A Time For Monsters

by Gareth Worthington

  Dakota reached out to switch it off.

  “No, don’t touch that,” Huus said. “It may have prints.”

  “I fucking doubt it,” Arne said, then fell to his ass on the bed, wheezing. His chest cramped again. This was all a setup. A waste of damn time. He was being led around on a fucking leash. Huakaas rubbed at his temples and tried to block out the song in the background. “What the fuck is that playing over and over?”

  Everyone fell silent, listening to the quick diction of the lead singer—almost rap-like in his pace and lyrical ability—and acoustic guitar, which then dropped into a heavy rock anthem.

  “‘A History of Violence,’” Dakota said.

  “Come again?” Huus said.

  “Theory of a Dead Man. That’s the band. The song is, ‘A History of Violence.’”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Huus asked, holstering his weapon.”

  “I like American artists,” Dakota replied. “Rock—”

  “Shh!” Huakaas stood, now concentrating on the lyrics. This was another message from her. For him. For the cops. She knew they’d come for her. Breadcrumbs lain out. The lead singer’s voice was scratchy but clear, his words enunciated well. Because that’s what she wanted. He sang of an abused woman who’d had enough. A woman whose only recourse was .38 and murder. And that no one was now safe from her.

  “Fuck it,” Arne said, swinging his gun around.

  Dakota winced.

  “It was a setup. Who knows if she was even here?” Huakaas said.

  “Do you know what the woman looks like, who rented this room? You have a copy of her passport, right?”

  Dakota nodded. “Of course, at reception.”

  “Show me,” Huus said.

  Dakota led the detectives out. Huus gave the two other officers instructions to tape up the scene and wait for CSI, then jogged up behind.

  “Looks like you were right on the money,” Huus said. “Told you, you were a good detective.”

  Arne grunted. “Something’s off. None of this feels right.” His entire body felt wrong, slow, sluggish, ready to pack in this thing called life.

  The detectives rounded the corner of the stairwell and ambled into the foyer. Dakota duly rifled through the records and pulled out a photocopy of Georgina Thompson’s passport. Arne took the paper and studied the dark grainy image. The woman in the photo had dark eyes and a mass of curly locks. The picture certainly looked like the image in the passport he’d seen earlier, but the Georgina he’d met had been sickly and bald.

  “Do you know if she actually looked like this?” he waved the sheet at Dakota. “Or was she sick? Skinny and bald?”

  Huus gave Arne a puzzled glance.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. I’m a temp.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Bald?” Huus said.

  Arne waved his partner away from the counter. “She was being treated for breast cancer. Real skinny, bald.”

  Huus shook his head. “So, she’s dying of cancer and decides to kill a bunch of guys as a last hurrah?”

  “Maybe,” Huakaas said.

  Huus rubbed at his face. “Wow. This whole thing gets more fucked up by the second. Thing is, we won’t be able to ID her from passport photos. We can put a description in the BOLO, though if she’s smart she’ll be disguising herself. The name got us this far—maybe it’ll get us further?”

  Arne rubbed at his chest scar again. The name had led them down a garden path. She knew they’d find out her name and she’d let them. Had she even meant to be hit by the car?

  He shook his head. No, don’t be an idiot. She was in control. Arne had nothing. He needed a cigarette.

  Outside, the air bit with a vengeance at Arne’s face. He sucked on the filter and allowed the toxic fumes to enter his lungs. He held his breath, giving the chemicals and nicotine the maximum amount of time to seep through the alveoli into his bloodstream. Huakaas watched the officer by the car talk to a redhead passing by. He blew the smoke through his nose, which burned his eyes and made him squint, but he kept his gaze on the woman.

  Arne cocked his head and studied her gait. Was that a limp?

  He clasped the cigarette between his lips and started toward the woman when his pocket began to vibrate. Arne cursed, then fished out his mobile phone.

  “Yes?” he said. He wasn't prepared for the answer.

  Huakaas swung around, the cigarette hanging from his lip, searching for Huus.

  Bjorn acknowledged Arne’s frantic waving and rushed over. “What’s up?”

  Arne held up a finger. “Okay, we’ll be right there.” He ended the call.

  “What’s going on?”

  “She’s done it again. CSI is on the scene, which means they aren’t coming here any time soon. Another dead one. Fuck!”

  “Shit,” Huus said.

  “That’s the last one.”

  “What’s the next play?”

  “She’s going to be trying to get out of the country now. I want her name and image, with hair and bald, fucking everywhere. Target trains, planes, boats. I don’t give a shit.”

  “Got it.”

  Arne’s fingers glanced the door handle, but pulled back as trampling footsteps filled the street. He glanced up, brow furrowed. An army of reporters and camera operators, who had likely been hiding around the corner waiting for him to emerge, charged toward the car.

  “Fuck,” Arne said.

  “What the hell is this?” Huus asked.

  In moments, Arne was surrounded, microphones shoved in his face, a thousand questions fired at him from all sides.

  “Why have the police covered up five murders?” One man pushed his microphone close.

  “Did you assault Oliver Hansen?”

  “Is it the same killer from last year?” a woman with a hawk-like nose shouted.

  “Do you know who it is?”

  The reporters bumped and jostled, forcing Arne against the police vehicle.

  “Get back!” A nearby uniformed officer spread out his arms, attempting to keep them at a distance.

  Huus barged his way into the crowd, using his significant mass to put a barrier between the media and Arne. “Go, I’ll keep them busy. Just go, I’ll meet you there.”

  Arne nodded, pulled open the door and squeezed through the small gap into the car. The door snapped shut, almost jamming his leg in the opening. Huus pushed back against the mob, freeing up enough space for Arne to pull away and speed off toward the latest—and probably last—crime scene.

  Huakaas stepped up to the yellow tape across the door to the house of the final victim. Inside were two techs in protective suits dusting and taking samples, hunting for any kind of clue. For the CSI team, it must have been excruciatingly frustrating to have worked the King Kubb Killer’s crime scenes for a year and not find a shred of useful evidence—other than what the perp wanted them to discover.

  In the corner of the room lay the victim, propped up against a leather couch, blood pooled around him. A glass bottle protruded from his head just as it had with the others. Arne stared at the dead man that could easily have been him.

  One of the techs, Christoph, glanced up. “Hey, Huakaas.” He stood and meandered over.

  “Hey, Christoph,” Huakaas said, having dredged up the name from Huus’s interaction with the man.

  “Another poor bastard.”

  “Maybe he deserved it,” Huakaas said.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Who called it in?” Arne asked.

  “Neighbor. She was pretty freaked out.”

  “Wife, family?”

  “Not home. Haven't been able to reach them yet.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Hey,” Huus called as he trotted up. “Anything?”

  Christoph shook his head. “Nope. Same as always.”

  “Damn,” Huus said.

  “There’ll be something here,” Arne said, though more to himself.

  “You reckon?” Christoph
said.

  “She’s been leading us around. The last site had a clue. The akevitt. Now the hostel room. She wants us to find something.” Arne’s gaze was fixed on the other tech attending to Leif’s broken body.

  “She?” Christoph said.

  “Long story,” Huus replied in a tone that said not now.

  Arne’s brain crackled with the plethora of clues, leads, names, descriptions at his fingertips. Were they all fake? Was she leading them astray? Or maybe she wanted to be caught? If she was dying anyway, maybe the point was for the world to know who she was and why she’d done it. A last middle finger to abusive men the world over.

  “By the way, I found out how we were tracked down by those vultures,” Huus said, pulling out his phone and showing Arne the screen.

  It was a headline from the Aftenposten: Kripos Withholds Vital Information on Serial Killer. “Fuck,” Arne said, then took the phone to read further.

  Photos of victims from last year and this year, all carefully positioned with a glass bottle protruding from their head, adorned the online pages. And in the center were pictures of Huakaas and Oliver Hansen. The article espoused the journey of the online blogger and his determination to get to the truth, despite threats from a disgraced detective.

  “She sent this shit to Hansen. I’m fucked,” Arne said handing the phone back.

  “We need to catch this bitch,” Huus said.

  “Hey, Christoph!” called the tech still in the room. “You wanna get over here.”

  Christoph adjusted his gear to ensure a tight fit over his head and face and headed back.

  “You okay?” Huus asked.

  Arne looked up at his partner. “I think she’s fucking with us. With me. What a way to go down in the end, huh? A shitty finish to an impotent career.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’ll have to ‘fess up to how I got the name at all. Be charged with DUI, GBH while under the influence. Perjury. Throw that on top of my previous, and I’m screwed.”

  Huus studied Arne’s face before saying, “Who’s to say her little incident in the hospital isn’t how we got the name? No one knows you hit her. Her stunt on the bedsheet—that could have prompted a chain of thought for a good detective.”

  What was Bjorn suggesting? That he wouldn’t rat Huakaas out? That he’d keep the secret and let him finish out however many more years he had left? Was he prepared to let Huus do that? Arne wasn’t a religious man, but somehow he felt an omniscient presence press down on his heart as if reminding him that his life had been spared on the promise of living for the truth from now on.

  “I don’t thi—”

  Huus’s phone began to hum. “Hold that thought,” he said, then answered the call. “Uh huh. Fuck yes. Amazing. Can they get a team on the ground? You’re a damn star. We’ll be there.”

  “What was that?”

  “We got a hit. She’s on a fucking plane back to the UK. We got the authorization to ground it in France. French police will be waiting to pick her up.” He slapped Arne’s shoulder.

  The news was stunning. Amazing. Too good to be true. Arne wavered on the spot, absorbing this new information. They’d gotten her. Finally, after all this time. She was on a plane with nowhere to run. No escape.

  Then why did it feel wrong? She’d led them this far, spent a year being meticulous. Now this?

  The CSI tech ran up and yanked down his mask. “You are not going to believe this,” he said. “We got a fucking print. On the bottle.”

  Christoph was right, Arne didn’t believe it. First alerting the media and now a print? This all stank. She either wanted to be caught and claim the kills as her own, or she was setting up someone else. Someone to take the fall. Maybe she was a professional? Someone skilled in hiding evidence. Huakaas’s gaze fell on the CSI tech patiently waiting for therm. A tech? Was she a police tech? Though the bigger question still loomed: who could’ve pissed her off so badly and why would she ruin them?

  London England, 2012

  Peeping rang in Rey’s ears. High pitched. Rhythmic. She knew very well what it was. A heart monitor. If she was hearing that, then she’d failed. She was still alive.

  Rey kept her eyes closed, soaking in the darkness, hoping to disappear into the void. The crisp sheets felt clean and sterile around her bare arms and legs. That familiar hospital smell, latex and mild bleach, filled her nose and throat. Warm tears welled up behind her eyelids, but she willed them back. Couldn’t let people know she was awake. She just wanted to be left alone. But she could hear people buzzing around the bed.

  A woman, perhaps a doctor or nurse, was talking to someone else in hushed tones. It took a few moments for Rey to recognize the voice. The annoying Janner diction—Jiji.

  “She’s been asleep for a while now,” the woman whispered. Her tone suggested a nurse. Just a tad more caring than a doctor.

  “Where’d they find her?” Jiji asked.

  “Her apartment. The postman was delivering something. Heard a huge crash inside and decided to bash in the door. It’s lucky he did.”

  Rey’s throat dried up, but she dared not swallow. Lucky to be alive? Did the nurse not see the point of hanging oneself from a loft beam? Clearly, it had given way. Rotten or something. Lucky is not how Rey would describe it.

  “Are you family?” the nurse asked.

  “I’m her girlfriend. Well, not girlfriend, her girl friend. Yano? I mean she’s pretty. I would, yano? Who wouldn’t?”

  The nurse snickered.

  Just shut up, Jiji.

  “Is there someone else we should call?”

  Rey felt the pause, the torrent of explanation behind Jiji’s lips waiting to spew forth to fill the silence. Jiji had hung around long enough. Lived with Rey for a while, recovering from a cracked cheekbone courtesy of boyfriend seven-hundred-and-sixty-eight. She knew far too much about Rey’s life.

  Keep your dumbass mouth shut.

  “Not really,” Jiji replied. “No dad. At least not around. Her brovver and sister don’t talk to her anymore. Reverse snobbery, ya know? Don’t understand that she left for a better life. And her mum ... just died. Breast cancer. I mean my mum’s dead, too. But she wanted to die, yano? Rey’s mum. No one saw it coming.”

  Fuck. Why was Jiji telling this woman Rey’s life story? Rey’s lips quivered slightly, the desire to shout and tell everyone off overwhelming. Though, if she did, they’d know she was awake. They’d prod and poke her and run tests and ask questions.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear,” the nurse said, in that way nurses do—a practiced and insincere sympathy. “The loss of a mother can have devastating effects.”

  “Well, that’s only part of it,” Jiji continued.

  Don’t, Rey thought.

  “Rey and her mum hadn’t spoken in a long time.”

  Damn you, Jiji.

  “They fell out a few years ago,” Jiji continued. “Rey was pregnant. Married a guy from Eastern Europe. The love of her life, I’m telling ya. Erik. She would ‘ave walked in front of traffic for ‘im.”

  That much was true. Rey would have. He had been everything to her. She’d met him in a hotel lobby in Bucharest while at a conference. He’d waltzed into Rey’s life with his green eyes and black hair. One coffee later, she’d learned he’d been through a lot of tragedy, just as she had. He’d had no one, just like her. The connection had been powerful and instant, overriding all defenses and logic. Rey had been powerless. She’d thought love at first sight was for morons. Idiots who fell for someone over the internet. But there it was—a thorn in her logical side. He’d managed to tap the last vein of idealistic sap that ran through the deadwood that made up Rey’s body. The hope that one day she would know what love was. And unlike Michael, who was so middle class, and therefore never going to be able to understand Rey’s past, Erik would be able to.

  Their romance had been one from afar. He’d still lived in Romania while Rey was in the UK, and he couldn’t stay in England for long at each visit. Romania
wasn’t part of the EU. When his mother—his only family—had died of an aneurism, Rey had insisted he come live with her. To ensure he could stay with her, they’d been married. A small wedding just him, her, and two witnesses. Because that’s all she’d needed. That marriage was supposed to stick. After fucking up with Michael, it had been her chance to do right. To come back to the light.

  It had only driven her further into the dark.

  Rey and Erik had talked about children early on and, while previously Rey had been vehemently against the idea, something within her had stirred. Maybe guilt for Michael. Maybe her mistake had been to say no to children, and so this time she would say yes. Maybe she’d just loved Erik so much. So, not only had Rey agreed, she’d gone through with it. The baby growing inside had been a boy. They were to call him Constantine.

  “But he changed his mind,” Jiji continued. “He didn’t want the kid anymore. Said he needed freedom to do something now he was in the UK. Pressured Rey into an abortion. A real late one, too. Had to go for a D ‘n’ C. Told her she wouldn’t make a good mum anyway, on account of her abusive dad, yano?”

  A tear slipped from the corner of Rey’s eye, tracking a wet path down her temple. Fuck you, Jiji. The tear was for Constantine and Rey alone. She could only hope no one saw. No questions. No sighs. No platitudes.

  “That must have been traumatic,” the nurse said.

  “Yeah. Rey reached out to her mum but was told she couldn’t help. She said Rey needed professional help, yano? That wrecked her. They didn’t speak for years. Rey got divorced about a year later. Then, a few weeks ago, her mom died. No one told Rey it was coming. Breast cancer. She only found out because of Facebook.”

  Instagram, actually, Rey thought.

  She hadn’t even been invited to the funeral. Rey had gone anyway. Loitering at the back, she had watched Damien and Riley opine their mother’s virtues and sing her praises as a brave woman who fought against their father’s tyranny. Those things were true, but her mother hadn’t done it alone. Rey had spent countless hours at her mother’s side. Calming her after the latest assault. She’d sat with her mom, drinking cheap coffee, and discussed the financial situation and scheme on how to afford school uniforms or other things the family needed while Joe frittered money on useless Star Trek memorabilia. She’d even stood between Joe and her mother and taken a strike to the head instead—all in the name of love and protection. Yet, at the funeral, Rey’s name and contributions were forgotten. She was the outcast. The one who had left.