Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) (33 page)

“Ray!” It was Benny. “He’s got a gun. Go back up. He’s already shot—”

Ambler dropped down the last few steps to the fifth level. The rows of shelves were close together, the concrete ceiling low, the aisles in all directions narrow, so it wouldn’t be so hard to dodge someone. He didn’t have a plan but crouched and maneuvered between the rows of shelving. He might distract Dominic and give Benny and Kay a chance to get out. Dodging between the rows of shelves, he might keep Dominic at bay until Cosgrove got there. He had the advantage of knowing help was coming. With that knowledge came hope and confidence. This moment might be why he’d practiced tai chi for twenty years. Yet, when push came to shove, he didn’t know if the tai chi moves he’d practiced for years would work if he had to disarm someone with a real gun and an intent to use it.

Another shot rang out, amazingly loud again, the bullet pinging and clanging off the iron and steel of the bookshelves, probably embedding itself in a book. He wondered if one day he might hold up a bullet-pierced book at one of his lectures and recount the true-crime adventure that ended in a shootout in the stacks. More likely, someone other than him would hold up the bullet-pierced book and tell the audience how the 42nd Street Library lost its first crime fiction curator.

It made no sense for him to be in the stacks dodging someone with a gun, but here he was, something inevitable in his moving forward. Shadows flickered among the rows of shelves, so he wasn’t the only one crouching and creeping among the stacks. He worked his way toward the farthest wall, where he expected to find someone who’d been shot, most likely Max. When he saw a body on the floor in the distance, he rushed toward it because it was moving. Turning into an aisle, he realized he was watching Laura Lee, scrabbling along the roughened floor like a crab.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Dominic behind a pillar. Laura Lee crawled, barely moving, pulling herself with her hands and arms, dragging her legs, leaving a swath of blood on the floor behind her. Her breath made a gurgling sound. Something clicked behind him again, so he crouched and ran past Laura Lee and around the next iron pillar.

The place was vaultlike, rows of iron pillars and tiers of steel shelving stretching out into the distance like an interminable cellblock. He ducked behind a second row of shelving, putting another aisle between Dominic and him. When he peered through a space between a row of books and the shelf above them, expecting to see Dominic creeping along the next aisle searching for him, he saw him kneeling on the floor next to Laura Lee.

Bent over her, he spoke softly, in the sorrowful tone reserved for the time when you’re no longer being heard. “Why?” Ambler heard. “Why, Laura Lee?”

When Dominic stood again, a gun in his right hand, down by his waist, his expression was different than Ambler had seen before. The cold, robotlike mask that showed no feeling was replaced by sadness that might even hold a strange brand of wisdom, the face of a man with a distasteful task in front of him; not one he’d chosen but something he’d have to complete.

Dominic spoke softly as if whomever he addressed was not far away. “She’s dead, Max. That’s what you got out of this.” Lifting his head as if to speak to a larger audience farther away, he said, “Whoever else is down here, don’t get in my way. Lie down on the floor and stay put. This is me and Max. Nobody else.” Even louder, he hollered, “She’s dead, Max. You got that? Dead instead of you. You could’ve stood up like a man.”

Intent on listening, Ambler didn’t realize Dominic had moved toward him while he spoke. When it was too late, he heard him—and saw the muzzle of his gun, a few feet away pointed at him through a shelf of books.

“Stay right where you are, librarian.” Dominic came around the section of shelving holding his gun on Ambler. “Who else is down here?” Before Ambler could answer, he said, “Tell them to get down on the ground.”

“Benny,” Ambler called. “You and Kay stay where you are. Lie down on the floor.”

A moment of silence and then, “What about Max?” Kay Donnelly’s voice shook.

Dominic flashed a look of exasperation at Ambler. “The guy’s a prick. You know him. Now, everyone wants to take a bullet for him. I don’t get it.” He took a breath and shouted. “What about Max is I’m going to kill him.”

Ambler waited, not knowing what he waited for.

“He’s got a gun, too, you know.” Dominic’s eyes were bright with heightened alertness. He seemed to ask for understanding … for forgiveness. No. Not forgiveness. He asked for permission, for Ambler to agree that killing Max was the right thing to do. Max murdered Emily and he had a gun, so you could concede a sort of law-west-of-the-Pecos logic to Dominic’s thinking.

Risking his life to save Max from a deserved fate wouldn’t benefit humanity in any way he could imagine, yet he’d have to do what he could to save him. What that would be, he had no idea. Somewhere in his memory was a tai chi move designed to disarm an opponent with a weapon. Getting into the bow posture might help him remember how to do it, so he bent his knees and shifted his weight to see if anything came to him.

Dominic would have to be close enough to him for him to reach the gun, which at the moment wasn’t the case. Next he’d have to grab the gun and spin to the side so the gun wasn’t pointed at him. Then twist his arm until the gun dropped. It was easy enough in the exercises, with a compliant teacher, likely to be different in real life, with a professional killer.

Dominic noticed his change of stance. He took a step back and raised the gun. “It’s time for you get on the ground, librarian.” He pointed the gun at the floor to emphasize his point.

“Do you want—” Ambler was trying to stall, when, out of the corner of his eye, through a gap in the bookshelves, he saw movement. His reaction, because it was instinctive, was unguarded.

Dominic followed his gaze. “What was it?”

“What?” Trying to distract Dominic wasn’t going to work. He tried anyway. “Do you want me to get down on the ground?”

“What’d you see?” Dominic shifted his stance, trying to get a better look through the shelves and keep an eye on Ambler at the same time. He was bending this way and that, stooping one second, standing taller the next, trying to see through the shelves, when a mournful cry, a sobbing wail of hopelessness and despair, shattered the silence of the tomblike stacks. A few seconds behind the wail, a single shot rang out close enough to be deafening.

Dominic moved toward the sound, as if he had started toward the wail and was hurtled forward by the shot, his reaction unthinking, instinctive. Distracted, he allowed his arm, the arm holding the gun, to brush against Ambler. Ambler would think later that he too reacted unthinkingly, that Dominic’s arm with the gun brushing against him triggered a reaction that required no thought—that allowed for no thought.

He grabbed Dominic’s wrist above the gun and twisted, at the same time turning on his waist and twisting Dominic’s arm in a circle and pulling him in the direction he was already going. He had his hand on the gun, on top of Dominic’s. It went off. He let go of the gun and spun on his right foot, completing a circle, and used the force of the spin to kick with his left leg, knocking Dominic’s legs out from under him. As Ambler spun onto the floor and Dominic fell, the gun went off again.

And then stillness. For a second, he thought he was shot. When he realized he wasn’t, he looked at Dominic, lying still. Ambler didn’t move, letting the enormity of what had happened sink in. He began shaking. Somewhere, something made a sound. Next he heard a scream. Soon, the sounds of activity increased. He hadn’t moved from the spot on the floor in the narrow aisle he’d ended up in. He began to feel pain in his shin where it had met Dominic’s shin in his last kick, pain in his shoulder and in his hip. He should move, stand up, but he didn’t.

Dominic was dead. He knew without going nearer the body He’d killed a man. That seemed not possible. He went back over what happened, trying to recall every detail in sequence. He couldn’t. He’d spun and twisted Dominic’s arm. The gun went off. Dominic was dead. It happened fast. He wasn’t sure he’d even been there.

Next, Mike Cosgrove was standing over him. “Don’t get up.”

Ambler shook his head. “Is he dead?”

“What the hell happened?”

Ambler shook his head. “Dominic. Is Dominic dead?”

“If that’s Dominic, he is.”

“I killed him.”

“We’ll sort out what happened. First, we need to know if you’re hurt.” He called to the medics, who came to look at Ambler.

Chapter 29

Cosgrove watched the medics examine Ambler. They looked for bullet holes first. Surprisingly often, folks have a bullet hole in them without realizing it. Ray’s face was ashen. Pain. Shock. Whatever happened took a toll on him. If he did kill Dominic, as he said, it would weigh heavily on him. Bad enough for anyone, even a cop. You don’t get over killing someone. Most people never know the feeling. Not even cops. One in a thousand, not even that. His bad luck to be one of them; years ago, and the nightmares still woke him. For Ambler, it would be worse—for all his interest in crime, if there ever was a never-hurt-a-fly person, it was Ray; he’d be a mess. Made no difference the guy deserved it.

What they had down here were three deaths, all by gunshot, one self-inflicted. Maximilian Wagner ate the gun. The woman was shot in the chest. With Wagner beside her, it looked like a murder-suicide. But the woman took more than one bullet. Same with Dominic, shot more than once. His gun was a semiautomatic. The gun in Wagner’s hand was a revolver. So it might not be what it looked like.

For the other death, it seemed likely that Dominic was holding the gun; it was on the ground underneath him. Ray grabbed at it; they wrestled; it went off. Accidental. Justifiable. It could be that; it could be something else. He’d take a statement from Ray when the medics finished with him. Not something he looked forward to, walking the guy through it again. It would be best to get it over with, so he’d do it, neither of them liking it.

From the looks of things, he’d be here all goddamn night. He could see the
News
and the
Post
in the morning: “Carnage at the 42nd Street Library.” They’d hound Ray once they figured out he was in the middle of it. It would make the headlines because everybody in the city, everybody everywhere—people in Iowa, for Christ’s sake—knew the 42nd Street Library. What the papers might not get would be the connections.

The killings here; the death of the woman in Hell’s Kitchen; her father’s murder; the murder at the library a week before that; the earlier killing when everyone was young and Emily Yates a damaged child. He wasn’t sure yet who killed whom. What he was sure of was that the events of that earlier time led to this. He was inclined to think it was over now. He could tell Ray the chickens had found their roosts. Everyone part of the twisted scenario was dead, except the two people he suspected early on, the ex-priest and Kay Donnelly. Things often aren’t what they seem.

He wondered how long it would be before he could sit down with Ray and piece it together. Ambler wasn’t a guy to think good triumphed over evil. After all this, he’d say good people sometimes did evil and evil people often did good. He was like that. You’d wonder if killing someone, accident or not, would change him.

Watching the medics examining Ray, it took a minute for him to notice a uniformed cop coming toward him with two bedraggled citizens in tow. He recognized Kay Donnelly and Benny Barone.

“And what have we here?” he asked.

Neither of them answered. They were subdued and scared.

“They were in this dungeon when the shooting went down,” the officer said.

“So, what happened?” He looked from Benny to Kay.

“What about Ray?” Benny asked. “He’s hurt.”

Cosgrove gestured toward Ambler and the medics. They were helping him to his feet and seemed prepared to let him go on his own.

“We don’t know,” Kay said. “First, someone was shot. I think Laura Lee because Max screamed her name. But we didn’t see. Right after the shot, Ray Ambler came down into the stacks and called to Dominic.”

Cosgrove broke with his usual practice, which was to let the suspect or witness talk without getting in the way, and interrupted. “Why were you down here?” He shifted his gaze to Benny.

“She came to warn Max Wagner. I came after her. I guess Ray came after me.”

“Why would you all do that?”

Kay and Benny looked puzzled.

Cosgrove tried again. “Try to stop a guy with a gun.”

They stood in front of him, arms around each other. The idea of it, budding love in the midst of murder, said something about life, how you find hope in the worst of things. Looking at it the other way, you find evil and cruelty and despair all around you that love can never overcome. However you choose to look at life, it’s a wash.

“I got my daughter back,” he said to Benny.

*   *   *

It was late when Cosgrove finished his work. He popped two Tums into his mouth and stood for a few moments on the broad landing in front of the steps leading from the massive bronze main door of the library to Fifth Avenue. That door had been closed for hours. What was left of the cruisers, ambulances, ME vans, lined the curb on 40th Street in front of a side door. Those who had business there, detectives, uniformed cops, shift supervisors, crime scene and medical examiner’s office technicians and investigators, went in and out the side door there.

A couple of hours before, the president of the New York Public Library in a tuxedo, the police commissioner, the Midtown South commander, and a half-dozen others—white shirts and gold badges—stood where he was standing. Facing a battery of TV cameras, the steps lit up like Yankee Stadium, they reassured the city there had not been a terrorist attack. A shooting took place. Three people were dead, including the perpetrator. None of the victims were library employees, and there were no other suspects.

Yellow cabs streamed down Fifth Avenue despite the lateness of the hour. But the sidewalks were quiet. The small crowd, mostly tourists, that gathered for the press conference dispersed as soon as the klieg lights were turned off. A lone cruiser idled at the curb beneath the watchful lions.