Catechisms (eBook)

Chapter 5

Inside the main entrance to the Orvieto Library, a campus security guard and uniformed St. Paul police officer stood speaking quietly with a squat, square, middle-aged man dressed in civilian clothes.

“What’s going on here?” Clarissa asked. She was referring to the large crowd of people they had pushed through outside.

The officer interrupted his conversation to answer Clarissa’s question.

“Students, staff, neighbors,” he explained. “The place has ground to a halt.”

“Everyone’s really upset,” the security guard added. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen around here.”

She was young, Paige noticed, just a student herself most likely, working her way through school part-time. Like she had done.

“No doubt,” Clarissa remarked. “Well, Captain Bellamy will be along soon enough. He’ll calm them down.” She exchanged a sardonic look with Paige. Then, noticing the library looked empty, Clarissa asked the officer, “Where is everybody?”

“Andrews had us put everyone we found in one of the office suites upstairs,” he answered. “There was only a handful. Not many had arrived for work yet.”

“That you know of,” Clarissa said, sounding skeptical. “How’d you gather them up so quickly? It’s a big building after all.”

“We used our emergency notification system to tell everyone to leave the building,” the civilian said in a gruff voice, the words turning in his throat like rocks in a tumbler, low and rough. The harsh sound of them caught Paige off guard. She winced reflexively and hoped no one noticed.

“And you would know because why?” Clarissa demanded of him.

“Lou Nicosia, Detectives,” he said, “Director of Campus Security for St. Paul’s University.” He unclipped an identity badge from the front of his shirt and offered it to Clarissa. “Stevie here can vouch for me,” he told them. “I’m her boss.”

Stevie the security guard nodded in agreement.

Seeming not to take her word for it, Clarissa glanced at the badge, and then passed it to Paige, who gave it a more thorough examination before handing it back.

“He in the access log?” she asked the officer.

He answered in the affirmative by showing Paige where he had entered Nicosia’s name.

“Better add Inspector Clarissa Wright and Detective Sergeant Paige McGraw from Homicide.”

“Which of you is the lead investigator?” Lou Nicosia asked.

“I am,” Clarissa answered.

Her partner’s assertion surprised Paige a little. Given that he wasn’t even there yet, Captain Bellamy hadn’t assigned the case to anyone that she knew of. But Paige had little doubt that Clarissa’s claim would turn out to be true soon enough. After all, she was the senior investigator in the homicide unit.

“When did you get here, Mr. Nicosia?” Clarissa demanded of him while he reattached his ID to his rumpled shirt.

“I just got here,” he rumbled from his throat. “I came as soon as I got the call.”

“Who called you?” Clarissa scowled.

“My morning shift supervisor,” he said. “I told him to initiate the first emergency message. As a precaution.”

“And what did your emergency message to them say?”

“That there had been an incident in the Orvieto Library and that everyone needed to stay where they were, exercise caution, and await further instructions,” he told her, the growl in his voice growing noticeably worse. Paige wondered whether it was simply a symptom of a nasty cold or something more permanent. “When your sergeant said he needed to clear the building, the supervisor sent a second message just to the people in the library. We gathered them up at that point. The system is that good.”

Clarissa raised an eyebrow. “And are you sure you corralled everyone?”

“Pretty sure,” the officer interjected. “But Andrews detailed a couple of rookies to a floor-by-floor search, just in case. They just got back. They didn’t find anyone.”

“And the people outside?” Paige asked. “How did they get there if this emergency thing of yours told them to stay inside?”

“I assume not everyone was inside when they got the alert,” Lou Nicosia rumbled. “The rest, no doubt, showed up after we sent an all-clear.”

“When was that?”

“When your sergeant told my shift supervisor that he had secured the building.”

Clarissa looked Lou Nicosia over from head to foot, appearing to size up the little man.

“When he called you this morning, your shift supervisor, what details did he give you?” Clarissa persisted.

“That there had been an apparent murder on campus. In the Orvieto Library. That’s all. Why? Is there a problem, Detective?”

“Perhaps,” Clarissa told him, “perhaps.”

Now, Lou Nicosia, his eyes flashing, seemed to size up Clarissa. Uncomfortable with how he and her partner were gauging each other like seasoned prizefighters, Paige stepped in with a question of her own.

“Did he tell you anything else, sir, about the murder?”

“No, nothing,” Lou Nicosia answered, slowly taking his eyes off Clarissa, and turning his attention to Paige, “except that a library worker, one of our students, found the body. I hear she’s quite upset.”

“I’m sure she is,” Paige agreed. “Has anyone on your staff talked to her about it?”

“No,” Stevie the security guard interrupted. “All she could say was something about a dead man on the fourth floor before breaking down in tears.”

“She’s right,” the officer agreed. “She’s pretty much incoherent. Andrews has her upstairs, too, but under guard in a separate room.”

“Good,” Clarissa told him. Then she turned to Paige and said, “Seems the sergeant has everything covered.”

Paige wasn’t so sure. She looked around, assessing the situation herself, making a mental checklist of her own. It was something her father had taught her to do when she first became a detective.

“What about the exits? Side doors, service entrances, loading docks, that sort of thing?” she asked. “Does Andrews have those covered, too?” She had done the arithmetic in her head and, based on what she had seen so far, concluded that Andrews hadn’t the manpower on hand for the whole task.

Before the officer could answer, Lou Nicosia waved him off.

“My people had all the exits covered within five minutes of the call,” he told her. Then, as if to fill the dumbstruck silence that followed, he added, “I run a tight ship, Detectives.”

Clarissa blinked in surprise and Paige let a wry grin pass over her face. Suddenly, they both had to admit a newfound, albeit grudging respect for the scruffy little man with the gravelly voice.

“Yes, you obviously do,” Clarissa told him. “Our apologies. We appreciate your assistance.”

“Fortunately, the call came in the middle of a shift change, so I had twice the people on hand,” Lou Nicosia explained, appearing less cautious but still guarded. “Now, are you ready to view the crime scene? I can take you there.”

With a sigh and a scoot of her hands, Clarissa gestured for him to lead the way.

Following him into the library, Paige observed Lou Nicosia also walked with a slight limp. Wondering what was up, she decided to ask.

“You okay, Mr. Nicosia?”

“Yeah,” he replied in his gravelly style. “Why do you ask?”

Paige shrugged. “You just look and sound like you’re dealing with something, that’s all.”

“Disability,” he said, indicating his lame leg. “I used to be a cop but had to give it up.”

The revelation appeared to pique Clarissa’s interest.

“Nicosia?” she mused. “Nicosia? Is that a name I ought to be familiar with?”

“I dunno,” the little man rumbled from deep in his throat. “Ought you?”

He led them past a bank of waist-high bookcases crammed with thick volumes of indexes and reference works Paige had never heard of.

“Maybe,” Clarissa reflected. “You ever work for Chicago PD? Your name rings a bell.”

“Yeah, long time ago,” he answered a bit hesitantly.

Then, a glint of recognition came over Clarissa’s face.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said emphatically, wagging a finger at him. “I remember. Lou Nicosia. The Greek of Steel. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“I never liked the nickname,” he retorted without bothering to look back at her. Arriving at the elevators, he pressed the call button for the upper floors. Soon, one of them chimed and a set of doors opened. The three of them stepped inside and he pressed the fourth floor. The car started upward.

Built onto an exterior face of the library, the elevator was made of glass on three sides and had a panoramic view of the campus and surrounding neighborhood. Leaning against a railing attached to one of the glass walls, Clarissa folded her arms across her chest and gave Lou Nicosia a long, studied look. Worried, Paige studied them both.

“You know how Lou here got his nickname, don’t you?” Clarissa finally asked her partner.

“Don’t call me Lou,” he told her gruffly. “It’s Mr. Nicosia to everyone except my friends.”

“Sorry,” she apologized, sounding insincere. Then she explained to Paige, “It was for what he did during a shootout on the South Side.” She rested her head on the glass and looked the little man over some...