The Monocle Man Read online

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SATIN CITY

  SATIN CITY

  The sound starts off gentle, an almost non-existent tone, but gradually gains volume, increasing as the ring continues. Reynolds’ eyes pry open begrudgingly, as if someone had glued them shut. His arm, laying draped across his forehead is stuck a moment. When he pulls it free the sweat between his arm and head made a sucking sound. The ring drones on. He slides his other hand over his head and down his face, wiping away the night sweats. A dream sits on the edge of his memory. He closes his eyes tight a moment, trying to remember. His heart races. Not because the phone startled him, but because whatever it was he’d been dreaming about forced the reaction. Set his pulse running, even as the blackest of currants washed over them. He can still feel that awkward chill. The one you get when you hear that unidentifiable sound in the night outside your window. You can swear a pair of eyes stare beyond the other side of the glass. But when you drudge up the courage to look, no-one is there. It was just the wind. You breathe a sigh of relief as a moment of cold runs through your body. You wonder, are you truly safe?

  The chill soon passes as do his efforts of trying to remember what he’d been dreaming. Though he can’t say for certain, he’d guess it has something to do with the patchwork man. Not the man himself, but rather, the events of that entire evening. They’ve haunted his dreams, as well as many waking moments. A puzzle that still needs to be put together. Something about that night sits very wrong with him. And he can’t shake the feeling.

  The phone goes silent while he lays thinking on the dream. With some effort, he pulls his head from the pillow and pushes the covers off his body. Throwing his legs over the side of the bed, he reaches for the heavens. Stretches every muscle he can in his back, hoping his spine will pop a time or two. A kink in his neck teases him. He knows it was another restless night.

  His nightstand illuminates. A bright indigo shooting up from its surface where his Blackberry lay. Truth told, he hated the thing. But everyone in the department was given one. Made to take one. Another unnecessary addition to a dwindling budget. And though he still kept his landline, he fumbled with this new technology as best he could. On most days, he wouldn’t mind. Checking the clock near the headboard, the numbers read just after midnight. If it had been a regular day, he’d have found the energy to answer the phone. But this wasn’t an ordinary day. He was on temporary leave and wasn’t expecting any calls for at least a few days. Till things cooled down with Detective Dori. So who else, other than his department, would have the balls to call him in the middle of the night? Before the next ring, Reynolds reaches over and snatches the device from the nightstand.

  “Yeah?” He asks in a gruff voice, his throat scratchy from having woke.

  “Rey?”

  “Yeah?” He says again, not quite recognizing the voice on the other end, though he knows it belongs to someone familiar. He wipes the butt of his palm into one eye, expelling a huge yawn.

  “Rey, it’s Ben.” Reynolds’ eyes prop open more at the mention of the name. His little brother Benjamin. His mind wanders a moment, trying to think of the last time he’d heard from his brother. Several weeks? A month?

  “Benny? Yeah, sorry, I’m a little groggy. What’s uh… what’s up?”

  “I know. Been some time since we talked… and I know it’s on the late side…” Late side? Reynolds looks again at the clock and chuckles to himself. Late would have been several hours ago.

  “It’s all right Ben. I wasn’t sleeping well, anyway.”

  “Bad dreams?” The question kind of hits Reynolds broadside. He can’t say why, but it makes him a little uneasy.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason really. I remember you used to have them a lot when we were kids.”

  “Did I?” Reynolds asks in earnest. He can’t remember having bad dreams. And he’s a little amazed, if he did, that Ben recalls them.

  “Sure did. Some nights you’d wake up screaming.”

  “I… I guess I don’t really remember. Can’t believe you do.”

  “Of course I do! We shared a room long enough. You used to wake up yelling about some man with scars all over his face. A big man, you’d say. Large. With great big hands. No hair. Just a patchwork of scars across his face and head. Mom and dad used to say it was because you watched too many scary movies.”

  Reynolds goes cold a moment at the mention of the word. Patchwork. He can’t ever remember muttering the word. But here, his little brother Ben is telling him he used to dream of such a man. His mind searches for a piece of those childhood dreams. Some kind of remembrance. What were the odds? He shakes his head, trying to clear it. It can’t be. It just… can’t. Can it? No. It’s all a coincidence. Nothing more.

  “Rey?”

  “Um, yeah. Sorry. I drifted a minute. So why the call?”

  “About that. We’ve got a little situation up here.”

  “Ok?”

  “A young boy’s gone missing.”

  “And how might that involve me?”

  “I don’t know. Not exactly. Strange circumstances. He more or less disappeared from his room during the night. Didn’t leave behind anything. Fresh snow on the ground, but the officers that responded to the call couldn’t find a single track. Listen, I get that you’re busy. But I thought on the off chance you weren’t, maybe you could take a look at things. You always had a great eye for seeing what others can’t. And you know, the kids would love to see you as well.”

  Reynolds sighs. Normally, he would have found some way to avoid the trip. He always had the best excuse. Work. But that didn’t stick at the moment. Not that Ben knew he was on a temporary leave. Plus he found the request a tad odd, even for his brother. Suspicion sets in, and he wonders if there isn’t something more to this, than asking his big brother to take a look at a missing persons case.

  “Is there something else?”

  “Something else?”

  “Yeah Ben. You call me in the middle of the night to ask me to drive a couple hours north to check out a case and visit the kids. It’s not entirely like you.”

  “No Rey,” Ben replies. “That’s the bulk of it.” Reynolds considers Ben’s words and a short silence fills the gap between them. “Listen Rey. It’s all right. If your busy, I completely under-”

  “No. No, actually. For once, I’m not.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m on a short vacation at the moment.”

  “You? Vacation?”

  “Yeah, well-”

  “Is it voluntary?” Reynolds smiles at this. His brother was a smart cookie.

  “I’ll catch you up on everything when I get there.”

  “Ok. This is great Rey! Thank you-”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I might not be of any help.”

  “Even if not, the kids will be happy to see their uncle.”

  “Has a search been organized?”

  “That’s under way. We were shooting for first light tomorrow, but it’s proving to be a difficult task.”

  “How long has the kid been missing?”

  “Not even twenty-four hours, as far as we can tell.”

  “So… still early.” Reynolds knows the drill. In the city, there’d be no chance of organizing a search party so soon. The sad fact, kids went missing every day. Most turned up. But his brother and he came from a small town. Reynolds smiles at the notion people in such a town still took care of their own.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ok… I’ll catch a few more hours and start up first thing.”

  “Thanks again Rey!”

  THE DREAM?

  THE DREAM?…

  The dream seeps in, like most do. Quiet and unassuming at first. But when it surfaces, you wonder if it had been there the whole time. Waiting. Biding each moment until those moments can no longer restrain it. And then… well then it comes flooding in. A torrent of images and sound barreling through your mind, taking hold, control of conscious thought and
leading the way around shadowed corners; down darkened alleys. Where dreams dare to appear real…

  … He’d been watching them for some time. The two girls. Friends, he surmised. As the two were inseparable, but looked far too different to be siblings. Part of him wanted to follow them all the way home, just to see. To see if they parted ways at the end of one drive and went on separately to their respective homes. Or if they accompanied each other into one house. Then, he might have his answer. Of course, he’d have to repeat this several times to make sure. It could just as easily be an evening where one was joining the other for a study session, hours later, walking home. A handful of times though, would cement their reality. Allow him enough information to distinguish if the two were in fact, related or not. But he never followed them home. Never got that close to the one place everyone feels safe. And sure, he had other means at his disposal of finding out not only who the girls were, but which families they came from. But where was the fun in that? These were things he’d find out later on, anyway. When he had both in his grasp. It didn’t matter if they were related or not. Such things were trivial. What mattered, was knowing when and where he’d get them. Their routine hardly wavered. Only on one day each week, the two girls would make a quick stop off the beaten path to their way home. An opportune time. The only other thing that mattered to him, was their age. These two were a little older than the rest. But that was all right with him.

  Watching these two, he felt a different stirring. One not aroused for quite some time. A stirring he was all too familiar with and satiated more times than he remembered. And though this would throw the pattern off, at least it would keep the flatfoots guessing for a while. That is, if he satisfied his craving to its fullest. They would, he knew, assume he’d graduated to another form of sickness. His needs elevated. As most serials do. But it would be easy enough to drop out of the light when they did. He would have to resort to his old ways. And his old ways, tried and true, allotted him many an option for disposing of evidence. But this time? This would not be one of those times. No, the two lovelies he watched at this very moment would be added atop the list of the many that came before. Their eventual death would stifle and confuse those in charge of solving such things. But it would send a new sense of fear throughout the community and those sworn to protect it. Because yes, the more he thought about it, the more he realized he would quench that thirst to its fullest. He would satiate that craving. Just as he had in the old days.

  He was a blur to them. One minute the shorter of the two, athletic, with the striations in her thighs and calves visible even through the tight fitting cloth of her leggings chatted away. She smiled a large toothy grin, her mouth wide under a flat, tiny nose, pushing away the long reddish-brown locks from her face and dark eyes. Her book-bag tossed over one shoulder bounced against her side as she walked. The other, a few inches taller, skinny with long legs and an already ample bosom for her fourteen years strode beside the other. She wore her long golden hair pulled back in a ponytail, revealing her thin, angular face. She was a girl carved of stone. Her features an artist’s rendering of clay with a tiny mouth, streamlined nose and two pebbles of blue; his finest work. She had each thumb tucked under the straps on her backpack which she wore high on the shoulders, stretching the fabric of her coat even further. They exited the small cafe, the shorter of the two holding a white cardboard cup containing a some fancy coffee in her free hand. They walked the block, crossed the street to the next, and turned right down an alley, well lit with the sun hanging in a cloudless sky above. But a ray of sun, no matter how bright, casts its shadows. And there, he waited. When he sprung, neither girl saw him coming. He was that fast. That trained. Soon the two pairs of eyes were lulling as he hoisted each under an arm and carried them another ten yards, to an adjoining alley.

  The girls jostled back and forth, their shoulders bouncing off of each other, propped up in the back seat as the car drove through the city toward its destination. Occasionally he’d check the rearview to see if their eyes were still closed, though he knew they would be. He’d years to perfect the concoction. And it always proved its worth. A deep, somber sleep. He did, however, have a hard time prying his eyes from the mirror as he gazed at the two. They were so beautiful. Young, innocent, untouched. The last he could always tell. It was true, over the years, throughout this game of cat and mouse he’d collected a few who, even not in their teens, had experienced adult pleasures. This he smelled on them. Not a stink, but a gradual odor, which aroused and also disappointed. Being the first to break the skin, the first to succor the sweets these young girls offered was often the highest form of pleasure. One he sought always. And so, these that had been tainted, he would dispose of in another way. Never savoring them. As if they were rotted meat. But the two in his backseat? Well, they smelled as fresh as spring rain. Lillies in a field.

  He wiped the spittle from his lower lip. Turned his eyes away from the rearview and smiled to himself. Amazed that even after all this time, all these years, he still lost himself like that. No, the girls wouldn’t wake for quite some time. Time enough to get the two where he wanted them. Where he’d enjoy them, and love them, and give them pleasures unbound by the human condition. And where also, he could set the trap.

  The tires of his car crunched the loose gravel and dark bits of tar gathered in little piles from winters of sanding and plows digging up the roads. They sat discarded here and there about the concrete, back when both the building and parking lot of the abandoned structure were still in use. He pulled in close behind a small shed added to the outer frame of the building in later years. The paints on the building has peeled and cracked, faded by the sun and rains and winters. He looked up at the several windows along the front exterior of the structure as he stepped from the car, his eyes lingering over the long-ago broken windows. With a deep breath, he inhaled the absence of life and the dust of neglect. It smelled of sand. Sand which will never be swept from the concrete below. Which will continue to compile in layers for years to come. Or rather, until someone discovers the bodies.

  With that he turned to the passenger’s side back door. Pulled it open and bent to peek inside. One girl, the taller of the two, her head lolled to one side, drool trickling down her lips, opened one of her eyes in the slightest. He didn’t worry. She’d be out for a long time still, even if either of them experienced the briefest moments of wakefulness. Her head still, she turned the one eye, squinting to look at him. He smiled. And for the tiniest fraction of a moment, a hint of panic, of knowing, crossed that eye, before it glazed back over and her eyelid closed.

  THE LONG DRIVE

  THE LONG DRIVE…

  Reynolds found it hard to sleep. He’d talked with his brother for a few more moments, asking about some details regarding the disappearance, when Ben suggested he just email the info over. He’d taken a quick piss after hanging up and trudged back to his bed. He climbed in and pulled the covers up over his shoulders, nestling one arm beneath the pillow before closing his eyes. But he’d slept only a moment. Not deep and restful. Whether his brother opened up something which lie dormant in Reynolds all these years, he couldn’t tell. But he dreamed in that short time. And now, waking, he wondered if it was a dream at all. He’d tossed and turned and tossed some more for well over an hour. His eyes always finding the small fracture of moonlight creeping in through the blinds, lighting a sliver of wall across the room. His mind reeling back to that dream.

  He considers, if he had an old time clock, the soft ticking of the hands would drive him nuts right now. And he remembers the old grandfather clock down in the hall of his parent’s house. How, even with the doors shut, it somehow snuck its sounds into your bedroom; some nights a comforting companion tapping you into slumber, while others a nuisance, its repetitive echoes lodging unwelcome in your brain.

  The red digital glow from his bedside clock reeks havoc with his eyes. Even closed, the color seeps through, lighting the back of his lids. With a huff, Reynolds sits up and k
icks off the covers. Looks at the clock. Only a few hours have transpired since he finished the conversation with Ben. But it’s still a little to early to head up North. He’d be there long before the search began if he left soon. Before even, most have woken. So, he scratches the top of his head and sliding from the bed, walks across the bedroom, down the hall, and into his living room. His makeshift desk, really just a small garage sale table sits in the corner, houses his new computer. Reynolds turns the big clunky device on and goes to the kitchen to make coffee. Once that’s brewed, he settles into the chair for some time, reading through the files Ben emailed him after the call. He sips from the mug while his eyes dart back and forth over the words; descriptions of the not-yet crime scene, and minimal statements from the parents. There’re no photographs attached to the email, save one of the missing boy. He watches the image render slowly, committing it to memory as best he can for now. With no printer, his memory will have to do, until that is, he gets up north. The rest of the details are sparse. So he allows a picture to develop in his mind, and with this little information ticks off the ways the young boy may have gone missing. Hours pass swift as his mind works, and he soon concedes to taking a shower. He sets the coffee for a fresh pot to take with and runs himself a semi-lukewarm shower. Every now and again turning the handle and giving himself a blast of frigid water to jolt his senses awake, readying him for the ride ahead.