The Monster Within Read online

  The Monster Within

  By Jeremy Laszlo

  © 2014 by Jeremy Laszlo.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Books by Jeremy Laszlo

  Clad in Shadow (Poetry for a Burdened Soul)

  The Blood and Brotherhood Saga

  (Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy, Ages 15+)

  The Choosing (Book One of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)(***FREE***)

  The Chosen (Book Two of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  The Changing (Book Three of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  Crimson (Book 3.5 of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  The Contention (Book Four of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  The Champions (Book Five of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  The Crowned (Book Six of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  The Calling (Book Seven of the Blood and Brotherhood Saga)

  Orc Destiny Trilogy (A Blood and Brotherhood series)

  (Dark Fantasy, Ages 13+ for gore and violence)

  Twisted Fate (Orc Destiny, Volume I) (***FREE***)

  Fallen Crown (Orc Destiny, Volume II)

  Three Kings (Orc Destiny, Volume III)

  The Beyond Series

  (Adults only due to extreme mature content)

  Beyond The Mask (The Beyond Book One) (***FREE***)

  Beyond The Flesh (The Beyond Book Two)

  Beyond The Soul (The Beyond Book Three)

  Children of the After series

  (post-apocalyptic, Ages 10+)

  Children of the After: AWAKENING (***FREE***)

  Children of the After: REVELATION

  Children of the After: EVOLUTION

  Children of the After: REBIRTH

  Left Alive series

  (Zombie Apocalypse, Adults only due to extreme mature content)

  Left Alive #1 (***FREE***)

  Left Alive #2

  Left Alive #3

  1

  I’ve made peace with my demons. They’re both my weaknesses and my strengths. I suppose it’s the curiosity of the darker sides of humanity that have led me here—on every facet of my life.

  The secret truth of detective work is that like everything else, the world of cinema, television, and movies, it looks a whole lot different than it truly is. I don’t think I’ve ever had a case solve itself in a matter of weeks. It’s never been an hour, and I don’t spend years working on one case. I sure as hell don’t make a few phone calls with an intricate network of experts and technological and sociological specialists at my beck and call. No, the secret reality of detective work is that most of it is just talking. It’s following up on lists, it’s a whole bunch of boring labor that falls between the frames of the movies and during the commercials of the television shows. The truth is, I love and loathe detective work, but it’s not something that’s ever made the quality of my life any better. If anything, my life is a ruin because of what detective work has done for me.

  But there is something special about a case coming to an end. It’s not like a jigsaw puzzle, where there’s a final piece that makes everything clear and understandable. No, it’s more like scraping the ice off your windshield after a particularly cold and wet blizzard. Each scrape is annoyingly painful and there is resistance at every turn. It’s only after you’ve taken the time to muscle your way through all of it, you can finally peer into the darkness within, and the dark inside finally gets a look at the light. Most killers are on a mission. They’re either proud, justified, vindicated, or just plain hungry, and death has a way of satisfying all of those like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  We live in an era of science, but science is constantly changing and crime doesn’t. Murder, vice, robbery, and racial hatred, they all endure. Science has done nothing to help stop the evil in the world—rid us all of our base hatreds and vile desires. All the cameras and apps don’t help with that. All the DNA evidence and all the other shit that convinces a jury that someone’s guilty doesn’t help stop us. Us. Not just them. Us. As a people, we are destined for destruction. Maybe that’s why I’ll always have a job and why secretly I enjoy it.

  Every time I close a case, Chief Mendez likes to get the debriefing personally. It’s his way of keeping me under his thumb just to prove that he’s in charge. I don’t like it, but I get it. We all have our vices.

  He sits in his chair like he might if he were a feudal lord sitting atop his throne. The thing about Mendez is that once upon a time, someone told him that he was a Mexican and that meant that the world owed him no favors. Rather than take that as a disappointing tale on racism, he took it up as a challenge. In fact, he took that challenge to heart so well that he became a power-hungry dick. In the world of detectives, we call Mendez a Test Taker. He was one of those smartass kids that got it easy because he could retain a shitload of useless fucking information and say all the right things on the tests that some ass-hat developed to determine whether or not you were worthy of promotion. Mendez answered all those questions right. I know, I watched him climb the ladder the entire time. It’s just one more reason I despise the little asshole. But he… he thinks I’m a damned dinosaur. Looking at those around me, he’s probably right.

  The force has been overtaken by the veterans and the academics coming up from college or home from war. They study their books in college or shoot their terrorists and that gives them a shield if they want it, at least in this city it does. I don’t think it’s fair, but the world never promised me that it would be fair. She’s a twisted bitch in that regard. The world has proven time and again that life gives you what you take from it, so I suppose that’s what they’ve done here. They’ve taken what they thought the world owed them.

  In this office, in these leather stuffed chairs that somehow manage to be more uncomfortable than hard plastic, I feel like a relic on display. Mendez sits down in his desk that he ‘fought’ hard for. Chief of Detectives, that’s something that I would have fought for once, if I wasn’t dusty and worn. To me, closing cases is all that kept me going this long. I’m not as ambitious as I once was. Watching your family collapse all around you has a way of breaking your spirit. Even so, I still like unraveling the dark and twisted.

  “Nice work,” Mendez says with an almost believable tone, looking at the report and file. Every other chief I’ve had would settle for the report. They never needed this confidential sit down, this sort of display of authority. Then again, they were men. Not Mendez. He likes to try and get inside our heads. He wants to know what I’m thinking. Too bad I’m wise to his game. He can know all he wants about what I’m thinking. “You have a way of breaking them in the box,” Mendez shrugs. “It’s a gift. Takes years to master.”

  “The one thing I have,” I say without much interest.

  “Speaking of.” Mendez closes the file and shows his hand. He never wanted to talk about the case. Fine with me. Whatever he wants to talk about, we can talk about. I can play his game. Hell, I can probably hold my breath until the clock runs out. Retirement is always coming up these days, wherever I go. Why should I be surprised that my hunter finds me here, on my own hallowed grounds?

  “Only a month left,” Mendez says with a heavy sigh, as if he’s about to lose one of his best. I am, after all, but that doesn’t mean he likes me. Very few of these kids like me. “Then what happens with you, King?”

  “I head to Florida,” I answer flatly.

  “Florida?” Mendez sounds slightly interested. I’m not sure if it’s genuine or not, probably not. What
does he care about any of this? “You have family down there or something?”

  “Nope,” I shrug. He’s mocking, but I play along. I doubt that I have any family left that would accept me. Nick might still be out on the road somewhere. I’m certain Kelly and him didn’t work out, but God only knows. My parents— I buried them both a few years ago, a fact he is well aware of. My marriage ended, another fact I’m sure he is laughing inwardly about, and I barely even speak to my daughter, though she still tolerates me from time to time. No, there’s no family left for me to send a card to on Christmas. There’s no one left for me. Not anymore.

  “Just going to take in the sun and lay out on the beach until the end of your days?” Mendez doesn’t buy it but at least he doesn’t make a fucking book joke. I don’t care. His belief is irrelevant to me now.

  “We’ll see,” I shrug. I don’t want to bother telling him about the idea of opening up a private investigation firm. I don’t want anyone here to know about that. There’s nothing for them to know about it. Old men, college girls, and drug runners, there’s nothing there that makes me think I won’t be needed. After all, I’m getting tired of the legal routes. I’ll be a man who can find answers and that’ll be the end of it. I’m not interested in compiling cases for prosecutors or the DA’s lackeys anymore. That shit died the moment someone first mentioned the letters DNA.

  “Well, you have a month, King,” Mendez says finally with a sigh, leaning back in his chair in a symbolic effort to look like we’re comrades, just two old buddies chatting over the future. Does this shit ever work on anyone? “I’m taking you off rotation. You don’t have to catch anymore, unless you want to. After everything you’ve put into this department—this city, I think you’ve earned a nice coasting to the finish line. Again, if you want to pick up one more, then so be it, but I don’t see the harm in just letting you do what you want. Show up, fill up the last bits of the Compo case paperwork, and you can get paid all the same.”

  I have to admit, it sounds nice, even if he says it in a way that says just fucking leave. In fact, where has he been my entire life? Why didn’t I get this option when I first started working cases? Show up, punch in, do nothing at all, punch out, and get paid all the same. That sounds like a magnificent job for me. It probably would have saved me a whole lot of strife and suffering along the way. If only the darkness didn’t beckon.

  “Thanks, Chief,” I say. He smiles and brushes it off as if he’s doing nothing at all, ’cause he’s that much better than everyone else. He stands and I immediately follow his lead. He sticks out his hand with a plastic smile on his face and I can’t help but feel like an old book stuffed away on the highest shelf in the corner of the library. No one’s checking me out anymore. The wheels of time are rolling, the world is moving on.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mendez says with a truly happy smile. He’s glad to be rid of me. “You’ve done a lot of good work for us over the years.” He says it as if he’s been there all along, rooting for me, pulling for me in my corner. I’ve known Mendez for seven years. Two years he was a detective, then he tested up to chief. Good for him, but don’t act like you know me.

  “Thank you, sir,” I choke as I make my way back to my desk. It’s past four o’clock and I’m thirsty.

  Sitting down at my desk, I look around, wondering where the hell the old war horses have gone. Where the hell did all these young faces show up from? Someone told them that the old days were better and in the old days we had mustaches. So I have a whole bunch of young assholes with seven dollar haircuts running around my bull pen with porn ’staches on their faces, looking at me like I’m some sort of historical figure. I don’t approve of military men coming back home and fighting this war. They’re not used to this kind of combat. They’re all shell-shocked or scared shitless. Academics are just as bad. They’re all by the book and obsessed with finding the right evidence. I know that the majority of my cases have been broken because of people and connections, not because of a lucky fiber or a fingerprint. Find the right guy and they’ll have all the evidence you need to lock them up. I don’t like how things have changed or the direction detective work is headed. But no matter where these kids came from, I don’t like being an old sock in the bull pen.

  My pocket begins to vibrate and instinctively I reach in, fishing out the flip phone that looks as old as I am in their eyes. I don’t need a smartphone. I don’t know why they’re all pushing for me to use one. The same thing goes for GPS. So many of these assholes only know the streets that were their old stomping grounds when they were boots. They don’t know the city like they should. I used to study the maps of this city like a jock cramming for finals, every night. Christ, they’re all a bunch of tech hounds.

  I answer the phone and don’t even bother with looking at the number. Unless they’re already in my phone, I don’t know who belongs with what strange number that pops up on the screen. “King,” I announce myself.

  “I was worried you were retired already,” a ghost from the past calls to me. Without him being there, I can clearly picture Bernie Owens. Back when I saw him almost every other day, Bernie Owens was a hard ass who had a thing about beating the hell out of pushers and pimps. He walked the fine line between vigilante and lawman. I don’t think he ever really gave a damn about the rules. Unfortunately times changed and left him and me in the dust. The DA started cracking down on those who didn’t care about the rules. Bernie Owens made a few wrong decisions in the presence of the wrong people and nearly wound up behind bars. Thankfully, back then, the vice department had Owen’s back and he ended up with a demotion. They wanted him on the streets still. He was too good of a man to be anywhere else.

  “Owens, what the hell are you doing calling me?” I say in a tone that’s joking enough to surprise even myself. Owens and I had too many intertwined cases back in his day. It was hard not to like a detective who had the same ideals.

  “Making sure you’re still alive,” Owens says in a hushed voice. “You got a case right now?”

  “Just cleared one up, actually,” I answer, leaning back in my chair. The remnants of my old days were all contacting me from across the city. They’ve all caught word that I’m retiring and they won’t let me go without one last drink or meal. I’m more than willing to get a free round or burger off of people I haven’t seen in a while. “Why? You got something exciting for me?”

  “I, well—.” The phone goes silent and I can feel a tickle in the back of my mind. This isn’t the sort of thing that I was expecting him to say. Two words, spaced out with a long pause at the end. “I’ve definitely got something. I think you should take a look at this.”

  “Isn’t there a detective already at the scene?” I ask him, trying to remain light-hearted. If there’s a murder, then there should already be a detective on the scene. They notify dispatch and then they call up and the next name on the roster gets the case. So if Owens is asking me to come and check out a scene, then there should already be a detective there.

  “There was,” Owens answers. I don’t like the sound of that. “Just… do you have a pen nearby? I want you to come have a look at this before they wrap this up.”

  “Alright,” I answer. I guess that I owe him a favor or two from back in the day, even though I keep my ledger black. I don’t let others do favors for me. I don’t like owing people anything. But it’ll be nice to clear up something that Owens thinks I owe him. Or hey, best case scenario, he owes me a favor. He gives me the address and I scribble it down on the back of one of my own business cards. I hardly use these things. They’re mostly to hand out to witnesses who can’t remember shit. They end up in the gutter or in the trash more often than not. “Alright, give me some time. Don’t let them bag everything up.”

  We all have our vices and I know for certain that I have three. At one point, when we’re young, we try to fight our demons. We have this naïve mentality that it’s us or them. We’re too stupid to accept our character flaws and to roll with them. We are
what we are, and denying ourselves does nothing to save us. Salvation comes through adaptation, acceptance, and control. But for me, one of my demons has always been harder to control than the others.

  The silver and black Shelby sticks out like a sore thumb amidst all the sedans and minivans that line the parking lot. It’s amazing what you can buy when money doesn’t go to your family, or bills, or savings for vacations or homes you’ll never have. For me, cars have always been a priority, since I first dropped my lead foot down on the accelerator and hit the open road. Unlocking the door and dropping into the custom leather interior, I fire up my beast and listen to it roar, the engine growls like a monster ready to destroy the city. There’s a warmth in my stomach and a rippling in whatever’s left of my heart as the engine fires up.

  The city is silent beyond my engine and as I pull out of the precinct, I’m left with my interior and that’s it. The whole city melts away from me as I drive. I feel like an astronaut in space, orbiting the city, unable to contact the life below because of an impassable barrier. I might as well be on the far side of the moon. I don’t care about the people that walk by while I’m at a red light or those in the other cars. This city doesn’t need me. It will live on long after I’m gone, just like it survived long before I arrived in my new boots. With retirement on the horizon, everything seems flat, distant, and blurry. I’m ready to give up the watch. I’m ready to drop the shield.

  The address Owens gave me is in the heart of town. It’s right in the middle of a bunch of apartments that were created for people who fancy themselves as artists, or at least people who were up and coming. No one dared to live inside of these architecturally peculiar structures unless they were part of the new order, the future of this city’s elites. They were still too wild, too busy, too spontaneous to be able to convince themselves of settling down and buying an excessive mansion. Here, they were at the golden age of their lives. When the future became too much for them, these academics, artists, and trust-fund babies would look back to their old apartments on this street and dream of those simpler days, unaware that this is the high life that most of the world can only dream of. People are ignorant. This is the sad reality of people. No one is ever happy with their lot. That much I’ve come to understand while on the job.