All About Checked Out

Chapter One

The polite tap on Lisette Osborne’s open office door was completely expected. She rarely got more than a few minutes at a stretch without one. But the silhouetted visitor wasn’t a mother with a toddler wanting to complain about the changes to Stories Out Loud. Oversized mirrored aviator sunglasses hid the woman’s expression so well that Lisette wished she could wear them herself.

She felt a flush of alarm across her cheeks. Without her customary ease, she managed to force her mask of professional impassivity over it. She couldn’t do a thing about the way her skin was crawling along the nape of her neck.

She didn’t know who this woman was, but Lisette knew what she was.

“How can I help you?” She had no idea if the visitor had seen her moment of panic.

“May I come in?”

She gestured at the chair across from her desk, but the blue-suited, dark-haired woman didn’t sit. So she stood up as well, putting her gaze on level with the top button of the utterly unremarkable, white-collared shirt.

She thought irrelevantly that her office didn’t often seem small, but it did now. It wasn’t that her visitor was large, but she seemed to take up a lot of space anyway. Maybe it was the sunglasses that gave her Agent Smith Matrix-style menace.

More likely it was the gun.

Lisette knew the outline of a shoulder holster when she saw one — her father had worn one to work for most of her life. He had returned home every night to hang the crisscrossed leather straps and buckles on the back of the kitchen door alongside the aprons, and to lock the revolver in the small case that sat on top of the refrigerator.

“How can I help you?” Lisette let one eyebrow lift as if to say Second Request.

“Sorry for the intrusion, ma’am. Are you the library’s manager?” The slight drawl said she hadn’t been born in or near Norcester, Connecticut.

“Yes, I am.” She held out her hand. “Lisette Osborne. Welcome to the Norcester Public Library.”

The handshake was firm and brief. “Peri Garritsen. A pleasure, ma’am. I regret to say that I am here on official business.” With an economy of motion, she withdrew a thin wallet from an inner pocket of her jacket and opened it to display her identification.

It was definitely one of those times when being right sucked — she’d expected FBI, but it was Homeland Security. Either way, it didn’t translate to holiday cheer.

So much for the hope of an ordinary Monday with nothing more pressing than staff scheduling and onboarding a new hire. She hoped she didn’t become nostalgic for the simplicity of days like that. Visits from Feds could get very ugly.

She already knew what was wanted. The answer was no, would always be no, and no was what she had said in the registered letter approved by the library’s legal counsel.

She squared her shoulders and was glad she was standing up. “Could you elaborate?”

“Yes ma’am. A certain information transaction was made from a computer on your premises via the Norcester Library network. We would like the name or description of the customer who was logged into that device at that time.”

“Patron.”

“Ma’am?” Her faint smile faded. Lisette realized that it had masked gaunt lines now apparent around the woman’s unsmiling mouth.

“The people who use our library services are patrons, not customers. You don’t have to buy anything to use our Wi-Fi, borrow our DVDs, or avail yourself of any other library service — except use of the copier or printers. For that you’ll need at least a dime, but you’re still a patron.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Her face fell into tight-jawed lines of authority. “A patron then.”

“Could you remove your sunglasses, Agent Garritsen?”

The left side of her mouth twitched. “Ma’am?”

“I understand that they were necessary outside. My glasses darken in the sun. Snow blindness is real and there is more snow on the way. They’re saying it’ll be a record for December.” Don’t babble! “But I assure you that our inside lighting is harmless.”

Agent Garritsen didn’t move.

There was no way their encounter today was going to end well, so she decided to be blunt. “I dislike being at a disadvantage. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how eye contact influences human interactions.”

Her lean face was carefully impassive as she slowly removed the oversized glasses.

Lisette realized two things at once. First, the agent’s economy of motion was the result of an inability to move her left shoulder more than an inch or so, and that limitation had nothing to do with the shoulder harness or the gun in it.

Second, that what she had taken for an intimidation tactic was more complicated. A thin, still angry and red scar ran from the bridge of her wide nose and across her right eyelid to leave rough skin where the center of her eyebrow ought to have been. Whatever blow or sharp object had caused that destructive path had spared her eye, but not by much.

It happened all in an instant — the hostile, official automaton transformed to a vulnerable human being.

Well, it wasn’t going to work.

“Thank you.” Don’t react, she told herself. You asked to see her eyes, now you need to look into them. Look she did, hoping it wasn’t overlong.

Agent Garritsen blinked, and she saw that the scarred right lid functioned slightly slower than the left. The light brown skin was wan underneath. Clearly, the agent had suffered a serious injury of some kind, and recently.

There was no trace of sarcasm in Gerritsen’s voice as she asked, “Is that more appropriate to the hour, ma’am?”

“Yes, it is. May I see your warrant, Agent Garritsen?”

“That’s going to present a bit of a problem, ma’am.”

I knew it! “You don’t have one.”

“This investigation is part of an ongoing domestic terrorism inquiry.”

“If this inquiry is related to the written one received in August, you should have a copy of our reply to the FBI in September. The Norcester Public Library does not divulge patron data, computer use, checkouts, or any other information without a properly issued warrant or similar court order. The right to access and share information is a fundamental one and a cornerstone of a democratic society —”

“Ma’am, the law is quite clear. A national security request supersedes your policies.”

Her heart was beating high in her chest. She knew she was on firm legal ground. “You’re correct that the law is clear, but your interpretation is at odds with every ruling for the past twenty years or so. A National Security Letter doesn’t automatically cancel constitutional rights. Go get a judge to agree that you need this information. Then I will see if it even exists. I will confirm nothing until I am advised by my legal counsel that I must do so. That is our policy.”

“Ms. Osborne, we are aware of your position. I am here to tell you that the Department of Homeland Security expects their requests to be honored regardless of pending legal inquiries.”

“And I expect Christmas cookies to have no calories, but life is full of situations we must all learn to live with.”

The agent’s tension grew palpable. Again the left corner of her mouth twitched — definitely not in humor.

“Ma’am, I’m not going to leave without my questions answered.”

“The library closes at seven. If you refuse to leave then I will be forced to call the sheriff. You can then discuss your concerns with them. And review local-federal interdepartmental cooperation edicts.”

Lisette had meant the agent to hear the sarcasm, but she regretted it. “Agent Garritsen,” she added more slowly, “You can talk to anyone here you want, including the head of the Board of Trustees. The answer will be the same from everyone. We may be a small community a good way from the interstate and a long way from New York or Washington DC—”

“I’m out of the Philadelphia office.”

Not FBI and not out of New York? That was odd. “Regardless, we’re still aware of our rights, and we have all studied the Supreme Court rulings regarding library privacy. I can pull those for you if you need to review them.”

Two heartbeats away from demanding the agent acknowledge that this was a library, a library, and she was a bona fide librarian, and didn’t a federal agent have a clue what that meant, she was stunned to silence by what Agent Garritsen did next.

She smiled.

The gaunt face warmed and crinkles deepened around her good eye. “Thank you, ma’am. I’d appreciate that.”

In a surreal turn of events, Lisette found herself guiding the still smiling Agent Garritsen to a patron computer. She showed her — and it couldn’t hurt that she experienced it firsthand — how to log in as a guest. She added with rote efficiency, “When you finish your session, click on the trash icon to remove your browsing history from our system. If you don’t clear it now, the system will purge the information in twelve hours anyway.”

Lisette suspected the agent was well aware that the information she sought didn’t exist. This was an officious hamster task. Someone wanted a tick mark next to a box, and they would run on the wheel until someone gave up.

She was a librarian, however, and that meant there was only one way this situation would end.

Against her instincts, she felt sorry for Agent Garritsen.

Leaning over the agent’s shoulder, she tapped and clicked until an index of relevant judicial decisions regarding libraries and the Patriot Act was displayed. “You can review the decisions in their entirety or read summaries, as you wish. If you require further assistance, please return to my office or ask at the desk where I can be found.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” As Garritsen glanced at the screen, Lisette saw a short series of suture marks, just healed and faintly visible across the crown of her scalp. The short, tightly kinked hair around it was growing in pure white on someone who, like Lisette, was in her late thirties.

Her tone was marginally softer as she said, “I don’t mean to make your job hard, Agent Garritsen. But I’m a librarian. Like you, I have my orders and my duty.”