Book Deal by Les Standiford Page B

kindness. What Deal saw incited a sickening mixture of rage and despair. When he turned back to Driscoll, he felt so weary, and even guilty himself.
    “I gotta warn you, it isn’t very pretty up here,” Driscoll was saying. The two of them had to step aside as a uniformed cop came down the staircase, a clear plastic bag full of loose book pages in his hands. Deal thought he saw a smear of blood across one page, then realized it was a plate, some lush illustration—red drapes fluttering behind intrepid swordsmen—torn from one of the old volumes Arch and Els housed in the upstairs annex.
    The cop nodded at Driscoll, let his gaze linger on Deal a moment. “He’s with me,” Driscoll said, and the cop went on by without a word.
    “Come on,” Driscoll said, leading the way up the narrow staircase.
    What had been up there were two pleasant rooms, the first a kind of library where a dignified reading area had been set up—a pair of burgundy leather chairs, each with its own tasseled lamp, a coffee table atop a faded oriental rug in between. Deal remembered it as the kind of place you’d sit in for five minutes, find yourself sliding right out of the world into whatever you happened to be reading.
    He still had the picture of it in his mind when he made the landing. But now the chairs were upended, the lamps tumbled over, brass standards twisted, shades flattened, the rug kicked into a wad in a corner. The old coffee table was on its back nearby, its four curved legs thrust up like a wooden animal begging for mercy. The ceiling fans were unmoving, the air thick with a smell he didn’t want to identify.
    Driscoll pointed through an open doorway into the adjoining room, where a couple of technicians busied themselves. The imposing glass-fronted bookcase that had held the rarest of the rare had toppled to the floor and shattered. Pieces of the case’s wooden shelving were stacked like kindling beside a shoal of glass fragments. Here and there a shred of paper or binding poked from the wreckage like scraps of clothing. There was a taped outline of a body on the floor nearby, a grotesque yellow cartoon surrounded by massive dark stains.
    That’s the smell
, Deal thought, his stomach churning.
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. That’s what dying smells like
.
    Driscoll gave him a closer glance. “You okay?”
    Deal managed a nod. “Did anyone call his parents?”
    Driscoll shook his head, his eyes helpless. “They’re someplace in Asia, chasing the butterfly migrations. One of those kind of trips where you follow your nose. No itinerary, no reservations. The housekeeper says they call in every week or so.”
    Deal nodded. Arch’s father had been a neurosurgeon. One day he’d been scratching the back of his neck, found a lump there. A week later he was under the knife himself. The tumor on his spinal column had been benign, but that’s all it had taken to readjust his priorities. A week in intensive care, six months of physical therapy until he could walk again, the man had retired.
    “He’s got a couple of sisters,” Deal said. “Sara lives in the Midwest somewhere. Arch was just telling me. And there’s a younger one in New York. Deidre.”
    Driscoll nodded. “The one in Omaha wasn’t there when they called. The one in New York is seven months pregnant, already on bed rest because she went into false labor last week. They’re trying to figure out how to tell her.”
    Deal closed his eyes momentarily. “How about Els,” he sighed. “This is going to kill him.”
    Driscoll shook his head. “He wasn’t home, either.”
    Deal stared. “You mean he’s just going to walk into work, find all this going on?”
    Driscoll shrugged helplessly. Deal turned away, thinking. Maybe he should go downstairs, post himself on the street. If he saw Els coming…he thought, then stopped. If he saw Els coming, he’d do
what?
    He turned back to Driscoll, who pointed into the adjoining room at one of the technicians who