Island of Bones(35)

“Yes.”

She hesitated, thinking. “He read the newspapers a lot. I mean, like every day, every paper that came in here, page by page.”

“Anything else? Phone calls that seemed odd. Visitors?”

She shook her head, like she was trying hard to remember.

“Did he seem...” Louis couldn’t find the word. If Frank was a guilty man, he would have lived like he was expecting someone to come around the corner any minute. “Did he seem watchful?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like if someone came in the library, did he keep an eye on them?”

“Like if they were going to steal a book?”

Louis shook his head.

“Wait a minute,” the girl said. “I remember one time when he was nervous.”

“When?”

“It was this charity thing we had, you know, Friends of the Library,” she said. “Mr. Woods came with his daughter and he didn’t seem, you know, very comfortable like.”

“What about his daughter?” Louis asked. “How did she seem to you?”

The girl giggled. “Snotty. Like she had a stick up her butt. And like she didn’t want to be there, you know, like at Christmas when you gotta be with all your creepy relatives and you don’t want to be?”

Louis knew there was nothing else the girl could help him with. “Why don’t you show me his office?” he said.

“No prob.”

Holly got another girl to watch the front desk and she led Louis to the back. The sign on the closed door said F. WOODS, RESEARCH.

“Mr. Woods is the head of our research department here,” Holly said, opening the door.

Louis glanced around. Standard-issue file cabinets and bookcases, a plain metal desk. The top of it was bare except for some cords, strewn like small snakes and attached to nothing.

“They took his computer,” Holly said. “I told them the only thing on it was library business, databases and stuff, you know, but they didn’t listen.”

“What else did they take?”

“His personnel file and some stuff from the drawers.”

Louis turned and gave Holly a smile. “You have been very helpful. May I look around in here?”

She smiled back then nodded. “Sure. But we close at nine.”

When she left, Louis pulled on a pair of latex gloves and sat down in the rolling chair. He started on the drawers, but there was nothing important, just routine papers, and in the bottom drawer, a messy assortment of personal items, the kind of stuff anyone might keep at work: Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, a bottle of Tylenol, a clean Tupperware container, a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid, a nail clipper.

He pushed the chair over to the file cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. The files in front appeared to be library business files but Louis dug to the back, hoping something had fallen between and been overlooked.

Nothing.

He stood and scanned the small office. If Frank had hidden anything here, he certainly would not have put it in a drawer or cabinet. He would have put it somewhere that felt safe to him.

He heard a tap on the door and turned. Holly poked her head in. “I’m sorry, but we’re, like, closing now.”

Louis looked around the office again. “Holly, does anything look odd to you in here?”

Her eyes widened. “Odd?”

“Like is there anything missing?”

“I told you, they took all -— ”

“I know that. But take a good look. Try hard.”

Holly bit her lip, looking around. Suddenly her eyes stopped and she pointed. “Well, there’s a book missing from that shelf.”

It was a shelf of reference books, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, the Columbia Encyclopedia. And there was one gap.

Something clicked. The book in the desk drawer. It was the only book in this office that wasn’t for work purposes. He went to the desk and pulled open the drawer, taking out the copy of Virgil's Aeneid.

He began to flip through the pages. Finally, he just turned it upside down and shook it. Four white index cards fluttered to the floor.

He heard Holly let out a gasp. Louis quickly gathered up the index cards before she could see them.

“Holly, would you mind waiting outside, please?” he asked.

She left but hovered outside the door, watching through the glass. Louis turned over the first card.

It was a small photograph of a young woman, cut out of yellowed newsprint and carefully pasted to the index card. Underneath it was printed: ANGELA. 1984.

The three others were the same. Other newsprint photographs, other girls’ names, all written in Frank Woods’s cramped handwriting. Louis sat down at Frank’s desk and arranged the cards in order of their dates.

The first was a young woman about sixteen, straight blond hair, wearing a dark sweater. Underneath, Frank had printed CINDY, 1964.