Dr. Beall gave him the first shot, followed closely by the second.He said, “I’ll check for a heartbeat.”I said, “You don’t need to. I can see it in his eyes.”Dewey was gone.

Dewey sent him, I thought, when I saw those eyes.

A library after closing is a lonely place. It is heart-poundingly silent, and the rows of shelves create an almost unfathomable number of dark and creepy corners.

Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the...