The Monolith Murders

by Lorne L. Bentley

  His wrists were bound by a padlocked chain and tied securely around the vent pipe. Once the vent pipe fractured, he could partially free himself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to remove any other parts of the chain. Using the adjacent rusty clothes washer for leverage, he was able to get his balance and laboriously rise to his feet.

  Now, he thought, what have I done? If they come back right away and find out that I’ve gotten free, that will be the end for me. I have to get out of the trailer immediately. He made his way to the laundry room door turning around so that he could grasp and turn the doorknob behind his back with his tied hands. He opened it, immediately losing his balance falling hard on the pressure treated wooden steps of the trailer. The fall momentarily drove the wind out of him. At least I’m free, he thought.

  He had no idea of the time, but he estimated it had to be after seven, because the countryside was immersed in darkness. A few low wattage park lights made a lame attempt to illuminate the dark trailer park streets. Still out of breath, he visually canvassed the park. No lights were on in any of the nearby trailers. He looked in the direction of where he thought he had heard kids playing earlier in the week. Nothing. He could attempt to hop to one trailer after another seeking help; but he was fearful that Donna would return in the interim and catch him. There would be no way he could get away under those conditions.

  He decided his fastest escape would be by literally rolling out of the park. He started rolling, at first very slowly because it was a means of propulsion that he had never attempted before, and his muscles weren’t conditioned adequately to propel him at more than at a snail’s pace.

  Aching and exhausted, he rolled to the park entrance. It was there he saw the sign—Trailer Park for Sale. That makes sense, he thought; the owner of the park was allowing tenants to remain in the park only until their lease was up. Donna must have rented the trailer only because she agreed to stay for just a short period; and it would provide the owner with more income until the sale went through. For her purposes she would also be free from a lot of curious neighbors.

  He saw no cars parked in any of the driveways of the other trailers. Anderson reasoned that the trailer that had housed the kids that he had heard playing a couple days ago was likely now also unoccupied. I’m glad I didn’t try to go from trailer to trailer doors, or it would have just been a matter of time until Donna discovered me, Anderson thought.

  He continued his painful laborious rolling until he reached route 72—the lightly traveled conduit between Sarasota and Arcadia. He knew this deserted highway well; it entered the unpopulated belly of Florida. It was rarely traveled at night, and there were very few houses residing in any part of its 40 mile stretch. So he assumed that he was close to one of the two towns, but which one in which direction? He gingerly hopped across the highway falling exhausted into the shoulder when he reached the other side.

  In the distance he saw the lights of a car rapidly approaching from the west. He thought if he could only get up and move into the beam of their headlights the driver would have to see me. Then he painfully realized that it might be Donna and Polish returning from Sarasota. He rolled out of the soggy shoulder into the adjoining open field lying prone and out of sight from passing traffic. The car passed the entrance to the trailer park. Hell, Anderson thought, it wasn’t Donna and her lover—I could have been rescued.

  He stayed in the same spot for another ten minutes, gradually getting his breath and energy back. In the interim, no car passed from either direction. He realized that if his captors returned to the park and found him missing, they would most likely search for him near the park since they were all too familiar his with the limiting bondage he was secured in. Anderson noticed a large clump of oak trees nearby. He decided the trees would provide him a modicum of security since he would then be out of sight from the highway, and he also would have progressed a tad further from the trailer park. Although the tree line was no more than three football fields away, he found that he could proceed at only the slightest pace as he rolled and hopped toward his destination.

  He was fatigued when he got there; but he arrived. The temperature was dropping rapidly on an unusually cold Florida winter night, and he was now both wet and cold. His brief outfit of shorts and a tee shirt had not been changed since he was kidnapped over three weeks ago, with the single exception of the time that he had operated on Donna. As a physician he knew that under these conditions hypothermia could set in quickly.

  When he worked for the CIA, his assignments had often taken him to remote outposts housing minimal medical facilities. It was there where he learned how to deal with hypothermia. In the short run he knew that flexing his muscles and wiggling as much as his chains would permit was an effective warming technique. He did that, hoping that he would be rescued soon. But if he continued to exercise, even in a limited way, he knew it would require an increased supply of blood to his core and that would actually accelerate the freezing process.

  He also knew that alligators tended to hunt in the nighttime hours and they were known to frequent the area that he was in. If he could stay alive until morning, he might have a chance. In the distance he heard the penetrating howling of a coyote. He had heard they were in the southwestern segment of Florida but he had thought that it was merely an urban legend. Now he knew it was true. His body started shivering, a defensive method for the system to conserve heat. He found several decaying leaves under a live oak tree and scooped them up, pouring them all over his body. He hoped the layering of them would provide some limited installation from the cold night, but he seriously doubted he would still be alive in the morning. He was sure the cold, the alligators or the coyotes would get him well before dawn.

  Anderson slept restlessly next to the base of a large silver oak tree. In his half sleep he was suddenly startled by the sound of movement in the underbrush near him. He was hardly in a position to defend himself or even run away. He wondered if his death would be by the powerful jaws of a hungry alligator, or he would become an early dinner for a coyote. He rolled around the tree’s base attempting to get out of sight for a moment, hoping that the nearby creature of the night would find some other more accessible prey in that short time-frame.

  Then Anderson saw something he wasn’t prepared for. A flashlight beam was focused on the tree next to him. Donna’s found me, he said to himself. She knew I couldn’t have traveled far from the trailer and she was right. Anderson hoped that she didn’t see him. And since the beam of light did not pick up his prone body he thought he had a chance—a slight chance to be sure, but still a chance! But he remembered that she now had her terrible powers restored. It doesn’t matter that she can’t physically see me; her mind has already picked up on my location, he thought. I can’t get away.

  In a moment he was blinded by a strong beam of light shining directly into his eyes. All he could see was the illuminated end of a shotgun as he heard the words, “There you are, I finally found you.”

  Chapter 36

  After Fred returned home, he realized no longer had any tangible leads as to Donna’s whereabouts. He discussed all aspects of the case with Jim, but nothing came to mind. Then one seemingly insignificant fact resurfaced, one that Jim had offered earlier and Fred had discarded.

  “Jim, you said that when you were chasing Donna, you entered a yard a short distance from my house, and Donna seemed to disappear right before your eyes.”

  “That’s right, and I had been only a few steps behind her. It was the damnedest thing.”

  “Was the place in my neighborhood?”

  “Yes, a couple houses down, it had a large cement wall.”

  “Jim, I know that house, there’s only one house like it on the block.”

  “Do you know the owner?”

  “I should, it’s Sue Granton, one of Maureen’s best friends.”

  * * *

  When Maureen reached Seattle, it was late in the evening. She had wanted to continue north, as far as she could go before com
plete fatigue set in; but she didn’t have a passport with her and the Canadian border was only an hour away. She still had not called Fred; she feared that Donna might in some unknown way be wiretapping her calls.

  She recalled the long disagreement that she had with Fred concerning their opposing roles in society. At times she found his job as a dedicated police lieutenant incompatible with her need to bring out the good in people through her psychological training.

  She had been against the death penalty ever since she learned that DNA evidence revealed that many who had been sentenced to death were actually innocent. But now she wanted Donna dead, but not one iota of her extensive psychological training could accomplish that. Only Fred or some other cop could put an end to the horror, and she no longer cared about the rights of the accused.

  Even some of her strongest beliefs were disintegrating. She had religiously believed that all abnormal human behavior was either organic or functional in nature. She had been so proud when she successfully contributed to a defendant’s not guilty finding because of her convincing testimony involving his disease of porphyria. Up to now she believed that all mental issues could be traced to chemical imbalances, tumors, childhood fears, and like causes. But at this moment she was convinced that there exists a small fraction of humans who are born with an irreversible bad seed; and the only way to eliminate the seed is to do away with its human host any way that is quick and effective.

  In her vulnerability she desperately needed to be around people, as many people as possible. She felt as if she were starting to disappear, that she no longer had relevance.

  She was totally isolated; her separation from Fred was causing her untold stress. She wanted a friend but she recognized that she would be away from Fred and her close friend Sue Granton for an indefinite period. She knew from the several physiology courses she had completed that the stress hormone, glucocorticoids, was gradually starting to accumulate in her cells. Her mind seem to lack clarity; she felt physically depleted.

  She rented a motel room in the heart of downtown Seattle. She strolled around the metropolis area feeling somewhat protected as long as throngs of people were near her. She entered the downtown Pike’s Peak Market, recalling in the movie Sleepless in Seattle the vast number of locals that milled around there. As she exited, she noted in the distance the magnetic beckoning of the Seattle Space Needle, its warm welcoming light glowing like a giant flaming candle in the darkening nighttime sky.

  Cheerful locals passed by, seemingly oblivious to Seattle’s wet and gray winter, which was made additionally bleak by the season’s truncated daylight hours. A soft rain was falling, rapidly forming puddles on the sidewalk while providing a kaleidoscope-like distortion of the reflective colored lights from brightly lit nearby businesses.

  When commerce shut down for the day, and fewer people were roving the streets, she sought a resurgence of concentrated human activity in a crowded downtown tavern. She ordered a well-done hamburger with heavily seasoned fries, slowly consuming them while sitting at an ornate Victorian walnut bar. She was surrounded by enthusiastic patrons all around her, who were happily soaking in the beat of local music and celebrating an uncommon victory by the Seattle Seahawks.

  Above the bar was a sign—Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy—Benjamin Franklin. Maureen was dubious that Franklin ever said that, but she thought - who cares? Below that sign was another. I feel sorry for people that don’t drink. Because when they get up in the morning that’s as good as they will feel all day. F. Sinatra. That accreditation she believed.

  As she munched slowly on her meal, she reflected on Sinatra’s song about it being three in the morning and being the only person in the place. She dreaded being left alone; she needed people, many people milling around her, but the day was quickly coming to a close. The chap next to her, an attractive black-bearded man in his early 20’s with a terrible pickup line that he must have lifted from a recent juvenile movie, offered to buy her a drink. Under other circumstances, she would have said no, but tonight she needed someone near her as long as possible.

  If Donna had re-established her powers, the strongest man on earth couldn’t protect her; but if not, this guy might prove to be an effective deterrent. Maureen made sure she milked her drink; she wanted to be in full control if Donna showed up. She positioned herself so that she could subtly observe in the bar’s huge ornate mirror the arrival of new patrons, always fearful that the next one through the door might be Donna. Her male companion, after unsuccessfully trying to get her to visit his nearby apartment to view his eclectic set of oil paintings, finally gave up and wobbled out holding firmly on the door’s over-sized brass handle as he departed.

  As a beautiful redhead, Maureen had the magnetism to attract several males from 20 to 80. But all she wanted was for them to stay close by her side in the anonymity and momentary security of the bar. She continued to do that until closing time at 3 a.m. Again Sinatra’s lonely melody played back in her mind. By now all the patrons had deserted, and only she and a sleepy bartender remained.

  As she left, the bartender locked the door behind her and flipped the outside light’s off switch. Maureen watched the death throes of the saloon’s welcoming outside neon sign as it shut down, casting darkness all around her. The street, which had been lively and festive just two hours ago, was now deserted. Even the homeless had long ago departed for their protective nighttime area, away from the increasing downpour.

  Maureen looked for a cab—there was none. There was scarcely any traffic on the street. She estimated that she was more than five blocks from her hotel. She was petrified as she rushed by several dark alleys on her way back. She thought she heard the distinctive sound of the clicking of high heels somewhere behind her. When she turned around she saw no one. I’m getting spooked, she thought, but a few moments later she was sure she heard the sound again; only this time it seemed closer to her, much closer. When she finally reached her motel, she entered the motel manager’s office and asked if she could talk to him. He said, “No problem, I recently shut off the vacancy sign for the night; what did you have in mind? Don’t you want to go to your room first to dry off?”

  “Not really; I’m not that wet; I just need to talk.”

  For two hours they just talked, until finally the manager said, “Look, I’m tired and I have to get up early to activate this place, so good night, lady. Sweet dreams.”

  Maureen said, “I just have one more question before you go off to bed; what time does the sun rise in Seattle?”

  Maureen returned to her room. She decided to call Fred. She was still fearful that Donna might intercept her call; but her fear was overcome by the greater need for Fred’s calming voice. She went about the normal circuitous route that Fred had designed for her, first calling the AU number and then waiting impatiently for Fred’s return call after they contacted him. When she called AU she spoke to Don, the security guard.

  “Don, this is Maureen Harris. You don’t know me but my husband’s always had good words to say about you.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Harris, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Do you know if Donna Lang has been caught yet?”

  “I don’t believe so, but the station captain has a patrolman stationed here day and night in case she shows up.”

  “OK, thanks, please call my husband. As you know, he’ll call me back from the AU conference room, after he’s been notified that I called.”

  “Sure, I understand. Take care, Mrs. Harris.”

  That’s what I’m trying to do, she thought, but with Donna on the loose it’s damn hard.

  Fred returned her call about half an hour later. “Maureen, honey, I’ve been worried to death about you. I was worried that Donna might have captured you, or even worse.”

  “No, I was in Atwell’s car and, fortunately, I recognized Donna leaving the condo; since then I’ve been on the run. I’m now in Seattle.”

  “Thank God. Look, I want you to take off and go to anot
her city first thing in the morning; and when you talk to me again, don’t even mention the town that you’re in.”

  “Fred, I assume from your statement that Donna must have her powers back and you’re afraid she can somehow intercept your telephone calls?”

  “Yes, but as far as her powers are concerned I’m not sure she can intercept telephone calls; I just don’t want you to take any chances. I’m quite sure that she won’t be able to mentally pick up on where you are, because her mind reading ability is only good for a limited number of miles from where she’s located. And I’m sure she’s now somewhere in the Sarasota area. Maureen, remember that you’ll be perfectly safe as long as you don’t return to Sarasota until we catch her. How’s your cash situation?”

  “It’s still good; I took a lot of cash out of the bank when I went to San Diego, in case the situation with Atwell didn’t work out. But I still have Atwell’s Mercedes with me.”

  “Okay, use cash and not your credit card for all your purchases. She can’t trace cash. Also, rent a car for a month or so. Give me the location of your motel, and I’ll contact the San Diego cops to have Atwell’s car picked up. I’ll also make sure you won’t be charged with auto theft.

  “Maureen, something is bothering me and I never had a chance to ask you about it. What was the disturbed logic behind Donna’s condemnation of the Rorschach test when she confronted us in our kitchen? Why would she even have been exposed to the test?”

  “Fred, I don’t really know except that defense attorneys sometimes employ the tests to prove that their client is not mentally fit, prosecutors seek the opposite conclusion when they use them. I don’t use it, I just don’t believe it has that much reliability. But it appears that she was given that test repeatedly, perhaps while in prison and maybe even by her defense attorney. Her responses to the tests, I would guess, remained constant and that constancy was troublesome to her.”