Solms headed for the stairs on the left leading up to the stacks. When he got to the landing, he spotted a flashlight lying on the floor. It was the same type of flashlight he was holding himself.
Belonged to Stavros or Hawkins. He turned his head and looked down the stairs. His eyes ranged over the ground floor, most of which was open to his gaze, searching for a body anywhere.
Nothing. Like one of them dropped it while they were running—but if that’s the case, where are they now?
He shifted the flashlight to his left hand and drew his gun. Then, slowly and carefully, finished the climb to the second floor and started searching through the maze of stacks.
* * *
Solms showed that he hadn’t forgotten what he’d learned as a regular street cop, when he saw the pyramid. Something about that black thing said: your next step on your way to somewhere else could be much farther than you want to go.
Then, when he got outside and reached Stavros and Hawkins’ cruiser, he showed his political smarts too. Had he still been on the city of Chicago’s own police force, of course, he would have called in for backup right away. And he still had every intention of doing so—after he notified the university’s own officials.
Solms was savvy about how things worked, officially . . . and unofficially. He’d seen the University of Chicago Police as a good career, and after he transferred from the CPD he discovered he had a sharp nose for campus politics. Whatever that thing was, the University administration would be furious if they didn’t get word of it first.
The Chicago Police Department routinely monitored radio calls made by the U of C police. Solms got out of the cruiser and went back into the library. Leaning over the entry control desk, he snagged the phone and called the dispatcher.
“Marilyn, get me Professor Miguel Tremelo on the line. Patch it through to here. There’s something screwy in the Regenstein. Then I want some backup—and ask the CPD to send a few cruisers too. But don’t do it until after I talk with Tremelo and give you the okay.”
* * *
Miggy Tremelo was still more of a scientist than an administrator. Once he’d had a thirty second look at the object, his training and instincts came to the fore. “Just keep everyone out, Lieutenant,” he said, achieving an evenness of tone that amazed even himself. “I need to make a call. I’ll go across to my office in High Energy Physics.”
“You can phone from here, Professor,” Lieutenant Solms offered.
“It’s more convenient from my office,” Tremelo lied transparently. “It isn’t going to take me five minutes to get over there.”
He walked off with a speed that belied both his calm tone and his age. Professor Tremelo was a widower, and he had time on his quick walk to the lab to feel a moment’s gladness that his wife Jenny wasn’t around to see the havoc wreaked in the bookstacks. Jenny had been the head librarian of the Regenstein, and had taken bibliophilia to the point of near-obsession.
* * *
By the time the university president’s Lexus got there, the Regenstein’s grounds were swarming with cops—both university and regular CPD varieties—and six excited physicists were trying to manhandle a portable industrial X-ray unit up the Regenstein’s entryway. The Chicago officers were fussing about “disturbing evidence,” and Tremelo was attempting to explain that X-rays wouldn’t disturb anything. They were getting a little heated about it. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Solms’ university cops had brought some yellow police line and carefully cordoned off the area.
O’Ryan had already spoken on the phone to his friend the mayor, and his face was very pale. Very pale indeed. Finding Mayor Caithorne wide awake at four in the morning had been alarming. Finding out why had been even more so.
The university president hadn’t gotten to his position without being able to exhibit forcefulness when necessary. Before too long, he had reassured the police that no evidence would be destroyed but that they really needed to let Professor Tremelo and his physicists proceed.
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