She led him to the far end of the library, where a table holding what looked like an ancient computer monitor sat on top of a film feeder. Next to the table was a long wooden storage unit with dozens of small drawers. “Is that where the films are filed?” He noted the drawers didn’t lock.
“Yes.”
“What publications are on film?”
“Well, I have decades of The Oregonian going back into the eighteen hundreds, but once they started digitizing their records we no longer got new ones. I also have the Bend Bulletin up to about twenty years ago and our own local paper, which goes back to the middle of the century. It used to be published every day, you know. But about five years ago, it dropped to a weekly paper. Pretty soon that will probably be my library’s schedule.”
“I hope not,” Truman told her. “I know you do an important service.”
“No one researches in books anymore. It’s all available online. Even our fiction circulation has dropped. People are switching to digital book subscription services.”
“There will always be a place for libraries.” Truman hated the sad look in her eyes.
“I still see some regulars every week, and moms bring in their toddlers for story time, but I never see teenagers.”
“You said some rolls of film were left out. Do you remember which ones?”
Ruth grabbed a small box off the top of the storage unit. “I haven’t refiled them yet.”
Truman took the box and pushed the rolls around with his pen, reading their labels. “This one holds a few months of The Oregonian from about forty years ago, and the other is our local paper from the same time period.” He smiled. “But they fit a whole year of our town’s paper on one roll.” He met her gaze. “You sure these weren’t accidentally left out?”
Ruth’s face was a study. He knew she was convinced nothing had been left out when she closed, but there was an infinitesimal chance she’d missed them. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain this table was clean.”
“Do you mind if I take these for a bit?”
Her face said she minded very much. “I guess not.”
He dumped them into a plastic bag from his pocket, wondering if there was any point in fingerprinting them. They would have forty years of prints. The content on the films was the key. But how would he know what the suspect had been looking up? And what good would that information do? As he sealed up the bag, he realized he needed the huge reader machine to look at the evidence.
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t take my only machine,” she stated, reading his mind.
“I don’t want to take it,” he admitted. “I’ll come back and use it when I have time to look through these rolls.”
“In that case, I need you to check out the rolls. This is highly irregular,” she pointed out. “I only allow people to view the rolls here.”
Truman signed his name on the cards she produced, amused at her thoroughness. There was a reason she’d been the librarian for the last thirty years. “Don’t touch the back door or this machine anymore. I’m going to send someone to dust for prints.”
“Just as long as they clean up after themselves. I’ve heard that powder makes a horrible mess.”
He promised not to lose her rolls and headed back to his office.
Inside his vehicle he sat for a few moments, his brain connecting dots. No one in town had reported a break-in in months. Suddenly he had two—possibly on the same night. Logic told him it was the same person, which was why he would collect prints.
In a perfect world he’d find a print that matched one he’d lifted from the church, and a suspect would pop up on a search of his first fingerprint database.
Rarely did he work in a perfect world. But it was worth a shot.
Is it Salome Sabin?
He’d interviewed the witness who claimed he’d seen a dark-haired woman driving a green car at the church the night of its break-in. Fred lived kitty-corner from the church and had been getting a late snack when he spotted the car around 2:00 a.m. He hadn’t seen the car stop or anyone get out, but he swore it’d slowly circled the block three times, immediately catching his attention.
Truman had tried not to stare at the Coke-bottle lenses on Fred’s glasses. They were smeared and scratched, so he asked when Fred had had the prescription checked. Offended, the senior citizen said it’d been updated three months earlier. Truman had his doubts. Unless Fred used burlap to clean his lenses, they shouldn’t be foggy with minuscule scratches in that short a time.
Fred’s statement was shaky. But between the driver description and knowing that Salome and Morrigan had disappeared that night, it continued to sit on Truman’s radar.
Truman focused on the bag of film rolls he’d set on the passenger seat. Someone had looked up articles from forty years earlier. He hadn’t been born yet. He typed “Eagle’s Nest” and the corresponding year into Google on his phone and scrolled through the hits. Most referred to graduating high school classes or population counts of the town.
The two break-ins are my cases. My town. I need to investigate.
It wasn’t like the gray area of his involvement in the Rob Murray murder.
He started his vehicle, remembering Detective Bolton’s frustration during Truman’s morning interview about his visit to Rob Murray’s apartment. Truman had had little to tell the detective. He’d visited the man and left. He hadn’t seen anyone hanging around, and Rob hadn’t appeared in fear for his life. Truman was still convinced someone—hopefully it was Rob—had moved his pickup truck before his death. He couldn’t see a reason for the killer to move it afterward. The murderer could have rifled through it, looking for anything of value to steal, but why move it?
Rob had to be the one.
He knew none of the agencies were seriously looking at him for Rob Murray’s murder, but it still bugged the hell out of him that he was even involved. It was as if he had a big black X on his perfectly clean record. He wanted it erased. And it was all because he’d nosed into a case where he had no business.
That’s what I get for satisfying my curiosity.
TWENTY-THREE
The summer after we graduated from high school, I stopped by Christian’s home. I’d had an argument with my mother, and I needed someone to listen to me grumble. Christian and I had grown close over the last six months, and we leaned on each other when we were feeling blue.
He was my best friend. My only friend.
His parents had divorced ten years before, and he’d told me his mother still carried a lot of bitterness. I had yet to meet her. They lived in an impressive ranch home in the nicest neighborhood. I knew his father was some hotshot lawyer in Portland, and I assumed he still sent money to his ex. The elegance of the home struck a chord in me. This was what I dreamed of. A two-car garage, a manicured acre of green lawn, and neighbors whose homes were as dignified as mine. I wanted to fit in.
Instead we had our odd cabin deep in the woods. Hiding from the world.
I rang the doorbell and waited, admiring the terra-cotta planters overflowing with petunias. The door opened and I found myself face-to-face with his mother for the first time. Brenda Lake was petite, blonde, and rake-thin. Everything I was not. Wealth shone in her perfect hair, gold rings, and pedicured toes.
I identified myself and asked for Christian. Her stare burned into my eyes. I exhaled and subtly sniffed. Red-orange. Anger. Sorrow. Hatred.