A Time For Monsters

by Gareth Worthington

  “What are you talking about?” Arne said, yanked from his train of thought.

  “We got a hit on that name, Georgina Thompson.”

  Huakaas struggled to sit up, attention now squarely on his partner. “And?”

  “A woman by that name booked into a hostel a week ago, near the old market. Management said she hasn’t been seen for two days. Then, what shows up but a police report with her name. She was in the hospital, some kind of accident. Then she assaulted a doctor and left in the middle of the night.”

  Arne’s eyes widened. “We need to get over there. To the hostel.”

  “Figured that would get your old ass up.” Huus laughed. “Gotta ask you, though. Where did you get the name from? Out of a hat? Little book of psycho killers? No bullshit, Huakaas. I just saved your life.”

  The sheets covering Arne’s legs became unbearably itchy, the room uncomfortably hot. Should he tell Huus? Should he admit to his mistake? It would likely cost him everything. Maybe even a prison sentence. A shitty end to a shitty life. Maybe he deserved it. The King Kubb Killer would cap off his not so distinguished career.

  Huakaas eyed his partner, who seemed unable to keep still for more than a few minutes, chomping at the bit to follow the lead. In the end, maybe it was Huus who was destined to catch Georgina, claim the glory and launch his reputation into the stratosphere.

  “She was in the hospital because I hit her with your car,” Huakaas said.

  “Come again?”

  Arne drew a breath. “The night we were at the liquor store. Watching the video feed. I took your car. My head was fuzzy. Maybe I had a beer too many. Maybe I was lost in thought. She stepped out. Or maybe, maybe I curbed it.”

  “You hit a woman with my car? That wasn’t in the report.” Huus bored holes into Arne.

  “Yeah, look. She was fine, but—”

  “I don’t get it. You hit a woman with my damn car, clearly lied about it, and decided she’s the killer?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. When she fled the hospital, she wrote something on the bedsheets in Latin: men reap what they sow. It felt like the message was for me.”

  “I’m not making the connection.”

  Arne scratched at his beard. “She was really articulate. Not the kind of woman who just says things, or writes them, without purpose. Grilled me when I last saw her in the hospital. Call it an old detective’s gut instinct. She wrote it in Latin, Huus. Men reap what they sow. Not people. Not women. Men.”

  “Okay. So, she was pissed that you ran her over.”

  “Probably.”

  Huus shook his head. “Make the connection, Huakaas. Walk me through it.”

  “Her note. It got me thinking. A hunch. So, I went to see a few of the early victims’ wives. Men reap what they sow. What if they were being targeted because they were men? Shitty men. Abusive men. None of the wives admitted to it, but they weren’t upset either. Not one had a picture of their dead spouse. Not one seemed to give a rat’s ass their husbands were dead.”

  “You think we have a vigilante—albeit a sick one—on our hands?”

  Arne nodded solemnly, then drew another breath. Time to come clean. In for a penny. “I also think she showed up at my apartment, last night. I swear I saw her in the window, and then inside ... It was difficult to see from the floor, dying and all.”

  “She came to your apartment?”

  “I think so,” Arne said.

  “To kill you?”

  Huakaas nodded.

  “Why, ’cause you hit her with my car?”

  Here goes nothing.

  “If she’s the killer, then I think it’s deeper. She probably knows about Aslaug.” Arne's chest tightened as her name passed his lips. He watched Huus’s eyes for a flicker of confusion.

  “I know about your wife,” Huus said, seemingly feeling Arne’s anxiety. “Unlike you, I care about who I work with.”

  Huakaas felt his cardiac muscle tighten again, the ECG machine at his bedside blipped more rapidly. “Then why work with me?”

  “Because no one else would,” Bjorn said. “And everyone deserves a second chance. You were a good detective once.”

  Words wouldn’t come. Perhaps Arne had none. Or maybe he was just shit at saying thank you. Either way, Huakaas kept his lips sealed as he swung his legs off the bed. They needed to get to that hostel. There would be a clue to who the next victim was, or where Georgina was.

  “You sure you’re ready to go?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Arne said.

  “There’s a unit already there, waiting on us.” Huus grinned.

  “We best hope she fucked up and left something behind,” Arne said, grabbing Huus’s arm to haul himself from the bed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about the crime scenes, not a damn shred of evidence. Super clean. That suggests she knows what she’s doing. A cop maybe?”

  “Or CSI,” Huus said.

  Huakaas stopped and stared at his partner. He hadn’t thought of that. He should have as it was an easy jump to make. This really would be his last case. Arne felt all but useless these days. He sighed audibly. “Get London Met on the line. See if we can dig up a tech with her name.”

  “You got it. Ready?” Huus said, his voice straining as he lifted Arne to his feet.

  Huakaas didn’t answer. His mind was drowning in a sea of questions. He might be rusty, his detective prowess not as sharp as it once was or really should be, but his gut never steered him wrong.

  If she was CSI, why were breadcrumbs being dropped now, after more than a year? The rare bottle of akevitt. The video from the liquor store, and now a hostel room. Something felt off. All he could do was eat up the titbits like a good little police mouse.

  Philadelphia, USA, 2007

  The forensics congress had been a blast—all lectures, dinners, and bars. How anyone remembered anything from these conferences seemed like voodoo to Rey, but somehow she and her colleagues did. Enough to keep their jobs at least.

  Rey checked her watch—a vintage Rolex she’d bought with her first bonus: 01:56. A pumpkin martini sat on the bar in front of her, though she couldn’t stomach any more alcohol. She glanced around McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the blurred world unable to keep up with the motion of her head. The bar was empty. No warm body to drag to her hotel for the night.

  Pity, she thought.

  Her ability to easily land a date, or most of the time a hard dick or wet pussy for the evening, was somewhat of a surprise to Rey. Each day, she’d look in the mirror and pick apart her ugly turned-up nose, thick eyebrows, unruly hair, and black soulless eyes, and wonder how it was men and women alike wanted to screw her. She wouldn’t fuck a girl that looked like her. Still, they came. Maybe it was because she had a mouth on her. Maybe it was because she could talk circles around most people. At twenty-seven, she already had a degree and a PhD, and was a star in her division. Hence being allowed to go to conferences.

  Rey patted a near unconscious Jiji on the shoulder. “Time to go,” she said.

  Jiji grunted an acknowledgment.

  Rey hopped down from the barstool, nearly twisting her ankle as the five-inch heel of her Manolo’s slipped on the wooden floor. A girlish giggle escaped her lips, for which she cursed herself. She grabbed Jiji by the elbow, linked their arms together, and began walking—if not stumbling—out the door toward the street.

  Rey hailed a cab.

  A taxi pulled up immediately, likely drawn by Jiji’s chest. That made her especially helpful when they were out—getting into clubs, hailing down cabs, finding free drinks.

  All owed to Jiji’s homegrown bags of fat designed to feed babies, Rey thought.

  The cabbie gave a lurid grin as Rey pushed Jiji into the cab and then crawled in after her. She slurred the name of their hotel. The driver nodded and they were on their way.

  The bright lights of skyscrapers twinkled outside. They were so tall they reached up far out of her field of view. She pressed her
forehead to the glass in an attempt to see higher, but it was no use. Disappointed, Rey slumped back into her seat, leaving a greasy foundation spot on the window.

  Jiji’s head fell into Rey’s shoulder, and that’s where it stayed as she slept.

  Rey huffed through her nose. Jiji was still stuck to Rey like fucking glue. Now working at the same forensics lab, she’d begged to come along to the conference. Rey had not wanted the company. She really had no time for other humans. They were small, petty, and annoying. Jiji had only wanted to come along to escape her shitty life. A month prior, her parents had traveled to Switzerland to kill themselves. Suicide tourism, Jiji called it. Apparently, they had seen all they wanted to in the world and watching their daughter screw her way through a barrage of abusive boyfriends was not on their bucket list. If Jiji were honest, though, she was running from her latest boyfriend who’d near broken her wrist in an argument.

  When would women like Jiji learn? Rey thought. Jiji, and all females like her, were stupid. Just walk out. How hard was it? No man would ever backtalk to Rey, let alone abuse her.

  Just let them try.

  The cab took a corner a little too fast and Rey’s stomach lurched. “Hey, asshole, slow it down,” she slurred, holding back the vomit.

  The cabbie ignored her and switched on the radio.

  Instantly, Rey’s skin prickled. The sensation started at her temples then washed down the back of her neck and over her arms and legs. The familiar opening piano notes of Counting Crows’, “A Long December.”

  Why this song?

  She knew why. Karma wasn’t a thing, wasn’t real, but still she was being punished. And rightly so, she deserved it. She’d been introduced to Counting Crows by Michael. The band’s first major album, August and Everything After, had been a revelation. Adam Duritz was a genius. His melancholy voice combined with obscure lyrics that had such meaning folded into their convoluted imagery. You had to be intelligent to understand their depth. Rey loved that. Music for intelligent people, not for plebs. This song, this particular song, defined both the beginning and the end of her marriage to Michael, which had lasted a whole six months.

  And it was all her fault.

  Michael was the kindest, sweetest man Rey had ever met. He was also gorgeous. Way out of Rey’s league. Frankly, she was in awe that he wanted anything to do with her. Rey was so blind to the fact he liked her that nearly a year after they met on registration day, she hadn’t realized he even liked her that way. Jiji had told her. Rey had laughed it off. Until one evening over beers at the student bar, she’d asked him outright, expecting him to rebuke it. He hadn’t.

  Rey had been besotted. She couldn’t believe her luck. She didn’t deserve him, and she knew it. So, there was no way she’d let him go. Rey being Rey took control, and within a year of dating asked him to marry her. A dramatic affair, at the top of the tallest building in Manchester, while they were still students, in a restaurant she couldn’t afford, with a bespoke ring she’d bought on a credit card. She’d worked with the restaurant to bring it out instead of the dessert and even knelt in front of all the patrons. He had been gracious about the potential emasculation and said yes.

  For a time, they had been happily engaged. Rey had completed her PhD in Manchester, then moved to London to work, while Michael had stayed in the North to embark on his PhD, a few years behind her. They’d visited each other when they could. It was an arrangement that had worked.

  Until it hadn’t.

  He wanted a family. Rey didn’t want kids. Ever. She would not make a good parent. How could she, growing up as she had? Besides, she’d worked far too hard to give it all up to a squalling child who would suck her money away, only to hate her later in life. Michael would ask Rey’s mom about it, hope in his eyes that it was just a phase. Rey’s mom confirmed it wasn’t a phase, and that Rey had never really liked other children growing up, let alone the idea of becoming a mother.

  Michael had said he accepted this. Rey had known he still yearned for a family life.

  For a while, they had carried on, though the distance seemed to grow. They’d argued more and more over the phone and visited less. Rey’s temper had grown, and with it the number of outbursts and overly harsh digs increased. She had been a bitch.

  And then, Michael’s mom had become ill.

  Few people knew about Rey’s past. Michael’s mom had. She’d been a straight-talking Welsh woman—who had already survived colon cancer once—and asked Rey every question possible about what it was like to grow up in a home with Joe. To watch the violence. To experience it. The candor had been refreshing. Rey had respected her immensely. A woman of strength, just like her.

  When the cancer came back, Rey had left her job in London and moved back to the North to be with Michael and his mom. They had been due to be married in a year anyway—at Christmas because Rey had insisted. It was supposed to be magical.

  His mom hadn’t made it to Christmas.

  Her death had come quickly. Overnight, in fact. Kidney failure.

  It had hit Rey harder than she’d ever thought possible. This woman, this strong, good, and kind woman had died, yet Joe still wandered the Earth unpunished. The unfairness of it all ate at Rey’s soul. She had asked Michael if he still wanted to go through with the wedding. He had. So, they had. The ceremony and reception had been large, lush and magical in a converted brick barn, with a Christmas tree, just as she’d wanted. Still, she’d felt empty. Their first dance song had been the same song that played on the taxi radio—“A Long December.” Sad and slow. With lines about the smell of hospitals in winter and hope that next year will be better.

  An omen, Rey thought.

  Within a few months of being married, they had mortgaged a small terraced house in Macclesfield, a tiny town near Manchester. Even at the time, Rey had felt her life morphing into the one thing she’d tried to avoid—the mundane, trapped, domestic. This feeling had grown quickly, and as it had, the distance between Michael and Rey had widened.

  Rey had filled this chasm with someone else. An affair. Someone she’d thought understood her better. Someone who didn’t want children either. A woman, in fact, who didn’t want children. Rey had believed Michael would never understand. And so, she had chosen to be magnanimous. Or at least that’s how she saw it then. She’d left him with the house and the car and all the furniture to be with her new love.

  Michael, being a pragmatic man, had seen no point in fighting Rey. He’d known her well enough. Her mind was made, and he would not beg someone to love him. He’d signed the papers. His last words to Rey had been, “Your father has a lot to answer for.”

  Rey squirmed in the cab seat as the song ended.

  Her father might have had a lot for which to answer, but the end of her marriage was all her fault. Her new relationship hadn’t even lasted that long after the divorce papers were signed. Her girl left for another person.

  Rey didn’t know what she wanted, at least in terms of love. What was love? Did she even know? Was she capable? Or had she been besotted with the idea, romanced by the lyrics of songs like, “Chasing Cars” sung in Gary Lightbody’s beautiful Irish lilt?

  The taxi jolted to a stop.

  Rey focused on the meter, then pulled a twenty from her purse and pushed it through the window.

  “Sorry there’s not more of a tip,” she said.

  The cabbie took the note, but held it there, staring at Rey and her friend.

  “Could always tip me another way,” he said, that lurid grin spreading.

  “Fuck off you perv,” Rey spat, then pushed the door open and dragged Jiji out.

  Only, now they were greeted with another problem that made Rey wish she’d taken the cabbie’s offer.

  Jason Hill sat on the stoop to the cheap hotel. Jiji’s ex-boyfriend. The wrist breaker.

  Rey pulled the inebriated Jiji closer. “Which part of fuck off and die didn’t get through that thick skull of yours?”

  “Shut it, Rey,” he snapped ba
ck in that thick East End accent. “This is between me and her.”

  “Her?” Rey’s nose creased as she snarled. “Her? She’s got a name, dickhead.”

  “How about you piss off, lesbo, and leave the real relationships to the rest of us.”

  Rey let out a loud, mocking laugh. “Lesbo? What? Because I wouldn’t fuck you or one of your idiot friends?”

  “You’re a bad influence,” he fired back. “She follows you fucking everywhere. You made her leave me.”

  Rey started toward the door, Jiji groaning under her arm. “No, you made her leave you.”

  “I gave her everything,” he said, stepping into Rey’s path. “And I’m here now, all the way from England to prove I love her.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Rey spat. “Gave her everything? I didn’t realize black eyes were this year’s must-have Christmas present.”

  A young couple, wrapped in thick coats and woolly hats, arms linked—a walking Hallmark commercial in Rey’s mind—passed gingerly between her and Jason. Their heads hung low, they made no eye contact, navigating through the obviously escalating situation. Rey watched them pass and cursed their cowardliness. People were the same the world over.

  Jason took a step toward Rey, probably hoping to catch her off guard while her attention was fixed on the passing couple. Rey’s right arm shot out instinctively. Her palm heel strike, though not massively forceful, was enough to stun him. She followed it with a swift kick to his groin, which doubled him over. With Jiji still balanced on one arm, Rey delivered a football-style kick to Jason’s face. Her shin made contact with the bridge of his nose which she was sure she felt splinter. Blood sprayed. Jason lay sprawled on the pavement, out cold.

  “Cunt,” she said under her breath. Those Krav Maga classes had actually paid off.

  It wasn’t enough. Professing love after delivering a backhand was a favorite of Joe’s as well. Of all men like them. An endless cycle of abuse and apologies. Never any consequences. Rey could dole out justice here. Real justice. Images of her picking up a brick and bashing his skull rushed like a locomotive through her mind, adrenaline fueling the idea—giving it life.