“We should look into whether he was particularly interested in any of the victims. Maybe he’s choosing them for a reason other than because they happened to be alone at the library the night he was there looking for victims. We should also visit all the other libraries in the area, see if they recognize him and if he pays particular attention to anyone who works there.”
“If he’s not at home when we get there, that’s what we’ll do next,” Milla agreed.
“Hopefully, we won’t have to because we’ll pick him up here and find something incriminating that is enough to keep him locked up while we build a case that will keep him behind bars,” Dante said as he parked the car outside a rundown ranch. The place looked like a dump. There was trash everywhere, and three old trucks were parked in the front yard. The paint was peeling off the house, and two of the four front windows were boarded up.
“Bet the neighbors love this guy,” Milla said wryly as they got out of the car. The rest of the houses in this block were impeccable, and Dante wondered how Ed managed to afford to live in such a nice neighborhood.
“I wonder if his parents feel guilty about his drug problems and rented him a house to live in,” Dante said.
“Maybe,” Milla agreed. “With how irregularly he seems to be employed, I doubt he could afford to live here on his own. There were no marriages in his past, and he doesn’t have any kids. He also lost his license after multiple DUIs.”
“With nothing else going on in his life, that leaves plenty of time for him to spend at the libraries choosing his victims and learning the patterns of the staff, so he definitely could have planned all of this out.”
“I’m just not sure that with drug and alcohol addictions and bouncing in and out of prison that he has the capacity to pull all of this—” Milla broke off as her phone rang, and they both paused on the sidewalk while she answered.
If Ed O’Rourk was the man they’d been looking for, then the idea of him being obsessed with the beautiful librarian left him feeling very unsettled.
Dante didn’t know why the woman had struck a chord with him, and he was pretty sure that he didn’t intend to do anything about it, but he still couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to her.
“There was another abduction last night,” Milla said as she put her phone away.
“Why are we only being notified about this now?”
“The woman isn’t married and lives alone, so no one to report her missing. The library was scheduled for maintenance today and the workers only just showed up there fifteen minutes ago. They found the setup in the kitchen and called it in. They also found blood—a lot of it.”
“He attacked her there in the library; he hasn’t done that before.”
“He’s devolving,” Milla agreed.
“What was the victim’s name?” he asked as they walked down the driveway.
Milla never got a chance to answer that question.
Just as they approached the front door, a bevy of bullets rained down around them.
Both of them dropped low to the ground, seeking shelter behind one of the trucks.
“Downstairs window, second on the right,” he told Milla as they both grabbed their guns. “Cover me.”
Leaning around the side of the truck, Milla returned fire while he tried to see if he could see the man through the window. It was partially boarded up, but above the planks of wood, he could make out a face through the grimy—and now broken—glass.
It was Ed O’Rourk.
Ed obviously caught sight of him and aimed right at him.
Dante darted back behind the van and the bullet hit the dirt just a couple of inches away. If he hadn’t moved in time, the bullet would likely have plowed right through his chest.
They both stayed low for a couple of minutes and the gunfire ceased.
With a glance at his partner, he nodded his head, and they both cautiously stood and made their way toward the house.
No more bullets were fired, and they climbed the steps to the front porch. When they didn’t hear anything inside, Dante kicked the door down and they entered the house.
They were halfway through clearing the downstairs when they heard the rev of a car engine.
By the time they got back to the front door, Ed was already driving off down the block, tires squealing as he went.
There was no way they could catch up to him.
“I’ll put out an APB,” Milla said.
Dante just nodded.
His gaze was locked firmly on the walls of the house, which were covered with thousands of hand drawn illustrations of beasts.
If he hadn’t been convinced before now that Ed O’Rourk was the serial killer they were hunting, he was now.
8:18 P.M.
* * *
Sydney hummed as she walked up the aisle.
This was her favorite time of day. She always hung around for a little while after the library closed, puttering around, tidying up a little, then she would walk up and down, choosing a couple of books to take home with her to read in bed and return in the morning. She could read at least one book an hour and usually went through two or three a day—every day. That made for a lot of books, so it was a good thing she worked in a library.
With a serial killer stalking librarians, staying back late on her own was risky, but she had set the security system after everyone else left, and the cops would be making regular drive-bys just to make sure everything was okay.
Besides, the cops thought that the killer was Ed O’Rourk, the creepy guy who had a crush on her, and after shooting at the cops this morning he had driven off, managing to get away. Surely, he had to know that if the cops were on to him then abducting and murdering was no longer an option. She felt confident he would lie low, try to avoid the cops, and fly under the radar.
Ed O’Rourk.
Even though she had always found him creepy, she still couldn’t believe that the man was a serial killer.
A serial killer.
She was in shock.
She had spoken to him just yesterday.
Not just spoken to him but turned him down when he asked her out, using her dead husband as her excuse.
What if she’d said yes?
Sydney shivered at the thought.
She knew exactly what would have happened if she’d said yes.
She would have been his next victim.
She shivered again.
All these months, Ed had been coming here—watching her, reading his comic books—trying to start conversations with her. And all that time he had been planning and executing these murders.
She had known that he gave her the creeps, and she had trusted her gut and stayed away from him as best as she could. But to know that he’d been here in this building—her happy place—was almost enough to have her quitting her job and never coming back.
So as much as she knew she probably should have left with everyone else, she just needed to be here tonight. She needed to convince herself that she was safe here, that the library hadn’t been ruined for her because of what Ed had done. He hadn’t contaminated this building; it was still the same place she was excited to come to every morning, and the place she was sad to leave each night.
This was her library, and she wasn’t letting Ed O’Rourk take that away from her.
“I won’t let you rob me of this place, Ed,” she said aloud, needing to break the silence. “It’s too special to me. It’s where I met Mitch; it’s where we had our first date; it’s where he proposed to me, and where we got married. There are too many special memories here and I won’t lose them, especially not to someone like you.”