Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [52]
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.
Damn him! she thought as she walked down First in the direction of Capitol South Metro Station for a train to the Farragut West Station, not far from her ground-floor apartment near Dupont Circle. The obscene calls had set her whole being on edge, even though the police had assured her that “chances were slim” he was a violent person who would initiate physical action against her: “Obscene callers are seldom violent.”
How comforting.
And now a murder within the library itself. As far as Sue was concerned, the murderer had to be someone who worked there. The new security system was too formidable for an outsider to gain access to the stacks and to the Hispanic division’s upper gallery, where Michele Paul sat. But she also knew that no security system was foolproof. Just thinking of Paul’s murder caused her stomach to turn.
She let herself in the apartment. Until the calls, she would have immediately changed into pajamas and robe if she intended to stay in and get to bed early. But the calls had changed that routine. She checked each window to make sure it was locked even though metal ironwork covered them, and double-checked the front-door locks. Rick had been there when the first call came four weeks ago, and he insisted they add a heavy dead bolt to the existing lock.
Feeling relatively secure, she responded to Wendell, rubbing against her legs, fed him, then poured herself her nightly glass of red wine, which she took to the bedroom, gave an extra tug to drapes covering the window,