one glancing blow to the left orbicular, two blows to the left temple—
She heard eggs drop and said, “Stop. That’s enough.”
Carol O’Toole. Carol. Of all the images that peppered her head, Lydia had the hardest time with the single glimpse of Carol she’d caught when her father had led her out of the kitchen shortly after scooping her up.
—Don’t look, her father had said, squeezing her to his chest. God, don’t look.
But before they rounded the corner to cross the living room she’d peeked over his shoulder and there was Carol in an open doorway down the hall, hanging half out of her parents’ pile, her red hair and pale skin encrusted with blood, her skull opened so wide it didn’t register as her skull until many seconds later, when Lydia was in the O’Tooles’ mudroom, so cold she could hardly move, so scared she could not erase—
“That’s enough. Please.”
Moberg closed the notebook with all the nonchalance of closing a menu. He sipped his coffee and frowned.
“What you’re really after isn’t in my notes,” he said.
“What am I really after?”
“The biggest cat in the doghouse was you. We could never figure you out.”
“Me what?”
“Why you,” Moberg said. “Why not you, more like. Why he didn’t kill you.”
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore Page 14
