Kent Library

It's a sunny late spring afternoon when you roll up on the library building. There's a local sheriff car parked nearby, the lights cycling blue-and-red. A deputy is sitting in the car with the windows open. He's watching two people who are sitting on the steps of the library.

The two people sitting on the library steps have an odd skin tone, kind of inhumanly pink like a bad shade of lipstick. Their heads are shaved or possibly bald. They wear white thigh-length robes over white trousers. They are barefoot. They seem to be enjoying the sunlight. They're sitting there silently looking at each other.

What do you do?

Janus circles the block. Historic houses (a plaque on one of them reads "1645" with an illegible name in smaller font), a lot that's so overgrown he can't tell whether it's vacant, and at the back of the library is a parking lot.

Another cop is here. She is taking photographs of the back doors of the library, which have been decorated with so much CAUTION and POLICE tape. She looks around at Janus. "This is a scene," she says, "it's a closed scene. Did you notice the car over there?" Janus had walked right past it. Glancing back he sees a standard issue sheriff's patrol car with its lights going. No obvious sign that he's in a crime scene. No other cops, either.

"We're from Novydom," says the man who spoke to Lili. His companion nods. "This is?" he turns and looks up at the front of the building. "Kent Library. Huhh. Letters are weird. ... Hey, what ... do you speak Seree?"

"Hey," the female deputy says in a completely disinterested way, "who are you?"
Joe circles the block counterclockwise as Janus went clockwise. He passes around the front, side, and back of a large white Methodist church on a fine green lawn with towering elm trees. The trees and the building have been there quite a while. On a whim, he cuts across the parking lot behind the church and heads straight to a gap in a wooden fence along the side of the lot. There's a certain smell from that direction ...

Stepping through the gap he steps into a line of pine trees that are planted right against the fence, and almost trips on a bleeding pink body that is dressed in very torn-up white garments. The body is torn up about as bad as the robe. The eyes are open. It's not immediately apparent whether the body is breathing, but first guess is "no."

Glancing up from the body, through the pine branches, Joe sees a parking lot with a couple of older cars, a book return bin, a sheriff patrol car with cycling lights, and the back of the library - he's sure about that because there's a sign that says Kent Library. He also sees Janus, who appears to be talking to someone out of his view in an alcove where the back doors probably are.

Joe probably can't be seen where he is.

"Yeah, we came outta there," says the so-far silent friend of the man who's puzzled by fonts. "Lotsa books in there, huh? Library. That makes sense. Yeah, we were at the library in Novydom and walked through the doors to the reading room and instead we were in this building here. We'd like to stay."

The "corpse" twitches and spasms and moans when Joe kicks it. Seems like it's not dead.
"Uh ..." the woman says to indicate that she doesn't understand what Janus is on about. "Right. I'm going to need you to leave the scene, mkay?"