Reflexively I reached for my cell phone to call Kathleen. She probably wouldn’t want ribs again so soon (had our anniversary dinner really been less than two weeks ago? It seemed like months). But my hand came up empty, and I remembered that I’d left my phone on the counter at home, so that Kathleen and I could both truthfully say that I didn’t have it with me. What was the phrase the CIA had coined back in the 1960s—when they were hatching political-assassination plots they didn’t tell the president about? Plausible deniability: the I-didn’t-know legal loophole. I’d left my cell phone at home so I could say I didn’t know that the FBI was looking for me, but now plausible deniability was circling back to bite me in the butt—or at least to make it hard to score a dinner date with my wife. “Crap,” I muttered, ducking back inside to call her from the annex phone.
Kathleen didn’t answer her cell or the house line. Finally I remembered that she’d mentioned being off the grid today, too—something about a journal article she desperately needed to finish writing. I dialed her office on campus, on the off chance that she was holed up there, now that everyone else had likely left for the day. No luck. “Crap,” I repeated, not wanting to eat alone. Deflated again, I backed my truck out of the corrugated cave, wrestled down the screeching door and locked it, heading for home and for leftovers in lieu of ribs by the riverside.
On an impulse, instead of heading directly home, I detoured to Kathleen’s building, hoping for a chance to tell her about my conversations with Maddox, Mrs. Janus, and Special Agent Billings. I didn’t see her car in the parking lot, though, and her office window looked dark. Only then did I remember that she had planned to hole up in the library.
I parked in a fire lane outside the library’s main entrance on Melrose Avenue, switching on the truck’s flashers in hopes that they might ward off a ticket or a tow truck. I took a quick spin through the coffee shop and the study areas on the main floor without spotting her, then peered through the doors of several study rooms, before it occurred to me that she might be downstairs in Reference. I didn’t see her there, either, but I did see a librarian I knew slightly, peering at a computer screen. Thelma? Velma? Neither of those names seemed quite right. “Hello there,” I said to her. “How long before actual books are a thing of the past?”
She looked up, reflexively smiling when she recognized me. Then something flickered in her eyes, and she looked slightly embarrassed, as if she’d remembered something unseemly about me. “Oh. Dr. Brockton. Hello.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my wife in here this evening,” I said.
“No, but I’ve been staring at this screen pretty hard. Feel free to take a look around.”
“I already did. Didn’t see her. She’s working on an article, so I thought she might’ve needed help finding something.”
“Well, not that I know of, but if I see her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her.”
“Thanks.” I nodded and started away, but then stopped and turned back. “Oh, long as I’m here . . . is, uh, Red working tonight?”
“Who?”
“Red. That’s her nickname. I don’t know her actual name. Young woman. Smart. Sarcastic, but in a fun way.” Thelma/Velma/what’s-her-name was giving me a blank stare. “You know, Red,” I repeated. “I think that’s the color of her hair.”
“I can’t think of anybody who fits that description. Not in Reference, anyway. Maybe she’s in Periodicals?”
“No,” I said, feeling embarrassed and awkward—stupid, even—but also stubborn, not quite ready to give up. “Reference. I’ve talked to her two or three times. She was working the late shift one night a couple weeks ago when I called. June . . . twentieth, I think. Just before midnight. You could check the staff schedule.”
“I don’t need to,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t need to check the staff schedule to tell you that there was nobody named Red working late that night. Nobody named anything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The library’s open till midnight during summer session,” she said, “but the Reference Desk is only staffed until ten.”
I STRIPPED IN THE GARAGE, TOSSED MY CLOTHES into the washing machine, and stepped into the shower in the basement bathroom. I stayed there, slumped under the spray, until the water turned cold. I was physically exhausted—I hadn’t slept in almost forty hours—but I was unmoored and off kilter, too, from the roller-coaster ride of all the recent revelations, confrontations, implications, and miscommunications: Prescott’s angry message, Maddox’s new information, Mrs. Janus’s mistrust of the FBI. The last two backbreaking straws had been my unsuccessful search for Kathleen, followed by the disquieting discovery that “Red”—to whom I had confided about the Janus case—was a stranger and an imposter of some sort, someone whose motives and machinations were utter mysteries to me.