“The next day,” he said, “you weren’t at work. Mary Zoltan said you were sick. She implied it was more than a cold.” He shook his head. “Maybe I misread the whole thing.”
“Mary’s an idiot. I wasn’t the least bit sick. I missed two days because my daughter was ill. High fever, stiff neck. We were worried about- ”
“Meningitis. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, just a virus. But I was pretty frantic.” She sidled closer to him. “You were worried I had some big old neurotic reaction to our little tumble? That’s kind of touching.” Her smile was wry. “Except that you dealt with it by avoiding me.”
“Not neurotic,” he said. “I thought I…” He shook his head.
“You thought you’d traumatized the poor sex-starved librarian and she was going to make your life miserable.” She threw back her head and laughed. Soft laugh. Sexy. Her hand moved down to his crotch. “You’re not that worried.”
“Klara, what happened- ”
“Was great. Don’t see it any other way.” She squeezed him, released him. Winked.
“Klara- ”
“Chemistry is chemistry, Isaac. One can never explain it rationally. That doesn’t mean we have to give in to our impulses.” Sly grin. “Though I can think of worse things.” She stroked his face. “You’re really a beautiful young man. I admire your brain and I adore your body, but it could never be anything more than an erotic tumble. Which isn’t half-bad, right? You’ve got the potential to be a fantastic lover and I’m a pretty good teacher.”
Another downward glance. “Don’t worry, that’s not an invitation for Episode Two. Because right now there are more important things to discuss. And that’s why I’ve been trying to reach you for days, silly lad. First of all, a cop has been nosing around, asking about you. He just left the library, as a matter of fact. Which is why I came here to leave you yet another message.”
“A cop?” he said. “What’s his name?”
“Detective Robert Lucido.”
The guy who’d been hanging near the bulletin board. “Pencil mustache?”
“That’s the one,” said Klara. “I didn’t know anyone but John Waters wore those anymore.”
“What did Lucido want?”
“He said he was carrying out a routine security investigation of LAPD volunteers because of some new September 11 regulations. Wanted to know what kind of person you are, who you hang out with. Then he got downright unconstitutionaclass="underline" what books you checked out. Of course, I declined.”
“How’d he get to you?”
She eyed the door. “He came to BioStat first and they told him you spent most of your time doing research in the stacks. His story- a routine investigation- is it baloney?”
“Probably.”
“What’s really going on, Isaac?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the truth. I was just over at the station and they changed the locks. Maybe it’s because their captain got murdered- ”
“I heard about that- ”
“Or it really is terrorism-related.”
“That,” said Klara, “would scare me. You know how open our campus is. Are you sad about the captain?”
“I didn’t know him well.”
“Cheating on his wife,” said Klara. “One must be careful who one fucks. And who one fucks with.”
She dropped one hand and Isaac readied himself for another goose. Instead, she held his hand. He felt leaden. So many unanswered questions, but his erection hadn’t flagged. Down, you little bastard!
“And Lucido just left?”
“Maybe ten minutes ago,” said Klara. “I made sure he didn’t follow me when I came here.”
“Thanks,” said Isaac.
“Thank me with a kiss.”
He complied.
She said, “Yum. You’ve got serious potential, but first things first. The main reason I’ve been trying to reach you isn’t Lucido. It’s because I finally came up with something on those June murders.”
“What?”
She pressed herself against him, positioned his hands on her rear. Pressed down and made him squeeze. When she spoke, they were so close her lips grazed his.
“I do think I may have solved your mystery, Isaac.”
CHAPTER 45
Klara left first, exiting the building to make sure Lucido was gone. Isaac waited in the hallway and moments later she stuck her head in and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Enjoying the adventure.
They walked back to Doheny, blending with student traffic. A girl in shorts and bikini top lay on the lawn of the five-story building reading philosophy. A couple of male students hurried by wearing sweatshirts that read “LSU Sucks, Tenn. Swallows.”
Klara wore a beatific smile.
Once they were inside, instead of descending to the subbasement, they climbed two floors.
The Rare Book Room. A series of locked chambers and brief, hushed corridors. Klara had all the right keys.
Inside, the central reception area was cozy, hushed, paneled in new, beautiful oak stained oxblood, discreetly lit by milk-glass lamps and chandeliers that hung from a white, coffered ceiling bordered with turquoise. Green leather chairs, oak tables. Off to the left side, a few administrative offices.
No one in sight. Lunch hour?
Klara led him to a room marked “Reading.” Inside was a medium-sized conference table, a photocopy machine, a small desk sided by an armchair.
“That’s for the student monitor,” she explained. “Someone sits and watches when you read the really rare material. I told her to take an early lunch.”
“I spent some time here,” said Isaac. “Researching Lewis Carroll for an English class. Pencils, no pens, white linen gloves when necessary.”
“We have a wonderful Carroll collection. Sit. We’ve got an hour.”
He pulled up to the table, expecting her to leave and return with something. Instead, she settled next to him. Unclasped her purse.
Out came a book- a booklet- brown-paper cover printed in rough black lettering. Wrapped in a zip-sealed plastic bag.
She said, “I was a very bad girl, taking it out of here. I did it just in case that Lucido person was still skulking around and we were unable to return.”
He took her hand and kissed it.
She laughed, smoothed out the plastic, removed the booklet carefully. “Talk about esoteric. I found it in the Graham Collection. It wasn’t even cataloged in the main collection. It was in one of the appendices.”
Out of her purse came a pair of soft, white gloves. “Speaking of which,” she said, rotating the booklet so the title faced Isaac.
He gloved up. Read.
THE SINS OF THE MAD ARTIST
AN ACCOUNT OF THE HORRIBLE DEEDS
OF
OTTO RETZAK
RECOUNTED BY
T. W. JOSEPH TELLER, ESQ.
FORMER SUPERINTENDENT OF THE MISSOURI STATE
PENITENTIARY
AND PUBLISHED BY HIM IN ST. LOUIS
A.D. MCMX
The brown cover was cardboard, acid-burned brown at the borders, brittle. Isaac lifted it gingerly, flipped, began reading.
After covering a single paragraph, he turned to Klara. “You’re brilliant.”
She beamed. “So I’ve been told.”
Otto Retzak was the son of Bavarian immigrant farmers who’d come to America in 1888 and ended up on a scratchy patch of rock-strewn land in the southern Illinois region known as Little Egypt. The sixth of nine children and the youngest son, Otto had been born on American soil.
Born June 28, 1897.
One hundred years to the day, before Marta Doebbler’s murder.
Isaac’s hands started to shake. He steadied them and hunched over the crudely printed text.
Retzak was eight when his drunkard father abandoned the family. Considered extremely bright but uneducable due to “a frightfully overactive and heated temperament,” Otto displayed a precocious ability to “wield charcoal stubs in a way that created faithful images.” His artistic talent went unappreciated by Otto’s drunkard mother, who routinely beat him with switches and kitchen implements and left him to the mercies of his older brothers. With great enthusiasm and teamwork, the elder siblings sexually abused the boy.