Monster: The Story Of A Maniac

by Peter Cry

  “And yet,” Alfred insisted delicately.

  “No!” Ms. O’Neal almost cried out. “What kind of an agent are you? Instead of catching the criminal and looking for our children, you’ve decided to switch your attention to the most unhappy people on the planet!”

  The angry woman crossed her arms over her generous bosom. Holding back her tears, she looked through the window.

  “Forgive me, ma'am, but asking such questions is a part of my job. Please, do not take them personally.”

  “I loved Michael,” she said with trembling lips. “And Simon also loved him. Now it seems to me that after the kidnapping I love him even more. Is that clear to you?”

  “Of course,” Agent Hope agreed guiltily. “Forgive me my sloppy manner, ma'am.”

  “You have two questions left, and if the next one is the same as the first, you won’t hear a word from me.”

  Alfred glanced at the screen of his phone.

  “Tell me a little about Michael. How did you and Mr. O’Neal feel about him, what have you expected from him?” Asking the question, he stared into her brown eyes, trying to see in them something that could hook him or make him doubt the sincerity of her words.

  “Michael is a very handsome boy. The kind of a child that a beautiful woman can have,” Ms. O’Neal said with displeasure, straightening her white, spacious shirt. “Here, in our area, all parents are the same. Their dreams are also not too original, you know. When you are the father of a handsome, strong boy, most of all you hope he will not join of one of the gangs on the streets. They just rob or sell drugs. Ideally, if you are lucky, your son will become an athlete, perhaps an actor or a model, and would be able to get you out of this hole.”

  Ms. O'Neal showed with her gesture, tone and look that she was still outraged by the questions asked by Agent Hope. However, as she delved deeper into the memories of her son, she became calmer and softer.

  “In this regard, Michael did not let us down. In addition to his beautiful face, he was also very smart and sharp. In his class, he was a leader, right, and good. He did not allow children to argue, or fight, he helped them to solve conflicts in a different way, not leading to the worst,” the woman grinned bitterly. “At first, seeing his intelligence and interest in science, Simon thought that the boy was not his. Well, now I would really appreciate if that were true.”

  “What kind of relationship did Michael have with his father?” Alfred tried to stick to her words.

  “Is that your third question?” Ms. O’Neal asked, raising a displeased eyebrow.

  “No, this is just a clarification.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “They had a normal relationship. Like father and son. Sometimes it could not do without punishments, but it happened extremely rare. Simon was not too intelligent, our son probably understood that, and I think this understanding made my ex-husband angry.” Ms. O’Neal pulled out another cigarette from the pack and lit it up. “Simon was calm about Michael's hobbies in physics and mathematics but did not believe that it would pull him out of the gray suburbs. It seemed to him the only thing that would help his son was his appearance and good physical shape,” she sweetly inhaled, then smiled with displeasure, showing her teeth. “Once that motherfucker even took my son to a lousy casting behind my back. The children were selected for advertising pajamas there.”

  Alfred felt a burning heat run down his back. Hearing the word casting, he nearly jumped out of his chair. Restraining himself, he decided to hear that story to the end.

  “And then he was terribly upset when Michael was not selected. But my son did not care. That is what I always liked about him – he was very strong. Stronger than me and my husband.”

  “Could you tell me more about the casting?” Alfred asked turning on the recorder in his smartphone, placing it on the low coffee table.

  “Is that the third question?” the woman joked.

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s the third one.”

  Flicking the ashes off the cigarette and putting her bent elbow on her knee, Ms. O’Neal thought for a moment.

  “Was it a movie agent from Los Angeles?” Agent Hope hastily asked a suggestive question.

  “Hell no!” the woman rebelled instantly. “Simon drove Michael to a friend of his acquaintances. He did not mention anybody from Hollywood. It was something for the local Walmart catalog.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “I won’t tell you for sure. Two and a half years ago, probably.”

  Looking at Ms. O’Neal, Alfred narrowed his left eye. The numbers and dates did not fit in his head, and he had high hopes about that.

  “Are you sure? Not more than three years ago, just a year before the abduction?”

  “No,” she shook her head, not understanding what her guest was driving at. “I'm not that young, but I am definitely not too old to forget the scene we had after that. Each one of them is carved in my heart with the season, day, and duration.”

  Alfred paused. He could not make the pieces fit – the casting, in which Emmy Stevens participated, and the other one, involving Michael O’Neal. Could these two incidents, having happened at different times, under completely different circumstances, be somehow connected? Or was it just a coincidence that he really wanted to believe in?

  “Do you have the contacts of the person who conducted the casting? His email, address, phone number, whatever?”

  Ms. O’Neal was a little confused.

  “What for? Do you think this could have anything to do with the kidnapping of my son?”

  “I don't know,” Alfred shook his head anxiously. “Each time the parents ask me such questions, I understand what they hope to hear. I do not want to reassure them, so as not to let them down. My colleagues have done that before.”

  The woman frowned and intently looked at the young agent. Suddenly, crushing her cigarette, she got up and, without saying a word, disappeared into the corridor leading to her bedroom. The sound of a closing door was heard.

  Sitting on a wooden lacquered chair, Alfred heard something incredible happening in Ms. O’Neal’s bedroom. It seemed that something rampant was rushing about the room, rattling furniture, and boxes, simultaneously commenting on it with colorful obscene language.

  Putting together the disheveled hair on her head, Ms. O’Neil ran out of her bedroom. Coming back to Agent Hope, she held out a white piece of paper.

  “Simon's phone number and his new address – you will find him and his new woman there. He has the contacts of the person to whom he drove Michael. But I would not recommend you visit my ex too early. He works at night, same as I do. And after the kidnapping of his son, he became very embittered and bitchy.”

  Alfred stood up, picking up the piece of paper, looked at the address and the numbers scribbled with a thick black marker.

  “Thank you, I hope this helps.”

  Ms. O’Neal scratched her head. She was a little confused. It was clear that from the inside she was exploding into a million small pieces. Pulling herself together, she looked hopefully at her guest.

  “You will find my boy, won’t you?” hiding her trembling hands behind her back, she smiled sadly.

  “I’ll find him, ma'am.”

  “You are new to this case... Don’t lose hope, as all of us parents did. Find them, I beg you.”

  Alfred nodded his head, hiding the note with the address in his pocket. He shook Ms. O’Neal's hand and left the house.

  Walking along the spacious noisy corridors, the young federal agent did not notice the world around him. Dissolving in the voice and gaze of the mother, who had lost her baby and lived hiding the pain from herself, he hurried to his car, jumping over the stairs. Not understanding why, he was boiling with anger and pain from within. The tragedy with the abduction and murder already became personal for him, which he did not like. There were just too many emotions not so easy to manage.

  Once in the car, he threw the piece of paper with the address into the passenger seat
and began to enter GPS coordinates. His index finger could not hit the right letters on the touch screen. Becoming angry, he missed even more.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he shouted suddenly with such a force that even through the closed doors he was heard by a group of guys standing near a liquor store. Noticing them, Alfred pulled himself together. He tried to relax in his seat and, breathing deeply, dug his fingers into the steering wheel.

  “Quiet, my friend, quiet,” he said to himself, “you must not be stressed and worried. You know that it’s bad for your head... Just another case that you will solve. And after that, you will move on.” Alfred spoke to himself because there was no one else to reassure him.

  He did not understand people, and people did not understand him. That was the whole dilemma. He wanted to abstract himself and not to take the case that he was investigating too personally, but apparently after he lost his memory due to some head injury, he simply was not able to do that.

  The five kidnapped children were everywhere – in the memories of their parents, in the smell of the rooms they live in, streets where they walked, in reports, photographs, thoughts, and guesses. Even in Alfred's dreams.

  He would be happy to run away, but he felt a responsibility. Not to the parents, to whom he had made a promise, but to the children.

  A certain sixth sense told him that two years after the abduction they were still alive, which meant there was a chance to save them.

  The young agent turned the key and started the engine. Without fussing, he entered the necessary coordinates, and the computer built the shortest path to the destination. The numbers on the monitor showed two and a half miles. Shifting the gear, Alfred stepped on the gas pedal, trusting the arrow leading to the target.

  Having traveled a dozen monotonous blocks, he found himself in an area full of flimsy white wooden two-story houses. The metal fences surrounding them, made of chain-link, looked old and rusted through. Some houses were abandoned. Their windows and doors were nailed up. The place that Alfred drove into was quite different from the suburb where he had happened to be last week. He was in the heart of the depression that devastated the northern edge of Indianapolis.

  Stopping the car on the sidewalk, Alfred got out. Looking back, he was surprised. There were no people in the district at all. From somewhere came only the noise of a dog barking and a train passing by. Crossing the road, the young agent threw back a low creaking gate and walked up the stairs to the porch. Pressing the button, he rang the doorbell. An unpleasant stinging sound was heard from somewhere in the hallway.

  A white wooden door opened, and behind a mosquito net appeared a young black woman in a satin robe with huge red roses.

  “What do you want?” she asked defensively.

  Alfred pulled documents from his pocket and showed them.

  “FBI, ma'am, agent Alfred Hope. I need to talk to Mr. O’Neal. Does he live here?”

  “Did Simon do something?” narrowing her eyelids, the woman asked, opening the door with a mosquito net.

  “No, ma'am, I'm investigating the case of abduction of his son, Michael. I need to ask him a few questions.”

  “Oh my God,” she breathed with relief. “I thought something bad happened. He is not himself lately.”

  “So, can I talk to him?” Alfred insisted neatly.

  “Yes! I mean, no,” the girl was confused. “He is out, he could be in the bar with his friends, playing dominoes. If you go there,” she pointed the direction with her hand, “turn right after two blocks, and you will see a-building of pale green color, without a sign. This is the bar where Simon goes with his friends.”

  “Thank you, ma'am,” Alfred said and hurried to the car to catch Mr. O’Neal in the indicated place.

  Having traveled a hundred yards, he turned around the corner and stopped at the one-story building that the young woman was talking about. The building looked more like a small warehouse than a bar. Opening a transparent plastic door, on which the old advertisement was pasted, he entered.

  After the bright summer sun, his eyes did not immediately become accustomed to the dimmed light of the bar. The first thing that caught his eye was the red neon sign hanging on the wall near the bar counter. An old gray-haired bartender was lazily wiping beer glasses. Just a couple of people sat at a few tables. Their appearance was shabby and miserable. Convinced that fate had been unkind to them, they drank what they could afford – the cheapest beer.

  To the left of the entrance, in the far corner by a single window, a group of five people, covered in a cloud of dense cigarette smoke, sat round a table. Discussing something among themselves and laughing quietly, they were playing dominoes.

  Alfred looked around. He realized that no one was paying any attention to him, including the bartender. After preparing his badge, the federal agent approached the players.

  “I would like to talk to Mr. O’Neal,” Alfred said, flashing his ID.

  “Who is asking?” a strong man with a short beard, streaked with grey, replied, not taking his eyes off the game.

  “The FBI. I need to ask him a couple of questions regarding his son.”

  Agent Hope put away the badge realizing it had not had the desired effect.

  “Have you found my son?” Simon asked sarcastically.

  His friends, seeing that something out of the ordinary was happening, were distracted from the game.

  “No, Mr. O’Neal, we haven’t. But I'm going to do that.”

  “You have already been doing that for two years.”

  Alfred was not prepared to be brushed off like this by Michael's father. His face reflected no less disdain for Simon.

  “So? Should we give up trying to find him?” the agent retorted.

  Simon threw down his dominoes onto the table and slowly got up. A large black man dressed in a sweat-suit, he was half a head taller than the stranger. He stared at the agent, controlling his urge to punch him.

  “Easy, Simon,” a friend sitting at the table intervened, not understanding what was happening. The other players seemed just as bewildered.

  “Yes, Simon, you’d better listen to your friends,” Alfred advised. “I’m not just a guy from the street. You are talking to an armed federal agent.”

  “What do you want?” Simon barked angrily.

  “I need the contacts of the person you took your son to, for the casting for the local Walmart catalog.”

  “How the hell did you know about that?”

  Alfred made a gesture to defuse the situation. He put his hands in his pockets.

  “Your ex-wife told me. She was more helpful than you are.”

  “That woman talks too much,” Simon shot back looking at the agent, as if at his worst enemy. “If she had looked after the child properly and taken him personally to the school bus that day, Michael would be still alive now.”

  “And why do you say he’s dead?” Alfred asked the angry man. He glanced at the others trying to win their support.

  “Did you not watch the news, not read newspapers?” Simon countered. Poking his finger at the agent, he could not stop himself. “My boy was the best, the smartest and the most handsome. Fucking perverts and pedophiles are everywhere these days.”

  “Please, don’t do that,” the federal agent warned, carefully moving Simon’s strong hand aside.

  “Michael was killed, and you aren’t able to find the killer, and not even the body of my son!”

  Suddenly Simon went silent, his legs gave way under him, and he collapsed into the chair. “My poor boy...” he muttered under his breath, as if delirious.

  “Take a breath,” Alfred laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not your enemy. I’m here to help.”

  Raising his head, the man, still gripped with anger, looked at the federal agent.

  “Give him to me, I beg you, I will tear that scum into pieces with my teeth. I’m begging you. He killed my boy, I know. My son, the best boy in the world.” Suddenly the huge hulk screwed up his face in helpless desperati
on and began sobbing. “I miss my son so much... My poor little Michael...”

  Friends knew Simon O’Neal as strong and firm, like a stone block, often irritable and categorical. That day they learned why he was like that.

  “I have no life after he disappeared,” he babbled, swaying helplessly. “I have divorced Karen, and she is such a good woman. I feel guilty that Michael is no longer with us, and I cannot forgive myself for that.”

  Alfred tapped the tearful Baloo bear on the shoulder, realizing the pain he felt.

  “Neither you nor your wife are to blame for what happened. This is the fault of one person who has planned and committed the crime, and I'm going to find him. To do that, I need your help.”

  “Yes, sure,” Simon said sobbing, taking his phone from the pocket of his jacket. Scrolling down his contacts, he found the wanted number. “Here it is, Damien Brannon – an old friend of my buddies. He said, he worked with large supermarket chains. He always needed children to make ads for their catalogs.”

  Alfred used his thumb to record the unfamiliar number on his smartphone. Several times he carefully looked at Simon's phone, so as not to be mistaken.

  “Forgive me,” Mr. O’Neal said calmingly, rising from his chair again. “We, the parents, the ones who lost their children, at some point when your colleagues began to apologize to us, we thought that we’d say whatever we like. We just wanted to blame someone for what happened… And yet there is only us to blame,” Mr. O’Neal held out his hand to the federal agent. “I am sorry for what happened. All this time I did not cry for my son, did not let out my emotions. I was like a powder keg.”

  “I understand” Alfred answered sincerely, shaking his hand.

  Simon took a displeased look at his friends sitting at the table.

  “My thaw doesn’t concern you, assholes!”

  And they, rejoiced ahead of time, looked at each other uncomfortably.

  “Why do you need his number?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” the agent didn’t sound confident. “I have one theory, but it does not fit on the dates. Therefore, I have nothing to tell you so far. As soon as there is at least some news, I will inform you and your wife.”