Monster: The Story Of A Maniac

by Peter Cry

  The police officer spotted a door located near the window at the end of the corridor. It was made of sturdy metal. Helen was sure that everything she was looking for was behind that door. Raising her revolver and directing it at the lock, she emptied her gun.

  Jumping up from the mattresses, the chained children began to scream. “Help! Help us! We are here!”

  Lily also opened her eyes. She quickly realized that the eight loud bangs she had just heard while falling asleep were not imagined.

  Breathing deeply and nervously, the girl jumped up.

  “Help us! Please, help!” she shouted as loudly as her throat would allow.

  Helen entered Jason's bedroom. An unpleasant stale smell greeted her. The room was dusty and untidy. Clearly, no one had cleaned, or lived in, that room for a long time. A worn carpet, a bed, a wardrobe, a desk, several monitors, and DVDs everywhere. There so many of them. The entire wall opposite the bed from the ceiling to the floor held numbered boxes without inscriptions. Three small digital video cameras stood on tripods next to the desk.

  Helen put her revolver into its holster.

  She went to the desk. The floor creaked under her feet. She noticed three oblong boxes behind the monitors. They contained photographs taken on a polaroid. Helen grabbed a handful.

  “Oh my god,” she shuddered, barely holding back her tears.

  The photos contained images of naked children, both boys and girls. Terrible! But some of them, apparently not understanding what was happening, were smiling.

  Helen threw the photos on the floor and grabbed a few more from another box. Nausea, disgust, and pain hit her all at once.

  The next photos showed a well-built adult man, whose face was not visible, having sexual intercourse with children. Some of the victims' faces were distorted in suffering and screaming. Others had resignation on their faces, as if they were dead, either internally, or in fact. Helen turned over one of the photos. The price of $500 was scribbled with a gray pencil on the back.

  Her trembling hand reached for a third box.

  “God, no!” tears rolled down her cheeks. “Why? What for?” Helen asked the emptiness. She tried not to faint.

  Snuff is the limit reached by few. Snuff is only for the lucky ones. Snuff was in those pictures. It was terrible that the bloodied children were still alive, they tried to flee or were tied. In one of the photographs, a naked, blurry, flash-illuminated Howard was smiling by the wall. The man from that house to whom Officer Escamilla had talked. Standing by the bloodied boy lying on the floor, he was holding something like a screwdriver in his hands. Helen turned the photo around. There was a price of $2000. Her teeth gritted.

  Suddenly she heard something like what she’d heard in winter – either the sound of the wind, or the barely audible cry of a child.

  The photographs fell from her hands.

  “Basement!”

  She forgot about caution and hoped that she could save at least someone. The basement door was locked. Pressing her ear against it, Helen was horrified. An incessant cry of children came from behind it.

  “I’m coming, wait... Now... Wait...” she repeated as if delirious, unable to pull herself together.

  Squatting down, Helen pulled a spare pistol from under her leg.

  “Shit!” she cursed. The clip was empty.

  "What should I do..." the woman nervously mulled over.

  The solid oak door was locked tight and she would not be able to kick it open.

  Without thinking twice, the officer hurried back to the second floor. She ran to the desk. Opening the top drawer and not finding anything there, she opened the middle one. There was a small red box covered with velvet. Inside it, Helen found a key. Grabbing it, stumbling, she rushed down to the door leading to the terrifying basement.

  Chapter 15

  Not far from the outskirts of the city, among the buildings was the North West Central School.

  Just a couple of years ago, this educational institution became famous throughout the country. It was shown by all the news channels not only in America, but around the whole world.

  The fame left a bad bitter aftertaste that the students, and especially parents did not like. Thanks to that fame, or rather notoriety, they did everything possible to ensure the school had proper security and that at least one patrolman was always there.

  At the very beginning, when Indianapolis was shocked by the brazen abduction, all the possible emergency municipal services of the city and their leaders were at the school, wanting to get their big portion of the media pie. The mayor wanted the townspeople to see how he and his team took care of the residents and their children. However, it was too late – the parents were scared. Nothing could calm them down. Two years later, they continued to bring children to school personally, handing them over directly to their teacher. None of the children went there by bus anymore.

  At the intersection of 25th and Franklin Street, there was a four-story house, built of red-brown brick. Once it housed a sewing plant, where the equipment, needed by the most powerful army in the world, was produced. After production was transferred to a cheaper and more profitable China, the plant was closed.

  For many years, the building stood empty. Despite the efforts of a real estate agent, no one was found to buy a room at an affordable price, or at least rent one. However, the FBI arrived on the scene and rented all the four floors for an indefinite period.

  North West Central School, as well as neighboring buildings and spaces, were clearly visible from the large lattice windows on three sides of the building. There was a road near the building, constantly filled with cars. It led drivers from the city to a huge eight-lane highway. Nearby streets around the school were sparsely populated and were somewhat gloomy. They were filled by trucks, rather than pedestrians.

  Alfred stood on the first floor of the building where he now worked. Looking at the clock first, he turned his eyes to a handsome middle-aged guard sitting by the doors in a comfortable chair. He was reading the morning newspaper. Sometimes, he lowered it to glance at the awkward stranger, not looking nor acting like an FBI agent. He did not possess the kind of sophistication or energy indicating he belonged to a certain elite caste.

  Alfred looked away. The interior surrounding him was not very elaborate. In the small hall on the ground floor, in addition to the panoramic windows, there were only white walls and several white doors. In the course of time, the white paint had lost its original appearance and acquired a bit of everyday grayness.

  The guard sitting at the entrance stood up.

  “I'm sorry for being late, Alfred,” Rita said, entering the hall. “I had to accompany Benjamin to the airport.”

  “He won’t come?” Alfred asked.

  “He doesn't come here often. Only if someone drops in from national television.”

  “Ma'am,” the guard said delicately. “Should I repark your car?”

  “No, Sean, thanks. I’ve dropped in just for a minute. I’ll introduce my agents to their new colleague.”

  Rita looked at the two men before her. “Have you already got to know each other?”

  The guard glanced at Alfred coldly.

  “Yes, just a bit.”

  “Get used to him, Sean, he’s one of us now.”

  “As you say, ma'am.”

  “Well,” Rita smiled formally. “Follow me, I will introduce you to the team.”

  “Okay, let's go,” Alfred responded, giving the guard an equally disdainful look.

  Director Coleman and her guest strutted through the hall and went up the stairs. She walked one or two steps in front of him and a little to the right.

  Thanks to the large windows, the staircase, around the shaft of an inoperative industrial elevator, was well lit.

  “Your Sean seems a bit cold,” Alfred commented.

  “Never mind.” She walked up the stairs, a brown leather brand handbag on her arm. “He treats all strangers like that. Even I once was no exception.”

&nbs
p; “Will all my colleagues be like that?”

  “Sean is not from the FBI, he's just a great security guard,” Rita smiled. “Your colleagues will be worse.”

  “Oh great,” muttered Alfred, trailing behind.

  “And another thing,” the stern agent suddenly stopped. Turning around, she looked at her companion with a certain haughtiness.

  “You have to buy some new clothes.”

  Alfred was taken aback.

  “And what's wrong with these?” he asked, examining himself.

  “A gray jacket, a plaid shirt, and jeans are perfect for a relaxing Seattle day, but not for an FBI agent who’s investigating the toughest case in its history.”

  “I see,” Alfred reluctantly nodded. “I have to look like I’m at a funeral.”

  “You cotton on quickly!” Rita replied, continuing up the stairs. “We deal with the dead all the time, Mr. Hope. Get used to it.”

  Alfred tried to understand if he hated her or was interested to play her game of boss and subordinate.

  That day, as always, Agent Coleman seemed tired and exhausted, but she was still attractive. She was wearing a fitted formal black suit with thin white vertical stripes. A jacket fastened at the waist emphasized her almost perfect shape, and the loose straight pants hinted at her slender long legs. Shoes with impressive heels made Rita a few inches taller than Alfred. He walked behind and stared at a woman resembling a wounded swan, or perhaps an alabaster statuette of a ballerina.

  “Sexy... bitch,” Alfred thought, smiling secretly.

  “Here we are,” Rita stopped at some double doors “Behave confidently and calmly,” she instructed her companion.

  Alfred nodded his head, but Rita missed it.

  Opening the door, Agent Coleman entered a spacious bright room, which occupied half of the third floor. Her subordinates inside the room were engaged in something which they all called “work”. One was sitting at the table monitoring fresh child porn on the Deep Web, another sweating over the documents, and a third, anticipating a shameful return to Washington soon, was relaxed and discussing the results of the Super Bowl over the weekend. All of them, seeing their boss enter the room, stopped work and stood up. Several people chatting by the window stopped their conversation.

  Rita halted just inside the doors. Behind her stood a young man, with noticeable scars on his face.

  “Hi everyone.” Director Coleman threw her bag onto the gray table on the right. “Today, I have good news as well as bad news for you.”

  The people in the room glanced at each other.

  “Give us the bad news, chief,” cried out an agent standing with his colleagues at the window.

  “From now on, I’m going to be here with you in Indianapolis all the time.”

  Hearing that, the staff was clearly dismayed.

  “After this, there can be no good news. There’s no point continuing, chief,” the same guy joked.

  “Shut up, Polaski,” Rita cut him off, though not making it sound offensive. “That's not all,” she took a deep breath. “Benjamin told me something this morning before his departure. He got a call from Washington.”

  Agent Coleman put her hands on her hips and delivered an important message. “We only have a few months left before we are disbanded. Then the case goes to another group in Washington.”

  “So, fuck it,” said a mature man, who was standing at the back desk, in the far-left corner of the room. “We’ll get home sooner.”

  “No, Ramirez, we won’t return home faster.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Ramirez, if we don’t solve this case, Benjamin will want us to share the responsibility with him. This case is a thorn in the side of the current administration in the White House. Scapegoats will be needed, and we are going to be them.”

  “Fuck!” the agent at the window fumed. He moved closer to his boss.

  “Coleman, you know the case is dead. No one’s managed to solve it. And it’s not the only case of this sort in the agency, is it? It’s just another one of them. And it’s not fair to punish us for that.”

  With a dismissive look, Rita sized up the agent who approached her.

  “I know, Polaski. That’s exactly what I’ve told Director Blake just before he left. He was unwavering.” Agent Coleman took a step towards her subordinate. “Personally, I think if you spent more time on the investigation rather than yapping away with your colleagues, things would move a lot faster.”

  Having heard the bad news from Washington, her subordinates seemed shocked and confused.

  Jeremy Polaski spread out his hands in displeasure. He wandered back to his workplace.

  “And the good news, ma'am?” a pretty young woman timidly inquired, standing ten feet to the left, at the desk bristling with papers.

  “Here’s the good news,” Rita proclaimed loudly, moving away from Alfred.

  He realized that now they would talk about him. Clamming up, he awaited the reaction of those present.

  Director Coleman pointed at him. “Meet Officer Alfred Hope, patrolman from Seattle. You, Kate, are already familiar with him, the others are seeing Officer Hope for the first time.”

  Alfred nodded awkwardly. Rita looked at him with scarcely concealed skepticism.

  “Officer Hope is one of us now. He has all the rights and privileges, just like you – the FBI elite. Therefore, he is neither a Johnny boy, nor a sprog, nor a greenhorn. Ramirez, this concerns you mostly.” Rita aimed at him.

  He smiled coldly in response with his arms crossed at his chest.

  “He has an incredible gift. During his short career, in just six months, he arrested four juvenile seducers.”

  “Five,” Alfred suddenly interrupted the speaker

  “Five,” she corrected herself. “Four of them are in prison. You will put him in the picture as soon as possible, and he’ll work with you, Kate, and you, Ramirez,” Rita looked alternately at those whom she mentioned, “with Agent Polaski, Trump, damn your namesake, Agent Brooks and Agent Price. In other words, those concentrating on pedophilia as a motive, not human organ trafficking, nor sexual slavery. The rest, don’t bother him and help if you can.”

  Alfred observed his new colleagues. In each of the twelve of them, except perhaps for smiling Kate, he sensed not only skepticism, but open disdain. Probably, when a nerd is introduced to a new class in a college full of rich boys and girls, he feels the same way – like garbage from under the bridge.

  “Kate, get Alfred up to date. Tell and show him everything he needs to know.”

  The young agent, Kate Duncan, was examining the newcomer from Seattle with curiosity.

  Rita went to the desk, her handbag in her right hand.

  “Do something. Search, find, give at least something to the parents, journalists, and Benjamin. Alfred is the fresh blood that could reanimate the investigation and set a new vector that will lead us to the goal. If we fail, he will go back to Seattle, and we will all vanish in an unknown direction.”

  Director Coleman turned around and headed for the door.

  Before leaving the room, she stopped near Alfred and moved her lips to his ear: “Don't let me down, Hope. I am counting on you. All of us are.”

  A moment later, she was gone. Everyone looked at Alfred, expecting either an opening statement, or an indication of conformity.

  “Kate Duncan,” the neat, short, fair-haired girl with a cute snub nose and gray children’s eyes came up holding out her hand. Dressed like everyone present in formal clothes of blue, white, gray, and black colors, with her sincere smile she stood out favorably from the rest.

  “You saved me,” Alfred whispered, looking at the young woman.

  “I know,” she whispered back, smiling.

  Having quickly come to their senses, the investigative task force staff became noisy and returned to their work.

  “Has Rita Coleman already shown you around the building?”

  “No.”

  “Let's go then, I'll show you ever
ything here.”

  Kate did up two buttons on her gray jacket, after which, pushing the doors open, she led the way to the stairs.

  “The second floor first.” Kate sounded like a tour guide.

  Once at the blue doors, as large as the ones on the fourth floor, she took out a key from her pocket and opened them. Inside, there was a corridor. Kate switched on the light. Bright lamps illuminated six white doors located along the walls.

  “We have used some of the rooms for interrogations. Others for meetings and briefings,” Kate said with a slight sadness in her voice. “At least that’s how we’d planned to use them at the very beginning.”

  “You’d planned?” Alfred did not understand.

  “Yes,” his new colleague turned to him. “In general, during the first six months it was like that. And it seemed to us that we were moving forward and doing everything right. But, after a few interrogations of perverts, and a couple of press conferences, the rooms have been empty.”

  “And those perverts didn’t provide any leads?”

  “No,” said Kate, opening the doors, and returning to the stairs. “What I will tell you now is a big secret because it is not quite legal. But you’re one of us now, aren’t you?”

  “Sure, you shouldn’t worry about that. I can be a team player.”

  Kate closed the doors and put the keys back into her pocket.

  “During the first couple of months after the abduction,” she said, looking at her interlocutor, “America wanted blood. The parents of the kidnapped children demanded answers. They requested constant updates on how the investigation was going. The pressure was so huge that many of us simply could not stand it and broke. Colleagues resigned or took long vacations.”

  Kate’s face reflected every word. She seemed to have recently experienced everything she was talking about.

  “I withstood the heat from public pressure with the help of sedatives. Others drank every night. So, dozens of people came and went, and only we remained. The strongest, or the most weak-willed.”