Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

the process by which they made them allowed them to be very close copies, and it was expensive. Each of these cost several thousand dollars. They were made so that scholars could study the book without having to access the original. So it’s down here to limit access. It’s in special collections because it’s special.”
    “ Ha. Funny. Okay, so are the missing pages in here?”
    “ Well, no, because this was made from the original as it currently exists, and no one knows exactly what the missing pages look like. But some of them are from the end of the gospel of John, so it would look similar to this.” I turned to the last existing page of the gospel.
    Pete examined it. “It looks a lot like the fragment that the detective had, doesn’t it?”
    “ Yeah, it does.” I looked at the pages in front of me. “But it’s extremely unlikely to be one of the missing pages. It’s even extremely unlikely to be a page torn out of one of these books. It’s probably a page from a book about the Book of Kells that someone thought they could pass off as the real thing. Or it could be some other illuminated manuscript that’s not even related to the Book of Kells.”
    I signed out of the computer, and swiped my card to get out of Special Collections. The door locked behind us and we headed upstairs. Pete mused. “I never crossed paths with the Art Theft task force when I was a cop. I always thought it was interesting that there was enough art theft in this town to keep an entire task force employed full time.”
    “ Well, sure. Think about all the museums we have here, and the galleries, and all the rich folks who have collected art over the years. And it’s not just art; it’s sculpture, and all that stuff. And there are always collectors who are willing to buy stuff on the black market, so to speak, that don’t really care where it came from.”
    “ Yeah.” Pete sighed. “So this torn bit that Wally was clutching. It looks like there was a fight over that. He had an accomplice of some sort, and something went bad.”
    “ It won’t be worth as much, torn like that. And now it’s easier to identify – the remnant, I mean, if it is something very rare or expensive and the other section shows up.”
Since we had the car, we decided to eat out. We headed for the beach and Big Dean ’s.
    When we got seated, I told Pete, “I didn’t care for the look on Belardo’s face when he figured out we were a couple.”
    “No.” Pete frowned. “But it’s not surprising. It still happens, usually with guys on the force who are older. Societal shifts take longer to make inroads into the police force than elsewhere. Similar to the military, I guess. But a lot of the younger cops are more accepting. Like Eckhoff.”
    “That was one of the reasons you left the force.”
    “Well, yeah.” Pete was interrupted by our server. We gave him our orders, then Pete continued. “As long as I was partners with Kevin, it was fine, because obviously he was supportive, and I knew he had my back. Other guys might not have respected me, but they steered clear of Kevin. And playing on the Centurions helped. It was harder to think of me as nothing but a faggot when I had a .452 batting average.”
    “Did the team’s coach care that you were gay?”
    “Nope. Anyone who could hit like I did was okay with coach. He’d have played Liberace, if Liberace could hit .452.”
    I laughed. “Are you ever sorry you quit the force?”
    “No. Never. There were several reasons I left, but the most important one was that I really wanted to teach. And you know I love teaching. I’ll never be sorry about that.” He smiled at me. “Don’t worry about Belardo. We probably won’t have to deal with him much more.”
    I hoped that was true. But I had a bad feeling about that torn piece of paper.
    When we got home, I got online and refreshed my memory about the Book of Kells. The script used by the monks to create the manuscript, a chunky font called Insular Majuscule, was unusual. I looked at pictures of it and of pictures of pages of the Book of Kells itself on various websites. The fragment Wally was clutching was done in a very similar style, at least to my untrained eye. But it could easily have been produced by an art student a decade ago instead of a monk a millennium ago.
    S omeone at UCLA would know.

    The next morning, after taking care of some things in my office, I went downstairs to talk to our special collections librarian, Conrad