Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [102]
The printing stopped. Annabel opened her eyes, picked up the printout, and scanned the pages once again. This time, her attention was directed at the initials sprinkled throughout the text—“LC,” “BE,” “WA,” “DM.” They were all there, as she remembered them to be. But what appeared on the pages she held was different from what had been on the screen when she ran the fifth disc from the envelope. It took her a moment to realize what the difference was.
A pervasive feeling of sadness gripped her as she again inserted the fifth of the five discs that had been copied from the original set and activated the Find and Replace function, instructing it to scan the disc for the initials “DM.” It found none. Annabel ran the search again. The same result.
Until that moment, it had all been speculation, conjecture on Annabel’s part. At first, the initials “DM” meant nothing to her, nor did many others contained on the discs. But then she began to wonder—when that moment occurred she couldn’t remember—whether they referred to Dolores Marwede. It was plausible. Dolores had worked in the Hispanic-Portuguese division during John Bitteman and Michele Paul’s tenure there. She’d reacted strongly at the mention of Paul’s name, and had made disparaging remarks about Bitteman.
“One more time,” Annabel said, distinctly recalling that those initials had come up at least six times on that disc when she first examined it.
She swapped discs again, inserted the single one on which she’d duplicated selected sections, and ran Find and Replace. The initials “DM” were highlighted.
“Damn,” she muttered as she popped in other discs from the duplicate set and searched for “DM.” Nothing. Those initials were gone, deleted, erased from the computer’s memory.
Annabel sorted out what she’d just learned. The final fifteen pages on the fifth of five discs had been deleted when the duplicates were made, and the printout reflected that. Any mention of “DM” had been removed from the discs, which, by extension, meant it wasn’t on the printed hard copy. The same thing undoubtedly was true of the original set of discs, which would easily be determined by returning to Broadhurst’s office and using a computer there to view them.
Annabel put the disc of selected portions into her blazer pocket, returned the duplicate set of five to the envelope, and placed it on top of the fifteen pages she’d just printed.
She drew a deep breath in anticipation of leaving the area and returning to the meeting in the Librarian’s office, started to get up, then settled back in her chair and thumbed through an internal phone directory until she found Cale Broadhurst’s extension and dialed it. His secretary answered.
“This is Annabel Reed-Smith, Pamela. I need to speak with Chief Lapin.”
“He’s in a meeting with Dr. Broadhurst and—”
“I know that. I just left that meeting. This is an emergency.”
“I’ll get him for you.”
Annabel’s right foot tapped out her impatience as she waited for Lapin to come on the line. She was so intensely focused on what she would say to him, that the building should be sealed off and Dolores Marwede found and detained, that she failed to realize someone had come up behind her. When she did, it wasn’t a sound that alerted her; it was more a sense that another person was there.
“Hang up!”
Annabel slowly swiveled in her chair and looked up at Dolores Marwede, whose expression was as frightening as the razor-sharp curved box cutter she held close to the back of Annabel’s neck. Her face was distorted, a twisted mask of both fright and fear, pleading and threatening at once.
“Hang up!” Dolores repeated, grabbing the receiver from Annabel and slamming it down into its cradle just as Andre Lapin’s voice could be heard through the instrument: “Mrs. Reed-Smith?”
“Give me that envelope,” Dolores said. When Annabel didn’t immediately comply, Dolores reached over her and swiped it from the desk.
Annabel attempted to collect herself, to will her breathing to slow down. “Dolores, I