Page 14 of The Librarians
Friday
Sophie runs. She’s not exactly comfortable being on foot alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood, but it’s five thirty a.m. right before the end of daylight saving time and the sky is pitch-dark. She comes across only one other jogger, who raises a hand respectfully as they pass each other.
She does a mile and a half before she grits her teeth and ventures onto Fanfare Drive, that cursed street. The moment she does, she sees neon yellow police tape in the distance, flapping in the wind.
The air is cold and clear, yet her nostrils fill with the stench of acetone and rubbing alcohol.
But at least the RAV4 is gone—and the body too.
She reaches her car at five minutes past six and decides to take a risk.
She drives to a side street not far from Twin Courtyards Apartments, parks, and runs toward the apartment complex.
Yesterday, she, the not-so-proud owner of a brand-new burner phone, used it to call the apartment office while sitting in the parking lot of Home Depot.
Hi. I’m going to take a job at the new Apple campus and I’m looking for a place to live. Do your buildings have exterior cameras? That would make me feel much safer.
I’m sorry, ma’am. We don’t. But the lease doesn’t prohibit tenants from having them, as long as the installation doesn’t damage the buildings.
She has her beanie down to her eyes, her mask up to her lower lash line. Dressed like this, even if individual tenants have cameras, they wouldn’t be able to identify her, especially when it’s still so dark.
Now she’s on the street that leads to Twin Courtyards Apartments, but on the opposite side. As she slowly jogs alongside a wall, she realizes that the wall forms part of the boundary of Astrid’s gated condo community.
Before she can think more about Astrid, a group of four people, dressed in athletic attire, come out from Twin Courtyards. Or rather, they stand right near the entrance, stretching.
The street T-junctions onto a more heavily trafficked road.
Sophie crosses to the Twin Courtyards side and starts back.
The folks meeting to work out are still there, probably waiting for more people to show up.
They step aside courteously as Sophie approaches, but in doing so, they block the entrance.
For a split second she almost asks them to move but doesn’t—she can’t afford to draw attention to herself. So she nods and runs back to her car, parked out of sight, and leaves the neighborhood from a different direction.
Three hours later, she arrives in the Den of Calories.
Jonathan, who just made a pot of coffee, hands her a cup.
“I meant to tell you about an article in the paper yesterday, but the police showed up and it slipped my mind. You remember the woman who came to Game Night, the one with the third eye on her forehead?”
Sophie’s eye twitches, but she has her response ready. “I saw that article last night when I tried to find some news about Astrid’s ex.”
“Do you think we should contact the police?” asks Jonathan.
Sophie’s other eye now twitches too. “If she was missing, then maybe we could provide a time and place where she was seen alive and well. But she’s dead and try as I do, I can’t think of anything I observed that night that would help any investigators.”
The door to the Den of Calories opens and Astrid comes inside. “You two are here early!”
She seems chirpier than Sophie would have expected. “How are you?” Sophie asks. “Are you holding up okay?”
“I—I think so.” Astrid nods rather hesitantly, but she nods. “I just hope everything will blow over soon.”
“Good attitude,” says Jonathan. “Everything will blow over soon.”
For Astrid, maybe. For herself, Sophie senses only impending doom.
When Hazel arrives for her shift early in the afternoon, Astrid waves at her from the picnic table under a sprawling live oak. A dappled ray of sunlight falls on Astrid and picks out the red streaks in her hair.
Hazel smiles as she approaches. “Taking your break?”
“Taking advantage of climate change before it roasts us alive next summer.”
Fall and winter were always the best seasons in Austin, as spring is liable to bring sudden hailstorms and summer, which sometimes lasts for what feels like half the year, turns the whole region into an oven.
But in recent years winter too has become thorny—Nainai lost both water and power for days during the Snowpocalypse.
And persistently balmy days in November, however enjoyable, are a worrisome anomaly.
Hazel sits down opposite Astrid. “How are you?”
“I’m—” Astrid stops. “Oh, I spoke in my fake accent again, didn’t I?” She plunges her fingers into her hair. “This morning when I got here, I wondered if I could start speaking normally. But then Sophie and Jonathan were there and without thinking I just did what I always do.”
With her smooth, round face and large, wide-open eyes, she looks so young, like a high school student. And she wants so much to do the right thing. Hazel, not terribly maternal by nature, feels a surge of protectiveness toward her new friend.
“Power of habit,” she says. “You can’t eat an elephant in one day.”
Astrid giggles. “That’s—”
She leaps to her feet, all mirth gone from her face. “That’s a cop car.”
Hazel scans the parking lot but doesn’t see any vehicle with a telltale light bar. Then her gaze lands on a blue sedan with a reinforced front bumper. A man and a woman emerge from the vehicle, but they are not the same pair of detectives who came to the library the day before.
“I hope they didn’t send meaner cops this time,” mumbles Astrid.
The plainclothes officers disappear into the library. But by the time Hazel and Astrid enter, they are nowhere to be seen.
Jonathan waves them over and whispers, “I think they’re here about Jeannette Obermann.”
“Oh, God!” Astrid sounds choked. “I hope they don’t think I have anything to do with her.”
Sophie’s door opens. She beckons stiffly. “Jonathan, Hazel, will you two come in here for a second?”
“Sure,” says Jonathan.
“What—what about me?” Astrid pipes up.
“You can keep getting ready for the teen book club meeting tonight, Astrid. Thank you.”
Astrid doesn’t look so much relieved as befuddled.
Hazel gives her a squeeze on the arm before she follows Jonathan into Sophie’s office. It is a nice size for one person, but with five people crammed in, Hazel can barely find a place to stand without crowding into a silk ficus tree or a file cabinet.
Sophie introduces the visitors as Detective Hagerty and Detective Gonzalez, Hagerty being the man and Gonzalez the woman. And they are indeed on the premises to investigate Jeannette Obermann’s death.
Detective Hagerty, a white man with a craggy face and military bearing, gives his email to Jonathan and asks for the list of patrons who registered for Game Night as well as photographs taken during the event by library staff.
“Can we have everything ASAP, Mr. Webster?” asks Detective Hagerty.
“Call me Jonathan, Detective,” says Jonathan. “And I will take care of this right away.”
He glances at Hazel before he leaves. Hazel, on the other hand, keeps an eye on Sophie.
The administrator, her hands braced on the back of her swivel chair, looks a normal amount of rattled for someone who likes order and orderliness dealing with a sudden influx of chaos.
But behind a wastepaper basket, which blocks the detectives’ view but not Hazel’s, Sophie is grinding the toe box of her gleaming black heel into the carpet, as if the pressure from her left foot is the only thing that keeps the seams of Hell from ripping open.
Detective Hagerty turns his attention to Hazel. “Now, Ms. Lee, you sat next to Ms. Obermann during Game Night, at the same table.”
Hazel does not request the use of her given name. She is perfectly comfortable being addressed as Ms. Lee. “That is correct, Detective.”
“Would you mind answering a few questions for us?”
“Of course not,” says Hazel.
“Normally you’d be able to use the meeting room, but our English conversation group is in there right now,” says Sophie. “Hazel, why don’t you show the detectives to the staff office? I’m sure everyone will understand.”
Hazel nearly raises a brow. Is she reading too much into it or is Sophie implying that the police are inconveniencing the librarians?
She smiles at the detectives. “This way, please.”
At the door, Hazel glances back at Sophie, who is slowly sinking into her chair, her face a rigid mask.
The staff office boasts a decent tally of square footage. But with four full-size desks, two on each side of the traffic lane leading to the drive-through pickup on the far wall, as well as a number of rolling bins, rolling carts, and crates, luxuriously spacious it is not.
The other librarians have decamped elsewhere for now.
Hazel thought she and the detectives would move some chairs around and maybe even push a desk out of the way so they can all fit around the same desk.
But after Detective Gonzalez sets up the recording equipment, Detective Hagerty sits down directly behind that desk, and Detective Gonzalez takes Jonathan’s usual spot across the traffic lane, which leaves Hazel no choice but to lean on the fore edge of the desk opposite Hagerty’s: She’d be too far away if she sits down behind this desk, the space between the desks is too narrow to fit a chair, and she does not feel like dragging a chair to the side of the desk currently occupied by Hagerty,
Astrid, temporarily free from the gaze of the law, brings in a few cans of chilled sparkling water and a plate of individually packed gluten-free cookies.
Hazel smiles as she thanks Astrid, but Astrid departs looking no less stressed: Hazel is wedged between two desks, which cannot be a reassuring sight for Astrid.
“Ms. Lee, please state for us your name, age, occupation, and place of domicile,” begins Detective Hagerty.