Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Located on the 6th floor of the East Butler Library (535 W 114th Street), the library houses extensive special collections spanning literature, history, and science. An old storage room in the library’s Rare Book section had been locked for years. No one really knew why.
Isabel Gonzalez, a senior librarian on the fifth floor, had come up because of a special request she had received by handwritten note: “Open the 6th-floor storage room.” The note was written in neat block letters. Guy Sanders, the head librarian of the rare books section, was already waiting for her; he had tried his keys and failed to find the right one. She fumbled through her set of keys, but none would fit. They had to call maintenance to open the door. Frederick Jones, the maintenance man, had to use a drill to open the lock because his keys didn’t fit either.
The storage room was cramped and packed with cartons of old library brochures and papers, along with an old Xerox copy machine. A putrid odor washed over them as soon as they opened the door. Behind the Xerox machine, Isabel spotted it. It sat in the corner, up against the back wall, under the Mystery Thriller Books poster.
The stained canvas tarp covered something she wasn’t sure she wanted to see.
“Frederick, will you take a look at that thing in the back?” Isabel said, pointing to the mysterious bundle.
He struggled to squeeze his belly past the Xerox machine and had to stretch to grab the canvas tarp. After two strong pulls, the tarp came off. Isabel screamed as she stared into the empty eye sockets of a desiccated skeleton. Guy fell back, landing on the floor, and Frederick knocked over several cartons that were leaning back.
“Call 911, call 911,” Isabel repeated, her nerves getting the best of her.
Detective Zoe Bailey arrived with her grande latte, extra sweet, in hand. She had to stop for coffee before she could function today.
“Rough night?” Brian Maloney, her partner, asked.
“Apparently not as bad as that guy,” Zoe said.
“What do we have so far?” she asked.
“It looks like it’s been here a while, judging by the decomposition. We found this on the Xerox machine.” He handed Zoe a Xerox copy in an evidence bag: “There Will Be More,” with a pocket watch showing 5 pm overlaid on it.
“What does this mean?” Zoe asked.
They stood outside the storage room, which was buzzing with CSIs in white jumpsuits gathering evidence. Sherry Stein from the ME’s office came out of the room and told them that it was not yet possible to determine the cause of death; she would know more after she had a better look in the Anthropology/Identification area back at the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Back at the ME’s Office, she explained that desiccation occurred once the tarp-trapped moisture had escaped or settled; the room’s low ambient humidity would then begin drying the remaining soft tissue. Rather than stripping the body down to the bare bones, the skin, tendons, and cartilage were dehydrated into a hard, leathery, brownish shell. “Carbon testing has placed it in that room for 30 years,” Sherry said. “She is a female, in her early 20s, blonde and petite—no visible signs of assault,” Sherry said. The bone marrow test indicated she had been poisoned with raw belladonna.
Brian and Zoe took their notes from the ME Office and returned to the station. The crime board was filling up quickly with photos and notes.
Was this an old killer resuming a killing spree? Zoe wrote at the top.
Excerpt from “The Body in Storage”
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