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During their investigation, the police discovered Tony had rented the empty apartment next door to her and was using the return air duct to get up into the ceiling and crawl to her room, letting himself into her apartment through the grate in the ceiling.
What they didn’t know was that Alex had been with him every time, holding the stepladder in the empty apartment while Tony crawled into the vent, and then crawling in behind him and giving him the lift back up from Dani’s apartment to help him escape unseen.
The police also found hidden cameras in Dani’s apartment, and camera equipment in the empty apartment where Tony had sat watching her. They suspected his brother, Alex, had been helping him, but the only fingerprints belonged to Tony. They couldn’t prove it, and Tony denied Alex was ever involved.
At his lawyer’s suggestion, Tony Bing opted out of a jury trial and threw himself on the mercy of the court. There was no lawyer on earth who could argue a good reason why Tony Bing shouldn’t go to prison for attempted murder.
His parents were horrified at what he’d done and disowned him, and then in indignation for their decision, Alex disappeared.
Tony Bing’s cold-blooded attempt at murder, his prior history of violent abuse, and the protection order he’d violated time and again didn’t go well with the judge who handed down his sentence. He got the full fifty years for an attempt at first-degree murder, with no possibility of parole. Soon afterward, Tony Bing and his wheelchair were transported to prison.
And after a year of living in hell, when the school year ended, Dani Owens resigned and began looking for a new teaching job, with the caveat that it had to be anywhere but the state of Louisiana.
Chapter 3
June—Washington, DC
Nyles Fairchild was a tall, thin man who’d turned forty-five on his last birthday—a confirmed bachelor who wore his long graying hair tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He had a master’s degree in English literature, a PhD in American history, and worked as a cataloger at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. He lived a quiet life in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of an old apartment building in Alexandria, Virginia. His last pet, a cat named Willie Nelson, died a year ago last Easter. He wasn’t lonely, but there were days when he wished he had an alter ego beyond being a mild-mannered cataloger of books.
Still, he fully accepted his life—until he found the journal.
Nyles’s workday began one morning with orders to oversee the renovation of an old wing on the lower level ofthe library. It wasn’t about moving walls or changing the format. Just overseeing the installation of tiers of new shelving. He didn’t like dealing with the public or other employees beneath him, and was mentally cursing the ineptitude of the workers when he saw a packet fall onto the floor from behind an old set of shelves. He quickly retrieved it, opened the soft leather wrapping tied around it, and after a quick glance, realized it was out of place. It didn’t even belong in this area of the library.
Then one of the workers knocked over a set of shelving, and he laid it aside in the top drawer of a desk to deal with later and went to see what damage had been done. Hours later, the new shelving was finally in place, and everyone had stopped for lunch.
Nyles always brought his lunch from home and ate at his desk, knowing everyone else would be out and he could enjoy the brief privacy. It wasn’t until he was getting ready to leave the basement area that he remembered the packet, and took it back to his office and set it aside as he sat down to eat.
It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t even be messing with it. He needed to check the provenance, and see when it had been entered into the system and where it was supposed to be. He checked the numbers and the coding, and then found the reference section to which it belonged.
NINETEENTH CENTURY JOURNAL DONATED IN1942BYJOHNDAVIDPOPE.
PERSONAL JOURNAL OFBRENDANPOPE CIRCA1833. REF.STATE OFKENTUCKY.
“How the hell did you get down here?” Nyles muttered, but now he was curious. It was almost as if someone had gone to great pains to hide it. And in that moment, he ignored his first instinct to just return it to the proper area and decided to give it a once-over.
The journal was wrapped in unprocessed rawhide and bound with a long thin strip of the same material. He took a bite of his sandwich, and then as he was chewing, carefully unfolded the rawhide, revealing the book within. The tiny label at the base of the spine indicated it had been processed into the library at some point, but it was certainly in the wrong place.
His pulse kicked a bit when he saw the age and the style of it, then took another bite of his sandwich and opened it.
The pages were yellow with age, but they appeared to have been made from a thick, heavy paper of good quality. The front and back covers were dark leather that had cracked along the spine and at one corner, but he could see stitches in the paper through a crack on the spine, proving it had been hand-bound.
Gently, he opened the front cover and saw writing on the flyleaf. The script was old-fashioned, and the ink so faded it was difficult to read. He moved it closer to the light and leaned over.
Brendan Pope—In the year of Our Lord—1833
Cumberland Mountains—Kentucky.
Nyles was intrigued, but before he could read further, the door opened, and a co-worker entered. His lunchtime and privacy were over, and without thinking, he dropped it in his briefcase, telling himself he’d look at it later when he had more time.
But then that evening as Nyles was walking through the tunnel beneath the building out to where his car was parked, he thought of the journal in his briefcase. He had no intention of stealing anything, but his curiosity was piqued. He wanted to read it.
What had Brendan Pope been writing about? Why had this particular item been hidden behind a shelf? Was it simply an oversight? Or was there a more mysterious reason why it had not been shelved where it belonged?
As soon as he got home, he ordered in some dinner and, while he was waiting for the delivery, removed the journal and sat down at his kitchen island with it, utilizing the bright lights overhead.
By the time Nyles’s food arrived, he knew that Brendan Pope, a twenty-year old man and a native of Scotland, had immigrated to the continent of North America, and after two years of hunting for subsistence and trying to find his place in this land, he set up a trading post on a well-traveled trail in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky. The trail went through a valley and then up the mountain beside it,making it convenient for trappers and random settlers to get supplies.
When Nyles’s dinner was delivered, he paused long enough to wolf it down before returning to the journal, reading up into the early morning hours. By daylight he was exhausted, but he couldn’t let go of the tale and called in sick. He showered, then set his alarm and slept for three hours before waking up and going back for more reading. Brendan Pope was something of a storyteller, and the journal posts, while intermittent, were, for Nyles, like stepping back in time.
