The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [110]
“That’s Russian,” my father says excitedly, rushing forward.
But what’s most noticeable is the crescent-moon-shaped hole that’s cut out from the center of the page and is about the size of a banana.
“Don’t you see? That’s the reason it got pulped,” Ann Maura explains, pointing to the hole in the page. “Somewhere along the way, one of our prisoners must’ve sliced through the pages to smuggle something inside.”
Or Mitchell Siegel did it years earlier, I say with a look toward my dad.
But to my surprise, he’s not studying the framed page. Instead, he crosses behind the librarian and stares up at the trophy room items that’re glued to the far left wall above the bookcases—or, more specifically, at the moon-shaped horn that’s—
I squint hard and give it another look. The moon-shaped horn. That’s not— That’s not for gunpowder. That’s an animal horn.
I glance down at the cutout in the Bible. A perfect animal horn shape.
Oh, God.
When Jerry Siegel’s Bible got transferred to the prison . . . they confiscated what was hidden inside, then put it up as a trophy for—
There’s a choking sound behind me, like someone fighting for air.
I spin around just in time to see my father’s hands gripping the librarian’s neck from behind. His face is red from squeezing, and a thick vein swells across his forehead. She thrashes and kicks but doesn’t have a chance. Before I can even react, she drops to the floor like a cut puppet, her head sagging down and her orange sneakers pointing in toward each other.
“Wh-What’re you—? Are you insane!?” I demand.
“It’s okay. She’s just unconscious,” my father insists, his eyes wide as he rushes to grab a nearby chair.
“Stop! Right now! Stop!”
“She’s fine, Calvin. I know what I’m doing.”
“You could’ve killed her!”
“She’s fine,” he repeats, his voice at full gallop as he runs with the chair.
I check the librarian’s chest. She’s passed out but definitely breathing.
“Lloyd, she was just—! Listen to me!Why aren’t you listening?”
“This is it—I finally got it. You see it, don’t you, Calvin? Cain’s murder weapon . . . the Book of Truth—it’s not a book!” he says, shoving the chair against the bookcase and climbing up toward the horn. “You can see the carvings—it’s written on the animal horn! This is it!”
“Lloyd, you can’t do this.”
But he already is. Standing on the chair, he stretches above the bookcase, up toward the trophies, where he grips the animal horn and tries to rip it from the wall. It doesn’t budge. He tries again with both hands. It’s glued on better than he thought.
“Dammit, get down!” I shout.
Undeterred, he yanks the nearest hardcover from the top shelf of the bookcase and flips it around so the spine is facing the wall. Turning it into a makeshift guillotine, he slices the book downward, slamming it into the horn and trying to cleave it from the trophy wall.
“Lloyd, I’m talking to you!”
“He’s not listening, Calvin,” a voice announces from behind me.
I spin back to the front door of the library, and my heart falls from my body. “Th-That’s not possible.”
“Sure it is,” the Prophet says as he slowly steps forward. “All I needed was a little help from your dad.”
75
I’m lost. Back up,” Naomi barked into her phone, scootching up on the gurney as she stared down at the polished floor. “What does this have to do with the Prophet? And where the hell’s Scotty? He explains stuff better than you.”
“Okay, forget the Prophet. Go back to Cal,” Becky says. “What’s Cal’s job? He picks up homeless people, correct? So to make sure he’s not taking these people and selling them to tattoo parlors for practice skin, Cal is required—by law—to put the name of every person he picks up into his laptop, which connects to the state database that keeps track of such things. You with me so far?”
“Keep going.”
“The point is, Naomi—on that first night Cal found his father, he keyed in his dad’s Social Security number and entered him into the database.”
“So?”
“So Cal’s dad’s name came right up.”
“Again . . . so?”
“And