The Monolith Murders (38 page)

For the first time Donna appeared concerned.

“Oh, yes, Donna, we do know where you’re residing and we’ve known for quite a while.”

“You’re bluffing, I know you are.”

“Call your landlady if you think so. In fact, I insist.”

Donna continued to hold her weapon on Fred as she picked up the living room phone. She dialed, and her landlady answered on the third ring. Donna asked for Lewis under the assumed name he had been using.

“I’m so sorry,” the landlady said, “but about fifteen minutes ago he was apprehended by the police. There were several police cars here. I asked one of the policemen why he was being arrested and they said for murder. They put him in handcuffs and took him away. I’m sure there was a mistake. I tried to tell the police that, but they ignored me. Honey, if you need me, you know that—”

Donna slammed the phone down.

“Donna,” said Fred, “you’ve been a problem for this city for a long time. Now I will give you a choice—I can eliminate you, to put it delicately, so we don’t have to worry about you ever again, or you can return to prison. Who knows, in prison you might even get the opportunity to escape again.”

“How can you eliminate me? You don’t even have a weapon,” Donna said bitterly.

“Donna, my weapon is my mind which is much stronger than anything you have ever witnessed in the past. But you didn’t let me finish. If you choose to surrender, I want you to put your weapon down. See this hypodermic needle?”

Donna said nothing.
 

“I’m going to give you a strong sedative, Donna, which will give us time to have that goddamn device removed from your cerebrum.”
 

“You’re nuts! You have no powers, you’re bluffing!”

“Your last chance, Donna. Watch this. And if you don’t surrender your weapon immediately, you’ll be next.”

Donna tried to transition into Fred’s brain to determine if he was telling the truth. She was blocked; he wouldn’t let her in. The fact that she encountered a mental firewall made her feel more ambivalent. Good God, maybe he does have all of his powers, she thought.

“Finished with that futile mental exercise, Donna? Now watch this.”

Fred concentrated and slowly pointed his fingers in the direction of the two sitting on the couch across from him. In an instant they were both gone.

Donna’s mouth fell open in surprise. Her fingers loosened on her weapon. “That’s not possible! Where did they go?”

“Oh, I just sent them a close distance away. However, when it’s your turn you will find yourself on some iceberg in Alaska or, in the Sahara desert miles away from civilization, or perhaps in the pit of a volcano. I wouldn’t have the heart to kill you directly; but I have no problem if the environment where I send you does that for me. What’s it going to be, Donna? You have two seconds.”

Donna dropped her weapon.

“That fucking Lewis, he told me you no longer had powers! Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“I know Donna; he never was too smart, was he?”

Fred grabbed her arm and deeply inserted the needle. She became lightheaded immediately.

“Where are the two that were on the couch?” she asked weakly.
 

Fred drew the window blinds and held her weakening body up as she looked across the street. Both the man and the woman, who had been on Fred’s couch a few seconds ago, were smiling and waving.

Donna said, “You know I’ll be back. You couldn’t hold me before, and you won’t be able to now.”

“Yes, Donna, now go to sleep.”

Fred called Debra Black. “We got her, make sure you get her to the CIA operating room right away. And for God’s sake, make sure she doesn’t wake up in the interim!”
 

In a short time Donna was in a helicopter with medical and CIA personnel surrounding her, heading full speed toward the Washington D.C. area.

Chapter 68

Early the next morning there was a knock on Jim’s office door.
 

“Come in,” Jim said.

Fred entered. “Jim, I want to you to meet a couple of friends of mine.”

Entering behind Fred were the two people who had mysteriously disappeared from his couch the previous evening.
 

Seated next to Jim was Sergeant Stewart.
 

“Are these your CIA friends?” Jim asked.

“No, actually I would like you to meet the Leslie the Great; he’s an exceptional magician, and this is his gorgeous assistant. They perform a host of different complex magic tricks; but their best is their human disappearing act. Maureen once literally dragged me to see his show, but I must admit I was impressed with his disappearing act. I had no idea how he did it.
 

“Jim, when I lost my special psychic ability, I felt that it was just a matter of time before Donna would kill Maureen and me. There was no way I could counter her. God knows how many more people would die if she had remained free.
 

“So I contacted Leslie, and together we set the stage for Donna. I had one advantage, I knew even with the feeble powers I had that I could still block her from entering my mind. But I couldn’t do much else. Fortunately, she had no idea what I had cooked up for her. I felt that if we could contrive a great bluff, I could convince her that I still retained superior psychic powers. Leslie’s disappearing act provided the
coup de grace
.

“Of course the fact that we knew Sergeant Lewis had murdered Anderson and Don, but we didn’t disclose it to anyone, helped us feed some false information to him. We knew he would pass it on to Donna.
 

“Sergeant Stewart, you helped us immensely by allowing us to keep you confined so that Lewis thought he was home free.”

Stewart said, “Jim, I must admit that I was flabbergasted when you arrested me. But later when you explained your plan when we were alone in my cell, I figured the worst case was that I’d get a few days off from my beat. And in the meantime I had some free, but not too delicious meals on the county.”

Jim said, “Knowing that Lewis was the murderer, and he not having any idea that we suspected him, made him an easy target for surveillance. I didn’t feel too good, Fred, when Donna left her house and we tracked her heading to your house. At that point, I radioed to put Lewis under arrest and we informed the landlady at the same time. We, of course, called you when we found out Donna was heading in the direction of your house.

“But one thing, Fred—when did you first suspect Lewis?”

“Well, actually,” Fred replied, “I initially suspected Slim Woods. However, after Anderson’s murder I started thinking about the events of that night. I remembered I had called Lewis and told him to go to AU to protect Anderson. I contacted him on his cell phone and he said good thing I had called his cell since he was in his personal car, and it had no police radio in it. He said that since he was a distance away from Sarasota, he would have to send Sergeant Stewart there. I was at the crime scene when Lewis arrived. He got no farther than the AU lobby, but his first words were, ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t get here in time to prevent Anderson’s death.’ The guard’s body was in plain sight, but Anderson’s body was back in the medical unit. That was not visible from the lobby, in fact it’s a separate room off the Science Division. Since he didn’t have the benefit of a police radio, there was no way Lewis could have known that Anderson was dead unless he was the murderer. Besides that, the time frame didn’t fit. Stewart said he had arrived at AU just minutes before I arrived, but Lewis had said that Stewart was only a couple of minutes away from the site. When I thought about it, I figured that Lewis must have gone directly to AU; and only after he completed his killings did he contact Stewart. Stewart became the perfect fall guy.

“Oh yes one other thing. Lewis’ fingerprints were all over the trailer where Anderson had been kept captive. Lewis is an experienced homicide detective, so he knew better than to contaminate the crime scene. It was obvious that someone in that trailer had made an attempt to wipe all the prints, but Lewis couldn’t be certain he got them all. Perhaps because they had to leave in a hurry. So, in case he hadn’t succeeded in removing all his prints, he wanted to make sure that our officers believed he had blown it and that he had left his prints at the scene through investigative carelessness.”
 

Jim asked, “Who do you believe murdered Mrs. Brown, Donna’s mother?”

“Jim, I first thought it was Donna, because it really didn’t fit that it was a robbery attempt. I couldn’t figure why Donna wanted to murder her mother, though. Then, when I found out about Sue’s relationship to Donna, I concluded she had done it so that we couldn’t link her to Donna.”

“What’s next, Fred?” Jim asked.
 

“Now I can retrieve Maureen and the two of us can go back to leading a semi-normal life. However, there is one final thing I must accomplish while I’m at the CIA headquarters.”

Chapter 69

When Fred arrived at the compound, he asked for an immediate appointment with Mr. Shade. Unlike in his earlier meetings, Shade was delighted to meet with Fred. After all, even without the psychic chip, Fred had captured Donna virtually single-handed. His value to the agency, however, was effectively over now that his ESP powers were eliminated. But once a member of the agency, always a member. And although Fred would no longer be given any assignments, his accomplishment would never be forgotten.

As Fred entered Shade’s office he was again greeted with a warm hug.

Fred asked, “Should we tell our wives about us and get divorced, or will it remain a state secret?”

At first, Shade didn’t react, but then he laughed. “Good one, Fred, good one.”

Fred said, “I have one question; where is the device you removed from me?”
 

“I see, you want to see it one more time for old times sake, huh? Well, with all that you’ve done for the agency, I don’t see a problem.”

Shade buzzed his secretary. “Tell Dr. Cunningham to come and see me and have him bring the special device. He will know what that means.”

In a short time Cunningham opened the office door with the device in hand. He said, “A marvelous piece of scientific accomplishment, isn’t it, Fred?”

“What do you intend to do with it now?” Fred asked.

“Why, we are already starting psychological tests on some good candidates. Too bad you had that tumor, or you could still be using it to our advantage.”

“But this device has terrible side effects. Beyond the ESP powers it instilled in me, it also almost destroyed me. I no longer had any residual ethics or morality after its insertion.”

“That’s just a freak situation, Fred. I’m sure it won’t happen to the next candidate, and we will make sure we fine-tune it in the interim. At any rate we need to continue to move ahead of our enemies, even if we might experience a slight risk in doing so.”

Fred asked, “May I hold it, sir?”

“Of course, Fred. I bet you got attached to its awesome power even for the short time you had it. So you’re saying goodbye to it for the last time?”

“Yes, sir, as are you!” Fred threw the monolith down on the tiled floor as hard as he could and then started stamping on it with all his weight. All three men looked down to observe chunks and tiny pieces of metal and plastic scattered all over the floor.

Shade said, “My god, I can’t believe you did this.”

Fred said, “Well, I did. And if you ever try to prosecute me for getting rid of the little Frankenstein monster, I will notify all the newspapers what harm it has done.”

At that point Fred turned toward the door. “Have a nice life, gentlemen.”
 

Fred retrieved Maureen from their unit and both left the compound forever.

* * *

The next morning Fred and Maureen showed up in Jim’s office.

“Jim, I just wanted to tell you that Maureen and I spent a lot of productive time together while we were in the D.C. area.”

“And that means—?”

“Well, our time together has paid off; initial indications are that we’re going to have a baby.”

Jim said, “That’s great, male or female?”

“It’s much too early to tell but we both hope it’s a girl.”

“Well guys, if it’s a girl, name it whatever you want except for one name.”

All three cried out in unison: “Donna!”

Epilogue

It was July 1st. Maureen had spent a long sultry week in Austin, Texas attending an ungodly boring professional psychiatric conference. Fred was eagerly waiting at the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport for her return. Today was their seventh anniversary. Fred had a surprise waiting for her when they returned home. Both had been so busy that neither had taken a vacation during the entire year. Because of their austere spending during the year, their saving accounts had swelled, so much so that they decided they would each buy the other a decent anniversary present for the first time in their married life.