The Monolith Murders (5 page)

Fred saw the smiling face of his boss and best friend, Captain Jim Hebert, as well as those of his long time poker buddies, Bill Cole and John Stevens. Fred still felt the loss of Ernest James, the fourth of the original quartet, who had been murdered during one of Donna’s directed killing rampages. Since then, Dan, the former station’s captain, had smoothly filled in as the fourth player.

Missing from the party was Maureen’s friend Sue Granton, who had declined the invitation because of a severe toothache. Sue lived two doors down the street from them. Until she had helped out a couple of months ago when Maureen’s car broke down, they had never even met. But in the subsequent months the two had become the best of friends.

George Schulz, always the “A” personality type, was the first to speak, “Fred, I was beginning to believe you would never show—it’s just like you, Fred!” Fred knew that the remark was etched with powerful scorn but that was to be expected from Schulz. In spite of his perpetual cynicism, Schulz had become a close friend. Fred’s smiling response was directed to Maureen, not Schultz, when he said, “Oh I’m like that proverbial bad penny, I always turn up again.” Maureen smiled and, as usual, instantly forgave him, even though she had delayed dinner for over an hour waiting for him.

In the corner dining room chair sat Dan, an imposing presence who appeared almost oblivious to Fred’s arrival. He was munching on the last of a batch of a large plate of spiced shrimp; he had already devoured the entire evening’s supply of stuffed green olives.
 

Even so, Fred could sense that Dan was eagerly awaiting the long overdue main course. Dan had been a top rated Florida State lineman many years ago, but after his days of glory, his appetite had resulted in noticeable weight gain. Although already extremely overweight when he retired from the force four years ago, he had gained at least another fifty pounds since. Fred feared he was the personification of a perennial heart attack waiting to happen, and his former chief was too good a friend for Fred to want that to happen.

It was a custom at these parties for one of the guests to provide Fred with a word puzzle. Fred was a master at solving them, much to the entertainment of his dinner guests. It was Maureen’s turn to give Fred tonight’s conundrum. She opened the kitchen’s café door, and turning toward the guests she said, “Okay, this time I guarantee that Fred can’t solve this puzzle. There are four players and each player sat down and played for hours. They all played for cash; but at the end of the night none of them lost any cash. So, Fred, who were the men?”

Fred pondered, “That’s a tough one. I’ll have to think about it a bit. ”

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, he 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.