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Detective Elrod couldn’t figure it out. She spent three weeks trying to catch this killer, a figure only known by the letter “G.” No real name, no other alias, hell, not even a good description. Some said they clearly seemed to be in their late forties, while others swore the killer was still skipping class in high school. Elrod shuffled a couple of the papers aside and picked up a stray pack of cigarettes, the cellophane wrapping half-worn from rubbing against city plans, case files, and Elrod’s EDCs. She fumbled with the matchbox in her pocket for a moment, before igniting the Camel and taking a long drag. Stanford used to give her trouble for that. Always went off on how “smoking was bad for her health” and “she needed to know when to quit.” It was rich coming from an old man who nursed the bottle like a grandchild. Besides, he was gone now. Where had his chastising gotten him? Elrod shook the thought from her mind and snuffed the cigarette into a nearby empty cup. When a sizzle sounded from the inside, Elrod cursed. That coffee was barely an hour old, and she’d just ruined it with unsavory seasoning. Perhaps it was time to call it quits for the night. Morning? Elrod checked her watch and cursed again. Definitely morning. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be running her regular shift with barely enough sleep to call it a catnap. Reluctantly, Elrod dumped her coffee into the office trash and scraped her evidence into a semi-respectable pile. Respectable enough that the Deputy Chief wouldn’t scold her for her “hap-hazardous research methods” again. The man had more sticks up his ass than a puppet. With one last glance around the office, Elrod shut off the lights and headed out.
The chill of the December air hit quick and hard like a prized fist-fighter. Elrod shoved her hands deeper into her pockets to ward off Winter’s bite, and she kept her head down as she passed the old Eberle home. She wasn’t typically a superstitious person, as she believed there was enough scary shit out there without adding on some supernatural bull, but something about the house gave her the creeps. It felt like the upstairs windows were constantly a little too bright for an abandoned home, like someone was inside, still inhabiting the crumpling piece of long-forgotten architecture. Too paranoid to completely turn her back on it, Elrod’s eyes slid toward those same windows. Unlike the usual eerily bright panes, they were completely black. Her brow furrowed. As a T-Bird sped by, the headlights flashed the house for a moment, and in that split second, Elrod saw a figure staring back at her. She jumped back in surprise, unaware of the T-Bird easily doing forty in a twenty. That was a job for officers anyway. She hadn’t pulled someone over for speeding since the academy. For a moment, Elrod stood frozen in place, unsure if she should investigate the possible squatter or leave it be. Before she could check her watch to gauge whether it was worth it to lose what little sleep she had over an imaginary spook, the faint sound of the unsheathing of a knife trickled into her ears. With lightning-fast reflexes, Elrod spun around and pulled her gun. However, the figure was quicker. Before she could shoot, she felt a sharp pain along her side as the blade slashed along her ribs. With a cry, she tried to back away and regain her ground, only to stumble into the road instead. She desperately shot at where she thought the figure stood yet heard no noise but the ringing of her ears as the gun went off.
“Fuck!” She spun towards the source of the cry, but before she could level her pistol, her vision exploded in a medley of stars and black spots. The world span as she struggled to regain her bearings. The gun slipped from her hand. Before she completely said goodnight, she heard the faint sound of hurried footsteps and labored breathing. Then, her world went black.
When she woke up, she couldn’t see a thing. For a moment, Elrod wondered if her attacker stuck her in the alleyway and left her to bleed out. However, she could feel itchiness around her stomach that didn’t resemble the nag of infection. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Elrod glanced down. The faint outline of thick ropes stretched tightly across her body, binding her to a smooth yet solid chair. If she looked close enough, she thought she could see a strip of white linen covering her slashed skin. At least they’re polite, she thought. Suddenly, a filthy lamp sputtered to life overhead. Elrod winced at the sudden brightness yet attempted to take note of her surroundings quickly. It was a large room, bigger than the stretch of the flickering light, with concrete floors and rusted, metal walls. In front of her sat a desk matching the steel of her seat, and if she squinted hard enough, she could see a board behind that full of unintelligible papers and photos.
“This damn light never seems to work right.” The voice behind Elrod startled her, and she tried to crane her neck as much as she could to get a good look at her kidnapper. She barely saw the figure out of the corner of her eye, simply a flash of long, black hair and pale hands. The light continued to stubbornly fade in and out until a resounding whack seemed to shove it into mediocre yet constant brightness. Elrod could now see more of the board, and her face paled at what she saw. The papers were reports from the division, most of them detailing the death of Stanford. Tears welled in her eyes for a moment as she saw photos of his corpse, strewn about the filthy alleyway they’d found him in and covered with blood. Along with his profile were the profiles of several other local men, all over the age of fifty and all white. As Elrod concentrated on the gruesome evidence, she realized they all matched the description of G’s latest victims. “There we go!” A thump sounded from behind Elrod, and the figure’s footsteps grew louder and louder as they approached Elrod from behind.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, unable to keep the warble from her voice. Stanford was her friend. His death haunted her every night, especially since the Deputy hadn’t the mercy to take her off his “Missing” case. To be fair, it was probably for the best. Elrod wouldn’t have let anyone touch his file anyway.
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to speak up a bit. After all, one of my ears is still sort of ringing after someone decided to shoot me,” the figure replied. The voice sounded male, younger, perhaps in his early twenties. His footsteps had stopped. Elrod tried to turn her head to look at him, but the ropes were too tight around her shoulders.
“You killed my partner, and you think you have the right to be indignant over me shooting you?” Elrod spat. The figure’s footsteps echoed once more, and slowly, he stepped into the light. Elrod’s eyes softened with surprise and confusion for a moment. The figure was barely twenty-five, with long, greasy black hair and eye bags bigger than hers. He looked like the rebel graffiti artists they sometimes picked up on the night shift, not the international serial killer departments across the world feared. He was just a kid. A kid that killed Stanford. Elrod’s anger quickly returned, and she lurched towards the figure as best as she could. The ropes strained and the figure jumped backward at her sudden movement. “You son of a bitch!”
“I probably deserve that, don’t I?” Elrod’s rage blurred the edges of her vision. She lunged for the figure again, yet a sharp, stabbing pain in her side made her cry out in pain instead of anger. “Yeah, sorry about that one. However, again, a gun leveled to the head makes people act out.” Elrod glared at the figure as he walked to the desk and sat down on its surface. She hated how young he was. She hated how relaxed he looked. For a moment, she hated herself for letting Stanford be killed by some high school punk. For letting every victim die at the hands of a kid who looked like he was late for math class. The figure crossed his legs and stared at her for a moment. Silence fell between the two of them.
“So, you’re G?” Elrod asked. The figure titled his head side-to-side.
“Kind of. Gerard. Gerard Keay. My friends call me Gerry. Well, if I had them.” Gerry let out a small laugh at his own joke, which quickly died when he saw Elrod’s death glare. He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “So, I suppose if I let you go, you’ll kill me?”
“It’s generally against my policy to kill children,” Elrod grit out. Gerry frowned.
“Listen, I’m nineteen. I’m not a child. “
“That makes it fine for me then.” Gerry swallowed hard and looked around. Anywhere but Elrod’s piercing glower. Time stretched on as Elrod silently fumed at Gerry, tears of anger and sadness streaking down her face. Gerry coughed, then jumped off the table and grabbed the board.
“Alright, so, you’re probably wondering why I killed your partner and all of those nursing home buddies. I need to start with the fact that I didn’t mean to kill your partner. Well, not kill him per se. It wasn’t about him. I thought he was someone else,” Gerry began. As the board wheeled closer to Elrod, she glanced over the profiles of the victims again. Each were somewhere between fifty and fifty-nine, with highlighted Norwegian or Swedish ancestry. Some were authors, others ex-criminals that the police had been tracking. Some were from Norway and the U.S., others were from France, Germany, Croatia, Russia, Japan, any and almost all places the police had found G’s victims. There were some profiles that Elrod didn’t recognize. “So, I do sincerely apologize for that. I don’t kill these people because I want to. Again, same reason I killed your partner: he looked like someone I’m going after. You may not believe me now, but his death was justified—”
“Justified? You call the death of a father of three and a long-time member on the force justified?” Elrod roared. Gerry winced.
“Poor choice of words. Listen, I went after these particular men because the person I’m looking for could literally destroy the world. If he’s stopped now, perhaps we all have a chance of not dying before he gets his hands on another cursed book,” Gerry explained. Elrod raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve committed first-degree murder on several accounts because you’re looking for an evil librarian?” she drawled.
“No! Well, yes. Kind of. It’s more complicated than that.” Gerry grabbed a marker from the top of the board and circled a map in the upper-hand corner. “This is the last known siting of him, but that was like five years ago. I’ve retraced the steps of some of his associates to see if they could lead me to him, but every trail’s been cold so far.” He tapped on the profile of one of the deceased. “I caught this guy sneaking around the docks a year back, and for a moment, I was sure that it was him. Turns out it was just some late-night fisherman.” Gerry’s hand faltered for a moment, and Elrod saw his breath hitch. “That—that was what started it. After that, I started to ask myself if it was worth accidentally harming innocents to get closer to that—that waste of human life, and I decided yes. His death would prevent the deaths of thousands, possibly millions.”
“Who is he?” Elrod asked. Gerry’s eyes darkened. His hands clenched into fists. For a moment, Elrod worried about her safety, still tied to the chair as she was.
“Jurgen. Leitner.”
“Jurgen… Leitner?”
“Stupid, idiot, motherfucking Jurgen Leitner. God-damn fool book-collecting dust-eating rat-old-bastard-shithead idiot. Avatar of the whore, biggest clown in the circus: laughed out of town. Cowboy motherfucking Jurgen Leitner.” Gerry’s eyes became wide as he gritted out the name, and his hand slammed into the desk. Elrod decided now was the best moment to remain completely silent, if she wanted to escape wherever she was intact. Gerry pulled a laptop from one of the desk drawers and opened it to a photo of an old Norwegian man.
“Stop pinning me when I talk about Jurgen Leitner; I hate him so much. Why does he have so many fucked up books? Why did he decide to fuck around and find out? Just set them loose. Is he dead? Is he a bastard man? Has such a visceral effect on me; not even in the room, haven’t recently seen this man’s face, and I know he has the world’s shittiest beard. Get away from me.” Gerry slammed the laptop shut and hopped off the desk, then swiveled around to face Elrod.
“If I wanted to get into heaven and God said, ‘Jurgen Leitner’s waiting inside,’ I would piss on God’s feet for the sole purpose of getting sent back down. If I have to deal with Jurgen Leitner speaking one word in person, on voice, in podcast, not only will I close the tab; I will delete my bookmark out of spite and have to rewatch the entire series again for the experience of being able to skip all the times when he is mentioned or alive.
“I don’t even know why I hate him so much. He collects books, but I am just mad because I am angy.” Elrod almost asked what “angy” meant but thought better of it when she saw how Gerry’s breathing became erratic.
“He better have some fucked-up backstory to explain this if he’s just some rich shithead who’s a fan of creepypasta and wanted the IRL version, I’ll go ham. Better have had a book make him kill a man, cuz if he didn’t I’m going to make him.
“Paypal.com/IFuckingHateJurgeinLeitner.
“Episode’s not even about him. Vaguely mentioned what is supposed to maybe be his library and I lost it.” Gerry pointed back to the map. “Where the fuck is Jurgen Leitner? If he’s still alive, I’m going to so deeply wish he wasn’t. Crusty old man. I’ll punch Leitner, and his sad, frail, old-man twig bones will simply flake apart under my epic huge meat fist, and he will disintegrate until all that’s left is one final book he kept on him at all times simply titled Now You Fucked Up in ancient Yiddish. I’m not breathing; I’m hyperventilating at this point.”
“Are you—” Elrod began, only for Gerry to put up a finger to silence her.
“I hope there’s a date given for when Jurgen died, or will die, so I can make it a reminder on my phone. Every day, once a year, I will see it and do anything but pay respects to the man who had so many fucked up–if true–books.” Gerry’s breath came out in short, sharp gasps, and the sound replaced his earlier speech. Elrod sat and silently watched, unsure whether to intervene or let the man have his moment. Finally, Gerry looked at Elrod.
“Does that make sense?”