President Garber’s first reaction was disbelief. The two detectives did not share this sentiment. Men of the law know that the most obvious suspect in a crime is usually the ultimate culprit, and who could be more obvious than the man who had greatest access to the library’s collections over the years? Garber stood and shouted. Liesl asked him to sit and be quiet. Detective Yuan provided more water. He knew that upset witnesses could often be calmed with water. Liesl began to talk about carbon dating. Garber drank his glass of water in one swallow and explained that he and Christopher had belonged to the same club, that they had dined together dozens of times. Liesl produced the carbon-dating report about the Peshawar. Garber argued against the validity of the science. Detective Yuan asked him if he was a scientist. Garber explained that he was an economist. Liesl offered to add Rhonda Washington to their quartet. Garber reminded everyone in the room that Rhonda was a mathematician, not a physicist.
President Garber had conducted interviews with dozens of outlets about the superiority of the university’s laboratory facilities. He had personally fundraised for the radiocarbon accelerator. Liesl recounted her conversation with Don Lake. Garber continued to argue, though his volume dropped. Detective Yuan filled their glasses of water again. The quality of the facsimile in Lake’s shop was exceptional, Liesl reported. No one was a fool for having been fooled. Garber held the glass of water like a security blanket. At the conclusion of Liesl’s explanation, the four sat at the table in silence. Everyone’s glass of water was empty, as was the pitcher that had been used to refill them. No one had anything left to offer.
Garber had been made a fool. To their credit, the detectives were largely silent during Liesl’s presentation so that Garber could convince himself that he was being made a fool of in front of Liesl only. By his own telling, Garber had been friends with Christopher. They had dined together. And Christopher had made him a fool. If what Liesl was describing was true, then the scale of Garber’s blindness, his ineptitude, was marvelous. And a man like Garber did not take kindly to being made a fool. So he doubled down on his denial.
“There isn’t enough here to convince a judge,” Garber said.
“I’m not in front of a judge,” Liesl said. “My goal here is for you to understand what happened at the library. To understand what Christopher did.”
“It’s hardly fair to accuse a man who can’t stand to defend himself.”
“That’s what we’ve done to Miriam.”
“And why are the police here? Christopher is dead. He can’t be prosecuted.”
“That’s true of the courts. But not of the press.”
It’s an ugly thing to watch people be so ugly with one another. Detective Yuan cleared his throat and stood, drawing the attention of the room over to him and away from Liesl’s blackmail attempt, which was wholly reasonable but was nonetheless unwise to conduct in the presence of law enforcement. Garber was right that Christopher would not be posthumously prosecuted, but there was still the not-insignificant matter of trying to recover the library’s property. Here Garber was stumped. The recovery of the books would allow him to issue tax receipts, reassure donors, and altogether save face. But the recovery of the books, if they were recovered from Christopher’s home or office or wherever else he may have put them, would prove absolutely that Garber had been a fool. So he tried a last approach.
“Christopher’s isn’t the only name on the manuscript. If he can’t be prosecuted, then it seems he has an accomplice who can be.”
“The detectives here have indicated that they don’t believe Francis was involved.”
“But if he were? He would be humiliated. Or even worse.”
“Professor Garber, I’m going to stop you right there,” Detective Yuan said. “Mr. Churchill is the one who brought Christopher’s writing, which we consider the key piece of evidence, to our attention. He shared the early chapters of the manuscript, chapters which were as incriminating to himself as they were to Mr. Wolfe, with Liesl shortly after the first theft was discovered. Mr. Lake has indicated that Christopher acted alone in the purchase of the Peshawar facsimile. Mr. Churchill is not under suspicion at this time.”
***
The property crimes unit secured a warrant to search Christopher and Marie’s home, but they needn’t have done so. Had they asked, Marie would have held the door wide open for them. When Detective Yuan recounted the scene to Liesl later, he described Marie as resigned, prepared for the detectives. Dressed in her layers of knit fabrics, she hadn’t even glanced at the warrant when they held it for her inspection. She waved her hand to let them in and suggested they begin in Christopher’s home office.
“She walked us to his office door,” Detective Yuan said. “But she refused to go inside while we looked.”
There was not a secret swinging bookcase that opened to reveal five hundred years of book-printing treasures. For all of his machinations to keep the thefts concealed, Christopher’s hiding place for the books was rather inelegant. He kept a big, beige metal filing cabinet in his office. Liesl recognized it in the photo; he had brought it home from the office nearly ten years earlier when they had rearranged the space. The library had less and less need for filing cabinets as record-keeping became a digital process, and for years they had struggled with what to do with the ugly old pieces of furniture. The old wooden card catalogs were snatched up, usually by an undergraduate library assistant to be used for wine storage, as soon as they were offered. But nobody wanted old metal filing cabinets. It was a relief, then, when Christopher had asked for one to be shipped to his house. In a room full of mahogany and chestnut-colored leather, the filing cabinet was an eyesore. It was one of the last places the police had looked. They had spent a lot of time trying to find the swinging bookcase.
“We checked the filing cabinet as an afterthought,” Detective Yuan said.
The six volumes of the Plantin Bible had occupied the bottom drawer of the cabinet. The Vesalius and the Peshawar were in the middle, and in total there were nine other books recovered from the cabinet and taken to police headquarters for cataloging as evidence.
The rest of the books in the office were a complicating factor. The room was lined with bookshelves, none of which swung to reveal a secret passageway, but all of which were heavy with rare and valuable books of uncertain provenance.
“How did Marie handle that?” Liesl asked.
“That’s where it fell apart,” Yuan said. He took a bite of his noodles, for of course it was only over lunch that he was able to meet with Liesl. She had suggested the restaurant, and he had looked slightly disappointed when they sat down, reminding her that if he wanted spicy noodles he could just go to his mom’s house.
Marie had objected to the removal of the books from the shelves. Christopher had been formed by those books, she argued, and they were all she had left of the man.
Her pleas were ignored, and the books were taken as evidence. They were kept separate from the books that had been recovered from the filing cabinet and under a separate agreement. The filing cabinet books were taken with the presumption they were stolen. If Marie could not prove legal ownership, they would not be returned. The bookshelf books would be sent back to her if no one came forward to claim them. As the books were boxed, Marie had stood in the office doorway and wept, issuing occasional instructions about how to pack a box full of books in a way that would not damage their bindings.
When they were finished with Christopher’s office, all that remained on the shelves were a few hardback John Grisham novels that had been removed from their book jackets, probably so that no one would notice that they were John Grisham novels. If a man was defined by the contents of his bookshelves, then Christopher was nothing more than a few airplane books, trying to pass themselves off as something grander.