Prodigal Son

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."

CHAPTER 16
        
        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."
        "Why?"
        "He said he liked to look at dead people in their caskets. Said it… relaxed him." She cranked off the water faucet. "Bobby was sort of a geek. But… why would someone cut out his heart?"
        Michael shrugged. "Souvenir. Sexual gratification. Dinner."
        Appalled, repelled, Nancy Whistler bolted for a toilet stall.
        To Michael, Carson said, "Oh, nice. Real nice."

CHAPTER 17
        
        PEELING PAINT, crumbling stucco, rusting wrought iron, sagging trumpet vines yellowing in the heat, and a