Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

Except he must have kept at least two copies, because he thought that Lincoln’s resentment for England clouded his judgment.
    “Seward had traveled all over the globe, witnessing firsthand the desperation of collapsed governments. Seward thought that America might need to call on England for assistance one day and that this document would help entice the Brits to help if they knew they would receive America itself as payment. So, he decided to keep at least one copy of the article and this Philadelphia Convention letter under lock and key inside one of his own journals.”
    “When you say the documents were inside the journal, where exactly were they?” Danny asked.
    Shilling looked at the president. They briefly carried on a silent conversation with their eyes. The president then turned to Danny. “You know all the right questions to ask, Sergeant.”
    “Comes with my job, sir,” Danny replied.
    “They were in a leather pouch sealed inside the back cover. The suspect had to cut it open to retrieve them.”
    “This may seem like a stupid question, but why wouldn’t one of the librarians have discovered them before now? I mean it wasn’t like they were tucked inside a copy of Horton Hears a Who! in some city library. Aren’t items in the Library of Congress examined or x-rayed or something?”
    Simon Shilling answered him. “As for who would know they were sealed inside the cover of one of William Seward’s journals, we have no idea. This particular journal wasn’t logged in the system. But that doesn’t say much. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, Sergeant. It contains over a hundred million items, nearly five million of which are considered rare and housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections division in the Jefferson building. Several thousand of those books, pamphlets, and other documents are considered lost, missing, or misplaced. So no. To answer your question, the librarians can’t even keep up with cataloguing them, let alone find the time to examine each item.”
    “There must be video of the man trying to steal the documents,” Danny assumed. “Or he must have shown ID to get into the rare book area.”
    The president took this one. “He passed himself off as a GWU student. College students are granted access all the time. He presented his GWU ID both at the library’s entrance and again at the Rare Book Reading Room circulation desk. It was scanned and recorded at both spots.” The president motioned at Simon, who opened his portfolio that was lying on the couch next to him. He extracted a photocopy of the ID and set it on the coffee table. “While the ID is a fake,” the president continued, “the photo has already been put through every facial recognition program used by every federal agency that has such technology. A match has yet to turn up.”
    “It’s like he appeared out of thin air,” added Simon Shilling.
    “Was this his first visit to the library?” Danny asked.
    The president nodded. “Using that ID at least.”
    “And the tapes?” Danny asked.
    “We’ve had our forensics people examine the security tapes,” Simon replied. “The suspect knew where the cameras were. He knew to keep his head down inside the building. He never once looked up at a camera. Once he was outside, he pulled a hood over his head. The officer who chased him and retrieved the documents worked with a sketch artist to make a composite, but so far no hits.”
    “What about fingerprints?” Danny asked.
    The president nodded. “They dusted for prints, but he never took his gloves off. It was a cold night, so no one thought it was suspicious. Still, we’re reviewing every fingerprint found at the locations where he went inside the library.”
    “Just in case he had a partner who cased the place for him,” Danny said.
    “Or if he himself had been there before, in disguise,” The president replied. “So far, no nefarious characters have turned up.”
    Danny’s turned his eyes up, focusing on his thoughts. “Okay, so the perp goes to all this trouble; he somehow finds out about hidden documents inside a lost journal that even the librarians don’t know is in the Rare Book Reading Room inside the Library of Congress. He probably uses disguises and fake IDs to case the place for weeks or even months, considering every detail of the robbery. Then at last, when he has his prize, he simply drops the documents before he escapes?”
    “It was the only way he