Liberty or Death (15 page)

 

The Merchantville library was so diminutive it looked like it had been taken out of Richardson's pocket and snuggled into the little patch of ground between the town hall and the fire station. It was a pretty thing, with its soft brown stone and the curving arch over the door, but didn't look big enough to hold any books, never mind also house a civil-defense office. On the other hand, Merchantville itself wasn't very big, so maybe it didn't need much defense. At least until recently. Now it seemed to me it needed all the help it could get.

A skinny girl with a skimpy ponytail was coming down the steps with a squirming baby in her arms and a toddler pulling on her arm, chanting, "Read, Mommy, read." It made me feel old as the hills. The mother didn't look old enough to be riding her bike off the sidewalk. As I watched, she smiled, dropped down on the steps, and pulled a book out of her bag. Without hesitation, she began reading aloud. As I passed, she was saying, "I do not like them, Sam I Am..." I wanted to sit down, too, snuggle up beside her, and listen. Anything to avoid what I was doing. It seemed such a lovely contrast to the raw ugliness of my day.

Inside, the room was dark and cool and had the pleasant, musty, old-book smell of all libraries. A small, round woman with graying dark hair skewered on top of her head peered at me through half-glasses and smiled, pushing back one of the strands that had escaped. "You're the new girl over at Theresa's, aren't you?" she said. "Welcome to the library."

So much for anonymity. I nodded. "I've always loved libraries and this one is especially beautiful."

"Too small," she said. "We're hoping to build an addition. Basement's not accessible for our older patrons and it's too damp anyway. Imagine it. A children's room where we could do story hour. A place where authors could talk, if any were to come and visit us. Enough space for computers and videos and audio books. Not that that's likely to happen anytime soon. The addition, I mean." She smiled. "Was there anything in particular you were interested in?"

"Junk," I said. "I mean, fiction. Light fiction. I'm so tired when I'm done work that my brain's not up to anything else."

"Theresa's a hard woman," she said. I noticed that she didn't add the usual qualification about Theresa's fairness. "I'm Mrs. Wilkerson. Mary Lou Wilkerson." She got up from her chair. "Shall I give you the ten-cent tour?" She didn't wait for an answer but began walking around the room, pointing at various alcoves and shelves. "New books, fiction and nonfiction, are here. They circulate for only two weeks. Other books go out for four. Paperbacks. They don't hold up well, but the patrons like them. Here are our audio books. Quite a good selection, really. We have a summer resident who buys a stack of them before she comes up every year and then donates them when she leaves..."

Behind us the door opened and shut, and heavy footsteps crossed the floor. "Going down to the office for a few minutes, Mary Lou," a man said.

"Be my guest, Bump," she said. "You have the key?"

He patted his pocket and there was a jingle. "Right in here," he said cheerfully.

" 'Cuz if you didn't, I've got half a dozen of them in my desk drawer."

"Save 'em for the forgetful old f... old duffers. Who's that with you?" He thumped across the floor toward us. Bump Peters, my favorite member of the group Theresa called "the fish butts." Not a very big man but his feet sounded like they were made of lead. "Oh, hello, honey. Glad to see you found our library. Oh, heck..." He smote himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "Sorry. My daughter Edith says I'm not supposed to call women honey anymore." He squinted at me, as if assessing whether I was offended. "Guess I don't know what else to call you, come to think of it. Theresa's new girl doesn't sound much better than honey, now, does it?"

"Dora," I said, holding out my hand. "Dora McKusick."

"Bump Peters," he said, grabbing it and working it like a pump handle. "Well, good to see you. Got to get to work." He dropped my hand, saluted Mary Lou with the edge of his hand, and thumped away toward the stairs.

We stood together and watched him go. "Man's got feet like an elephant," she said. "Guess he never could sneak up on anybody, could he? Which brings us to the mystery section. I used to shelve them with all the rest of the fiction but we've got so many mystery readers I finally decided to make life easy for them. Our patrons read more mystery than any other type of fiction. You read mysteries?"

I nodded. Actually, I didn't read much of anything, though I loved books. By the time my work days were over, I'd curl up with a book and fall asleep almost immediately. You don't get through many books in a year that way. I'd done a little better since I'd found audio books. Here in Merchantville, I hadn't even bothered with a book. But I wasn't about to tell Mary Lou Wilkerson that. I could tell but the way her fingers lingered over the bindings as she straightened errant books that she was a dedicated bookwoman and this place was her pride and joy. "What do you recommend?"

She hummed a little under her breath as her fingers skimmed along the shelf, touching, rejecting, touching another. She turned and looked at me thoughtfully. "It's hard to guess someone else's taste, so I'm going to give you three of the best. Laura Lippman. S.J. Rozan. Michael Connelly." She pulled out the books and handed them to me.

"I don't have a library card," I said.

"Not a problem. I know where you live and where you work. And you have an honest face."

Everyone in town seemed to know where I lived and worked. Too bad more of them didn't think I had an honest face. I took the books with a murmur of thanks and followed her over to the desk, where we went through the ceremony of obtaining a library card and checking out the books. It impressed me almost as much it had when I was a kid. A small rectangle of cardboard, now plastic, that was the key to this whole kingdom. But I still needed to get into the basement and had no idea how to do it.

"Is there a ladies' room here?"

"It's unisex, I'm afraid, the library being so small. Downstairs in the basement." She opened her desk drawer, fished though a pile of keys, and handed me one with a big wooden clothespin attached. "Keeps people from accidentally putting it in their pocket." She pointed toward the stairs. "Just go down there and it's at the end of the hall on the right. I'm going to run across the street and grab a soda. This heat's too much for me. If I'm not back, stick it in the drawer when you're done." She picked up her purse and walked out. Totally trusting, leaving me behind with a grateful, pounding heart, an honest face, and a larcenous mind.

As soon as the heavy door had shut behind her, I went behind the desk, opened the drawer, and looked in at the mess of keys. There were five that looked identical with little red DODGE dealer key tags on them. I helped myself to one of them, slipped it into my pocket, and headed for the stairs, leaving my books behind on the desk. At the bottom of the stairs, I hesitated, wondering how long Bump Peters planned to be in the office. He answered my question by coming out at that moment and shutting the door behind him. He checked it to see that it was locked, patted his pocket to be sure he had the key, and headed toward me, whistling.

As we passed, he grinned ruefully and jerked his head toward the door he'd just closed. "Couple of us check the office regularly and sign the log book. For years there wasn't a lot of civil-defense business, but now with this terrorist stuff, we're paying attention. Come hell or high water, we'll be ready for it, and high water's always a possibility. Hell, too, I suppose." He paused, pleased with his own wit. "Still, be a damned... darn... sight better if they'd concentrate on these Arabs and leave good people alone. See you over to Theresa's." He sketched a salute like he'd given Mary Lou, and thumped away up the stairs, dapper and cheerful from his retired navy cap that had U.S.S. something on it in gold letters to his neatly trimmed white mustache and his thundering white topsider-clad feet.

I waited until I heard the door shut, then tried my key. It went into the lock smoothly enough but then it didn't want to turn. I had to grab the handle and pull the door toward me before the tumblers reluctantly exerted themselves and allowed the door to be opened. I closed the door carefully behind me and looked around. It was a surprisingly large room with a lot of mysterious equipment, desks, many telephones, a computer, copy machine, fax machine, shelves with rows of thick notebooks, and a bank of sturdy file cabinets. An open notebook I took to be the log book lay open on one of the desks. I had no idea where to begin and I didn't have much time.

I checked the log book first. It appeared that the same two or three people were in and out of here on a regular basis. Bump Peters. Someone named Kendall Barker. And Col. Stuart Hannon. Colonel. Why was I not surprised? And why did my untrusting soul suspect he hadn't earned that title in the military? A shiver ran down my spine. They
were
everywhere, weren't they?

I grabbed the first notebook off the shelves and opened it. Nothing that looked useful. An evacuation plan. I checked another. A hazardous-materials response plan under Public Law 99-499. Another was a log of operational tests on an automatic-starting diesel generator. Checked a few more, trying to skim through the books while looking over my shoulder and listening for footsteps. Maybe I should check the filing cabinets. I opened the first drawer, running my eyes over the file tabs. Nothing. Second drawer. Nothing. Third drawer. Nothing.

Footsteps rumbled overhead but I didn't hear anyone on the stairs. Maybe it was Mary Lou coming back. I was going to have to think up some plausible excuse for such a long visit to the restroom. I pulled out the fourth drawer. Pulled too hard. It came flying at me, halting with a metallic thunk when it reached the end of its runners. Hastily, I studied the labels. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing! Dammit. Didn't it have to be here somewhere? I was approaching cardiac arrest.

Outside I heard footsteps on the stairs and then coming down the hall, and a voice—Mary Lou's voice—calling "Dora?" Past my door and down to where the bathroom would be. Knocking on the door and calling, "Dora?" again. Then they came back down the hall and went back up the stairs.

I reminded myself to breathe and pulled out the drawer again, more quietly this time. And finally found it. A file labeled "Shelter Census." About thirty pages, in no particular order, giving locations, sizes, basic equipment, and food and water stocks for shelters in the area. I didn't have the time or the information to do an inventory. And I didn't dare simply steal the file. Cautiously, I rose to my feet and went and turned on the copying machine. It was one of those old, portable models that take a few minutes to warm up. I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner.

I checked the paper supply and began making copies. It moved as slowly as molasses. In a real emergency, it would have been a useless piece of equipment. A good citizen would have left a note, telling them to replace it. But I was not that good a citizen. Or that big a fool. "Come on, you idiotic machine," I whispered. "Hurry it up. We're almost out of time." The machine continued its clickety-clacking back and forth motion, complete with flashing lights, as it slowly spat out the precious pages. I was about three pages from the end when, in a lull, I heard footsteps come down the hall and stop outside the door.

Quick as a wink, I snatched the copies out of the machine, hit the off button, and replaced the file. Then I shoved the drawer shut and looked for someplace to hide. A more experienced spy would have thought of the hiding place first, but I was new at this. If I had my way, this would be my first, and last, break-in into a government office. My last summer by a peaceful Maine lake. My last stint as a waitress. And hopefully not because I was going to meet a bad end.

There was a small space between two filing cabinets that held a coatrack upon which rested several voluminous black raincoats. I slid the coatrack forward, squeezed in behind it, and crouched there, wedged halfway between standing and sitting, trying to keep from gasping from stirred-up dust and fear. I had strong thigh muscles but profoundly hoped that whoever it was didn't plan on a long visit. My legs were already trembling and I was getting a cramp under the arch of one foot. I gritted my teeth, stifled a groan, and willed the muscles to relax. The papers in my hands began to slip. I clamped my fingers more tightly together.

Keys jingled as the door opened. I sensed him standing for a moment in the doorway, surveying the room the way I had, and then footsteps came toward me. Everything seemed amplified—the crunch of gravel from his shoes, the slight whistling sound his breath made, the jangle of keys as he set them on the desk. I smelled fabric softener, bug spray, and aftershave. There was a sound that I thought was a notebook being pulled off the shelf, the slap of the cardboard cover against the desk, and then footsteps walking across the room. A door came open with the slight reverberation of a hollow-core door when it sticks, and then the click of a light switch.

I heard a grunt of satisfaction, returning footsteps, and the click of a pen. Some scratching noises as information was entered in a notebook. The cover snapped shut. The book shoved back on a shelf, and the jangle of keys being picked up. Footsteps heading for the door, hesitating, returning. He had to hear my heart. Everyone in Merchantville must be hearing my heart. He shoved the coatrack back into its space between the filing cabinets, knocking me suddenly into the wall.

A protruding peg caught me squarely in the nose. A coat button on a swinging sleeve hit me in the eye, causing intense pain and tears. Blood began to pour from my nose. My hands were full of papers. I had to let it bleed.

"There," he said. "Everything as it should be." He left, closing the door firmly behind him.

I dropped the papers, fumbled a tissue from my pocket, and pressed it against my wounded nose. Goddamned prissy Stuart Hannon. I was going to shoot him. I was. I hated getting hit in the nose. It hurt so much!

As quietly as I could, working with one hand, I moved the rack, crept out of my hiding place, and started cleaning up. I stuck the papers I'd copied into my purse, including the last three, which I hadn't had a chance to copy and hadn't returned to the files. What were the chances anyone would ever notice? I wiped the scattered drops of blood off the floor. Anything else? Just to be sure, I checked the copy machine, and it was a good thing I had. I'd left the last page I copied inside. They say God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States. I hoped it was true.