Free Fanatics by William Bell

conscientious about trying to return someone’s lost property.”
    “Yeah, well, I misplaced that sense of duty in the bush somewhere,” I replied. “The GPS is in the trash down at the park, and the cell is still in the Hawk’s saddlebag.”
    “You’re not going to try and return it, I hope.”
    “No. It can stay where it is for the time being. I’ll probably end up tossing it, too.”
    “Good idea,” she said, suddenly serious. “They sound like people worth staying away from.”
    We talked a bit more and then signed off for the night. I watched a bit of TV and went to bed. Before I fell asleep, my imagination replayed images of the camo-boys flitting through the trees, converging on me.

PART TWO
    The Lord has brought me here, and has said to me ,
“I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy
that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”
    —Girolamo Savonarola

One
I
    T HE MORNING AFTER my unplanned visit to the paintball camp I returned to the mansion and went immediately to the library. I sat down at the escritoire, thinking. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Professor Corbizzi already had a catalogue of his collection, and I was determined to search the library thoroughly before I started an inventory from scratch. There was no use asking Mrs. Stoppini—she avoided the room. Besides, she had asked me to do the inventory in the first place.
    The absence of a computer or one of those old-style multi-drawer file-card systems like they used to have in public libraries was not encouraging. The filing cabinet yielded nothing but old household bills, tax statements, and other papers, and in the escritoire I found only an old pipe tobacco tin containing a broken pocket knife and a rosary with glass beads and a black wooden cross.
    One of the bottom drawers of the escritoire jammed when I tried to close it. Wiggling as I pulled, I removed it and set it on the desk. On my hands and knees, I took a close look at the track. It was worn but seemed true. I checked the drawer’s corner joints. Sure enough, they were loose, a common problem with old furniture. It would take only a few minutes to fix.
    I emptied the contents—a few loose papers and a package of envelopes—onto the desk beside the typewriter and turned the drawer upside down to examine it more closely. Something rattled, then two small brass keys plopped onto the escritoire. I set the drawer down, intending to repair it later, then looked around, my mind back to the quest for a catalogue. I could see nowhere such a thing might be kept—unless among the books themselves. Finding it would mean taking the books off the shelves and examining them—which Raphaella and I would be doing anyway as we worked on the inventory.
    Then I remembered the alcove on the other side of the room, and the cupboard built into the bookshelves.
    Quickly, I crossed the floor, the little brass keys in my hand. The volumes flung onto the floor by the professor during his last seconds on earth were now stacked on the table in the alcove. I stepped between the table and the shelves on the north wall. The closely fitted cupboard door had a round wooden pull—and below the pull, a brass cabinet lock.
    One of the keys opened the lock. I found a stack of small leather-bound books that would have made my father exclaim “Aha!” as he waggled his eyebrows. He loved old books, and sometimes added them to his collection rather than put them up for sale. I transferred the pile onto thetable behind me and opened one book at random. It was a Greek–Latin dictionary, published in London in 1763. Assuming the rest were as valuable—or the professor wouldn’t have kept them under lock and key—I made a mental note to tell Mrs. Stoppini she would need the services of a rare books expert at some point.
    I lifted out a stack of bundled papers, each bunch secured with ribbons, like a parcel. On closer examination, the paper turned out to be