The Three Monkeys, a Carter A. Johnson & Kate Menke Thriller

by Robert Schobernd

  Liars. So many of the office holders of both major parties were blatant liars. They stifled the truth with politically correct terms that softened and diffused the impact truthful statements would carry. How can there be truthful discourse if neither side is encouraged to be truthful? As President George H.W. Bush said, "The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits." Paul asked himself many times what was wrong with the unvarnished truth. All of the abundant P.C. crap had given the country the majority of issues that were now tearing it apart at the seams. It had to stop, and he was proud to lead the charge to turn those events around before the progressive liberal socialist agenda destroyed his country.

  They stepped out of the St. Louis Gateway Station and walked four blocks east before flagging down a taxi. At nine, the air was still too warm and humid. The train's arrival was half an hour late, but in another ten minutes they were home. Anastasia had four days off, and therefore her ingrained nosiness would not be a concern. They had been close for several years after he'd gotten rid of his nagging wife. But slowly she began making subtle demands, acting possessive much like the detached former wife. Just as slowly as she'd been allowed to rise to a role above servant, he pushed her away until her duties relegated her back to managing domestic chores instead of making frequent trips to his bed. He hated to do that; she was a willing and creative sex partner. He suspected that cleaning up behind the other women he'd entertained over the years had antagonized Anastasia as much or more than his gradual rejection of her sexual favors. That was likely why she moved out of his home to her own lodging. She might have extricated herself from him years before were it not for the generous pay she received. He smirked noticeably. The lump sum bonus for testifying against Eunice was worth every penny she had siphoned from him. In addition, he had on occasion reminded her that she was in the country illegally when she had the audacity to challenge him. Lately, she’d not dared to step above her station in life as his undocumented employee.

  She was still a good-looking woman. He might consider reinstating her role as house whore and pick up where they'd left off years ago. If she refused, he could still turn her over to the immigration authorities and replace her with a younger illegal submissive. He frowned in deep thought. It would be best to leave that situation alone. Anastasia was too engrained in the details of his life and the house's workings to turn her over to the authorities. Who knew what information her snooping and prying could have unearthed? He would, of necessity, have to be more diligent in setting traps to learn the extent of her sneaking to rifle through his documents.

  They’d had their dinner on the train, so he proceeded right to work. The friendly mongrel Johnny had snatched off the street in a western residential neighborhood was surely hungry again. Paul mixed half of a Halcion sleeping pill into a quarter-pound of raw hamburger and fed the dog. An hour later the black and white mutt was sound asleep. It had taken longer than he'd anticipated and he'd need to hurry to stay on schedule. He carried the twenty-pound mutt from the cage to the work table. Strapping it down like the humans was impossible, but he was able to use the same apparatus with spacers beside its head to hold it steady. The rebar rod had been cut to twelve inches, shorter than those used on the humans. In hurried minutes, he was ready. The rod was placed on the sacrificial animal's forehead between its closed eyes and angled toward its brain. Paul drew back his left arm and gripped the two-pound, short-handled sledgehammer tightly. The first blow went through the frontal bone; the dog moaned lightly, its eyes popped open groggily, and its body quivered fitfully in its drug induced sleep. Then it slowly relaxed as shock set in and its life drained away. It took another hard hammer blow for the death instrument to mush the brain and penetrate through the rear portion of the skull. He was sure the dog was dead because the bloody rod stuck three inches through the back of the skull. The canine was taken from the killing table and deposited in a large, shallow aluminum pan. While the dead animal bled out, he finished the final preparations.

  Hours later, the temperature had cooled ten degrees, but the high humidity still felt oppressive. Johnny trotted down the alley behind J&M Investigations carrying two heavy duty plastic bags. One bag was large and heavy, the other smaller and somewhat lighter. His clothing, shoes and watch cap were black. Brown cloth gloves covered his hands and prevented leaving fingerprints. He placed the larger bag at the corner of the garage near the detective's entrance door. At the aluminum storm door on the back of the building, he removed an 18-volt battery drill from the smaller bag. He drilled five holes in the metal door and through the aluminum door frame on the side that opened. A screwdriver bit replaced the drill bit. Five wood screws three inches long were screwed tightly into the wood frame to prevent the door from opening. He was amazed at the ideas Grandpa came up with.

  At the walk-in door to the garage, Johnny removed a steel pry bar from the small bag and jammed it between the door and the door frame at the deadbolt lock. In seconds, he felt the frame splinter. He moved the pry bar to the entry lock set and worked it. The loudness of ripping wood surprised him. He glanced over his shoulder then moved the pry bar back to the deadbolt and pushed and tugged until the door popped open. Grandpa had warned him the alarm would likely sound inside the detectives’ apartment before the door was forced fully open, and he would have to move fast from this point on to have time to escape. With the larger, heavier bag in hand, he scurried into the garage.

  The driver’s door on the white Escalade was unlocked. Johnny leaned over the seat and dumped the bloody dog carcass from the large plastic bag. It flopped in the driver's seat and blood ran from the bag; parts of the dog's hairy body were soaked in its blood. Johnny froze at the gruesome sight displayed under the car's dome light. The air he breathed carried the taste of death and he wanted to gag and throw up. He felt sorry for the dumb animal and his eyes teared. He dropped the bag on the floor carpet. Quickly he repeated Grandpa's instructions: dump the dog, then the bag, make sure the drill and its parts and the pry bar were in the small bag and run like the devil was after him.

  Johnny cleared the doorway and was at the corner of the garage when he saw and heard a large man open the back door of the brick building. Johnny grabbed the plastic bag from the ground. Without hesitation, the man charged the storm door, bounced, and stopped dead in his tracks. Blue pajama bottoms covered the man's legs. Johnny grinned and ran as hard as he could; the grin quickly faded when he realized the man had a gun in his hand. Instinctively, he ducked low and ran as fast as his legs could churn.

  Carter stood momentarily stunned; the damned door wouldn't open. He kicked at the lock and the frame flexed slightly. Kate moved back as he kicked harder at the cross bar where the two glass panels met. It bent but didn't pull loose. The cloaked figure that emerged from the garage squatted before reaching the alley and sprinted to the left. Three more kicks with his house slippers wrecked the door enough for Carter to carefully squeeze through it and run to the alley. A half-block away a white panel van sat at the center of the alley, their thief got in, and the van sped off.

  "Damn it, damn it! God damn it to hell!" Carter yelled.

  Kate laid her hand on Carter's shoulder. "The garage door is open; let's see what was taken." Two second floor lights at apartments across the alley turned on and people moved to their porches to watch the early morning antics of their recently acquired neighbors.

  Carter's Glock was in his right hand. At first glance, he noticed the interior light in the Escalade was on and the driver’s door was open. He leaned around the garage door frame and flipped the light switch to the on position. In the bright light cast by six fluorescent fixtures, nothing appeared out of order. Kate stepped around Carter and rushed to her car, leaned in, and gagged from the s
mell.

  "Oh my God!" she screamed.

  She felt strong hands on her shoulders as Carter pulled her away from the car. He craned his head to see the bloody warning left behind. A vile contempt for the sicko who would torture a dumb animal to make a point made his stomach churn. Tears ran down Kate's cheeks; Carter's strong arm around her shoulders did little to block out the memory of the black and white dog covered in its own dried, brown blood. The image of the rebar protruding from its head made her want to vomit.

  They left the garage before Carter palmed his phone and speed dialed the police station two miles away.

  Kate wiped her eyes and leaned against the back of their building. She was not a dewy-eyed animal lover. Actually, she could take cats, dogs, et cetera or leave them. There could be no peaceful solitude with the critters vying for attention. In her lifestyle, human attention took precedence over lower animals. But that did not leave room for perverts to mutilate and torture dumb animals to death to make a frightening point to others. There was absolutely no justification for what she had just witnessed. She resolved to catch the satanical son of a bitch who would commit such an act.

  Paul sped out of the alley with a hard right turn then drove the speed limit. "How did it go?"

  Johnny was somber. "Good. Just like you said it would." He stared through the dirty windshield as he removed his cap. He was sweaty from the exertion in his long clothing. "That man had a gun in his hand; I could have been shot."

  "That's why you took the precautions you did."

  "He could have shot me through the door. He didn't have to open it and chase me."

  "No, Johnny. Years ago, he was a policeman. He knew he couldn't shoot you without his life being threatened, or he'd be charged with wrongful homicide and he'd go to jail. Especially if he shot you in the back while you were running away and posed no threat."

  Johnny changed the subject. "I don't like what you did to that dog."

  "Neither do I. I'm sorry about that, but it had to be done to frighten those detectives. Now they surely know we mean business."

  "I understand, but I couldn't do that to Louie Louie or any other dog. I like dogs better than most people. I only love you and Anastasia."

  "I know you do. I'll say it again; I appreciate the way you helped me in the basement with those three people we moved to Illinois. It couldn't have been done without your help."

  After a brief period of silence, Johnny spoke, "At night when I try to sleep, I can still hear their soft screams, especially the woman. Do you think some day that will stop?"

  "I don't know, Johnny. I hope so for your sake and for mine also."

  Minutes later, two squad cars parked in the alley with the red and blue lights flashing. Three officers milled about the garage or spoke to Kate and Carter.

  The officer taking their statements agreed the incursion was bold and well-planned. He had never seen or even heard of a storm door being screwed shut to impede the owner from giving chase.

  They went inside and reviewed the file from the security cameras. The officer said, "The way that guy is bundled up there's nothing to see."

  Carter said, "I'll make a copy for you to give to Capt. Davis or Lieutenant Altmon. The man we recorded appears to fit the description of the man who threatened us in a previous incident."

  Outside, another officer joined them. "There's several papers lying beside the dog and more in a plastic bag on the floor. Lieutenant Brandon was here and he said he'd put in a request for the Crime Scene Lab Crew to put this on their schedule for today."

  Two of the officers left. The third would stay onsite to provide security until relieved by the day shift. He stood by the garage smoking a cigarette as Kate handed him a thermos with freshly brewed strong coffee. He nodded, smiled, said, "Thank you," and retreated to his squad car.

  Paul parked the van in its stall in the four-car garage. It had been converted from a carriage house in the mid-nineteen-thirties. Paul's father commissioned an extensive remodeling again in nineteen seventy-three, but retained the period architectural embellishments. Paul had often thought of moving out of the old family home to something smaller and newer. Maintenance costs on the old, three-story, nineteen-room dwelling were staggering. In the end, his addiction to traditional values negated such a drastic change at his age.

  The dash clock showed three thirty-three. They left the garage and walked in deep shadows to the back door of the imposing mansion. In two hours, they would drive Johnny's car to the train station and leave it in the long-term storage lot. A train would leave Gateway Station at six forty a.m. and was scheduled to arrive in Indianapolis at nine forty-six that same morning. Their alibi certainly wasn't ironclad but would suffice in the death of a runaway dog. As he thought about their successful morning exploit, Paul cracked a smile at the sounds of Johnny snoring loudly in the living room. They would each get several hours sleep on the return run to Indianapolis and then retire for a few hours in their hotel suite. Along with the explicit warning to the detectives, he had managed to add another name to the investigators’ list of prime suspects.

  Paul was exhausted, but there was still much to do. He was a staunch believer in the Constitution and revered traditional values. The evil lies blithely spun by local and national leaders sickened him. He and Johnny would draw attention to the national malady of government leaders and people in positions of power and influence spinning the truth to fit and enhance individual and group agendas. The country was going to ruin while the idiot voters of both political parties watched reality TV. What would it take to cause them to care and become informed as the country around them regressed into degradation and ruin?

  He caught himself dozing and stood to walk. Their next victims had been chosen months ago, and that plan would soon be implemented and finalized. Those victims would highlight another aspect of the country’s rapid decline of personal ethics and honesty.

  Chapter Ten

  Two days later, Capt. Davis stopped by the J&M office. She accepted a cup of dark Columbian coffee from Deline and consented to wait ten minutes or so while Kate finished interviewing a prospective client. Minutes later, a matronly woman stormed out in a huff. Deline surmised the potential client meeting didn't end well.

  The detectives and Deline joined Capt. Davis in the large conference room. After a meager period of small talk, Capt. Davis focused on Kate. "The lab crew recovered fingerprints from the brochures left in your car. They belong to Richard Allen Henekes, a member of the Order of White Patriots. All law enforcement agencies in Missouri and Kansas have been notified that he is wanted for questioning." She glanced at her wristwatch. "Tyrell is in Gasconade County this morning. He's taking part in a joint operation with the County Sheriff's department to search the compound of the Order of White Patriots. If Mr. Henekes is found there, he'll be brought back to St. Louis for questioning."

  Carter set his coffee cup on a coaster. "Do you have a description of Henekes?"

  Capt. Davis rummaged in a folder before laying a paper on the table in front of her. "A widower, sixty-six years old, six feet two inches tall, two hundred sixty pounds."

  Carter shook his head. "The man who ran from the garage couldn't have been that old or that heavy. He moved like a high school track star, not an overweight, aging geriatric."

  Kate nodded and quickly added. "I agree."

  After a few seconds of silence, Deline said, "Does it not seem rather strange that the murderer committed several perfect crimes with no clues left behind? Then he carelessly left fingerprints on papers that should not have been in the bag to start with. Does it not feel as if we are being led and fed a high-calorie dose of bullshit?"

  "You may be right," Capt. Davis admitted as she tried to stifle a grin, "but this is the only clue we have and we'll have to follow through with it to discount Henekes or find reason to charge him. Our best information indicates he lives at the Order of White Patriots’ compound." She opened her phone to check the time. "Lieutenant Altmon should be
at the Patriot's compound about now with a warrant to search for Henekes."

  From the radio, Lt. Altmon heard, "Team one, are you in position?" A double click sounded in lieu of a voice transmission. "Team two are you ready?"

  Sergeant Sanders replied, "Yes, we're holding a half-mile from the entrance. We're ready to advance on your okay."

  Captain Vonbrecht cautioned, "Be careful, the operation is a go. Proceed with extreme caution. Team two, advise when the entrance is secured."

  Sergeant Sanders drove the black Cadillac CTS four-door sedan the final half-mile to the White Patriots’ compound entrance. The car slowed, turned right, and parked at the left side of the sixteen-foot-wide single gate that blocked the gravel lane. Guards in camouflaged military garb sat in the shade of old growth hardwood trees as the car stopped.

  Lieutenant Altmon stepped from the passenger side of the car confiscated from a St. Louis drug dealer. Sergeant Sanders exited the driver's side. Tyrell and Maggie approached the gated entrance with trepidation. Both were out of uniform. Tyrell suspected the sight of a black man with a younger, pretty white woman in an expensive automobile wouldn't go over well with the two scruffy rednecks. The older men cradling assault rifles stood and peered with visible animosity at them from muted shadows.

  As he moved around the front of the sedan, Tyrell said, "Need help, we're lost."

  The Patriot with a six-inch-long scraggly beard laughed. "The hell you are. You got no business being out here, nigger. Go back to the city slums while you can."