The Monolith Murders

by Lorne L. Bentley

  Maureen said, “Well you’ll have a few moments to ponder it. ” She returned to the kitchen. In a minute she returned with a large serving plate in hand and announced, “It may be late, it may not be good, but damn it, dinner is finally ready.” She served the steaming hot spaghetti dinner to the chief first, responding to his almost pleading starving expression as a mother cat would instinctively react first to her hungriest kitten. After she had served all the others, she sat down next to Fred who was seated on the opposite side of the kitchen’s café door.

  The chief had just taken the first tasty bite of his meatballs when the café kitchen door suddenly flung open. Fred instantaneously felt a cold steel object pressed tightly against the back of his neck. He knew immediately from the coldness and feel of the object it was a revolver; he also knew from the primitive extraordinary perception that he had developed over the years, that it was Donna Lang holding the weapon. He also knew with certainty her next act was to kill him followed immediately by all the others in the room. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Chapter 7

  In a barely understandable high pitched scream, Donna yelled, seemingly at Maureen, “You and your damn know it all types, pretending to be professionals! I took Rorschach tests until they came out of my ears. You’re supposed to be so intelligent, so professional; but you don’t know that all the ink blots are just damn ink blots—nothing more.”

  Fred then detected that her next booming remarks were directed to him.

  “You son of a bitch, you goddamn son of a bitch, you were the one responsible for my last four years in that hell hole. You bastard! You, your sweet wife, and all of your fucking friends are about to die!”

  Fred was immobilized but Dan wasn’t. In an instant, a plate full of steaming meatballs and spaghetti were flying directly toward Donna’s head. The chief’s aim was true and powerful; in an instant, the hot ingredients of the plate found their mark, virtually exploding in Donna’s face. Almost comically two of the plate’s meatballs had found each of her eye sockets and for an instant she looked like a blind, exaggerated caricature of herself.

  Donna fell violently backwards, the café kitchen door swinging closed, her revolver simultaneously firing wildly into the popcorn ceiling as she fell. Fred yelled, “Get down!” pushing Maureen hard onto the tile floor as he started to sprint to the living room to retrieve his police revolver. In an instant Hebert had already retrieved his weapon, and was now dashing towards the kitchen. As Hebert swung open the café doors, his feet immediately went out from under him. He was propelled forward on the kitchen’s tile floor made unnaturally slick by the remnants of the spilled spaghetti sauce. His right leg struck the kitchen wall, painfully spraining it in the process.

  Donna was gone, the back door wide open. Captain Hebert yelled for someone to call for backup, as he limped into the back yard attempting to follow Donna’s circuitous trail through the subdivision’s backyards. Fred normally would have willingly taken Jim’s place in the pursuit, because Fred was now Jim’s subordinate and Jim’s movement was appreciably hindered by his sprained leg. However, Fred had a much higher priority.

  He bounded upstairs to his bedroom—with a quick glance he saw that the room was normal, just as he had left it when he left for work this morning, except for one thing-–the top of his dresser was now bare—the monolith was gone! He ran to the phone on his nightstand, called his duty station, directing them to deploy several police cars around his block. He provided the on-duty sergeant a full description of Donna. Although he had not seen her for four years, he assumed her appearance had held basically stable over that time. He was sure she was still the attractive blonde with the long straight hair gracefully falling over her shoulders, as he had last seen her at her trial. Retrieving a revolver from the top of his clothes closet, he bounded downstairs to speak to Schultz.

  Fred excitedly asked the question, “Do you know the phone number or the address of the medical doctor on your staff? As I recall his name’s Dr. Anderson?”

  “Yes, it’s Anderson; his number’s unlisted, all that personnel info is kept at my office. But, Fred, Anderson’s no longer working at AU, he left my employment about two weeks ago!” He’s now employed as a neurosurgeon in the Fort Myers hospital.” Schultz didn’t understand why Fred needed this information at this critical time, but he recognized Fred’s sense of urgency and deemed it best not to question him.

  Exasperated, Fred said, “Well, now we have to go through the damn tedious investigative wickets. Let’s go to your office first to retrieve the information we need.”

  “And second?”

  “Who the hell knows?”

  Fred wasn’t being caustic; he hated to be put into a situation in which he had to respond rapidly, without adequate time for deep thought. Fred was the big picture type, he rarely saw the trees in the forest; he envied others who not only saw the trees but the sap oozing out of them and the lichen and insects grasping tenaciously at their bark. Fred relied on his intuition for his crime solving, but for him that was often a gradual and highly deliberative process. Had Fred been in the same chair the chief had been in, he would still be considering what would be the optimum object to heave at Donna. But Fred now lacked the luxury of time; so by necessity he was moving forward rapidly, employing the best course of action he could conceive of under time constrained circumstances.

  Fred held little hope that in his physically damaged condition that Jim would capture Donna. Besides, he reflected, she’s a brilliant adversary, so she most likely had structured some deliberate and refined escape plan before she even entered my house. She may have lost all of her psychic skills after the monolith was removed from her, but that certainly wouldn’t have diminished any part of her superior intellect.

  Fred retrieved his second revolver from the hall closet and handed it to his former boss, who had still not moved from the corner of the dining room. “Chief, would you please stay here to protect Maureen in case Donna comes back?”

  “Sure, Fred, but I haven’t used a revolver since I left the force.”

  “That doesn’t matter; I don’t think I could ask anyone more capable than you to protect the love of my life.” The former chief gradually released one of his rare smiles.

  Fred added, “But once Jim comes back, please tell him that I need to have a patrolman stationed here night and day to protect Maureen until we catch Donna.” Shifting his attention to Maureen he said, “And honey, the chief seems to have been careless with his meal; would you please serve him another one?”

  Fred thought it was good that the chief was the one to have thrown his dinner plate at Donna, first because of his amazingly accurate aim and secondly because it contained twice as much food on it than anyone else’s plate had.

  As he and Schultz were about to leave the house, Fred turned and saw that his wife was bringing a new and even larger plate of spaghetti to the chief.

  The chief’s face was beaming.

  Chapter 8

  As he left his house heading toward his Miata, Fred glanced at Schultz. For the first time he realized that an out of shape, pudgy 6’5” man, with most of his fat concentrated in his lower belly, would have a hard, if not impossible, time fitting into Fred’s tiny Miata.

  “Let’s take your car, George,” Fred said. “I’ll drive!”

  Schultz wasn’t used to taking commands from anyone; he still retained the same massive ego that Fred had witnessed the first time he entered AU’s doors. But he liked Fred and appreciated the urgency of the circumstances so he reluctantly said, “Okay, but for God’s sake be extra careful; the damn car is brand new without a scratch on it.”

  Fred jumped into George’s’ new Cadillac SRX, reaching for the clutch out of habit from his years of driving his five speed manual Miata. Already in the passenger seat, Schultz witnessed Fred’s unfamiliarity with his car and mumbled, “Hell, damn novice.”

  After Fred studied the driving mechanisms of the big car more carefully, h
e started it, and gunned the engine, spinning the front wheels to the pungent smell of burnt rubber as he flew out of his driveway.

  Schultz yelled, “For Christ’s sake, take it easy.” Fred accelerated even more. eHe exceeded seventy as he entered the busy intersection of Tamiami Trail directly across from the sprawling Ringling Museum grounds. Unfortunately, Fred’s vision was distorted; he hadn’t adjusted the driver’s seat to allow for the difference between a 6’5” man and one that was barely 5’7”. The only clear vision he had was that of the tops of Sarasota’s buildings flying by. As he turned left spinning onto the drive, Fred recognized two Sarasota police cars, sirens screaming, LED blue lights blazing, speeding from the opposite direction.

  Damn it, if they tried, they couldn’t do more to signal their arrival to Donna, Fred thought. But then he realized it didn’t matter, Donna would surely have guessed they would have been called and fully anticipated their arrival shortly after she vacated his house. He was positive that she was long gone.

  Then Fred wondered why Donna didn’t get up when she fell into the kitchen, and return to the dining room with her gun blazing. She obviously held the momentary advantage. In retrospect, he thought that after she had invaded a house with a bunch of cops, she would have known that it wouldn’t take long for them to retrieve their weapons and set off after her. But, Fred figured that her first goal had been to retrieve the monolith, and she had already successfully accomplished that. She can always kill me anytime, Fred thought grimly.

  Fred was relieved that Donna no longer had her paranormal aid; because if she did, she would have probed our minds and would have known that our weapons were not in the immediate area, and that she had the perfect opportunity to kill us all. All the more reason I have to get that monolith back quickly, he reasoned. He knew Dr. Anderson would be the key. He said to Schultz, “Call your security guard and make sure he’s waiting for us and lets us enter your company just as soon as we get there. We have to move quickly.”

  Schultz complied, and they arrived at the AU in less than ten minutes. Fred glanced at the big man sitting beside him as he started to leave the car. Schultz was sweating profusely even thought Sarasota’s nighttime temperature had dropped unnaturally low for this time of the year.

  “Not used to seeing this baby driven that fast, huh, George?”

  Schultz said nothing, but preceded Fred to the building and pounded on the glass front door. Don, the security guard, recognizing Schultz, immediately opened it.

  The huge security guard was the same one Fred had worked with when he was in pursuit of the Sarasota mass murderer. His company nickname, “the living tower,” was well deserved. Even Schultz looked small standing next to him.

  Although they had established a good relationship, Fred did not expect the vigorous handshake of the over-sized man as Fred’s hand completely vanished under his. Fred could almost hear his hand bones shatter as the big man suddenly realized his emotion had gotten control of him and his normal self-imposed constraint of his great strength had been forgotten in the heat of the moment. The guard’s face was flushed, “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

  Fred said, “It’s Okay, Don; I was worried about breaking your hand as well.” Since Fred was almost a foot shorter and carrying at least 200 pounds less weight, the guard responded with a broad smile to Fred’s retort.

  Schultz and Fred walked briskly toward the medical operating room. Fred was thinking that he hadn’t been injured on the job in the four years since he had solved the mass murder case. But now he was experiencing severe pain in his throbbing hand. With the re-arrival of Donna, his streak of bad luck was starting to happen all over again.

  The AU medical operating room was housed in the rear of the Science Division. A single metal door at the back of the Science Division provided its only entry point. As Fred was proceeding, Schultz grabbed Fred by the arm stopping him in his tracks.

  “Look, Fred! there’s a light under the door! It’s almost ten o’clock; no one should be here at this time of night!”

  Chapter 9

  After running from Fred’s house, Jim, with his longer leg span, had advanced within twenty feet of his tiny antagonist. He had just proceeded through the open metal gate of the backyard of a neighbor’s home, slamming the gate tightly shut to preclude an easy silent reentry. The gate issued a loud metal clanging sound as it closed. Donna was running as fast as her small frame could propel her, but even with his injured ankle Jim was quickly gaining on her. She was now just a few feet in front of him next to the side of a house in the same yard that Jim had just entered. To her right was a 10 foot cement wall; that same sized wall encircled the entire property. Jim pulled out his weapon. Knowing what Donna was capable of, he had no intent to fire a warning shot; the faster society is rid of this creature the better for all of us, he thought. I’ll worry later about justifying my action to both my superiors and the media.

  As he started to fire his weapon, Donna abruptly turned left at the corner of the house moving in the direction of the front of the house. Within a few seconds Jim turned the same corner. The front yard was deep. Jim knew that there was no way she could have made it to the front gate before he had turned the corner. Escape for her was impossible. Donna was trapped somewhere in the yard, but where? The house was typical Floridian, built on a cement slab with no crawl space, but Donna was nowhere to be seen. He quickly glanced around the other side of the house. No one! He went to the front door—locked. Where the hell was she? The wall was much too high for a person of her stature to be able to climb over. He proceeded to the back yard. Again no one there, the back gate was still secure just as he left it. Had she somehow been able to exit from the backyard gate, he would have heard the sound of its closing. He walked as far from the house as he could, staying within the boundary of the yard and looked up at the roof. No one. He knew instinctively that Donna couldn’t have reached the high roof from ground level. He tried the back door—locked. He went to a fiberglass shed in the backyard. It was padlocked. He knocked on the front door. No response. After another ten minutes of useless searching of the small lot, he sat down on the front steps, massaged his aching ankle, and smoked a cigarette. Then he gave up, totally disconcerted and frustrated.

  Fred pulled his revolver out, pushing Schultz to the side while at the same time putting his finger on his lips signaling Schultz to be quiet.

  Schultz started to protest, but remembering the unspeakable mental and physical things Donna had done to him four years ago with her hidden powers, he retreated and moved off to the side of the door saying nothing. He decided it was best to allow Fred to take care of Donna.

  Fred bent his knees, crouching as low as he could, attempting to make himself as small a target as possible. He simultaneously opened the Science Division door and burst into the room.

  “What the hell!” the person seated at the desk inside the door gasped.

  Fred recognized him immediately; it was Dodd, who was the division director in charge of the Science Division as well as the medical unit contained within it.

  Schultz was the first to speak. “Dodd, what the hell are you doing here this late?” he asked.

  “Wait a minute,” Fred interrupted, focusing on his reason for being there. “Is Dr. Anderson in his room?” Fred was referring to the medical and operating room housed off to the left in the far back of the division.

  “No, I haven’t seen or heard from him for two weeks; the last I saw him was the day he resigned from AU.”

  “So no one’s in the medical unit?” Fred asked, fearful that Donna might be lurking somewhere and effecting some type of unknown control over Dodd.

  “No, no one is in there, you can see for yourself,” Dodd responded.

  Fred moved to the glossy white door of the medical unit. Schultz and Dodd stayed behind. Fred could hear Schultz asking again why Dodd was in the office this late.

  Dodd replied, “You must remember, boss, it’s the anti-gravity experiment that the compa
ny wanted concluded this week.”

  Schultz said, “Sure, I remember. Okay, get back to work.”

  Fred could tell by the big man’s response that Schultz had either forgotten about the project or had not been included in its developmental loop. But Schultz’s ego wouldn’t let Dodd know that, so he had feigned knowledge.

  Fred entered the medical unit where he had at one time interviewed Dr. Anderson. The operating table was in the same place it was during Fred’s last visit and the sterile high gloss walls still presented a cold uninviting antiseptic look. It was at that table where Dr. Anderson had first inserted the ESP device into Donna’s brain, and then weeks later removed it. The contents of the room had not materially changed; the only thing new was a large yellow plastic bucket, a sponge mop, a straw broom and an oversized dustpan sitting in the middle of the room. A layer of dust had accumulated on the operating table. Obviously, the place was no longer active as a medical unit. No, thought Fred, Donna has not been here.

  Fred and Schultz left the Science Division and met again with the security guard. Fred issued stern directions, “Don, don’t let anyone in the building tonight. And for God’s sake, make sure if Donna or anyone else attempts to enter, you call me immediately.” He gave Don his personal cell phone number.

  “No problem.”

  “Make sure you do it,” Schultz said, unnecessarily reinforcing his authority once again.

  “Yes sir,” the big man said.

  Fred said, “Okay, now we need the phone number and address for Dr. Anderson.”

  The guard moved to the reception desk, and within seconds Fred heard the low hum of a mainframe computer system starting up.

  Fred was sure that Donna would attempt to get in touch with Dr. Anderson since he was the surgeon who had originally inserted the monolith into her brain. She wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it since it was a unique medical breakthrough requiring a surgeon imbued with special expertise. Fred thought it highly probable that Donna might want to have the operation conducted in the same area that it had been completed in previously, and that was the Science Division’s medical unit. Fortunately, Donna had not yet gotten to AU. Fred was not sure if Donna had attempted to contact Dr. Anderson before she had retrieved the paranormal unit from Fred’s dresser. It was critical that he get in touch with Anderson before Donna did.