The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

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“Historical documents mostly.”

“Legal?”

“Some. And planning and zoning, real estate, government filings.”

“That right? My partners’re handling a case with some issues going back thirty, forty years. I’m looking for some old housing rulings that city hall doesn’t have. Is there any way I can get in?”

He hoped a senior librarian wouldn’t pop out and ask what, specifically, he wanted.

“You gotta make an appointment. Call this number.” The man handed Shaw a card, which vanished into his jeans pocket. It was more likely that his father or Gahl had used the public side of the place. If he found nothing there, maybe he’d bone up on old California real estate law and try to get inside the private portion.

Shaw thanked the man and then walked through the unresponsive metal detector into the spacious and well-lit open-to-the-public portion of the library.

Now, where to go from here?

It was an upscale facility, as you might expect, being attached to one of the best endowed universities in the country. In the center was a librarian’s station, circular. A Black man of about thirty-five in a beige suit sat there, focused on his computer monitor.

Radiating outward from the center were rows of tables and spacious computer workstations with large monitors. The screen saver—a moving block of the name of the library—ricocheted in a leisurely fashion around each monitor. The desks and cubicles offered office supplies: pens, pads of paper, Post-it notes and paper clips. Ringing this open space were the stacks, containing books and periodicals. There were floor-to-ceiling windows in the front and on the side. Against the back wall were what seemed to be a dozen offices or conference rooms. Circling the second-floor balcony was a series of stacks and rooms, just as down here.

There weren’t many patrons in this portion of the first floor. Two older businessmen who’d doffed their suit jackets pored over old books. A young woman in a plaid dress and a slim man in a dark suit and white shirt—both looked to be mid-thirties—were on computers.

Instinctively Shaw examined the library for escape routes. He sensed no threat, of course, but scanning for exits was a survival thing. He did it everywhere he went, automatically.

Never lose your orientation . . .

There was the front door, of course, and a stairway that led to the second floor. An elevator. A glass door in the back of the stacks led to the members-only side of the library. It opened onto a conference room, which might lead to other exits in the back of the structure, though it was presently occupied; a middle-aged businesswoman in a suit and a lean man in dark casual jacket sat with their backs to the glass door. A somber-faced man with bright blond hair sat across the table from them. The door had a latch but Shaw had no way of knowing whether or not it was now locked.

The left-side floor-to-ceiling windows featured a fire door, fitted with an alarm. It exited onto a side street. There were men’s and women’s restrooms, and a door on which was a sign: supplies.

He tucked this information away and got to work. Assuming that his father had identified the library as a place where Gahl might have hidden the evidence, where would the man have concealed it?

Shaw guessed that he probably had not stashed the entire courier bag, which he guessed from the name was not a slim piece of luggage; it would be conspicuous. He would probably have emptied it and put the contents—copies of incriminating emails, correspondence, spreadsheets, computer drives or disks, whatever it might be—in an out-of-the-way place. Maybe in the pages of a book or journal, maybe in the shadowy areas behind the volumes in the stacks or on top of the racks, maybe in the spaces beneath drawers in a workstation.

He strolled through the stacks, filled with such titles as Liability in Maritime Collision Claims: Bays and Harbors; Piercing the Corporate Veil; Incorporation Guide for Nonprofits. Easily four or five thousand books. He noted that many were outdated, like Who’s Who of San Francisco Commerce: 1948. What better hiding place for documents or a CD or thumb drive than a book of that sort? In plain sight, yet inside a volume that no one would possibly need to refer to.

Yet Shaw calculated it would take a month to go through all the volumes. And it would be impossible to do that without arousing suspicion . . . No, Gahl was not a stupid man. He hid the evidence because he knew there was a chance he would be killed. It would be hidden in a place that somebody, a colleague, the police, could deduce.

Shaw noticed the librarian was looking his way.

He nodded a friendly greeting to the man, walked to one of the workstations and sat down. A swipe of the mouse revealed the main screen to be an internal database of the library’s contents. Just what he wanted. He typed in Gahl, Amos. Nothing. Then Shaw, Ashton. Negative on that too.

But with BlackBridge, he had a hit.

The reference was to a book titled California Corporate Licenses, Volume I.

Had Gahl reasoned that Ashton Shaw or someone would do this very thing, run a computer search for the company, and accordingly hidden the evidence in the book?

An elegant and simple clue.

The listing sent Shaw to a stack near the librarian station. Yes, there was the book: thick and bound in dark red faux leather. He lifted the tome off the shelf and set it on the floor. Then he removed the adjoining volumes and examined the space behind them. Seeing nothing, he reached in and felt along the cool metal. Nothing. He returned the other books and took Corporate Licenses back to the workstation.

He began his examination, first opening up the book to see if Gahl had hollowed out a portion and slipped a thumb drive or chip inside. No, he hadn’t. Nor were there any folded documents or notes between pages. The book was simply a listing of corporations with licenses