The Cartographers(25)

But the lobby hadn’t been triggered first.

It didn’t make any sense. The burglars were now in their target exhibit, but how did they get in there without being caught by the lobby recorders?

Felix checked the records. After the upgrades, there were now two cameras in the Map Division: the first one in a corner of the ceiling, looking out across the entire room, in case anyone tried to tamper with or steal a map or atlas while reading it. The second camera was stationed outside the Map Division just above the doorway, pointing outward toward the lobby, so that any suspected thief could be followed as they exited the Map Division and merged back into the main library population, where they’d then appear on the lobby cameras.

He clicked the first interior camera and skipped back a few seconds before hitting play again.

Suddenly, a lone figure dressed all in black was in the center of the room—a single man, not a group, unusual among art or museum heists—crossing quickly from one side to another, then back again, apparently searching for something on the shelves and in the glass display cases.

“Gotcha,” Felix hissed, surprised at how unsettled he felt. He couldn’t see the burglar’s face, because he had on a mask, but that only made it worse. It had been seven years since he’d been able to call that room his, but his heart was racing all the same, his mouth dry and palms sweaty. It was like watching a burglary of his own home.

He zoomed back out and watched tensely as the security guard made his way toward the burglar, one square at a time. Then suddenly, the only room that was lit up was the Map Division.

He gasped when the guard’s head hit the tile floor and he went still.

The Map Division’s camera remained on for several more minutes as the intruder continued searching for his target. On the camera feed, he crossed the room several more times, double-checking every case and shelf, growing increasingly frustrated.

It was true. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there.

Because Nell had it on her coffee table.

The thought sent a shiver down Felix’s spine.

At last, the burglar looked as though he was about to flee—but then noticed the security camera in the ceiling.

The burglar climbed onto a wheeled book ladder, and then knocked the camera. He didn’t manage to break it, but he did dislodge it slightly, so that instead of giving a view of the full room, it angled sharply, looking straight down at the far reading table. Several more seconds passed, with glimpses of the burglar as he moved in and out of what remained of the frame. Then, suddenly, the video feed went dark—all cameras off.

“Wait,” Felix muttered, hitting pause.

How was that possible?

The cameras needed motion or sound to continue recording, and since the guard was now out cold on the floor, unconscious or worse, he wouldn’t trigger the sensors in the Map Division—but the burglar still should have been caught by the main lobby cameras upon his exit. Except he wasn’t.

Felix sped through the rest of the recording, but there was no other stimulus until after dawn, when the first arriving NYPL employees, Swann probably among them, came in through the front doors, saw the guard, and called the police.

Confused, he scrolled back to just before the damaged camera blinked off—when the burglar was leaving the Map Division—and hit play again.

He sat in silence for a full minute, his eyes glued to the screen, waiting for the moment the overhead Map Division camera went dark. When it did, his gaze jumped to the second camera outside the Map Division door, pointing back toward the lobby, to watch the actual footage of the burglar’s exit from the room.

But nothing was there.

It stayed black the whole time.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Felix finally muttered, confused.

The only explanation was that the burglar hadn’t gone out that way—but there wasn’t any other way to get out. Felix remembered the Map Division well. There wasn’t even a separate entrance for employees. The only way into and out of the entire exhibit and its back offices was through the main door he’d just watched on the feed.

He played the video grid at least ten more times, then went back and watched every single camera in the library, listened to every single speaker, and scanned every line of data, but there was nothing useful. No matter what he tried, there was no recorded footage for the lobby for the entire night, aside from the guard during his routine rounds. The burglar tripped only the camera inside the Map Division, and no others.

Felix went through the police notes, looking for mentions of damage, but they had confirmed that the lobby cameras hadn’t been tampered with—only the one in the ceiling of the Map Division. And they were all on the same system, so any attempts to hack them before the breakin would have brought the whole network offline, which clearly hadn’t happened, because Felix had been able to watch the burglar prowl the Map Division.

The only explanation he could come up with was that somehow, the burglar hadn’t gone into the lobby at all. But then how had they gotten into an exhibit room whose only entrance and exit was a single door directly off the lobby hallway? Felix double-checked the notes again, but there had been no glass broken in the windows or drill holes found in the walls either.

It just didn’t make any sense. How could a burglar break in to a building without actually breaking in to a building?





VII