The Hollow Ones(25)
She walked down the short rear hall, stopping just inside the door of Agent Solomon’s bedroom. It was simply furnished, the bed neatly made, a small hamper of worn clothes in the corner. She chose not to poke around, merely sliding open a mirrored closet door, taking note of the old suit jackets inside, and a bright-blue FBI windbreaker.
She profiled an older bachelor, possibly a widower, someone who preferred to keep his home neat rather than be bothered to tidy up after. Solitary living, alone but not necessarily lonely. For whatever reason, she tried to envision herself living in this house near the end of her life. A simple existence, a small universe. These thoughts began to cascade to other thoughts, big life thoughts, wondering about Linus and her future, things she didn’t want to sort through now, or ever.
She returned to the kitchen to refocus. Dennis was swimming fast, reinvigorated. Odessa checked the cabinets for a receptacle large enough to serve as a temporary bowl for changing the water. She looked around for a little net. Nothing in the cabinets, nothing in the drawers. She continued to look around, and as she did so, she realized that something about her surroundings was bugging her. It took a few more moments to realize that the dimensions of the house did not seem right.
She opened the front door and walked halfway to the sidewalk, turning to take in the house. There was a window to the right with its interior shade drawn. There should be another room or two on that side.
She returned inside, more energetically this time. She located a narrow utility closet near the front door, recessed into the side wall. Boxes of trash bags sat on shelves, an Electrolux vacuum standing on the floor. There, hanging on a nail, was a fishnet—but she wasn’t interested in that anymore.
She knocked on each wall. The back wall beneath the trash bag shelf sounded different from the two side walls. Hollow. She examined the seams and pushed on the right side.
With a soft click and a tiny kickback, the rear wall gave way, swinging left on hinges. The space beyond was dark.
Odessa halted. She took a beat before pushing through. What if it was some sort of sex dungeon? This was how her FBI mind worked.
She entered the narrow passage. The air was not stale but fresh, with a hint—more like a memory—of cigar smoke. Her shoe met a soft carpet. She felt for a light switch and the hidden room came to life.
Bookshelves. Floor-to-ceiling ones, occupying most of the wide walls, with old, textured maroon-and-gold wallpaper covering the rest.
Before her was a small work desk with a wide leather chair. Headphones lay on the desk, connected by a cord to a large reel-to-reel tape player.
To her right, vented out through the wall, whirred a large air purifier. A small humidor containing a few expensive-looking cigars sat next to a standing ashtray. Against the wall on the other side of the desk was a side cart, liquor bottles on the lower tray, thick crystal rocks glasses on the top.
And then she saw them: the tapes.
“Sweet Jesus…”
The shelves contained not books but thin cardboard cartons. Mylar audio recording tapes on seven-inch reels, each narrow spine labeled and dated. Reel number, date, and subject. There were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of them, many of them from multiple recording sessions with the same date, four or five reels long.
The shelves were mounted on sliders, revealing yet another layer of tapes behind—on a wall-mounted system. But this was not hoarding—it was a careful, methodically organized system.
The dates ran to the year 2018. Odessa walked backward to the top shelf of the first bookcase, locating the first chronological recording.
#1001 Mississippi 1962 Vernon Jamus
She didn’t know what it meant, but of course she thought of the reel-to-reel player from Solomon’s office desk, seemingly forgotten. Suddenly she felt like she was trespassing here—not legally, but spiritually. This was a private chamber, and it held secrets—bookcases full of them—that added up to a mystery she felt instinctually that she did not want to solve.
After one last look around at the hundreds of painstakingly cataloged recording tapes, she turned off the light and retreated back through the narrow utility closet.
Shaken, she leaned against the kitchen island, as though having returned from another world. A long-retired agent who wasn’t retired. A secret room inside his house. She remembered his questions to her, and how he seemed to know about the thing she saw—saw, felt, whatever—leaving Walt Leppo’s body after she had shot him dead.
A cauldron? Drop a letter in a mailbox on Wall Street?
It was all too bewildering. Instead of changing Dennis’s bowl water, Odessa tucked the bowl under her arm to take with her, locked up, and left.
Odessa met with her new lawyer—same firm—behind closed doors at a Midtown office. She had been reassigned to a female lawyer, who asked Odessa to take her through her account again. The lawyer’s name was Courtney and she was only a few years older than Odessa, dressed in a simple black-and-white suit, taking notes on her laptop as Odessa spoke, softly tapping on her keyboard while her eyes remained sympathetically on Odessa’s face. Odessa imagined Courtney’s fingertips were as gently callused as the pads of a cat’s paw.
“Thank you,” said Courtney as Odessa exhaled, drained, at the end of her recounting. “I think the only thing—or the best thing—you have going for you is the surviving daughter. Her statements indicate that she was certain Agent Leppo was going to kill her and that your shooting saved her life. That is a compelling statement, although we won’t know for some time how she presents in person. Also, she remains seriously traumatized by the event—she is the only surviving member of her family—and so any testimony she gives will be difficult. And as a survivor of trauma, her memory may be challenged at the inquest.”