Birth of a Monster (15 page)

He made it but barely. His boots
weren’t exactly ideal for vertical leaps. Nonetheless, as soon as
his fingertips latched onto the surface, he did a pull-up so
effortlessly that he catapulted himself onto the top
surface.

He quickly jumped down and began
sprinting towards the mayor, who had almost made it to the front
door.

Righty reached him just when the mayor
was beginning to turn the door handle. A hard right cross to the
back of the neck put him into a sleep from which he would never
wake.

“It’s nothing personal, Mr. Mayor, just
tying up a few loose ends,” Righty muttered.

He pulled out a mangy looking dagger he
had purchased from Tats last night, cut the mayor’s throat, and
then stuck it deep into his back with the following note
attached:

Its alwas smart tu pa yur
dets!!

He began running towards the backyard,
hoping Harold was watching and would anticipate his movements, and
also hoping he wouldn’t run into an eyewitness or a growling
dog.

For what seemed like the first time in
a while, luck was on his side, and he found Harold prostrate as he
turned the corner of the house.

He jumped on his back, and they were
hundreds of feet in the air before Righty could blink more than a
few times. But as he turned back it looked like a small cluster of
moving lanterns were in the general vicinity of the blood-stained
coach.

“We just need word on that one last
job, and we can call it a night!” Righty said to Harold.

Chapter 27

Twigs hadn’t exactly been Tats’ first
choice for participation in the nearly suicidal mission of chaining
the main police station’s doors shut in broad daylight in
anticipation of a violent gang leader doing some unknown, but
predictably violent, act. But precisely because of the nature of
that mission, volunteers had been a bit scarce.

Twigs had been hoping to earn a better
nickname—his skinny appendages being the inspiration for his
current appellation—and he had also seen the murderous threat in
Tats’ eyes that many had failed to see that night and who had paid
with their blood for their lack of perspicuity.

But he knew he was in a fix now. He
would hang for sure. His skinny little frame should have enabled
him to wiggle out of the police officer’s grip like a piece of
spaghetti escaping the fork seeking to ensnare it, but, alas, the
officer’s grip had been firm and unyielding, and he believed,
rightly, that he had been the only soul so unfortunate as to be
captured. He had seen most of his compatriots escaping into the
anonymity of the crowd, which was bedazzled by the fireworks
display put on the by the incineration of the Sivingdel Police
Station.

He supposed he would have to cooperate.
There was no way he could save his scrawny little neck otherwise.
He would rather take his chances disappearing into some other city
than facing a bunch of stern-faced judges who could make him alone
bear the government’s wrath for the horrible crime.

But he knew things. He knew where
several of Tats’ mansions were. He knew what Mr. Brass looked like,
having seen him back in the old days at the junkyard. And he
suspected that just maybe, if he could convince the police that a
dozen or two necks are more fun to stretch than just one, he just
might be a free man in a short time.

But he knew he would have to disappear
and fast. He didn’t want Mr. Brass’s terrifying eyes to be the last
thing he saw on some dark night.

As he contemplated his gloomy scenario,
he heard the soft fluttering of wings.

Some tiny bird had deigned to share
company with him in this dingy cell.

The bird looked at him from the base of
his bed, on which it had alighted, and cocked its head in a
friendly manner.

“Come here, little birdie. I won’t hurt
you.”

He then tickled the bird lightly with
his bare toes.

He wasn’t sure if it was the shifting
of the moon, or whether a cloud had unveiled an erstwhile hidden
portion of the moon’s glow, but he suddenly saw what looked like a
small needle extending from the bird’s beak.

Before he could contemplate the matter
further, he felt a sharp sting in the big toe on his right
foot.

“OWWWWWW!!!” he screamed, making the
cell reverberate thunderously.

He bent forward to grasp the injured
area and saw it was puffy and red, and its swelling was expanding
rapidly.

He screamed and screamed, but no
footsteps at the makeshift jail came stomping along to his
rescue.

The guards had been warned by the mayor
not to approach the cell under any circumstances until he arrived,
since the prisoner might lure the guards into a trap. The mayor was
going to arrive “with a special team,” he had promised.

Twigs began to feel light-headed as the
poison coursed through his veins. Finally, sleep offered him a
respite, and he accepted it willingly.

About twenty minutes later, the same
bird alighted on his chest and cocked its head towards his heart
and then towards his nose. Satisfied, it left the room quickly
through the small, barred window.

When Righty got the news, he told
Harold somberly, “It’s been a bloody night. I need to bathe both my
body and my soul.”

Harold took him to a lake high in the
mountains, where Righty cleaned the blood off of his body. He felt
far more soiled on the inside, however, than ever
before.

“Can I ask you one more favor, Harold?”
Righty said, realizing that, if Harold had his limits of loyalty,
he was exploring the outer limits.

“I’ll deliver the package to Sodorf,”
Harold said calmly. “It’s on the way towards bringing you home,” he
added with a smile.

Harold had hidden the package in the
woods last night while Righty slept in the cabin.

He made a quick detour, picked it up,
and dropped Righty off at his home.

As Righty approached his home at around
11 p.m., he was glad for what seemed like the first time in ages to
be approaching a doorway without murder in his heart.

But he knew that whether he got any
serious furlough from murder and mayhem would depend on tomorrow’s
headlines, the government’s response, and what kinds of things he
found when he began perusing the late Chief Benson’s personal files
with the scrutiny of a microbiologist.

“It’s me, babe,” he said, entering the
home.

The baby began to cry.

“Shhhhhhh,” he said softly as he picked
Heather up, and to his surprise, once again her presence in his
arms gave his soul the purifying bath that water and soap never
could.

Though she pretended to sleep, Janie
looked at her husband out of narrow slits, her heart warmed by the
genuine love she could feel emanating from Richie whenever he was
around their baby.

When he slid into bed beside her a
half-hour later, she grabbed his right hand and laced her fingers
with his. That hand had done some very violent things, but now it
gently caressed her fingers.

Chapter 28

Righty’s formal academic career had
ended with high school, but from time to time he had heard of the
crushing stress those in the medical, legal, and accounting fields
experienced when they awaited the results of their licensing
examination.

The answer came in the form of a
letter, and from what he had heard, the first line of the letter
would either send the reader into an incomparable state of bliss or
into an equally intense state of despair. Those in the former
category would contemplate the bright future and moneymaking
prospects ahead of them. Those in the latter would meditate upon
approaching their friends and family with the shameful news—that
years of study and many a pretty falon had been expended in vain on
the poor soul’s insufficiently sharp mind.

Righty supposed that, if he were free
to discuss his violent past couple of nights with a licensed
professional, perhaps he would concede that Righty indeed knew
exactly what it felt like to know that the direction of one’s
future—namely, up or down—depended upon the contents of a sentence
or two that he would be reading shortly.

As Righty set off towards Sivingdel on
Harold’s back, ready to start buying one newspaper after another,
his stomach churned. Either he was going to have to take Janie and
the baby and hightail it out of Ringsetter like thieves in the
night, or he would see the prospect of peaceful times ahead, which
would involve a very cozy alliance with the new mayor and chief of
police.

Harold set Righty down in the city
park, and as he tipped his hat confidently at a passing officer,
the policeman warned him, “Careful, sir; there’s a maniac on the
loose in these woods.”

“Well, I can get awful cranky if
someone interrupts my afternoon walk, so he had better steer clear
of me,” Righty said, affecting a laugh.

The officer smiled and continued on his
way.

Righty took a coach to the city square,
where most of the newspapers were available, and picked up the
first one he saw, which was written by The Sivingdel
Gazette:

TERROR ARRIVES!

“The increasingly infamous Mr. Brass is
the police’s top suspect in the cold-blooded arson and murder that
rocked our city’s foundation to the core yesterday. Rumor has it
that the elusive underworld figure was arrested not too long ago
and destroyed the police station in a callous act of
revenge.”

Righty put the newspaper back and went
to another.

It had similar content. And so did
several others.

He gulped as he approached the
newspaper stand for The Sivingdel Times. He didn’t want to kill
anyone tonight . . . or ever again for that matter. But a promise
was a promise.

An excellent sketch of the fire at its
zenith was engraved at the top of the paper.

SHAME ON YOU, MR. MAYOR!!

Righty, a bit flabbergasted, quickly
paid for the paper and searched for a place he could sit down and
read calmly.

“Mayor Roverdile, long known for his
nefarious underworld ties, has not only crossed the line this time
but left it a mile behind. Unimpeachable sources inside our city’s
police department have informed The Sivingdel Times that the late
Chief Lloyd Benson was engaged in a no-holds-barred investigation
of the crooked mayor for embezzlement, bribery, malfeasance, and
other serious felonies related to his ties with organized
crime.

“Sources say ‘an indictment was a
foregone conclusion,’ but the mayor had other plans and ordered his
underworld contacts to smuggle a large amount of dynamite and
flammable materials into the police station so that the
investigation would ‘go up in smoke.’

“Thoroughness cannot be denied the
mayor, however. In a crime matching the mayor’s modus operandi in
the Sivingdel Police Station burning ‘to the t,’ it has been
discovered that Chief Benson’s home was burned to the ground the
night before the police station attack. Sources close to the
investigation say ‘this was the clear work of hired
professionals.’

“Two of the chief’s three dogs were
found groggy but very much alive, with two gnawed pieces of steak
located near the fence. The dogs whimpered when shown the steak,
leaving no doubt it caused them to fall asleep at their
posts.

“Both the chief’s and an as-of-yet
unidentified person’s decapitated remains were found in the rubble,
showing that whoever did this intended to make sure the job was
done without surviving eyewitnesses.

“In a cynical game of smoke and
mirrors, the mayor has been blaming the police station burning on
organized crime, but what is clear now is that, regardless of who
lit the fuse, it was the mayor who gave the order.

“Police say they plan to investigate
city hall from top to bottom, rather than go after the mayor’s
‘underlings in the underworld,’ since they surely would not have
carried out so brazen a crime unless acting on direct orders from
the highest levels.

“In one final act of brutality, two
National Drug Police agents were savagely murdered while en route
to the nation’s capital. According to a law enforcement source
closely involved with the investigation, ‘The two agents were
likely fleeing for their lives, as we now have an eyewitness who
saw them being threatened and chased out of the city.’