Immortal (12 page)

I collected a cart full of books for the third floor and rolled it into the elevator. I'd get the shelving over as quickly as possible. It was pretty mindless work, and didn't really distract me from my inner thoughts. I worked as fast as I could, hoping to keep my mind off of Caeran. Thinking about him would just make me sad, so I tried not to do it. Didn't succeed all that well.

I had the cart three quarters empty when I pulled it around the far end of a row of shelves and stopped, frozen. The white-haired guy was standing halfway down the aisle, peering at a section of the shelves.

I grabbed a book from the cart and retreated to the aisle I'd just come from, heart thundering. My hands shook as I took out my cell phone and got it ready to take a picture. I remembered to turn off the flash, and hoped the fluorescent lights would be enough. Book in one hand, phone in the other, I slowly stepped back around to the cart.

He hadn't moved. I tried to keep my mind blank—tried to go Zen—as I reached up to put my book on a shelf, hiding the phone behind it. I turned and quickly shot a picture, then kept moving, pushing my cart past the aisle.

Had his head started to turn as I was leaving? The skin on my back prickled.

I moved faster, wincing at the rumble the cart made. Tried to keep my dread from showing in my thoughts. Books, shelve the books, got to finish that. I stared at the numbers on the aisles, not really registering them.

When I reached the end of the section, I abandoned my cart, grabbing my pack from the bottom shelf and making a beeline for the restrooms. Maybe white-hair wouldn't care about that taboo, but it made me feel a smidge safer.

Still shaking, I called downstairs to Tony. He answered on the second ring.

“Tony, I need a big favor. I'm in the ladies room on the third floor and there's a creepy guy in the colonial history section. Could you come up and walk me downstairs?”

“Sure. Which ladies room?”

“By the study carrels and the green chairs.”

“OK. Stay put, I'll be right up.”

“Thanks.”

I felt slightly better. If I died, someone would at least know what had happened.

I fumbled with the phone until I managed to bring up the photo I'd taken. It was better than I'd hoped; not crystal clear, because of the distance, but a fairly good shot of his profile. My stomach twisted, looking at it. I wanted never to see him again.

I called campus police and told them I wanted to email it to them. They gave me an address and promised to send someone to the library at once.

“Do you want someone to come escort you out of there?” said the officer who'd answered.

“I've got a friend coming for me.”

“Make sure they stay away from the suspect.”

“Right.”

I hung up, silently cursing myself for not thinking to warn Tony. The white-haired guy wouldn't be interested in him, I hoped.

I moved closer to the door, keeping the privacy wall between me and it. Shoved my cell back in my pocket and dug in my pack for my pepper spray. My hands were a little steadier, but my breathing was still shallow, panicky. I leaned against the wall and listened.

My pulse distracted me. I couldn't exactly hear it, but I could feel it. Nothing going on outside came through as clearly.

I tried closing my eyes and taking some deep breaths. I heard footsteps and stopped breathing altogether.

“Len?”

Tony. I let out my breath in a sigh and left the restroom. He was standing just outside, looking suspiciously around.

“Let's go,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets and starting for the nearby door to the back stairs.

“That way?”

“Yes.”

The elevators were too far away; I didn't want to cross that much open ground. I paused inside the stairwell door to listen. Heard nothing, so I ran down, my footsteps echoing loudly. Tony muttered something, probably a complaint, but he kept up with me. Two flights of stairs were nothing. I could have been shelving up in the stacks.

We came out the door on the ground floor and wound up face to face with a wide-eyed cop. I yanked my hands from my pockets and held them up.

“I'm Lenore Whiting. I called it in. Tony and I work here.”

The cop frowned at us, then nodded and let us by. Neither of us fit the suspect's description.

Tony glanced back at him. “I thought you just saw some creep. What's this about?”

“Let's get to the lounge.”

We strode through the reference section toward the main entrance and the counter where we worked. I kept my eyes open for the white-haired guy, but there were three more cops at the front entrance and if he had any brains he'd gone to ground.

I led Tony into the employee lounge, where Dave was talking with yet another campus cop. Dave scowled as we came in.

“There she is.
She
can explain it to you.”

The cop, a nice-looking Latino guy, turned to me. “You're Lenore Whiting?”

“Yes. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“What part of the building were you in when you saw the suspect?”

I grabbed a copy of the library map and drew a circle around the section. “Third floor. He was in this aisle,” I said, adding an “X” about where I'd seen him.

“OK. We'll check it out.”

He walked away with the map. Dave tagged along after him, to my relief.

“Suspect?” Tony asked. “As in, murder suspect?”

“Maybe.” I opened my cell phone and showed him the picture. “This guy.”

“Who is he?”

“I don't know. I saw him in the SUB Saturday night. He gave me the creeps, so I told campus police about him and they said to call if I saw him again.”

Tony frowned. “Marietta should see this.”

“Send her back here, OK? I don't want to go out front.”

Tony left, and a minute later Marietta came in. “What's going on?”

“I saw a guy upstairs who might be a suspect in the attack.” I showed her the picture and gave her a brief explanation. Her eyes widened.

“I saw him come in! He asked where to find books on the early Spanish colonists!”

I stared at her, pieces clicking into place inside my head. The white-haired guy was looking for the same thing Caeran had been looking for. Family?

“What did he say to you?”

“He just asked where to find the section and I gave him a map. I offered to help him with a catalog search but he said he just wanted to browse.”

“And then he left?”

She nodded. “I was glad—I didn't like him.”

“Neither do I. You should tell the police about it.”

“All but one of them went upstairs with Dave.”

I glanced toward the door. A tiny voice inside me was fretting:
You're wasting everyone's time, this guy might have nothing to do with the murder, what if he's a friend of Caeran's?

“I guess we should wait, then.”

“Well, I have to work.”

She moved slowly toward the door, looking unhappy. I sat down at the lunch table, ready to wait out whatever was happening upstairs.

“Let me know when they come back down, OK?”

She shot me a look, then nodded and left. I picked up a magazine from the messy stack in the middle of the table. It was one I'd already read, so I threw it back. I was fishing for another when someone moved into the doorway.

I jumped, then saw that it was Amanda. “You scared me!”

“There are cops outside. What's going on?”

I showed her the picture of the white-haired guy and told her the details. “I think I'd better wait until they're done up there, since I called it in. If you're hungry, go ahead without me.”

“No way! I want to know what happens!”

She joined me at the table. We didn't have long to wait, fortunately. About ten minutes later Dave was back, giving me a sour look.

“There's nobody up there who looks like your suspect.”

“He must have slipped out, then.”

“Yeah, or he was never there.”

I held up my phone with the picture showing. Dave ignored it.

“You didn't finish shelving.”

I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling at him. “No, I didn't. When I see homicidal maniacs I tend to leave my work unfinished.”

“You don't know he's a homicidal maniac.”

“
You
don't believe he exists, so why worry about it?”

Amanda flashed her eyes at me, warning me to cool it. Usually I didn't let Dave get to me, but I was feeling stressed.

The nice Latino cop came back, looking apologetic. “He's not on the third floor. We've cleared it.”

I bit my lip. “I'm sorry to have wasted your time. He must have left right after I saw him.”

“We're doing a walk-through of the other floors, but we don't have the manpower for a thorough search.”

“I understand.”

He turned to Dave. “We'll have people watching the entrances until you close. If he comes out, we'll catch him.”

Dave glared at me. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks for your help, Officer… ?”

“Martinez. You're welcome.”

“I hope I haven't led you wrong—”

His face hardened. “We take every legitimate lead seriously. Don't hesitate to call if you see him again.”

I smiled, grateful for the reassurance. He left, and Dave went out front to talk to Tony and Marietta. Amanda and I followed him out and continued out of the building, past a pair of campus cops flanking the front entrance.

The sun was setting, and the air was getting cool. I wished I'd brought my coat.

“Is the SUB all right with you?” I asked Amanda. “I don't really feel like going off campus.”

“Yeah.” She nodded agreement, her brow creased. “Sure.”

We crossed the plaza to the SUB and went downstairs to the New Mexican restaurant for killer green chile burritos. Comfort food, and it helped, though I still felt pretty edgy. I kept thinking about the white-haired guy looking for Spanish colonial books. He had to be following the same lead that had brought Caeran to my station a week earlier.

Should I try to let Caeran know about him? It would mean going to the bosque, and I'd sort of promised not to. Caeran might be gone by now anyway. The thought made my chest tighten.

If he was gone, he wouldn't care about my being in the bosque. If he was still there, he might appreciate knowing about the white-haired guy. Armed with this rationale, I decided to go the next day. I'd still have some daylight after I got off work—or maybe I'd call in sick. Let Dave worry about how to cover the check-out counter. Maybe he'd actually have to step up to a station himself.

“Homework tonight?” Amanda asked, sounding unenthusiastic.

I couldn't picture hitting the books in my current frame of mind. “Um, I think I could use a break. Think I'll go to bed early.”

She nodded. We refilled our sodas and headed for home. It was getting dark already, and the chill had intensified. I shivered and shifted my pack on my back.

Our dorms stood adjacent, with no more than a hundred yards between the entrances. Amanda made a halfhearted offer to walk me to mine, but our routine was to go to hers together, and then I'd hurry home. There were no hiding places in the intervening distance—a couple of bushes and a few trees that were too skinny to conceal anyone—and everything was brightly lit. I wasn't worried, so I turned her down.

“Call me,” Amanda said at the doors to her dorm, getting out her card to swipe through the lock.

I nodded. That was part of the routine, too—I'd always call to let her know I'd reached my room safely.

“See you tomorrow.”

I watched her in, then headed for my dorm, walking briskly to fight the cold. After about twenty steps my arms broke out in goosebumps. The back of my neck prickled. I hadn't seen or heard a thing, but my heart started hammering.

I glanced around—nothing. I walked faster, listening intently. All I heard was my own footsteps, until behind me a thud and a flash of light happened simultaneously.

I yelped and spun around. Two men were grappling on the sidewalk where I'd just passed. One had white hair.

“Oh, shit!”

I pulled out my phone and punched the redial, backing away from the fight. A flash of a brownish ponytail made my heart jump in fear.

“Caeran!”

I froze in terror, watching the near-silent battle. They were fast, and weirdly graceful even as they struggled. The way they fought was almost like a dance, or some weird martial art unlike any I'd ever seen. Another flash of light dazzled me and I staggered backward.