Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [101]
“I’m sure the police will appreciate that, Consuela.”
Annabel handed the printout to Consuela, and she gave it to Broadhurst, along with the envelope containing the discs. The Librarian pulled the discs from the envelope, held them up like cards in a poker game, and said, “Perhaps you’d be good enough, Annabel, to give us the benefit of your knowledge of what’s on these.”
Annabel put her law training to good use, speaking slowly and deliberately and establishing eye contact with each person in the room. She spoke for ten minutes before getting to what she considered the most important material, the final portion of disc number five. She briefly mentioned her suspicion that Michele Paul might have been involved with John Bitteman’s disappearance eight years ago. That comment raised eyebrows, and questions, but before Annabel could elaborate, Broadhurst was told he had an important call, and the meeting was temporarily put on hold.
Andre Lapin came to Annabel’s side. “What makes you think Paul had something to do with the Bitteman case, Mrs. Reed-Smith?”
“Nothing you’d consider as evidence, Chief Lapin, nor would I if I was still practicing law. It’s more a matter of the apparent animosity between them. Bitteman was going to—”
“Was this break planned?” a man she’d just met that evening asked, smiling. “Like a curtain falling on Act One? I can’t wait for Act Two.”
Lapin and the man started talking, allowing Annabel to slip away and go to where the Librarian had placed the printout on the edge of his desk. She picked it up and riffled the pages. She went to a page near the end, which she read carefully. She went on to the next page, and the next. Consuela looked across the office and saw the quizzical expression on Annabel’s face. She came to her. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“Yes. These final pages don’t reflect what was on the end of the fifth disc.”
“Are you sure?”
“Let me look again.”
After another fast perusal, Annabel said, “That material isn’t here.”
“Dolores must have forgotten in the rush to print that portion of it,” Consuela offered.
“Probably,” Annabel said, “or didn’t include them with the other pages. I’ll go back and see if she knows what happened.”
“Sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. In fact, if she didn’t print those pages for some reason, I will from the duplicate discs we put in my locker.”
Annabel was glad she’d worn flat, comfortable shoes as she almost ran through the tunnel leading to the Jefferson Building. She used her card to gain access to the stacks and stairway, went to her area next to what had been Michele Paul’s space, squinted in the dim light provided by her desk lamp and a couple of low-wattage bulbs, opened the locker, removed her laptop, printer, and the envelope containing the duplicate set of the five discs, booted up the computer, slipped disc number five into the slot, opened the final file on it, and waited for it to appear on the screen.
What came up puzzled her. It wasn’t the final file as she remembered it. Instead, what was on the screen was a long section preceding the final set of files. She sat back and bit her lip. The hard copy she and Consuela delivered to Broadhurst’s office had obviously been printed from this duplicate set of discs. The missing pages should be on the original set back at Broadhurst’s office, unless they’d been deleted from them, too.
She was certain of one thing: The disc on which she’d made selected copies of material from the floppy discs found in the Aaronsen collection contained those pages. She took it from her blazer pocket, substituted it for the other disc, and scrolled to the end. The missing fifteen pages started to come to life on the screen.
She connected her ink jet printer to the laptop and sent it into motion, each page slowly emerging like toothpaste squeezed from a broad tube. As the words were transformed from computer images to black-on-white, Annabel sat back and closed her eyes. This was no careless mistake,