Chapter 6
It wasn’t much warmer the next day. In the shelter of a brick gatepost across from Marcy’s apartment, Keith was congratulating himself on remembering to wear two sweaters under his coat, but regretting that he’d left his hat behind. Other students brushed by, some glancing his way, but most of them ignoring him, not wanting to turn their necks in the cold wind. A girl gave him a sideways look, and he smiled. “Hi, there,” he offered. She turned away quickly, dismissing him. He sighed. “Cold-shouldered again. Nice day for it, though.”
Overhead, the heavy sky was turning slate and dark purple. The National Weather Service had suggested that the first flurries of snow might be on their way; if not now, then certainly before the end of the month. Keith shrugged, huddling his ears into his collar. There was no such thing as an easy Midwestern winter. One just hoped the inevitable wouldn’t be too early in coming.
Broken brown leaves swirled through the iron tines of the gate, and collected, rustling, in the shelter between Keith and the corner of the wall. The wind increased in velocity, whipping the students from a walk to a run between the class buildings. Keith felt his nose and ears growing frosty and numb, and he tried not to think about them.
White sheets of paper cartwheeled down the sidewalk, pursued by their owner, a honey-blonde-haired girl in a pink aviator’s jacket, waving an empty folder and yelling over the howling chorus of the wind. A few of the pages swirled in behind him, and he managed to trap them against the wall without crumpling them too much. He stepped out of his hiding place to help her gather up the rest.
“Thanks,” she gasped, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “It’s my research paper.” Keith held the portfolio open while she shuffled the fluttering pages together. From the depths of a pocket full of oddments, he found a large paper clip which he offered to the girl. She secured the paper to the folder, flipped it shut, and smiled up at him. Her eyes were blue-green and very pretty. “Thanks again.”
“No problem. You know us Boy Scouts,” Keith said, becoming interested in pursuing the conversation, then over her shoulder caught sight of Marcy emerging from her apartment. He had to make a rapid choice between duty and pleasure, and curiosity won. “’Scuse me. Duty calls.” He dodged out of sight behind the gate, and waited until Marcy had passed, heading toward the library. The girl in pink gave him an odd look, and went away without further comment.
O O O
He stayed outside the library until he could see which direction she was going through the glass doors. The heavy bronze frames creaked as he hauled one of them outward into the wind. Two other students behind him caught the metal door’s edge, which burned their fingers with cold, and together they pulled it open. The wind shook it in fierce protest as they struggled inside. The thick plate glass windows thundered.
Keith kept to the edges of the foyer until Marcy showed her pass and entered the library stacks. Curious, he found his own stack pass, and went in behind her.
He almost lost his quarry on the ground level, until he noticed the fire stairwell door hissing shut. No one was allowed to use those stairs except the librarians. The general use staircase was in a different place. With a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he followed. Her footsteps sounded out below him, and he trotted down the stairs, taking care to stay a flight above her. Either this study group met down in one of the conference rooms in the stacks, or he was probably going to interrupt Marcy and her boyfriend, having a private “study session.” Keith made a face. He decided he didn’t want to think about the latter, and stifled the little whine of jealousy in his mind.
It was dim in the stairwell, and the echoes sounded about him. Even his faint footfalls threatened to drown out the distant clatter of Marcy’s steps. He was descending into No-Man’s-Land, the private realm of the librarians. Keith felt as if he was on a safari, passing into dangerous territory. Did the library staff know that Marcy’s group was here? The very secretive nature of her group excited Keith’s already sharp curiosity. But what would Marcy think if she caught him following her?
Another set of footsteps joined the echoes in the hall. Keith stopped, wondering if it was the boyfriend, or someone else from her group. No, they were too definite, too deliberate. Not another student sneaking up the stairs. Someone with authority. Keith straightened up and let his shoulders swing in a nonchalant attitude, pretending he belonged here.
“Young man!” A tall dignified woman with a coil of black hair on her head swam out of the gloom. “What are you doing here?”
“Um, going to level eleven, ma’am,” Keith said, blanching. He started around her, but she clenched his upper arm in a powerful grip peculiar to librarians engaged in administering reproofs.
“This area is restricted from students’ use except during emergencies,” she said coldly. Her scrawny neck and full cheeks made her look like an angry turkey. “You are to use the north stair only.” Keith nodded politely, and tried to catch the sound of Marcy’s footsteps. They had disappeared. The librarian escorted him forcefully to the eleventh level and pushed him into a waiting elevator. “Your privileges will be restricted to the study rooms for tonight.”
“But my project…?” There was no chance of catching Marcy now.
“Your project will have to wait. You students must learn that you cannot break rules without punishment.” She flipped his stack card out of his fingers and brandished it at him. “You may reclaim this from my secretary tomorrow morning. I’m Mrs. Hansen, the head of Library Services.” The elevator closed with a snap on his protests.
O O O
Keith wandered around the reading rooms, keeping an eye on the stack entrance, until the Teaching Assistant on duty there threw him out. After that, he sat in the lobby, wondering if he should try to get into the stacks another way. He dismissed the idea, realizing that he would probably miss Marcy if he left his watch-post. Nine o’clock closing came, and the other students drifted out of the stacks. Marcy was among them, and she was alone.
“Hi!” Keith hailed her as she appeared.
Marcy smiled at him curiously. “How long have you been here?”
“Just a little while,” he assured her. “I had nothing else to do. Thought I’d just wait and find out what your study group had to say.”
“How did you know…?” Marcy exclaimed.
“You almost said it last night,” Keith said apologetically. “The li—Sorry. It’s the bloodhound in me. And the rest of my face isn’t so good, either. How about it?”
“I … They still say they’ll think about it. Please. I’m doing what I can. Don’t rush me. They’re kind of … funny about having people join.”
“No problem,” Keith said, stretching as he rose from the marble bench. “Want to go for some coffee?”
“Sure,” Marcy said relieved. “I’m glad you’re being patient.”
“That’s me,” Keith said, taking Marcy’s arm. “Patience is my middle name. Right after Emerson.”
O O O
The next Tuesday, Keith spotted Marcy walking alone across the common, and hurried his pace to catch up with her. His mouth was open to call out a greeting to her, when Carl Mueller appeared from between two concrete posts on the edge of the parking lot, and matched his stride to hers. She smiled shyly and tilted her head to one side, responding to something Carl was saying with a satisfied smirk on his face. Keith was too far away to hear what they were saying, but it was obvious from the body language what he was seeing: this was the above-reproach boyfriend in Marcy’s life. Carl fell neatly into that sort of pigeonhole. He considered himself to be a cut or so better than most of the other students, and had somehow persuaded Marcy to agree with him. Poor kid.
Keith had an impulse to run up and start a conversation with her, which would infuriate Carl, but Marcy would probably get upset if he annoyed her boyfriend. He assumed that Carl must be in the mysterious study group, too. That would explain perfectly why Marcy was uncomfortable about having him, Keith, around. Not only was Carl a snob, but he was a jealous snob, too. The guy probably monogrammed the flowers he gave her. He wondered if Carl knew he knew Marcy.
He followed them down the street, trailing about a hundred feet behind, until they came to Gillington Library. Hanging back so they wouldn’t see him, he paused at the top of the steps, squinting through the double glass doors, until he saw which way they turned. Ah. Left. The stacks.
Feeling like a private detective on the scent of an adulterous divorcee, he flashed his ID card at the librarian on duty at the entrance to the stacks. Marcy and Carl had disappeared, and Keith heard the bang and whirr of the elevator. He ambled down the aisle toward the double metal doors, idly fingering the spines of books, as if looking for just any old thing to read.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the indicator drop. Either this study group met in the basement of the stacks, or the lovebirds were just looking for somewhere dark to neck. Not Marcy! he chided himself, right hand slapping his own left wrist. She wasn’t that type. Campy, but true.
The librarian, a thin woman of middle age who looked like a failed actress, glanced at him oddly. “Black widow spider,” he explained solemnly, holding up his wrist for her examination. “The bite is usually fatal.”
“Oh.” She nodded and then looked away, her forehead pulled into a puzzled frown.
The indicator stopped on Level Fourteen, which was the lower half of the third sub-basement. The library stacks were half-high levels, eight above ground, and six below. As far as Keith knew, there was nothing official that went on in those underground levels. They were archives; locked floors to be entered by library personnel only.
Unless Carl and Marcy had keys, they must have exited the elevator before then. And yet, he hadn’t noticed the indicator stopping before it showed the basement numbers. Something most definitely was going on here. Cursing himself for not paying attention, he found the stairs and started down to search the floors one by one.
Weaving his way through the low-ceilinged, narrow aisles of the stack levels, Keith put on a show of bored nonchalance flavored with the attitude any harried student had toward trying to find an obscure book out of which some teacher threatened to construct the entire final exam for his course. The first four underground levels were a snap. The lighting was good, and no one paid him much attention. The heavy thrum of the heating system spread a blanket of white noise throughout each floor. Maybe ten students occupied each floor in various isolated carrels, cramming for one course or another, with heavy head full of knowledge cradled in supporting hands over a textbook. But his search was frustrated. None of the meeting rooms was occupied. Marcy was nowhere around.
He wondered if he had mistaken another number for Fourteen. No, he was sure he had seen the indicator change from a one and a round number, and he was certain it wasn’t 10. Also, it would have been quicker to walk down the two short flights of stairs. Capturing the elevator, he held the door open with one hand and punched at the last two studs in the double column. They refused to light up, obviously waiting for the key to be turned in the locks below to activate them. The door surged under his hand, and from somewhere in the bowels of the mechanism, the elevator emitted an imperative BEEPum BEEPum BEEPum. Petulantly, Keith gave the door a sharp shove before letting it slide closed. It thrummed away, the beeping fading into the floors above.
Carl and Marcy weren’t on any of the four floors. That left the two security floors. What was so special about this meeting that it had to be held down there? Of all the inconvenient locations! At this hour of the evening, ninety percent of the classrooms on campus were empty. Maybe he was about to stumble into a communist satrap, or a weird religious cult. He mentally scratched the latter option; he couldn’t really see Carl dancing around in a pastel muslin robe.
How about a spy ring? he speculated as he stood in the stairwell, prying at the locked door to level Thirteen. Keith loved a mystery, especially one he didn’t have to take seriously. He could see through the edge of the door that it wasn’t quite latched, but that there was no knob on this side. With the tips of his fingers, he dragged at the painted metal door, pulling it a quarter inch out from the jamb. The hinges groaned and scraped, echoing deafeningly in the dim hall. He scrabbled at the emerging edge with one hand, but it slipped back flush. It was simply too heavy for him to hold it open with just one set of fingers.
He needed to get something between the door and the frame to keep it from slamming shut until he could get his hands free. A pencil was the only thing he had on him that was light and strong enough. It went between his teeth, eraser end outward, and he pulled at the door again. The rubber eraser skipped across the paint, jabbing the point of the pencil into his tongue. “Aagh,” he mumbled around it, and then winced at the sound.
Carefully, he maneuvered it into the tiny opening of the door. It took him four tries before he could pull the door wide enough for the pencil to go through. It occurred to him too late that the point would have helped him widen the opening. Never mind. He let go of the door when the pencil was in place. It snicked shut onto the wood, and Keith stepped back, spitting out graphite.
Dusting his tingling fingertips together, he levered the door open and let himself through. A crumpled candy wrapper pressed into the latch socket was what had prevented the door from locking automatically. Keith deduced in his best consulting detective method that someone else without keys wanted access to these floors. In the pitiful light of a wavering fluorescent bulb high up in the stairwell, nothing out of the ordinary would have been visible.
Level Thirteen was poorly lit. It was also neglected, Keith learned, as he prowled around the room, peering into alcoves. Checkout cards lay strewn on the floor with scuffed foot-prints and dust on them, and here and there the end of an internal shelf had slipped, letting the books on it fall sideways, as if they were reclining, bored to be here in the dark. Just as in the twelve levels above, carrels and study nooks occupied two walls, and the elevator descended down a shaft drilled straight through the middle of the level, visible over the metal bookshelves. The room was surprisingly cold. They must have all the heating ducts closed, since no one used this floor much. It didn’t have to be fit for human habitation, or for librarians, either. Keith wasn’t sure about librarians.
Children’s librarians were a little different. They seemed to like people, and all the ones he knew enjoyed their jobs. He admired their patience. Maybe it was that they were actively involved in teaching, helping their young charges to learn skills they had never encountered before, while their co-workers in the adult sections were just caretakers for what they perceived to be an unappreciative and disinterested public. Too bad there were no children’s librarians here at Midwestern. On the other hand, maybe not. Keith would never get away with half of his favorite bent rules if there were.
Nothing here, anywhere on this level. That left Fourteen.
O O O
Once beyond the security door, there were no more barriers. Keith trotted down the last set of stairs, listening to his footsteps reverberate in the hall like ping-pong balls bouncing. He thought for one breathless moment he could hear other feet on the stairs, but guessed that the echoes were playing tricks on his ears.
Fourteen was, if anything, more deserted than Thirteen. There were no emergency lights down here at all. He felt his way to the elevator, wishing he had brought a flashlight. Not that he was afraid of the dark, but what if something jumped out at him? The light switches were somewhere on the central pillar. There was a groaning hum under the floor that raised the hair on the back of his neck, but that was from the furnace blowers. It was nice and warm down here, but not inviting. He decided he had to be wrong about Marcy being down here somewhere. It was dead quiet. There was no one down here but himself.
He touched the wall, found his way to the switchplate. The slots were empty. They required the insertion of a switchkey, something impossible to duplicate without a screwdriver or a paperclip, and Keith had neither. He felt for the elevator call button. He wondered where Marcy and Carl had gone. This was an old building. Maybe there was a secret passage around here somewhere, and they lost him on Level Eleven, right under the librarians’ noses. His imagination drew up pictures of a spy sect, something to do with the CIA or communism, melded with the weird religious cult that worshipped IC chips. Men and women wearing gray business suits under sackcloth robes and chanting from mystic flow charts. He’d be intruding on a bunch of mindless hulks who would beat him up, and spread his guts out across Anthropology through History in the name of electronics.
“C’mon, I’m scaring myself,” Keith said chidingly. His throat was dry and tight.
A click sounded behind him, a heel scraping against the concrete floor. Keith spun, just as the blinding beam from a flashlight hit him square in the eyes. His heart pounded, threatening to jump out of his open mouth.
“What are you doing down here?” a man’s voice boomed.
“Uh,” cried Keith, goggling. His voice had abandoned him. The beam moved closer, dazzling him with the sun-bright circle of yellow light at the center of the white and past, brushing the wall until it came to the elevator indicator. The flashlight turned vertical, as the hand holding it shifted to punch the call button. The light turned horizontal again, and stayed on Keith’s face until the elevator arrived. Keith shrank back against the cold, rough stucco wall, trying to avoid looking down the hot torch-beam. He felt like a rabbit caught trying to cross a road. The other hand appeared now, reached up and shoved him into the car.
“Don’t come down here again without authorization,” the voice grumbled. As the doors closed, Keith caught a glimpse of a bearded man in a security uniform, and the flashlight, as it turned back toward the floor. Something about the guard’s proportions seemed wrong, but before he could be sure, the elevator doors closed. His heart slowed down gradually to its normal pace.
O O O
He posted himself in a study carrel on Level Eight handy to the elevator and the stairwell, and waited for Marcy to reappear. The scrawny librarian kept staring fiercely at him, willing him to sit still and study. Keith smiled sweetly, and went on jumping up every time the elevator stopped near him. After an eternity of false starts, the elevator doors opened, and Marcy and Carl emerged, chatting. Keith raised himself up, and waved over the carrel wall. Marcy noticed him and involuntarily started toward him, shaking her head, signaling a frantic “no.” Carl noticed him then, and glared hotly, pacing ahead of Marcy. If Carl had been Superman with heat vision, Keith would have been a little crispy smudge on the floor. He ignored Carl, and smiled brightly at Marcy. “Hi!”
“Uh, hi,” Marcy said, barely audible.
“Good to see you,” Keith said. “Marcy’s in my Sociology class,” he explained.
“I know,” Carl glowered. He tugged at Marcy’s arm, and she turned away too quickly, banging her knee against an exposed I-beam. She gave a soft gasp and nearly dropped her books, but she kept moving. Carl didn’t seem to notice that she had hurt herself and virtually pulled her out of the stacks. The last Keith could see of her was an expression of wide-eyed appeal. Or desperation.
“I’ll see you later,” he called to her.
“Please, just leave me alone,” she breathed, clutching her books tightly. Keith subsided into his chair, puzzled.
“Shhh!” hissed the librarian triumphantly.
***