Birth of a Monster (27 page)

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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