Birth of a Monster

by Daniel Lawlis

  He had personally led a crack group of tough patrolmen to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s house to turn it inside out. He suspected he had been behind the attacks, though without getting his fingers dirty lighting the match. It all made sense to Hoffstedt. Mr. Hoffmeyer had been losing market share to the point of becoming irrelevant. What better way to get rid of his competition than by burning down the police station, getting a martial law response, and paying for the police to go after Mr. Brass and hunt him down?

  After all, Mr. Hoffmeyer’s name had been kept under tight wraps for the most part by Chief Benson, whereas every trooper in the city was well aware of Mr. Brass. He would have been the most likely suspect for the police headquarters attack. But Hoffstedt knew better. Mr. Brass had no reason to do that; he was winning the game, and he surely had enough money to pay whatever tribute that crooked old Chief Benson demanded.

  No, Mr. Hoffmeyer was the guy. That was for sure. And as for the late chief’s demise, that had Mr. Hoffmeyer’s paw prints all over it. Who else besides the chief would have suspected an obscure has-been like Mr. Hoffmeyer as the mastermind behind the police station burning?

  Well, maybe no one—except for old Detective Hoffstedt, he answered himself with a smile.

  So, when his house turned out to be empty, Hoffstedt decided he would go for the next best thing—or perhaps the best thing: Mr. Hoffmeyer’s source.

  He had long ago done a little private staking out of the warehouse in plain clothes in spite of the late chief’s instructions, and he knew which warehouse the action was taking place in because he had flashed his badge and greased a few palms late one evening.

  He had been staking out this building now for about a week, warning all of the workers therein every day that if they failed to show up for work at any point before this investigation was completed they would be locked up under suspicion of involvement in the police station burning, and given the martial law situation, they would probably not be seeing daylight anytime soon thereafter.

  It was the look those men gave to the wagon that had just entered that let Hoffstedt know his fish had finally arrived.

  “Good afternoon,” Zelven said.

  “All right, we’ll cut to the chase,” Hoffstedt said. “All four of you punks—hands against the wagon and spread ‘em!”

  Zelven and his associates quickly complied.

  “Would you give me a hand here?” Hoffstedt said irritatedly to his police subordinates, “Or am I gonna have to frisk these rascals all by myself?”

  “Sorry, detective, sir,” one of them said, and all three of them rushed forward to help.

  Hoffstedt began to pat down Zelven’s arms—that was where a lot of punks these days liked to hide their daggers.

  The clothing was rough and unpleasant to the touch, almost like touching a rose bush with nascent thorns too tiny to see, but regrettably large enough to feel.

  “Kasani! What’s the matter? Can’t a punk like you buy a decent shirt?! I’ve patted down bums with more comfortable clothes!”

  As he turned, he noticed his underlings wincing as well, but not daring to voice their complaints, lest they look like softies.

  “Okay, they’re clean. All right, back it up, you porcupines—back it up!” he said angrily . . . and foolishly, since it was they who now had their backs to the wagon, while only he and his men had space to retrocede.

  He and his men seemed to sense this, and they backed away from the men, establishing a safer distance between them.

  “All right, what are you carrying in there? Or should I even waste my time seeing if you’ll tell the truth?!” Hoffstedt exclaimed.

  Zelven calmly handed him the bill of lading stamped by the police officer.

  “Oh, so Fred’s on the take too, huh? Well, that does beat all,” Hoffstedt said.

  “Watch these punks!” Hoffstedt barked while he headed to the back of the wagon.

  He was beginning to feel just a little light-headed, but it didn’t bother him too much. After all, he had one heck of a temper—or so his wife said—and maybe he was letting his emotions run a little too hot on this case.

  He lifted up the back flap of the wagon angrily and looked around. Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling so tight you couldn’t fit a piece of paper in between, but in the front row, middle column, there was a glaring exception, with just a couple of boxes stacked there, leaving the top one at around the height of his chest.

  “What am I gonna find in here? Nails and other hardware, or whatever the hell was written on that phony bill of lading?!” he said with a menacing cackle.

  He pulled out a dagger, though he noticed his hands felt a little numb due to the excitement that comes when you’re about to finally see the fruits of your hard labor, and inserted it into the top of the box and pushed down hard lifting it slightly.

  He repeated this on either side. Eyes greedy, he stuck his fingers underneath both sides.

  He gave one last glance to Zelven.

  “Last chance to confess,” he said.

  Zelven shrugged his shoulders calmly as if confused.

  Hoffstedt lifted up on the lid.

  He saw a brief blur but wasn’t sure what it was until the viper recoiled.

  “Whiiiuuu,” he whistled. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? And you almost bit me, you little son of a bitch!”

  He was getting really mad now and was tempted to run his knife through one of these punks’ stomachs and see if that could elicit a little respect and cooperation.

  “You tryin’ to get me killed?!” he shouted at Zelven.

  “Sorry, sir. There is a connoisseur of rare snakes in Sivingdel, and we were told by our bosses that that particular package was not to be indicated on the bill of lading. Something about customs issues . . . .”

  “Real funny, and it just happened to be placed in the one box an inspector could actually—”

  He stopped himself.

  You need to cool down a little there, Stedtie. That temper of yours is gonna be the death of you.

  He felt downright rotten. He lifted his hand to his neck but felt no pain, which was a relief, but then he realized he really didn’t feel much of anything.

  His legs were beginning to complain that his body was a little too heavy, and as he turned to bark something at his colleagues, he saw one of them keel over and land right on his head without so much as sticking an arm out.

  That seemed to be the cue for his fellow officers to do the same, and they probably couldn’t have done a better job if they had rehearsed it five times.

  He turned towards Zelven.

  “Are you gonna get that snakebite looked at?” Zelven asked calmly, handing the detective a mirror.

  When he saw the side of his neck had a bulge about the size of a large apple, he shrieked in terror.

  “Velia rarely misses,” Zelven said calmly.

  Hoffstedt’s fury had been replaced by fear of a far greater intensity.

  He tried to say, Help me! but he had already lost control of his tongue and vocal chords. He toppled over face first onto the ground, splitting his head open. Foam flowed out of his mouth, and his heart ground to a halt.

  “That was an unfortunate thing to see,” Zelven said calmly to the workers, who stood gazing in frozen horror.

  Zelven pulled a knife out of each sleeve, and his throws were immediately echoed by those of his companions. A mere three seconds later, each worker had a knife sticking out of his heart or throat.

  Two minutes later they were all placed within a secret compartment underneath the wagon.

  Twelve minutes later, mops and special cleaning fluid had washed away all the blood.

  Before they exited the premises, Zelven went to go check on Velia. His mood was greatly improved by the fact something had broken the monotony of the last several months.

  He gave a special knock to the box and then opened it carefully. Even he had to be a little careful with Velia.

>   She tried to strike at him, but he easily moved to the side and grabbed her neck.

  “Easy there, girl,” he said softly, pulling out a small vial of milk, which Velia began lapping up.

  “Now that’s more like it,” he said.

  They passed no checkpoints on the way out, and within an hour they were in the countryside.

  Chapter 49

  “And for these reasons, I hereby present to you The Two for Two Act,” Senator Hutherton said boldly, standing before his fellow senators.

  “The message must be unequivocal. You murder two of our agents, we don’t just replace them. We send a flood of two hundred more into the ranks of these cowardly drug peddlers!”

  That was the end of a ten-minute speech, before which the surviving widows of Benjamin and Willis had appeared before the senate, to plead, tears in their eyes, for Benjamin and Willis’s sacrifice not to have been in vain.

  After that, a moving speech by several NDP agents had been made, describing how understaffed they were for the challenge lying before them.

  Once these emotional stimuli had exited the senate and the debating began, it was soon revealed that the only opposition was due to the unavoidable tax increase.

  When it was Senator Hutherton’s turn to speak, he boldly exclaimed, “This bill shall pass! Tonight at 7 p.m., the widows will be giving a speech on the steps of the senate before a large crowd of journalists and concerned citizens, and they shall publicly read the name of every senator who voted in favor of acquiescing to the drug peddlers! The tax increase will be minimal. The cost of voting against this bill will be your senate seat!”

  Hutherton, though still technically a junior senator, had been enjoying a rise in his standing amongst his colleagues. Not many people his age could boast having successfully sponsored two major pieces of legislation, and nearly everyone in the room knew that this would be his third.

  An hour of spiritless debate ensued, and then the vote was made. Only Senator Megders voted against the bill, saying, “To fund an agency whose sole mandate is the enforcement of a manifestly unconstitutional law is shameful. To increase its ranks nearly fourfold, due to the loss of two agents, is outrageous.”

  He was booed and hissed at so loudly, he wondered whether he would make it out of the senate in one piece.

  The Two for Two Act was signed into law that evening in front of a crowd of around ten thousand, whose eyes had largely been peeled to the sensational stories about bloodshed and corruption in Sivingdel that cast a dark shadow over the national name.

  A more muscular response was the answer.

  The End of Birth of a Monster

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