January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) by Jess Lourey

time.”
    “O’Callaghan’s thanks you for your interest! We hope to see you soon.”
    That they will , I thought, as I hung up the phone. Probably this Tuesday, in fact . I was about to shut down the computer when the front door opened. Hadn’t I locked it?
    “Sorry,” I said. “We’re not open on Sundays.”
    The track of lights above me was illuminated, but I hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights over the front door. The person was definitely a male, his head leaning so far down that the top of his cap was facing me.
    “Sir? We’re not open. You can come back tomorrow at ten.”
    He stepped into the light at the same time he lifted his head. It was Ray, the mewling, tweaking freak Maurice had saved me from.

Seventeen
    Every cell in my body lifted its skirts and ran for high ground. I stepped back involuntarily, one hand fumbling for the phone and the other scrabbling inside my desk for something substantial to whack Ray with. Why had I left the stun gun in my car?
    He kept moving toward me, and the closer he came, the clearer the tattoo on his neck grew. The barbed tail of a manta ray licked at his ear, leading to a widening of the body, most of which was tucked into the collar of his thick winter jacket. Stingray . I wondered if the tattoo had given him his name, or vice versa. I also wondered where he’d gotten the warm winter coat and how the helicopter I’d been stupid enough not to lock the door.
    “Stop. I have a gun. And I’ve pushed the alarm.”
    “Shit, this is a library. What you got that anyone wants to steal?” He stopped, though, and glanced behind him, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
    “That’s close enough. Now, you have exactly two minutes to get out of here before the cops arrive.”
    “Two minutes all I need.”
    Two minutes?!? Why couldn’t I have said thirty seconds? Our eyes were locked. His pupils were far less jittery than the night we’d met. He also wasn’t making that trapped baby animal noise. In fact, he appeared entirely calm. Still, when he began to draw one hand slowly out of his pocket, I instinctively raised my stapler.
    He saw it and started laughing wheezily. “Stop! Don’t collate me.” He held up his empty hands in mock horror.
    “That’s a pretty odd verb choice,” I said, still gripping the stapler.
    He dropped his hands and shrugged. “I used to work in a copy shop. I got what, a buck thirty seconds now? Here’s the deal. I heard there was a chick detective in town and that I could find her at the library. I got a letter I was supposed to hand over to the police if anything happened to Mo.”
    “Mo?”
    “Maurice. My friend who was ganked. They found his body in the lake yesterday.”
    “Wait,” I said, dropping the stapler by my side, “you didn’t kill him?”
    Ray scrunched up his face. “What’s wrong with you, woman? We don’t kill our own. So you want the damn letter or not?”
    “I thought you were supposed to give it to the police.”
    “I look like I get along with the police?”
    Point taken. “Say, speaking of police, I don’t suppose you happened to shoot an officer of the law last night?”
    His eyes narrowed dangerously. “I ask you one more time: You want the letter or not?”
    I leaned over the desk and held out my hand. He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his coat pocket and stepped forward as if he was going to drop it into my hand. At the last second, our hands so close I could feel his body heat, he balled up the paper and tossed it over my head.
    “Sorry.” His eyes had gone as flat as a doll’s. “It must’ve slipped.”
    He raised an eyebrow and started slowly walking backward to the door. My heart thudded a sick beat against my ribs. I held eye contact. In this brief interaction, I’d made the dangerous mistake of thinking he might be human since he’d done a favor for a friend. He was reminding me what he really was and who held the power in this room.
    I let him walk out, neither of us