Monster's Dream

by P. K. Abbot

  I have escaped my pursuers for years, but he wants to match wits with me. I can hardly believe it.

  Does he think he’s my equal?

  He’s a sorry excuse for a cop. He’s never even worked in homicide. He was a vice cop who arrested hookers. He’s no more than a bottom feeder. But he couldn’t keep even that worthless job. His heart is dying. He’s broken – a tinman – and yet he thinks he can catch me. He’s such a fool. He thinks he can outwit me, but he’s out of his depth and doesn’t know it. He’s ignorant – no match for me.

  He should show respect for me, but he doesn’t, and his disrespect is insulting to me.

  I can feel my blood pulsing through my neck now – anger rising in my veins. He needs to pay for his disrespect. He needs to be brought down. I’ll find a way to make him pay. I’ll find a way to make them all pay.

  Chapter 13

  Riley was coming out of the deepest sleep, conscious of the noise disturbing his peace. Thunder, he thought, coming up from the south with the coastal storm. But it was more than that. There was the rhythmic pounding coming from his front door.

  “Riley!” he heard. It was Ginny calling as loud as she could.

  Still groggy with sleep, Riley bolted out of bed and ran to the front door. He yanked open the door and found Ginny out of breath and about to pound on his door again.

  “What’s wrong?” Riley asked.

  “Pete just called. He needs to see you right away.”

  “Pete who?”

  “My son Pete, the state police detective.”

  Riley looked at the clock on the wall and turned back to Ginny. “It’s not even 8 o’clock yet,” Riley said.

  “I’m sorry, Riley, but he was very insistent. He needs to see you right away.”

  “And where is he?”

  “He called from the beach at the end of our street.”

  It was a strange place to meet. Riley had an unsettling feeling that this was not at all good. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get there right away.”

  Riley closed the door and went back to his room to dress. He putlled a light T-shirt over his head, slipped into his jeans and sneakers, and headed out the door to meet Pete Mueller.

  Once on the street, Riley was sorry that he hadn’t brought a windbreaker with him. With the approaching storm, the temperature had dropped sharply. Chilly and raw, it felt more like November than the middle of summer. The sky had turned dark and foreboding, and the thunder was coming closer as the storm approach from the south.

  At the end of the street, the lights of three state police cruisers flashed. Yellow police tape blocked the entrance to the beach, and a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered there.

  Riley pushed through the group of people and walked up to the massive state trooper who was guarding the entrance to the beach.

  “Pete Mueller asked to see me,” Riley said to the trooper.

  “You’re Riley?” the trooper asked.

  “Yes. I’m Riley.”

  The trooper lifted the police tape so that Riley could duck under it. “He’s over there.” The trooper tilted his head toward a knot of state police standing in front of an SUV parked on the beach.

  “I’ve never met him before. Which one is he?” Riley asked.

  “He’s the tallest one there, the only one with the sergeant stripes.”

  “Thanks.” Riley replied. Then he padded over the soft sand to find Mueller.

  Riley spotted Mueller from a distance. He was a nice looking man in his mid-thirties, with curly brown hair and brownish-hazel eyes, but he had a serious, no-nonsense air about him.

  From the corner of his eye, Mueller saw Riley approach. He turned and walked toward him.

  “Raphael Riley?” Mueller asked.

  “Just Riley, please.” Riley held out his hand to Mueller.

  “Pete,” Mueller said, as he took his hand without smiling.

  “What’s going on, Pete?”

  “A jogger found a woman’s body here this morning. She’d been murdered. It’s a very strange crime scene though.”

  “What you mean by strange, Pete?”

  “The body had been dumped here, but there are no tracks on the beach for a quarter-mile in either direction. No vehicle tracks. No footprints, other than the jogger’s. So, the body must been dumped at high tide from a boat on the ocean. But, the boat had to be very small in order to dump the body so high up on the beach.”

  “Why do you want to see me?” Riley asked.

  “We think you may know the victim.”

  Riley felt his pulse and his breathing start to race. His skin felt clammy, and he had a sinking feeling of foreboding in the pit of his stomach.

  “Who is she?” Riley asked.

  “Come on,” Mueller replied. He signaled Riley to follow him, as he walked around the SUV and approached a woman who was sitting on a folding chair and frowning as she dictated into a recorder. Mueller waited until she had finished her dictation before he spoke to her.

  “Dr. Ritter, this is Detective Raphael Riley,” Mueller said, mispronouncing Riley’s first name. “And this is Dr. Ritter, our medical examiner.”

  “It’s actually RAY-feel,” Riley said as he smiled at her and offered his hand. “But my friends just call me Riley, Dr. Ritter.”

  She was a very attractive, petite woman in her early forties with ash blonde hair. Her lively, bluish gray eyes sparkled as she shook his hand and said, “And please call me Susie.”

  As they shook hands, Riley could see that she had a metal cane in her lap and wore a 3-inch block of wood attached to the bottom of her right shoe.

  Suddenly her expression turned grim. She clasped his hand and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Riley.”

  Riley looked puzzled. Mueller interrupted them and said, “Susie, we haven’t gone into that yet with Detective Riley.”

  She turned to Riley and said, “We have reason to believe that you may know the victim, Riley. Would you mind viewing the body and letting us know if you can identify the deceased?”

  Riley was in a cold sweat. He simply nodded and said, “Sure.”

  “Let’s view the body then, shall we?” she said. Dr. Ritter placed her left hand against the arm of the chair and pushed the end of her cane against the sand as she struggled to rise from the chair.

  Mueller came over to her. “Let me help you,” he said. She nodded to him and held onto his upper arm as they walked over the soft sand toward the corpse. Mueller signaled one of the troopers to draw back the tarp that covered the victim.

  The body was partially submerged, resting on the edge of the shallow tidal pool that remained when the ocean retreated at low tide. Every hint of life, warmth, and blood had left the woman’s body. Her skin was the color of cold, lifeless marble, and her lips were a deep purple.

  Riley could not stop staring at her. The killer had sliced open her abdomen, cutting her from her sternum to her pubic area. Her organs had pushed through the cut and were protruding into the water of the tidal pool. Mueller reached over and picked up a juvenile crab which had come out of the water to feed on her. He flung it away from the body.

  Riley stared at the woman’s face and, behind her lifeless features, he did recognize her.

  His heart started racing. He could not catch his breath. Then his vision went dark, and he fell to his knees. He felt the sharp pinch his chest. Then he felt it again. They were the moderate electric pulses that his defibrillator sent to his heart to get it back into rhythm before it went into ventricular fibrillation. Before the device would send a major electric shock to his heart.

  Riley’s pulse slowed, and his breathing steadied. He was still lightheaded, but his vision started to clear.

  Mueller rushed over to him and helped Riley get back on his feet. “Are you okay, Riley? Mueller asked him.

  Riley was pale but nodded to him. “I’ll be okay. I have problems with arrhythmia. Seeing the body brought it on, but I’ll recover.”

  Dr. Ritter stared at
him with the practiced eye of the physician. She looked sad when she spoke to him. “I’m sorry to have caused your episode, Riley, but we have no idea who the victim is. Do you recognize this young woman?”

  “I do,” Riley sighed. “She’s an acquaintance of mine. Her name is Yuliya – Yuliya Novak.”

  “I see,” Dr. Ritter replied. She frowned and stared out into the ocean for a moment. The leading edge of the storm had now moved over them, and it had started to pelt them with a cold drizzle. Dr. Ritter looked up into the sky and then turned back to Riley. “We need to continue this conversation. Shall we sit inside the SUV for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” Riley replied.

  She turned away from Riley. With her free hand she grasped Mueller’s forearm and hobbled over the soft sand toward the SUV.

  “Susie,” Riley called out.

  She stopped walking and turned back to face Riley. “Yes?” she asked.

  “If you had no idea who your victim was, why did you think that I knew her?”

  Dr. Ritter’s expression turned very grim. “When we first came upon Ms. Novak’s body,” she said, “her mouth was taped shut. After we removed the tape, we examined the inside of her mouth and found this, tucked against her cheek.”

  She reached into the briefcase that she was carrying. She extracted a clear plastic evidence bag and held it a few inches from Riley’s face.

  Riley stared at the item and turned pale. It was his business card, the one he gave to Yuliya on the first night they had met.

  Dr. Ritter watched his reaction and then spoke to him. “I’d say that the killer is sending you an intensely personal message, Detective Riley.”

  Chapter 14

  The cold drizzle had turned into a drenching rain by the time they got to the SUV. Mueller helped Dr. Ritter into the front passenger seat and then rushed around to the driver’s side. Riley climbed into the center seat of the row behind them.

  Riley had tears in his eyes when he looked at Dr. Ritter and said, “Yuliya is dead because of me, isn’t she, Doc?”

  “You don’t know that, Riley.”

  “But my business card. You found my business card in her mouth.”

  “She’s not dead because of you, Riley. She’s dead because there’s a monster out there, and we need to catch him.”

  Mueller turned around and stared hard at Riley before he spoke. “The way the killer cut her up, it was intensely personal. He was consumed with rage. Can you think of anyone who’s capable of doing this to her?”

  Riley stared down at his hands for a long moment. Then he looked up at Mueller. “Yeah, maybe,” he said.” I can think of someone.”

  “Well?” Mueller said.

  “I’m not 100% sure, but there is someone who’s done something like this before.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Mueller asked.

  “Let me tell you this story. A few days ago, your dad took me and three others out on his boat. We were going for blues, but one of the guys baited a second line for sharks. He caught one – a shark. But when he got it on board, your dad saw that it was a juvenile and undersized. Your dad made him throw it back. The guy was really pissed. He released the shark, but before he did…” Riley paused and looked away for a few moments. “…but before he threw it back, he plunged a knife into its belly and sliced it open – just like the killer did to Yuliya.”

  Mueller and Ritter were deathly quiet.

  “But I’m not sure he’s the killer,” Riley went on. “You can’t imagine how cruel he is, but…”

  “But what?” Mueller asked.

  “But he’s a cop – a homicide detective with the Atlantic City Police Department. His name is Nick Wolfson.”

  The color drained from Mueller’s face. He and Dr. Ritter stared at each other until she finally turned to Riley and asked, “Yuliya Novak was the mother of Aleksander Novak, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I performed the autopsy on Aleksander. The state police became involved when his missing person’s case turned into a murder investigation. Of all the boys who have gone missing in Atlantic City,” she went on, “Aleksander is the first one whose body we recovered. – Or so we thought.”

  “What do you mean by ‘or so we thought’?” Riley asked.

  “Aleksander’s autopsy tied his abduction and murder to another case. We never imagined there was a link,” she said, “because the cases are so dissimilar.

  “How are they dissimilar?” Riley wanted to know.

  “Aleksander Novak and the dozens of missing boys in Atlantic City fit one profile: non-white victims, young boys from the lower socio-economic classes, who were taken one at a time. The other case involved an eight-year-old boy named Michael Adams. Although we recovered Michael’s body, we never made the connection with the abductions in Atlantic City, because Michael was white, from a wealthy, upper-middle-class family, and he was abducted along with his twin sister ten years ago.”

  “Ten years ago?” Riley’s face flushed and he grew louder as he spoke. “Do you mean to say that for all of those years, no one ever connected these abductions to Michael’s murder? Not once in the ten years before Aleksander was murdered? Not once before Yuliya was butchered?”

  “I’m sorry, Riley,” she said, “but there was no way that we could have known that the Adams’s case was linked to the Atlantic City abductions. After Michael Adams’s murder, not one body had been recovered. Not until Aleksander Novak.”

  She turned away from Riley and looked through her window, past the driving rain, and stared at the grey ocean for nearly a minute. When she turned back to Riley, there were tears in her eyes and her voice quavered. “My wife and I have two little boys at home, the same ages as Michael and Aleksander were. I have performed hundreds of autopsies, but none has affected me to this degree. The killer was unspeakably cruel to this little boy.” Her hands were trembling as she held them in front of her.

  “I’m sorry, Doc,” Riley said.

  She sighed, then nodded and went on. “Aleksander’s autopsy revealed the similarities between the two cases. Both boys had their eyeteeth removed shortly before death. Both boys had been sodomized, and each had numerous small bones fractured in his hands and feet at the time of death.”

  “They had been tortured?” Riley said.

  She nodded and wiped a tear from her face as she continued. “And each boy appears to have been strangled twice before being killed. Perimortem bruising indicates that the killer had choked each boy with his hands before death. Both boys were strangled again with a device – perhaps a belt or a type of garotte. This device crushed each boy’s larynx and caused his death by asphyxiation.” She stared directly at Riley now. “There’s no doubt about it. There are just too many similarities,” she said. “It’s the same killer.”

  “And it’s been going on for ten years,” Riley said.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she sighed.

  Mueller opened a file from his briefcase and removed a photograph. He passed the photo to Riley. “This is Michael and Angela Adams, shortly before their abduction.”

  Riley looked to the photograph. Michael and Angela were standing side-by-side, staring into the camera. They were both frowning, and their eyes were the palest blue – the color of ice – cold and dead.

  “They look forlorn,” Riley said, “It’s as if they had a premonition of what was to come.”

  Mueller and Dr. Ritter looked at each other. Then Mueller turned to Riley and said, “You shouldn’t project your prejudices onto the evidence.”

  “What are you talking about?” Riley asked.

  Dr. Ritter gave Riley a weak smile. “What Pete is saying is that there are other considerations about which you are not aware.”

  “Like what?”

  “Michael’s autopsy revealed numerous bone fractures. Fractures that had healed months and years earlier. His autopsy revealed years of abuse. So, you’re likely not looking at two children with a premonition. Y
ou’re looking at two kids who had been living in their private hell for years.”

  “Damn,” Riley said. “Did they ever prosecute the parents?”

  “They never got the opportunity,” Mueller replied. “The autopsy findings were leaked to the press – probably by someone in the Atlantic City Police Department. The parents couldn’t withstand the public backlash. Two days after the leak, they locked themselves in their garage and turned on their car. They committed suicide.”

  “But there was still a killer out there,” Riley said. “What happened to the case?”

  Mueller shook his head and laughed to himself. “They solved the case, Riley.”

  “How?”

  “They received an anonymous tip that a man named Baptiste had abducted the children. Baptiste was a Haitian immigrant and the family’s chauffeur. He was the last person to see the children before they were abducted.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “No. When they tried to arrest him, there was a gunfight, and the arresting officer killed Baptiste. At that point they had enough to close the case.”

  “But Baptiste was not the killer.

  “No, Riley,” Mueller said. “Baptiste was not the killer. And the gun which he is alleged to have used in the shootout was not his. It had come from the evidence lockup of the ACPD.”

  The color drained from Riley’s face. “The gun was a plant. One of the cops set up Baptiste.”

  Mueller nodded. “If a cop is involved, it’s extremely perilous for you, Riley. No one can be trusted any longer. He murdered Baptiste and Yulia. And now he’s sending you this grisly message. You’re not safe, Riley.”

  Riley turned very pale. “Who was the arresting officer on the Baptiste case?” he asked.

  Mueller riffled through the report. He turned toward Riley with a grim expression and said, “The arresting officer was Detective Nick Wolfson.”

  Chapter 15

  By the time Mueller dropped Riley at the motel, it had stopped raining, and the storm was moving up the coast away from Wildwood. Nathaniel had been nagging Céline all day to take him crabbing. When she finally lost patience with the boy, Jack stepped in and offered to take him crabbing on the bay.