The Paper Mirror by Dorien Grey

McGill interjected. “First of all, there is no concrete proof that he was, and he was very young when Morgan killed himself. It well may not have been the kind of thing that would even have been mentioned to him.”
    I had to admit there was a lot more to his business than meets the eye. But interesting as it was to learn that the notorious preacher had skeletons in his closet, I couldn’t see much of anything in it that could possibly get Taylor Cates killed.
    “How did you happen to find Taylor’s body?” I asked.
    “I was just making a routine check of the building, making sure that everything that should be locked up was…with crowds of people around, I wanted to make doubly sure. And the door to the catalog room was unlocked. It shouldn’t have been. Taylor had been working at a desk near the door. There was an opened box of material on the desk—again, there shouldn’t have been. The door was to be kept locked to prevent just anyone from walking in, and while I knew he would be working to pass the time, he had instructions not to leave materials loose on the desk if he let someone in.”
    He looked down at his desk as if in thought before continuing. “Those two facts alone set me immediately on edge. I called to him and there was no answer. I began looking for him and that’s when I found his body.”
    “Is there any other reason to think it might not have been an accident?”
    McGill leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on the desk. “I’m not really sure,” he said, “but Taylor had no reason to be in that part of the stacks, let alone on a set of steps that led to an unused door. The police apparently assumed that Taylor was going outside for a cigarette, or that someone had knocked on the door and he had gone to answer it. I told them that either assumption was highly unlikely, however logical.”
    “How’s that?” Though Glen O’Banyon had already indicated the answer, I wanted to be sure he and McGill were on the same page.
    “Because knowing Taylor, even as little as I did, I know that he would never have just left his post, cigarette or no, and that everyone knew that door was to be used as an emergency exit only. Even if someone had knocked—and again there is a sign on the outside of the door directing people to the front entrance—he would not have broken the rules by opening it.”
    “Taylor never broke the rules?”
    “Actually, no,” he replied. “And he was intolerant of anyone who did. That’s why he reported Dave for taking materials home with him. Some people may see it as being petty, but Taylor did not.”
    “What were the papers he was working on at the time of the…accident, if I may ask?” I…uh…asked.
    “Morgan Butler’s, I believe. I didn’t have time to look at them more closely than to make sure they were in chronological order and put them back in the box and return the box to the shelf. Looking back on it, I realize that was a rather strange thing for me to do under the circumstances, but I really wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”
    “Were any of the papers missing, could you tell? Is it possible someone might have been trying to steal them?”
    He knit his brows and looked at me. “I really don’t know,” he said. “But I’d think it highly unlikely. Morgan Butler had no particular distinction of his own; I’d imagine if anyone were out to steal papers, it would be Jeremy Butler’s they’d be after.
    “Jeremy Butler’s papers had already been cataloged, however, and we were just finishing up with Morgan’s. I’ll have both sets gone over again to be sure nothing’s missing. But as for anything of Morgan’s that had not yet been cataloged, I’m afraid we would have no way of knowing if anything were missing or not. Though again, I really can’t imagine that there would be.”
    We talked for a while longer, but I felt I had gotten what I needed to know for the moment.
    “Oh,” I said in afterthought, “would you happen to