Page 48 of The Librarians

Astrid’s house

Tuesday night

After Hazel leaves for the library, Astrid and Sophie exchange a look, and then reach for the cheese board at almost the same time.

“Swedish cheese?” Sophie asks, scraping some Hush?llsost onto an almond flour cracker.

“Yep, from IKEA,” Astrid answers.

They burst out laughing, but their mirth quickly subsides into a choked cackle. Sophie shoves the cheese and cracker into her mouth; Astrid does the same with a piece of salami, chewing nervously.

When they have calmed themselves down some by demolishing half of everything on the cheese board, Sophie asks to see more of Astrid’s fonts.

As it turns out, she is perfectly knowledgeable about typography, and they discuss x-height and kerning like two old friends reminiscing over childhood memories.

So much so that Astrid is startled when her phone beeps. It’s Hazel, messaging their three-person text group.

Inside the library. All good. It’s a bit creepy but doesn’t really bother me.

Astrid immediately texts back. You see anything promising?

I’m pretty much searching for a needle in a haystack. So, not yet.

This time, Astrid and Sophie do not find it so easy to lose themselves in the finer points of finials and ball terminals. Their exchange peters out gradually, until Astrid closes the last of her stack of lettering-filled notebooks.

“I still feel iffy about Hazel being alone in the library,” she says.

Sophie looks at her watch. “Let’s call her. Put it on speakerphone.”

Sophie comes to sit next to Astrid. Astrid makes sure that the phone is right in front of Sophie.

She glances at Sophie. Sophie has her hands under the dining table. She nods at Astrid. Astrid taps at her phone.

A ring tone reverberates.

“Hey, Astrid.” Hazel sounds puzzled. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Sophie and I are worried about you, that’s all.”

“Yes, why don’t we keep this line open?” says Sophie. “That way we’ll all feel a little less jumpy.”

“Sure, thanks for thinking about me,” answers Hazel. “I definitely feel safer with you guys on the line.”

“Are you still in the storage room?” Astrid asks.

“Yep.”

The answer is accompanied by crisp sounds of pages being flipped and then small thuds of stacks of books being moved about.

Sophie rotates her neck. “Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

Astrid’s heart rate, which has yet to return to normal, spikes again. “Let us know if you see anything interesting.”

It becomes mostly quiet on Hazel’s end, with the occasional minor interruptions of filliped paper and gently colliding volumes. Astrid startles once at a crash, but Hazel assures her that it’s only that she inadvertently knocked some books onto the floor.

Time passes as slowly as if Astrid were staring at a pot of water on the stove, waiting for it to boil.

She and Sophie split the remaining grapes.

Her head feels heavy, despite her agitation.

Drowsily she wonders whether she ought to get up and make some coffee when Hazel says, “Hmm, there’s a box that says ‘For Central.’ The central library? ”

“Should be,” Sophie answers, her voice sounding preternaturally calm.

“From time to time we get interesting items donated, things that could constitute primary material for local history. We send those downtown and see if central might want them for their collection, or even forward them to the history center.”

From the other end, the shrill slide of a box cutter slicing through packing tape, followed by the pulling and snapping of incompletely cut tape. “I see why these were potentially of historical interest. There’s a stack of Austin and Texas maps from the forties and fifties.”

“Practically antiques,” concurs Astrid.

“Look at that, a couple of first edition historical romances from the 1970s. I think my grandmother had these books at one point—maybe she still has them in the attic. Oh, what’s this?”

There’s now wonder in Hazel’s voice.

“What’s what?” demands Sophie.

“A yearbook from my old elementary school. I have this one—it’s from my fourth-grade year.”

Astrid moves closer to the phone. To Sophie. “It’s not yours, is it?”

“No, mine is back home in Singapore.” The sound of pages flipping again. “But it’s definitely from the time I was in the States. There I am, Mrs. Rodriguez’s fourth-grade—”

Hazel’s silence is abrupt and complete, like those moments when a movie’s soundtrack suddenly stops when characters plunge into water. Or deep space.

“Hazel? Are you okay? Are you still there?”

“I’m here, it’s just that—under my picture, someone wrote ‘Hi’ and drew an arrow pointing to the right.”

“Shit!” The word escapes Astrid. “Oh my God, do you think—is it possible—”

The rub of glossy paper on glossy paper grows more strident—Hazel is paging through the rest of the yearbook at a breakneck pace. Astrid’s hand comes up to her throat. Beneath her thumb, her jugular throbs like an EDM rave. Next to her, Sophie’s knees knock together.

“I’m on the last page,” whispers Hazel, “you know, that blank flyleaf for people to write on.”

“What about it?” Astrid’s voice shakes.

“There is a huge character string.” Half a minute passes. “Fuck. It’s exactly sixty-four characters. That’s how long a blockchain private key is.”

“Lord Almighty,” squeaks Sophie. “You think you found it?”

“I don’t know. I need to FaceTime my hacker friend—she’ll know more than I do. If this is it, I need to hand it in to the police.”

“Okay,” says Sophie. “We’ll hang up now. Let us know what you find out.”

“I will—in the morning. But if you don’t see me at work tomorrow, you’ll know why.”

The line goes silent.

“Everything will be fine, right?” asks Astrid.

Her hands shake. She places them on her chair, under her thighs, to keep them still.

“Yes,” says Sophie, sounding only half-convinced. “Everything—and everyone, too.”

But everything—and everyone—is not going to be all right this night. That was always a given. The only question is, who isn’t going to be all right?

The library is not brilliantly lit at night. But between streetlamps, exterior lights on apartment buildings across the parking lot, and exterior lights of the shopping center to the other side, enough illumination is provided for a midnight visitor to see clearly, without the aid of flashlights.

A man dashes out of the apartment complex and streaks across to the long, extended porch in front of the library. He counts only one car in the lot, an incongruously cheerful red Miata. Strange to conceive of Hazel Lee in such a symbol of suburban midlife crisis.

He hopes she will cooperate. He doesn’t want to hurt her.

But it’s so much money. What else matters in the end?

Nobody loves him anyway, so he might as well have as much money as possible.

Money is loyal—unconditionally so—it will provide better than any parents and be more dependable than any children. It will form the bedrock of his future.

The front entrance slides open soundlessly, as does the next set of automatic doors. The interior of the library is shadows upon shadows, but he’s familiar enough with its layout to skirt the darkened public terminals and head for the staff breakroom.

The door opens. There is another door in the wall opposite, under which a fluorescent glow creeps. He takes a deep breath and wraps his gloved hand on the handle.

The storage room is a cave full of book stalagmites rearing up from the floor.

A woman with her back to him sits on a knee-high stack of books.

The hood of her jacket is pulled over her head but the slender volume on her lap is visible, with little rectangular headshots of children—that particularly American publication, the primary school yearbook.

He extends his weapon, points it at the back of her head, and commands, “Give me that if you don’t want to die.”