The Monster Within

by Jeremy Laszlo

  “I’m Detective Steven King,” I introduce myself.

  “Like the writer,” she smiles. God, I’ve heard that more times than I can count and I swear that one day I’m going to pistol whip someone who wisecracks about it. I keep it hidden pretty well, how annoying it is, but she catches on pretty quickly, even without my hints. “Sorry, you must hear that all the time.”

  “Not as often as you’d think,” I lie.

  “Sorry, I’m such a mess.” She leads me to the living room where I drop down onto a chair that doesn’t even look like it was designed for people. I worry for a moment whether it even is a chair, or if I just sat on something decorative. “Poor Mason has been so patient with me.”

  “I’m sure it’s understandable,” I shrug.

  “What can I do to help?” she asks me with sad eyes. “Jenny was such an amazing person and there’s no way this was her idea.”

  “Why do you say that?” I furrow my brow. Does she so eagerly and obviously not think it was a suicide either? Or did Owens and his goons get to her and plant this in her mind.

  “Because there was nothing wrong with her,” Kendall says with a firm, unswaying tone in her voice. “I saw Jenny every day at ten in the morning and we texted each other all through the day. I swear that I spent more nights with her over here than with Mason. That girl was a rock. Nothing ever got to her and I made sure that she never felt like a pet hanging out with me. Some people get insecure when they start spending time with me. They think there’s a gap, but Jenny wasn’t that way. She was very confident in herself.”

  “From what we’ve discovered,” I reach into my breast pocket and pull out a notepad, “She recently broke up with a Charles Murphy?”

  “Yeah,” she nods and wipes a tear from her eye. “That asshole cheated on her with his boss’s assistant. She wasn’t taking it well, but it wasn’t like she was moping around. She was getting back out there. She didn’t want to linger on the past.”

  “From what her neighbors said,” I look at Kendall’s leg and resist the urge to reach out and run my hand up her inner thigh and finding what treasures lurk beneath, “Jenny was home with a different guy every night.”

  “Recently,” Kendall nods slowly, as if she’s ashamed of it. “I tried to stop her from behaving recklessly, but she was hurt. She wanted to get back at Charlie, so she started sleeping around. She was coming around, though. The last time I saw her, I pulled her off some creepy guy in the bathroom.”

  “Do you have a description of him?” I grab a pen from my pocket.

  “Average height, skinny, bleach blond hair.” She leans back on the couch and I look up at her flat stomach under her silky gown. “He dresses like a total sleaze ball and I’m pretty sure he’s selling drugs. We were at The Office and every time I go there, I see him lurking around.”

  “I’ll check him out.” I finish writing down the note. “Was he the guy she went home with?”

  “I don’t think so.” Kendall rubs her forehead. “She was checking out some guy at the bar. He was tall, lean build, dirty blond hair, a short, stubble beard that guys are all about right now. He was wearing a gray three-piece. He was handsome. Actually, he was an upgrade to all the others she’d been sleeping around with.”

  “Maybe the bartender will know him.” I write down the guy’s description.

  “They’re saying that it was a suicide.” Kendall looks at me with red eyes. “Do you think it was a suicide?”

  I’m hesitant to answer that. According to Whitman, Jenny killed herself, but I’m not sure that there wasn’t someone else in the room whispering in her ear. But, what if I’m wrong? If I’m wrong and I tell her that I think it was a homicide and I turn out to be a dumbass, then she’s going to be pissed and hurt even more. I look at her and feel a knot twisting inside of my stomach. “I’m not sure yet,” I tell her. “Some things aren’t adding up.”

  “I know that she wouldn’t do this,” Kendall pleads with me.

  God, I want to slip her out of that gown and just look at her. She would hate it if she knew that was what I was thinking about right now, but I can’t help it. I wonder if she still has the slutty schoolgirl outfit. That would be a little too perfect, actually. I look her in the eyes and swear to her. “I’ll do everything that I can,” I promise her and that’s the truth.

  “Thank you,” she answers.

  She suddenly rises and I rise with her. Rushing to a table near the door, she grabs a pen and writes something down on a notepad and hands it to me. I take it from her and look at the seven numbers and wonder how many men out there would kill for this phone number. How many men would kill Mason just to get that number?

  “Call me if you find out anything?” she says softly.

  I feel like reaching out, pulling her close, and planting my lips on her soft, crimson lips, kissing her deeply. I resist again. “You got it,” I tell her.

  “Thank you,” she says as I turn to the door.

  Standing in the elevator as it slowly takes me back from the heavenly home of the gorgeous beauty named Kendall Stein, I feel something vibrate in my pocket. I reach down, expecting a text from someone at the precinct. I stare at the phone with a cold sense of terror in my stomach. Somehow, between the time I entered Kendall’s apartment and left, lost in that haze of information download and extreme horniness, Owens called me twice and left a voicemail. There’s no way he would call twice and leave a voicemail if he was just trying to contact me to find out what news I’ve discovered. Something’s happened.

  11

  I’ve seen a lot of places in this city that remind me of Whispering Hills. It’s a trailer park that is its own contained form of a ghetto. A miniature society built within a stitched together network of self-sustaining, governing miniature societies that make up the outskirts of the city, surrounding all the happy, well-to-do and the rich people. This is where the angry, broken, beaten, and worn go to hide out for the rest of their days. It’s the dark part of the city that everyone avoids or just passes through if they have to. No one likes these places, especially me. I’ve spent too much time in dusty, hot places like Whispering Hills, leaning over dead bodies. This is where you get shot because you looked wrong at your neighbor.

  I pull up behind a squad car that’s parked right in front of an old, sun-faded billboard with a smiling, happy cowboy over the name of the trailer park. I wonder if this place is inhabited with smiling, happy cowboys or if that’s false advertising. I stop the car and wish that I was back questioning Kendall Stein. At least there was aesthetic appeal all around there. I could admire the people and the décor. Here, I’m stuck with dust, tumbleweeds, and strange looking people who gave up on life long before the race really started. I step out of my Shelby and wonder if I’m going to be missing my tires when I come back.

  A uniform steps toward me and holds up his hand, I flash him my ID. He looks at it thoroughly and head deeper into the trailer park. People are standing out on their makeshift porches looking south to where a tangle of cop cars are parked and yellow caution tape is stretched out in a perimeter to keep prying eyes away. There’s a woman with curlers still in her hair and in a nightgown that looks more like a tarp she’d purchased at some big chain store. She looks at me and I try really hard to figure out who still wears curlers in their hair. In fact, who still lives in a trailer park? She looks at me with her toad-like face and I give her a nod. She just stares at me, as if she thinks I can’t see her. I give up trying to communicate with the locals. Scotty, there are zero signs of life down here.

  I pass a uniform who is interviewing a man with a mullet and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off so that his tattooed arms can bask in the glorious light of the sun. He looks at me with a sunken-in, worn looking face before he spits to the side and starts answering the uniform’s questions again, pointing back toward the entrance of the trailer park and across the street to a red and white gas station. I look back at the trailer I’m heading for and I catch the sight of a beau
tiful, blonde girl being questioned by a lady cop, since ladies generally begin gabbing. I never understood why women had to talk to women. It seems stupid.

  The girl is something that screams out to my carnal, base desires and I immediately look away from her as she turns and looks at me. I pretend to be overly interested in a trailer near me and keep walking. I can’t get distracted here like I was with Kendall. I need to be focused and on top of my game. This could be what saves me from the wrath of Mendez. Or, this could be the final nail in my elusive, avoidance coffin. I can feel the girl’s eyes on me as I approach the trailer. The porch is covered in uniforms who are taking notes and discussing what they found inside with one another.

  The trailer is a sea foam green that looks absolutely hideous and I wonder if the sun has faded it over the years or if they bought it with that color. The windows are dirty and unwashed along with most of the whole building. It’s a dilapidated, terrible looking place and I wonder what it is that brings me here. What did Owens see here that I wasn’t at this moment?

  The screen door swings open and Owens appears, my salvation.

  “What am I doing here, Owens?” I ask as I climb the steps and stand in front of him.

  “You’re not the only one who can do some detective work,” Owens growls as he holds open the screen door and I immediately smell the stench of cigarettes, something rotting, and the humid disgusting presence of someone dying slowly. It doesn’t take long for me to find the source of the odor sitting on a couch in the trailer’s living room. She has an oxygen tank to her face, slowly breathing in at the request of the paramedics. She’s a fat, squatty thing and she looks like the cancer is kicking her bloated, yellow ass over and over again.

  I follow Owens and another paramedic into the back room, past the bathroom and where the woman sits watching us. They push open a door and I’m immediately greeted by something that looks like it’s a statue or prop for some sort of horror movie, definitely having something to do with a voodoo doll. There’s a man who has a short, dirty blond beard, messed hair, and a face that looks pretty handsome, but it’s hard to tell from all the gashes and blood running across his face. He’s wearing black slacks and a red polo. I immediately picture the gas station across from the trailer park. His body is riddled with pens, pencils, and an enormous pool of blood is underneath his chair.

  “Who the fuck is this?” I ask with a confused look on his face.

  Owens gestures behind me. I turn and see a closet that is full of nice clothes, something that I didn’t expect to find in this hellish place. I almost instantly see a charcoal gray suit. Pulling my latex gloves over my hands, I reach out and turn the shoulder of the suit on its hanger and see that it is indeed a three-piece. Shit. This is the guy.

  “Theodore Martin,” Owens introduces me to the dead body. “Everyone seems to know him as Teddy. He dropped out of college to come home and work across the street at a gas station to help pay for his mother’s medication.”

  “That seems to be working out well,” I grunt. “What does she smoke? Eight packs a day.”

  “I’m guessing a full carton,” Owens looks through the doorway at the fat, sickly hag. “Anyway, a girl outside talking to Trina says she was supposed to go out with him last night, but he never came to the door. She figured he’d ditched her and went home for the evening. From what the paramedics have told us, it looks like he stabbed thirty four pens and pencils into him at various spots then took an x-acto knife to his face before he finally bled out.”

  “Jesus.” I look at the dead man as the paramedics slowly take him from the chair and place him in a body bag. He looks like he was tortured. He looks exactly like what I would expect a victim to look like. “How did you find him?”

  “When I talked to Kendall Stein.” Owens turns and looks at me. “Fine piece of ass, right?”

  “Definitely,” I nod.

  “Anyways, she said they’d been to The Office,” Owens says. “She also gave me a description of Teddy. I went to the bar, asked around and the bartender gave me his name. We came here to question him, thinking that he was our guy. The mother shouted for him to come out of his room, and when we kicked in the door, we found Teddy here like a pin cushion.”

  “Jesus,” I whisper again.

  “But that’s not all,” Owens continues to enlighten me. “Turns out Teddy had a run in with the law yesterday. He was robbed at gunpoint at his job and then decided to quit shortly after. The girl outside witnessed the whole thing.”

  “So what’s the theory?” I ask Owens, folding my arms.

  “Not a fucking idea,” he answers with a dazed and lost look on his face. “But whoever killed him, must have known about Jenny Martinez. Maybe it’s a vengeance kill.”

  “Were there any other detectives called out?” I turn and look out the window where the blonde girl is being questioned.

  “Some boys called in a few favors,” Owens answers. “You’re the only one who caught this. But Mendez is going to know. Your ass is officially on the chopping block, but at least you’ve got something now, right? I mean, this has to be something.”

  I hope so. God, I hope so. Turning to the drawing table, I look at the message Ted decided to leave behind for those he’d left. It’s drawn out in charcoal and it looks like it was written in the hard hand of a maniac. It reads: ‘I’m sorry I’m such a big disappointment and that I never lived up to your expectations. I just wanted you to love me. –Ted’. His name looks alien, foreign to his own hand. I watch them zip up the body bag and I decide that it’s time for me to get out of their way. I hesitate a moment on whether or not I should question the mother, but she looks like she’s about to die herself. As I turn and head outside, I hear the paramedic call out that she’s fainted. I roll my eyes and head toward the blonde.

  This is a girl that’s going to be hard to resist. She has the face of an angel and the body of a goddess. She’s wearing a leather headband with flowers on it and a low cut shirt that shows off her stomach and a glittering piece of jewelry on her belly button. I look at her and wonder what sounds she makes when she’s having an orgasm. She looks at me with sad, horrified eyes and I can’t help but feel that she’s already soiled. There’s no more magic in the world. Right now, she’s learning that suffering and agony is all that there is for the living.

  “Detective Steven King.” I hold out my hand and she takes it gently. I try not to squeeze her hand too hard.

  “Like the writer,” she smiles weakly.

  Okay, I fucking hate that joke. “Sure,” I grin playfully, trying to ease her suffering. I look at the uniform that I interrupted and give her my permission to get the fuck out of here. She looks at me angrily and decides to move on. “You witnessed the robbery that Ted was a part of?” I ask her softly, trying not to sound too professional.

  “I did,” she nods.

  “What was your name, sweetheart?” I ask her, reaching into my pocket and pulling out an old tissue I’ve been saving for a moment like this. I look at her as she takes it, wondering if I’m going to meet a gorgeous redhead before the day is over. I’ll be complete.

  “Courtney,” she answers.

  “Well, Courtney,” I pull out one of my business cards for her and hand it to her. “I know that this is a tough time for you, but if you need to talk to anyone or you just need someone there for you, feel free to call me any time.”

  “Don’t you want to ask me questions?” She looks up at me with a confused look on her face.

  No, I want to fuck you, I wish I could say. “After a while, if you can think of anything that might tell me who did this, give me a call,” I say gently to her, confident and strong. “Until then, Officer Trina has gotten everything that I think I will need.”

  I look over her body from behind my aviators one last time and shake her hand, feeling how soft and smooth her skin is before leaving the crime scene. I can feel my phone vibrating and that means Mendez is on the hunt. I decide that I can no longer hold onto running. I h
ave to go see him. I have to lay all of this out for him. This morning, I had nothing, but now, I have something. I don’t know how Jenny knew Lola Maretti, but I’m certain that if we start digging, we’ll find out the connection. The killer knew Jenny, then moved onto Ted. Why kill Ted? Was it because he’d heard Ted talking about how depressed he was at The Office? Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe the killer lurks in public places, listening to conversations and selecting his victims that way. God, I don’t know. All I know is that I need to contact Robbery to find out who they’re looking at for robbing Ted. Maybe that was just a test run for the killer, but Courtney had been there to fuck it up. He wanted this all to look like a suicide, so he needed no witnesses there to contradict him.

  It takes over an hour to get back to the precinct and I would feel like I’m a man on death row taking the long march up to the electric chair as I step out of my car and approach the building, but my days are already numbered. As I walk, I feel the weight of this coming storm all around me, the electric sensation in the air makes my neck tingle. This is going to suck, big time. I’ll just have to try my best not to punch the fucker in the face. As I open the doors, I’m nearly ran over by a uniform that approaches me. She looks like a boot and she’s way too pretty to be an officer. Why isn’t she modeling somewhere? We don’t need beautiful beat cops. I look at her dark, chocolate colored hair and feel slightly disappointed that it isn’t red.