After Chief Samuel Upton responded to the accusatory questions of the woman with the spiky hair, she nodded almost imperceptibly, and sat down.

His eyes drifted over the others at the table.

“Any more questions?”

The bank teller wanted to know what materials were employed to make impressions of footprints. The pharmacist asked if black powder was still used to take fingerprints. The gas station attendant asked if the Police Department was hiring.

Then it was over.

Sam remained seated after all of the others left. Waiting.

Five minutes later, the spiky haired woman came back into the room and walked towards his table. But Olivia Olmstead’s hair was no longer short, black, and spiky. Now it was the same shade of pale blond that it had been during the trial. And her eyes were no longer brown. One was blue. The other was green.

She was carrying a small tote bag.

She pulled a black tangle of hair out of the bag, put it on the table and said, “Wig.”

She placed a small plastic container on top of the wig and said, “Contact lenses.”

She reached into the back pocket of her jeans, removed a .38 mm Smith and Wesson revolver, and laid it on the table, too.

“It was Marty’s,” she said. “It’s loaded.”

She leaned forward and gazed deeply into the eyes of the man she had come to the library to kill.

“Romeo and Juliet?” she repeated ruefully. Then she raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and walked away.

Samuel Upton watched her go. He inhaled deeply. He exhaled slowly. He pocketed the revolver. He glanced around the room. Three Human Books were still engaged in dialogues with the people who had checked them out.

The table to his right was occupied by Myra Goldberg, the “professional sex worker.” Before he became police chief, his boss had arrested Myra four times. But Sam saw her more as a lost soul than a prostitute, and as long as she kept her business off the street, he left her alone.

The table to his left was occupied by the microbiologist masquerading as a clown. She was wearing a fuzzy orange wig and had painted her face into a classic clown-mouth. An eight-year-old boy watched, half-terrified, as she manipulated balloons into the shapes of spiders and baboons.

Chief Upton grimaced. He would never forget that John Wayne Gacy, rapist and murderer of thirty-three young men and boys, had painted his face in that same way to entertain children at birthday parties. He kept watching as the little boy backed away from the lady clown, turned, and ran out the library’s front door.

Then his eyes moved to the Human Book at the table closest to his, occupied by Clarence Liverpool, the now famous litigator qua ambulance chaser who had gotten his start in real estate. Across from him sat a silver-haired, seventyish lady wearing a stylish bright green dress. She was shaking a wad of papers at Liverpool; her face was contorted with grief and her voice was trembling as she cried, “…but you took everything from the estate. Everything. I have nothing left to…”

Clarence Liverpool observed the woman impassively, with eyes as cold, immobile, and expressionless as the eyes of a shark.

Chief Upton scrutinized his face because ... he did not know why. Maybe it was a cop thing, but there was something about the guy. He had a skinny neck and onion-white skin. His upper and lower teeth were the same size, like matching rows of tombstones, and two small twisted ears protruded from either side of his head like squashed paper cups.

Ears. The ears. They reminded him of something. Someone. Where had he…?

Then it all came back to him.

Continued next Friday …

Chapter 6 of 8. See previous chapters beginning on Friday, April 12. Or check link to author archive…https://www.evesun.com/authors/31

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com