Dean Koontz - Frankenstein Special Edition - Prodigal Son and City of Night

“Maybe they’re so interested,” she told Michael, “because none of those bastards has a heart.”

They hurried up stone steps to the ornate red-stone building with gray granite arches and columns.

Admitting them, the police guard at the door said, “It fits the pattern, guys. It’s one of his.”

“Seven murders in a little over three weeks isn’t a pattern anymore,” Carson replied. “It’s a rampage.”

As they entered the reading foyer with the elevated main desk, Michael said, “I should’ve brought my overdue book.”

“You checked out a book? Mr. DVD with a book? ”

“It was a DVD guide.”

Crime-scene techs, police photographers, criminalists, jakes, and personnel from the medical examiner’s office served as Indian guides without saying a word. Carson and Michael followed their nods and gestures through a labyrinth of books.

Three quarters of the way along an aisle of stacks, they found Harker and Frye, who were cordoning off the scene with yellow tape.

Establishing that the territory belonged to him and Carson, Michael said, “Yesterday’s hand bandit is this morning’s thief of hearts.”

Frye managed to look greasy and blanched. His face had no color. He kept one hand on his expansive gut as if he had eaten some bad pepper shrimp for breakfast.

He said, “Far as I’m concerned, you take the lead on this one. I’ve lost my taste for the case.”

If Harker, too, had a change of heart, his reasons were not identical to Frye’s. His face was as boiled red as ever, his eyes as challenging.

Running one hand through his sun-bleached hair, Harker said, “Looks to me like whoever has point position on this is walking a high wire. One mistake on a case this high profile, the media will flush your career down the toilet.”

“If that means cooperation instead of competition,” Michael said, “we accept.”

Carson wasn’t as ready as Michael to forgive the toe-tramping they had received from these two, but she said, “Who’s the vie?”

“Night security man,” Harker said.

While Frye remained behind, Harker ducked under the yellow tape and led them to the end of the aisle, around the corner to another long row of stacks.

The end-stack sign declared ABERRANT PSYCHOLOGY. Thirty feet away, the dead man lay on his back on the floor. The victim looked like a hog halfway through a slaughterhouse.

Carson entered the new aisle but did not proceed into the blood spatter, leaving the wet zone unspoiled for CSI.

As she quietly sized the scene and tried to fit herself to it, planning the approach strategy, Harker said from behind her, “Looks like he cracked the breastbone neat as a surgeon. Went in there with complete professionalism. The guy travels with tools.”

Moving to Carson’s side, Michael said, “At least we can rule out suicide.”

“Almost looks like suicide,” Carson murmured thoughtfully.

Michael said, “Now, let’s remember the fundamentals of this relationship. Tou are the straight man.”

“There was a struggle,” Harker said. “The books were pulled off the shelves.”

About twenty books were scattered on the floor this side of the dead man. None was open. Some were in stacks of two and three.

“Too neat,” she said. “This looks more like someone was reading them, then set them aside.”

“Maybe Dr. Jekyll was sitting on the floor, researching his own insanity,” Michael conjectured, “when the guard discovered him.”

“Look at the wet zone,” Carson said. “Tightly contained around the body. Not much spatter on the books. No signs of struggle.”

“No struggle?” Harker mocked. “Tell that to the guy without a heart.”

“His piece is still in his holster,” Carson said. “He didn’t even draw, let alone get off a shot.”

“Chloroform from behind,” Michael suggested.

Carson didn’t respond at once. During the night,

madness had entered the library, carrying a bag of surgical tools. She could hear the soft footsteps of madness, hear its slow soft breathing.

The stench of the victim’s blood stirred in Carson’s blood a quivering current of fear. Something about this scene, something she could not quite identify, was extraordinary, unprecedented in her experience, and so unnatural as to be almost supernatural. It spoke first to her emotions rather than to her intellect; it teased her to see it, to know it.

Beside her, Michael whispered, “Here comes that old witchy vision.”

Her mouth went dry with fear, her hands suddenly icy. She was no stranger to fear. She could be simultaneously afraid but professional, alert and quick. Sometimes fear sharpened her wits, clarified her thinking.

“Looks more,” she said at last, “as if the vic just laid down there and waited to be butchered. Look at his face.”

The eyes were open. The features were relaxed, not contorted by terror, by pain.

“Chloroform,” Michael suggested again.

Carson shook her head. “He was awake. Look at the eyes. The cast of the mouth. He didn’t die unconscious. Look at the hands.”

The security guard’s left hand lay open at his side, palm up, fingers spread. That position suggested sedation before the murder.

The right hand, however, was clenched tight. Chloroformed, he would have relaxed the fist.

She jotted down these observations in her notebook and then said, “So who found the body?”

“A morning-shift librarian,” Harker said. “Nancy Whistler. She’s in the women’s lav. She won’t come out.”

THE WOMEN’S REST ROOM smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and White Diamonds perfume. Regular janitorial service was the source of the former, Nancy Whistler of the latter.

A young, pretty woman who put the lie to the stereotypical image of librarians, she wore a clingy summer dress as yellow as daffodils.

She bent to one of the sinks and splashed cold water in her face from a running faucet. She drank from cupped hands, swished the water around her mouth, and spat it out.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she said.

“No problem,” Carson assured her.

“I’m afraid to leave here. Every time I think I just can’t puke again, I do.”

“I love this job,” Michael told Carson.

“The officers who did a perimeter check tell me there are no signs of forced entry. So you’re sure the front door was locked when you arrived for work?” Carson pressed.

“Absolutely. Two deadbolts, both engaged.”

“Who else has keys?”

“Ten people. Maybe twelve,” said Nancy Whistler. “I can’t think names right now.”

You could only push a witness so far in the aftermath of her encounter with a bloody corpse. This wasn’t a time to be hard-assed.

Carson said, “E-mail a list of keyholders to me. Soon.”

‘All right, sure. I understand.” The librarian grimaced as if she might hurl again. Instead she said, “God, he was such a toad, but he didn’t deserve that .” Michael’s raised eyebrows drew an explanation from her: “Bobby Allwine. The guard.”

“Define toad ,” Michael requested.

“He was always…looking at me, saying inappropriate things. He had a way of coming on to me that was…just weird.”

“Harassment?”

“No. Nothing forceful. Just weird. As if he didn’t get a lot of things, the way to act.” She shook her head. “And he went to funeral homes for fun.”

Carson and Michael exchanged a look, and he said, “Well, who doesn’t?”

“Viewings at funeral homes,” Whistler clarified. “Memorial services. For people he didn’t even know. He went two, three times a week.”