The Monocle Man Read online

  The targets were young girls. Most between the ages of ten and fourteen. The details of the crime were baffling to say the least. Some were abducted leaving school, others while walking the streets. Some, snatched from the very beds they slept in. No signs of struggle. No apparent motives nor ransoms. Very little evidence. Other than the bodies that continued to pile up.

  Reynolds knew he should, in many ways, be grateful of the opportunity to land such a high profile case so early in his career. Single, with no children of his own, he brought an unattached perspective to the murders. It wasn’t that he felt nothing for these young girls or their families. Quite the opposite. But with nothing in his life for comparison, he could stand on the outside and look in, rather than get caught up in the emotion of it. He wasn’t sure how that made him appear through the lens of a camera, but then, he didn’t really care. The media wanted blood. The mayor wanted the issue resolved and the fiend behind bars. And he wanted it done yesterday. Reynolds worked his ass off. But there was so little to go on. All the degrees in criminal psychology did little to advance this pursuit, with the never-ending cache of non-evidence. But maybe they caught a break this evening.

  Reynolds rounded the side of the first rack, glancing upward at the hulls of small boats hanging over the side of the structure. He looked ahead and up. The boats atop the racks seemed to waver as if coming free of their mooring. It gave him a momentary sense of vertigo, before he turned straight ahead, shaking off the feeling, and walked the length of the aisle.

  Each footstep crunched on the sand and salt collected on the floor. Every now and again, he would peer through the articles collected on the shelves, hoping to spy something on the other side of the warehouse. The dark made it difficult to discern anything real from the shadows. The streams of moonlight that played through the structure only made it harder to focus.

  Coming round the backside of the aisle, Reynolds caught a shadow moving from the corner of his eye. He pulled back instinctively; let a moment or two pass. With a deep breath he craned his neck around the rack. There, across the back of the warehouse, he saw the shadow turn the corner at the top of the stairs, just out of view. He couldn’t be sure who it was. But he thought it might be Dori. What little he made out in that brief moment, convinced him it had to be his partner. He doubted that it could have been what he saw up there in the front window earlier. The shadow too small, for such a hulking mass of a man.

  Reynolds breathed deep. He listened for anything, his head still peeking around the corner, keeping an eye on the stairs, waiting to see if his partner might be followed. A minute or two passed in silence. Reynolds clucked his tongue and readied himself as he left the cover of the rack to make his way toward the staircase.

  3

  3.

  The large hand burst from the darkness. Its fingers wrapped around the scrawny neck, pushing the man off his feet and hurling him to the wall; the huge figure stepped out from behind the door and pinned the detective against the shoddy wallpaper.

  There was a grunt.

  A harrumph.

  The sound of a great bull clearing its nostrils, getting ready to charge.

  Dori hung from the large man’s grasp, his feet dangling several or more inches off the ground. He gazed directly into the eyes of the creature. The hulking beast. This abomination with the patchwork skin.

  The thing’s mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, trained directly on Dori; looked through him with such hatred and ferocity. That which only a rabid animal could muster. The thing sneered, revealing large discolored teeth, with one or two missing in each set. But they are not teeth really, more like slabs of off-white granite. Thick and sturdy. The thing spewed spittle, while its chest, a mountain upon a ribcage, heaved up and down with each breath.

  “You,” it began, in a voice so low in decibel it rattled the glass in the picture frames on the wall. Guttural, and through a pit of gravel. “You… must… die.”

  Dori cocked his head to one side, as best he could, his neck still caught in the vice of fingers and flesh. His eyebrows arched in question. He wrinkled his nose, a little put off by the stench of the creature before him. The stench was not all that unfamiliar though. No, on the contrary. He’d found himself ankle deep in much worse.

  “You,” the creature began again, tightening his grip on Dori’s throat.

  “Yes, yes… yes. I must die. Surely you can do better than that.” Dori bobbed his head from side to side, tracing impatience in the air with one hand.

  The creature’s eyebrows furrowed. His sneer deepened at the insult; the audacity. For the briefest of moments, doubt crossed the big man’s face and his fingers loosened the slightest.

  Another harrumph.

  And the thing opened its mouth to speak once more.

  “Please spare me your trivialities,” Dori spat, reaching one hand up to grasp the brute by the wrist. His other hand picked away at the thing’s fingers, uncurling them one by one, as if they were mere spears of clay. The muscles in the creature’s arm tensed as it tried to hold tight its prey. But soon, Dori pulled free, lowering himself to the floor with the hand wrapped around the thing’s huge wrist. Dori looked up at the patchwork man. Smirked. “Now,” he hissed, smoothing out his hair and tucking back in his shirt which had pulled from his pants when he was lifted. “If you’d care to speak civilly, I would gladly acquiesce. But if you’d rather get physical, I’d also be glad tear your big, bulbous head from your shoulders.”

  The creature took a few steps back. Either threatened, or just stunned by Dori’s forwardness, the detective couldn’t be sure. But he couldn’t care less in either regard. He stepped over the two bodies lying on the carpet and sat himself in one of the chairs to the side of the room. The big man loomed in the doorway as if waiting a command.

  “I see we have an accord. Very well. Let me begin by saying, if you ever, and I do mean ever attempt such a feat as you’ve just tried, it will be your last.”

  “But… you…”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Such a bore my fellow. I know your true purpose. I know the why, and especially the how of you. For, in many ways, I am your true father.”

  The brute’s eyes widened at the statement, as if it were an impossibility. But he sensed also it might be true. Confusion set in. The contrast to his beliefs struck home. He’d often wondered his role in the world. Shunned by most, turned away by the rest, he wandered aimlessly attempting to carve a path his own. He scanned Dori’s eyes, his countenance, searching for raw honesty. From a man as evil as Dori, he was surprised to find it plain as day written on the man’s face. His true purpose. His reason for being. And now this, the man who claimed to be his father.

  Dori smiled from across the room. He knew well why the creature followed him here. What drew it to each and every site where girls had been murdered and then disposed of. In fact, that was the plan all along. This creature had been after him for as long as Dori could remember. And he’d finally had enough. The big lug’s heart swelled, and he cared for little girls. The only thing he didn’t yet understand, why the creature felt responsible. But he loved them so. Individual to him, like snowflakes, and just as fragile. The big man saved many over the decades. And though Dori could never guess at why the creature held such a soft spot for the opposing gender, he understood leaving a trail long and bloody enough, the galoot would certainly try to intervene.

  The creature stood still, looking at Dori, Waited. The side of Dori’s mouth turned up in a half-smile before he nodded and began the tale for the big man…

  The matter of his true being. His reason for existing at all. He remembered well that evening and told the story. Lord Byron and Mary Shelley had already left the large attic of the villa. They left behind Violetta Bersani, the woman renting the villa, and a renowned hunter of immortal creatures. At least, within small, hushed circles. The room contained all manner of electrical instrument and apparatus. The table at the center; where endless cords snaked out in all directions, searching out
those machines, reached up into the ceiling. The large creature, stitched together like a doll-macabre, rested on that table.

  Mary, new to the venture, had just arrived in Lake Geneva only days prior. But Dori sensed that Lord Byron, now aware of what he was, would bid for help. Though he would have wagered a guess the help to be Percy Shelley, not his wife. However, Byron chose wisely, as Mary was a woman with an oaken will, steel, and plenty of grit. After her initial horror, she became fascinated by the large man lying atop the surgical table. Her eyes traced the patchwork seams that held the many colors and textures of skin together, holding her breath all the while. When the creature had come to, even for that briefest of moments, he saw the look in her eyes. He knew she would join forces with Violetta and Byron in their attempt to eradicate an individual such as he.

  And so, once the two had left to return to the Villa Diodati, Dori waited and watched while Violetta prepped the body for an evening of slumber, before striking into the room, and tearing the woman to pieces. Once dispatched, he was free to take his time in assuming a newer role in his long, sordid life. The role of father.

  “Now don’t look surprised. I was there that night.”

  “That… nigh-“

  “My God man! In all these years, all this time spent upon this earth, have you not attempted to educate yourself? Language is the key you beast. The key to everything.”

  “Key,” the large man nodded.

  “Yes… key. Or maybe, Byron and Violetta forgot to sew your brains back in when they stitched you. Regardless… I know what you are. And I know you’ve been at my heels for decades now. But tonight, this ends. They may have created you intending to destroy me. But without me… or my blood, you would have never been! And what I bore, I too shall reap. The time has come.”

  Dori jumped from the chair at a frightening speed, light as air, as if pulled by a marionette’s strings. He sailed, airborne, his feet just above the floor toward the big man. The creature took a step back, angling toward the door, though readying his stance, with his head lowered, and his fingers working themselves into fists. Dori landed a few feet from the creature.

  “Ahhhh! Good. Good my son! That’s the spirit!”

  “You… must… die.”

  “Yes. But you first!”

  As Dori stepped forward a clank from the warehouse below echoed up the staircase, giving both Dori and the patchwork man pause. The big man arched his large brow; turned his head to listen.

  “Well then,” Dori spoke. “Some other time?” He watched the large man back from the office. “Don’t worry my friend,” gesturing with his arm at the two girls lying at his feet. “I’ll be sure to leave you another present real soon.”

  4

  4.

  Reynolds, crouched down, slunk toward the staircase. He slowed his breathing some, but a damp sweat crept up the back of his neck; dotted his brow. Step by step, he inched his way across the back of the warehouse. When his foot clashed against an empty paint can, sending it reeling away, he winced. The clang bounced off the walls. He stopped. Swore beneath his breath and listened a moment.

  Everything still seemed quiet though he worried now he may have alerted the criminal to his presence. How could he have been so careless?

  ‘He should have been watching his feet!’

  ‘What the hell was he thinking?’

  Reynolds shook his head in disgust. He reaffirmed his grip on his firearm and started forward again, watching both the staircase which loomed before him in near darkness, and the path in front of him.

  He took a few steps at a time, pausing here and there, keeping an ear cocked toward the top of the flight. He heard something muffled.

  ‘Was someone talking?’

  ‘Or did it sound more like humming?’

  With cautious steps, he crossed to the bottom of the stairs. One by one, easing his foot onto each riser, he climbed. A few steps below the top landing, Reynolds crouched down. He set his backside on one of the stairs, and leaned forward, his head only inches above the landing itself, peeking to his left first, down the catwalk, and to his right. The catwalk extended into the darkness. The few windows let in almost no light, blackened out from years of dirt and debris, and the absence of an occasional wipe down. He considered pulling free his flashlight, but decided against it for the time being.

  To his right, the landing opened to a small hall. He peered around the framing, found a single door about twenty feet away. The door stood ajar. Both eyes squint as he witnessed some movement.

  ‘Dare he call out his partner’s name?’

  With one last deep breath, he stood from his position, steadying his firearm with both hands and sidled down the hall. Outside the door, he pressed his back to the wall and listened.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Such an odd sound!’

  ‘Like the end of a straw struggling against the bottom of an empty cup.’

  He craned his neck a little, trying to see into the room. The lights were out, with just the eerie cast of luminescence from the screen saver on the computer screen. It illuminated little, save for a few filing cabinets, and some framed pictures on the wall behind the desk.

  His eyes scanned the room. There, on the floor, someone hunched over something. It’s back heaved up and down ever so gently.

  ‘Was it Dori?’

  Hard to tell with no light. Reynolds stepped into the room further, his gun trained on the ground before him, while blinking his eyes, trying to adjust them to the low-level light.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  He saw now what lie beneath the man crouched over. A pair of bodies. They lie in a heap, one atop the other, sprawled out on the floor. He watched a hand, that of the man over the bodies, as it ran the length of one thigh. There’s a longing in the gesture. Nearing a caress.

  A slight movement from across the room, and Reynolds pulled his arms up, training the gun at the wall, near a water cooler. He shook his head.

  ‘Were his eyes deceiving him?’

  A man stood there. Cloaked in black. Hard to see, save for the man’s dark, thick mustache. And then the sound of footsteps pulled him from this.

  Large.

  Lumbering.

  And chasing down the catwalk.

  Without thinking, Reynolds turned on heels and darted back down the hall. His instincts told him, regardless of the strange situation within the office, those footsteps belonged to the man they’ve been hunting. And he reacted. Ran down the small hall and turned the corner.

  Just then, a slight crackle of electricity whistled throughout the warehouse. All sounds seemed to seep from the air, as if someone clamped his ears shut, or pushed his head under water. He stumbled, loosing a touch of equilibrium. A few sparks arose with a blueish hue. A glow, somewhat explosive brightened the dark all around him, coming from down the small hallway in the office’s direction. Followed by a scream. Human, but primal. He recognized the voice. Dori.

  Catching his breath, and righting himself, Reynolds made a quick decision to continue down the catwalk. He ran its length in no time at all. Came around the corner checking the one office and a small storage room on that level before cruising down the stairs to the first floor. There, he found the front door wide open. He scampered out into the night, scanning the wharf, this way and that. But he knew his quarry was gone.

  He returned to the second floor catwalk moments later and found someone had flicked on the lights. The catwalk and hall leading to the office were illuminate with fluorescents. Turning the corner to the small hall, he stumbled upon Dori standing outside the office. He closed the door a little way. The man looked distraught. Though Reynolds wondered how much of that look was an act.

  “I wouldn’t go in there,” Dori recommended, but Reynolds pushed past him, now angry and very confused.

  There on the floor, well lit, were two young girls. Stripped of their clothes, lying in a heap a few feet from the desk. Reynolds wanted to vomit. His stomach lurched. No matt
er how many times he’d witnessed this scene, he remained far from finding it usual. His mind reeled, retracing the steps from the staircase, to within the office; to the man who stood in the shadows at the far end of the office, to the man crouched over the bodies, caressing the thigh of one girl. And if he had chased the man responsible for this act of violence, who the hell was hunched over these poor souls? He thought he knew. And that man, he was sure, was the same who stood outside this door talking into his phone, calling in forensics and backup. But what the hell had his partner been up to?

  Looking about the room, he’s doubly perplexed that there were no signs of anyone else having been in there. Maybe the man with the mustache was just a figment of his imagination. Just a trick of low light and shadows cast. His nerves getting a little the better of him.

  But no. He’s sure someone else was here. The man may have been cast in shadow, but he stood there none-the-less. Reynolds could almost see his face. Something familiar about it. He felt he’d seen it before.