Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  He was breathing hard as he stood above her.

  He should wait.

  He shouldn’t do this here.

  For all he knew, someone would be coming back.

  But he couldn’t resist.

  Wrapping his claws around her arm he lifted it and sank his teeth into her flesh, and like the addict he was becoming, endorphins flooded his body at the taste of blood.

  He wasn’t just becoming a beast; he already was one.

  10:29 P.M.

  Dante hoped that their warnings had been heeded.

  They didn’t have the manpower to stake out every library in the city, nor did the killer seem to have a pattern in how he was choosing which libraries to hit. He wasn’t predictable in what days he was committing his abductions and murders, so there wasn’t a lot they could do to keep people safe. They had to settle for putting out a warning to all the libraries, making sure that their staffs knew not to remain alone in the buildings at the end of the day.

  Was it enough?

  Somehow, he doubted it.

  By design, most people lived with an air of immortality. Although death was all around them and they all knew that one day it would grab them, it didn’t seem to matter. People lived like they would live forever, and it wasn’t until they had an up close and personal experience with death that it finally began to change.

  He had been guilty of that disposition.

  It wasn’t until his life was ripped apart that he learned just how close to death they lived each day.

  He’d just turned thirty-four last month, and that same day marked the anniversary of the loss of his family.

  Not just one person he loved.

  Not even two or three.

  But every single member of his family.

  Gone.

  In one horrific night.

  It was his birthday and he was supposed to be at home celebrating with his family, but a victim in a case he was working was found wandering along the side of a highway. Of course, he had rushed off to interview her and find out if she knew who had snatched her from her bed in the middle of the night and tortured her for over a month.

  She knew nothing more than that the man was a monster.

  He was about to learn that as well.

  That the girl had gotten free was no accident; it was a diversion. While he was occupied with the case, the serial killer broke into his house and proceeded to kill his family one by one. Slowly and painfully. His parents, his three younger sisters, and his fiancée. They all died horrific deaths that night.

  Dante knew that because the killer had filmed everything and live streamed it to his phone.

  It went without saying that the night had virtually destroyed him.

  How could it not?

  Watching the fear on his loved ones’ faces was surpassed only by the resignation as they realized they were never walking out of the house alive.

  When he was done slaughtering his family, the killer had brazenly walked out of the house and been shot by the dozen or so cops surrounding it and planning how they would swarm inside and take the man out before he killed anyone else.

  By then, it was too late.

  They were all dead.

  As was the killer.

  He had lost everything that night six years ago. He had been left behind to live out the rest of his life alone and stuck in a circle of grieving that had no end.

  So, this was his life now.

  Work.

  It was a simple life, but at least, it gave him something to hold on to, something to keep him going, something to focus on so he could keep the depression that threatened to crush him at bay.

  Every second that he wasn’t sleeping or performing some necessary chore like eating, showering, sleeping, or working out, he was working on at least one of his open cases.

  Which was exactly what he was doing tonight.

  It was quiet at the station this late. There were detectives on duty but most of them were out in the field. He liked being here alone—with no one to bother him. He found he was much more productive.

  Milla thought he had gone home when she left for the day, but there was nothing for him at home. This was where he wanted to be; this was where he could still do something good in the world.

  Tonight the case he was working on was the library killer case.

  He was positive that he already possessed the key to finding who this man was. He just didn’t know that that piece of information was important.

  Yet.

  But he would find it. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his time.

  Pausing the TV, he stood and walked from the table over to the screen to get a better look.

  Right there.

  He tapped his finger just above the screen.

  That man.

  Dante was sure he’d seen him on one of the other videos he’d watched earlier tonight. He had collected all the security footage from the libraries and had been going through it, hoping that he might see someone pop up at all the locations.

  Not that that necessarily meant anything. It was perfectly reasonable that someone would visit more than one library, but if he could find someone who had been at all of the buildings where someone had been abducted and murdered, then he might get a suspect.

  The man he was looking at looked just like a man he remembered seeing at the library where Teresa Mateo worked and at the library where Kelly Mac worked. On the screen, there he was sitting at a table, a comic book in his hands, at the library where Kim Johnson worked.

  Three for three.

  That was good enough for him. He would send this footage to the tech guys and see if they could get a good enough shot to run it through the database using facial recognition software to get a match.

  Tomorrow he and Milla would go to the libraries with a screenshot of this man and see if anyone was able to identify him from the picture. If he was lucky, someone would not only recognize him but would also know his name.

  Tonight, he was going to start watching footage from other libraries. If he could spot the guy somewhere else then he might actually be able to get one step ahead of the killer.

  4

  April 18th

  9:50 A.M.

  Dante paced impatiently outside the library.

  He’d waited all night to get here and start interviewing staff and patrons and now that he was here, he just wanted to get inside and find out if anyone knew the man in the security footage.

  “We still have ten minutes until they open,” Milla reminded him, standing patiently beside the door.

  “I can tell time,” he snapped.

  “Of course you can. How could you have become a cop if you couldn’t,” she said with a cheerful smile.

  It didn’t matter how often he tried to push her buttons and ruffle her feathers, because she didn’t have buttons or feathers when it came to getting annoyed. Milla was the most even-tempered person he’d ever seen. Which was probably why she was the only cop in the department who was happy to work with him.

  Losing his family in one night had changed him. He had never been a particularly outgoing or extroverted person, and he’d always preferred to work hard and focus on his job and his family, but once he lost them, he became angry and bitter. He knew it was a natural reaction to grief, and he didn’t deliberately act cold and harsh. Pushing people away wasn’t a conscious decision. He would just prefer to stay alone and not get close to anyone else.

  Since Milla couldn’t be drawn into a disagreement of any kind, not even a lighthearted one, he just continued to pace and checked his watch for possibly the hundredth time.

  There were still four minutes to go.

  Stalking up to the glass door, he looked inside, seeing if anyone was in there. He’d been checking every minute or so since he knew that there had to be people in there. The library opened in just a few minutes so the staff was probably having their morning meeting or something.

  “There,” he announced when h
e caught sight of a man. “Someone is there.”

  Milla joined him and they both hammered on the door. The man turned to look at them and shook his head, pointing to the large clock on the wall.

  Dante held up his badge, and when the man saw it his eyes grew wide and he hurried over, pushing a button that had the doors swinging open.

  “You’re the cops? Did something else happen? Is someone else dead?” the man asked in a rush.

  “I’m Detective Delamarre, and this is Detective Lindsay. As far as we know, there haven’t been any more murders,” he told the man. While they hadn’t heard anything about another mauled body being found, that didn’t mean there wasn’t one out there in the woods somewhere waiting to be discovered.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” The man looked enormously relieved.

  “We were viewing security footage from the libraries where the killer has struck and comparing it with footage from other libraries to see if we could find someone who had attended all of them, and we found someone. Can we show you a photo and see if you recognize this man?” Dante asked.

  “Of course, come in.” The man let them in then called out to a couple of people walking toward the door, “We’ll be open shortly … there’s just something important that’s come up … sorry for any inconveniences.”

  They crossed over to the counter where another two staff members were gathered. “What’s going on?” an older woman asked.

  “These are the cops. They think they might know who the killer is. They need us to see if we recognize someone,” the man who had let them in explained.

  “The photo isn’t the best of quality,” Dante warned as he pulled out his phone. “This man has been at all three of the libraries where the killer has struck, and we saw him on footage here as well as at another two libraries. Do you know this man?”

  He opened the image and turned the phone around so the three other people could see it and immediately all three of them started nodding.

  While he wasn’t really a person who got excited about things, that feeling of anticipation started to form inside him. If they knew this man, the next stop after here would be his house, and this case could be wrapped up by the end of the day. He might not get excited when he closed a case, but he did feel immense satisfaction. By taking a killer off the streets, he was preventing another family from experiencing what he had, and that was what kept him going when the temptation to end things got too strong.

  “His name is Ed,” the older woman said.

  “Ed what?” he asked. They needed a surname if they were going to get an address.

  “I think it’s Ed O’Rourk,” the younger woman said.

  “Do you have an address?” he asked. It had been a long time since he had been to a library, but he thought there was a chance they kept details on the people who took out library cards.

  “We might have … let me check.” The younger woman walked over to the computer.

  “Why is it that you recognized him so quickly?” Milla asked. He’d been so obsessed with getting a name that he hadn’t even thought to ask that.

  “He’s a little creepy,” the man who had let them in said immediately.

  “Creepy, how?” Milla asked.

  “He’s obsessed with one of the librarians here,” the older lady said. “He sits here for hours and watches her … he even tried asking her out the other day.”

  “Can we talk to this woman?” he asked, wondering if she might know some more about this man.

  “She’s in the middle of a tutoring session with some kids with disabilities,” the woman said, pointing to a room off to the side.

  Inside sat four teenagers and a gorgeous woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was talking away—all animated—and even from here, he could feel her enthusiasm.

  She looked up suddenly and their eyes met.

  When they did, he felt something he hadn’t felt since he met his fiancée.

  Startled, his momentary panic was cut short when the woman smiled at him.

  Then he felt at peace.

  The same peace he’d been lacking for six years.

  Dante was going to ask for her name—purely so he could interview her and find out what she knew about Ed, he lied to himself—when the woman at the computer called out, “I got an address.”

  11:03 A.M.

  “That was CSU. They said that none of the sets of teeth that they collected at Trake Powell’s house match the wounds on the victims.”

  Dante heard the words, but they didn’t register.

  All he could think about was the woman at the library.

  Why had her smile made him feel like he was no longer dead inside?

  Why did she make him feel like he was making a mistake refusing to let anyone else get close to him?

  Why did she make him want to date again?

  Why did she make him feel alive?

  How was one smile able to accomplish so much?

  “Dante?”

  “What?” It came out as a growl, which wasn’t really how he intended it to sound. It was just that he didn’t want to stop thinking about the woman at the library.

  “I said, that was CSU on the phone, and they said that none of the sets of teeth that they collected at Trake Powell’s house matched the bite marks on any of the victims,” Milla said with exaggerated patience. “That means that it probably isn’t him.”

  “We didn’t think that it was,” he reminded her. “Not after he threw up when we showed him the crime scene photos. If he got sick at that, there’s no way he could have ripped those bodies apart.”

  “I know, but I was kinda hoping he was faking. I just want to wrap up this case before anyone else dies,” Milla said.

  “Hopefully, that’s what we’re about to do,” he said as he turned a corner. They were about five minutes away from the house where Ed O’Rourk lived. “Have you found out anything about him?” They had left the library as soon as they’d gotten the address, so while he’d been driving—and thinking about the librarian—Milla had been researching Ed.

  “He had a twin sister who died of a drug overdose when they were fifteen. That same year, he almost died of one, but they were able to revive him at the hospital. Looks like he changed a lot after that. Got expelled from two schools, never graduated, no college, has worked at construction and factory jobs for the last fifteen years. Doesn’t appear to be close to the parents, they haven’t bailed him out any of the three dozen times he’s been picked up on possession or public intoxication charges. He doesn’t appear to be working at the moment, and we know—according to the library staff and from what we saw on the security footage—that he spends most of his time at one library or another,” Milla rattled off.

  “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 e
mployed, 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.