“No, thank you,” said Liesl. “I’m worried I’ll spill some on my blouse. The rest of the sandwich is pretty beige, but the sauce is a risk.”
“Your loss,” he said, seasoning his next bite with an extra dab of the sauce. “You’re not the property owner.”
“The owner is the institution,” Liesl said. “This isn’t a purse snatching.”
She always felt it was a good policy to remain calm, maybe to the point of stoicism, when anger or frustration were expected from her—holding back tears at funerals, speaking in a low tone when someone else was yelling—so she could never be categorized as hysterical. She had worked at it for years. But as she placed her sandwich down in her lap, it took all her energy to suppress a scream of aggravation.
“You have to take that up with President Garber,” the detective said with a shrug.
“Have you spoken with him?”
“Briefly.”
“And he didn’t report the books stolen?” She looked at the sandwich in her lap, picked at a piece of lettuce, and took deep, calming breaths.
“He didn’t file an official complaint.”
“So, what now?”
Yuan had a mouthful of pita and falafel. He took a long time to chew and swallow.
“We’re searching for her car.”
“Okay,” Liesl said. “How does that help me?”
He scrunched up the wax paper from his sandwich. Hers was only a quarter eaten.
“Well,” Yuan said over his shoulder as he got up to throw away his trash. “She may have the books with her.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s all you can hope for.”
“Why?”
“It’s still only a missing person case.” He hadn’t sat back down, and she sensed that he was preparing to leave, that he had given her enough of his time.
“So you suspect she is missing because she committed a crime.”
“Right,” Yuan said. “Most logical explanation.”
“Right,” Liesl said. She stayed sitting as a form of protest, not wanting him to leave until she had some small bit of satisfaction, some answer that made sense. “But you won’t investigate her for the commission of said crime.”
“Right.”
“Is all law enforcement this insane?” she asked.
“No. But in my experience, all academia is.”
“What should I be doing now?”
“Eating your delicious sandwich,” he said. He put his hands in the pockets of his trench coat.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve never had more authority and less control in my life.”
“That’s funny.”
“Not to me.”
“Let President Garber deal with the theft, and let me deal with Miriam,” he said. “You keep yourself sane by finding yourself something no one else can say no to.”
***
She asked Dan to clear some boxes out of the receiving room. He cited a clause from the collective bargaining agreement explaining why he wouldn’t. She picked up the Christie’s catalog, looking with longing at Lot 37. She ignored the stack of unpaid invoices on the desk. She took her half-eaten sandwich to the lunchroom and threw the sandwich and the wrapper in the general trash bin instead of the green bin. It didn’t satisfy her. She went back to the office and picked up the phone.
“Rhonda,” she said. “It’s Liesl from the library.”
“Is everything all right?”
“All right? Why wouldn’t it be?”
She was drumming her fingers on the table and clenching her jaw. She might have sounded manic.
“I’m calling about the Peshawar.”
Somewhere in a hospital bed, Christopher’s eyelids fluttered.
“I’d love for you to take it for your research.”
A team from the university’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit came to the library the next day. All three wore eccentric designer glasses.
They came several times over the next few days. There were measurements and preparations and discussions about how to carry out sampling. Liesl did not ask Dan to bring out and put away the Peshawar every time it was needed for these meetings. She did it herself. In the evenings she called Vivek and Detective Yuan to check on progress, and she responded to President Garber’s voicemails with curt emails. It began to get dark very early in the evenings, but Liesl did not let that deter her from walking home through the cold every night.
13
Liesl lay on rumpled linens, drool puddling on her pillow, one eye half-open and watching the clock so she could count every second that she had left to sleep, pretending not to notice the sour smell of night sweat paired with last night’s gewürztraminer on her breath.