Emma Purcel was reading a dog-eared copy of Tropic of Cancer and waiting for the two law students on the computers and the four medical students half asleep on the couches and lounge chairs to finally realize that nothing they did in the next four hours was going to help them pass a test they hadn’t prepared for earlier. She was startled when the massively muscled psychology student suddenly appeared at her desk.
‘Uh, c-can I help you?’
‘I need to find someone.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘There’s a man I need to find. I was hoping you could show me how to search for him on the computer.’
‘Oh, sure. There’re several searches you can run to track someone on the computer. Here, I’ll show you.’ Emma rose from behind the desk and immediately felt the large creepy student’s eyes lunge for her, charging over her curves and invading her most intimate areas. She felt simultaneously frightened, annoyed, and aroused, sensations she was used to experiencing in his presence. Her nipples hardened and stabbed the sheer fabric of her blouse. Joe stared at her heaving bosom with unselfconscious lust. Emma’s face colored. She turned her back to him and sat down at the computer.
Emma had to admit that the boy was extremely good-looking. He exuded a savage sexuality that was nearly oppressive. She could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck as she tapped the keyboard and logged on to the Web.
‘Uh, so who are we looking for?’
‘His name is Damon Trent. He would be almost thirty by now.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might be? A city? A state?’
‘He would still be in Seattle; either in prison or a mental institution.’
Emma’s fingers hovered suspended over the keys. This was more of his bizarre research.
‘What exactly did he do?’
‘He raped and mutilated a couple young boys about twelve years ago.’
‘That’s sick! I’m not going to be a part of this! What is this twisted morbid fascination you have with these monsters? Look, you’re online now. I’m sure you’ll have no problem locating your murderous pedophile. I’ve got work to do back at my desk.’ The librarian stood and turned to leave.
Joe placed a hand on her shoulder and gently eased her back into her seat.
‘Please. You have to help me.’
‘Why? Why should I help you with this obsession? A child murderer? Why would you want to know anything about a man like that?’ Joe’s voice lowered and tightened to a deep self conscious mumble. The librarian could feel the boy’s body tense as he spoke.
‘Because I was one of the boys this particular monster assaulted.’
The librarian’s eyes widened then softened and moistened with emotion.
Her mouth fell open and her body slumped back into the chair, as if physically struck by the student’s unexpected confession. She placed her hand atop his and turned to look him in his eyes. Her bottom lip trembled and her voice lowered to a soft, maternal whisper.
‘Oh my God! I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know. No wonder you’re so obsessed with finding out what makes them tick.’
‘Will you help me?’
‘Of course.’
It took no time at all to locate their killer.
‘He’s not in Seattle anymore. He’s in Tacoma, at the state mental hospital in a special unit they have for violent sex offenders.’
Joe scrolled down the screen, reading about the hospital where Damon Trent had been kept since he’d openly confessed to drinking the blood of young boys and was declared unfit to stand trial a dozen years ago. Trent believed that he could absorb the souls of his victims by imbibing their body fluids. The article, written two years after his incarceration, said that Trent claimed the doctors at the state hospital were deliberately trying to drive him insane by depriving him of human blood to drink.
Joe wrote down the address and phone number of the hospital and turned his attention back to the thick meaty librarian. He’d wanted her for a long time and though he had needed to locate Trent, he’d really come down here for her, using his search for the child rapist as a way to get close to her.
‘Would you have a cup of coffee with me?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Besides, I’m old enough to be your mother. Why are you so interested in me?’
‘Because you’re beautiful and I need a friend right now…’
It was the right thing to say. Joe had been rehearsing it from the first day he’d seen her. Her need was so obvious you didn’t have to be a con man or a predator to spot it. Emma needed to be needed. There was a deep loneliness and sorrow within her, like one of those chimpanzee mothers who cradle their miscarriages in their arms for weeks, refusing to accept their death. Joe played on those maternal instincts lying dormant within her, starving for a purpose.
‘I know I frighten you. We can take separate cars and go to the cafe down the street where there will be lots of people.’
‘That sounds awful. I’m sorry. It’s not that I think you’d hurt me. It’s just that … those books you read …’
‘I’m a psychology student and I’m trying to understand what turns normal human beings into these vicious predators. One day, I hope I can find a cure for their madness.’
‘I think that’s admirable, but I hope you won’t be offended if I take my own car and meet you there?’
Joe smiled wide.
‘Thank you.’
They talked late into the night. Emma told him about her two failed marriages. Her first husband beat her and her second left her for her sister. She had a daughter who ran away from home five years ago, only two months after her sixteenth birthday.
‘Do you ever hear from her?’
‘She calls every once in a while. When she’s in trouble or needs money or just needs someone to listen to her. I’m a good listener. I don’t know where she is now, though. She hasn’t called in months.’
‘It must be hard, not hearing from your daughter in so long.’
‘I cope.’
Joe nodded and looked down at the scrap of paper with the name Damon Trent written on it, followed by the phone number and address to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He rolled the slip of paper over and over in his hands as dark shadows slithered through his mind.
‘What did he do to you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Maybe not, but you need to tell it. I can see that you’re hurting. It might help to talk.’
Joe didn’t want to talk to her anymore. He didn’t want to get too close because he was still planning on murdering her, but maybe talking about these horrors would be just the distraction he needed. Perhaps it would calm him down until he could get her alone.
‘I was riding my bike when he attacked me. I turned the corner and he was just standing there, grinning at me. I tried to turn the bike around and run. I could tell that he was going to hurt me. Of course, I had no idea how bad. I thought he was going to beat me up and steal my bike or something. Then he grabbed me by the throat. He squeezed so hard that I couldn’t even scream. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then he threw me in the back of his pizza van.’ Joe took a deep breath and rubbed his bare arms to warm himself as chills raced the length of his spine.
‘It’s okay. You don’t have to continue if it bothers you.’
‘When we got back to his place, he undressed me. He started punching me. Then he started stabbing me. He stabbed me dozens of times, raped and sodomized me. I remember him licking my wounds, lapping up the blood like a kitten licking milk. His eyes were all glassy and vacant. He kept me down in that basement for days, feeding on me. Somewhere along the way I passed out. Then he put me back in the van and dumped me back in the park. I was the lucky one. I was his first victim. He got much more violent with the next ones before they caught him. Those he kept. They never got to see the sunlight again. They died down in his basement.’
The librarian was crying when Joe looked up. Joe reached out and brushed a strand of hair from the librarian’s face, cupping her cheek in his hand and leaning in to peer into her sad eyes. He wiped away her tears with his thumbs.
Something about her sorrow was reawakening the monster, turning him on. He could feel the drive roiling like a furnace, burning at the root of him, hard and insistent.
Joe thought about Alicia, still chained up back at the apartment. He thought about her magnificent ass. The soft sumptuous mound of tender fat and all the things he wanted to do to it, to her. All the things he would do if he didn’t curb his appetite with something else. Something like this librarian.
‘I want to kiss you.’
The librarian jerked away, shocked by Joe’s forwardness. It was Joe’s firm belief that when most women ran it was because they wanted to be chased. He seized her face in his hands again and pulled her toward him. Greedily he sucked and bit at her lower lip as he kissed her aggressively. She never struggled or made any attempt to resist him. Rather, her body melted to his touch as if it had been locked stiff with tension released the moment their lips touched. She responded to his kiss with her own, the desperate hungry embrace of a woman starved for affection, in need of a man’s love.
She was out of breath when Joe leaned back in his chair and picked up his coffee. He stared at her with those same rapacious eyes that had long intimidated her as he sipped the scalding brown liquid. Emma trembled with want.
Embarrassed, she reached for her own coffee, lifting it up and then placing it back on its coaster. She looked back into Joe’s terrible, wantonly sexual eyes and felt another wall crumble. She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.
‘What do you want, Joseph? What do you want from me?’
The air between them became hot and thick with a palpable lust. Joe licked his lips. He was recalling the taste of Alicia’s nipples when he’d eaten them and imagining what it must be like to consume a woman’s entire breast.
‘I want to make love to you.’
‘You just want to fuck me,’ she sighed, looking down into her lap. Then she looked back up and her eyes were furious with lust. ‘But that’s okay. I think I want to fuck you too.’
She leaned forward and took his hand.
Together they rose from the table and walked out into the parking lot.
‘You’ll be gentle with me, won’t you? I haven’t been with anyone since my husband and I divorced five years ago. You’ll take it slow, won’t you?’
They were almost to her car. She pulled out her keys and opened the car door. ‘Promise me you’ll be gentle with me.’
‘No,’ Joe said.
His huge powerful hands clenched tight around her throat and jerked the librarian up onto her tiptoes. As he closed his fingers tight around her windpipe she kicked and scratched, dragging her manicured nails through the skin on his forearms and punching at his face. She raked his throat with her fingernails, breaking off the plastic tips in his flesh before she blacked out. Joe stuffed her into the car and drove her across town to the apartment building on Folsom Street.
