The M1 Theory by Brian Hesse (best novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📕

swallowed the bile so as not to leave any DNA behind, causing his throat to burn and his stomach to churn angrily again.

  Ronald fell forward against the garage door and cried,” please stop, please stop!”

  Fearful that others would hear Ronald’s screams, Thomas instinctively removed the knife from Ronald’s back and swiftly drove the blade deep into the side of his neck. Thomas turned away in terror when he watched the exit of the blade out the other side of the dying man’s throat. Thomas was covered in blood, pouring in small red streams following the creases made by his plastic suit. He felt dizzy listening to the ever-decreasing gurgling sounds as Ronald attempted, in vain, to hold on to life with deep gasps of breath. Thomas collapsed on his hand s and knees feeling the physical world slip into the darkened silenced. His instinct was too let go and just pass out for a short while. The peace of darkness was never so enticing, so intoxicating to him as it was now. He fought the urge to slip into the deep undercurrent of unconsciousness, knowing that he needed to collect his weapon and leave.

 He waited for a few more moments until the gurgling stopped, and walked slowly to the bloodied form propped against the once freshly painted white garage door. He reached down and quickly pulled the knife from Ronald’s neck, looking briefly into his wide-open accusing eyes.

Closing the Gap

 Sandra waited patiently in the Fifth Street alley just outside the department headquarters. She peeked around the corner carefully, aware that being caught anywhere near the chief’s office would burn her career for good. Every instinct within her screamed the name of Thomas Lorey. Few times in her profiling career did she feel this certain about a person’s guilt, without any real hard evidence.

  “Until I produce the hard evidence, my hunches are as useless as tits on a bull,” she stated softly into the cold morning air.

  Waiting for Officer Carson, to leave the precinct, following that mornings roll call, she considered everything she had so far. She recalled the night she met Thomas after she examined his Fathers crime scene. His eyes were dead, she considered. Black and dead, and as he described events, subtle flags just kept being raised. She considered the scene at the diner, the implant found in Kathy’s head, and a thousand other details, but none pointing directly to the sad young man with the lifeless eyes.

  “I know your involved. I know your responsible you little bastard,” she stated again to no one in particular.

  Sandra quickly snapped back to reality as she watched officer Carson exit the three-story dirty grey precinct building.

  “Pssssssst, hey Carson, come here,” she whispered, pocking just half of her wind burned red face from behind the alley.

 “Oh, you. I’m not allowed to talk to you. Word has it, you’re over the edge, and on a one way trip to the rubber wall academy.”

  Sandra laughed and stated,” yea, and if I’m right, your about to become one famous cop. If I’m wrong, I promise never to mention our little talk.”

  Sandra was pleased when she watched officer Carson’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Appealing to the beat cop’s ambition for greatness was always, as she knew from experience, a great way to get what you want.

  “I’m listening, he continued, but make it quick.”

  “All I need to know is if any witnesses saw anyone with the Kathy Brier prior to creating her own version of steak tartare.”

  “Yea, several people witnessed a man leaving the diner during all the carnage, but nobody Identified him as with her.”

   “Well, who is he?”

  “Couldn’t tell ya. You know eye witness reports. I have a vague description of an average sized guy, wearing glasses, and with short brown hair. That’s it.”

  “Oh yea, he continued as he tuned back to Sandra. Evidence found a small strand of grey and black material imbedded in the teeth of the steak knife she used.”

  Sandra watched him walk away as her mind floated away to images of the knife, the blood-soaked bodies at the crime scene, and the face of Thomas Lorey as he exited the diner wearing a long grey and black coat.

#

  “What can I do for you detective?” asked professor Richardson, absent mindedly placing term papers into his briefcase.

  Sandra waited for the lecture hall to clear before beginning, “I would like to talk about a former student, Thomas Lorey,” she stated, looking for his first reaction to hearing the name. She learned through experience, that an individuals first and, most revealing reaction, is a silent one. The expression of a person’s face can tell the story of a fifty-thousand-word novel.

  As she guessed, he grimaced for just a moment revealing his disdain, or jealousy she considered, just before he put on a characteristic mask of pleasantness.

  He smiled and stated, “Oh, yes my Thomas. A very temperamental, but brilliant young man.”

  “What can you tell me about him.”

 “Not much, he stated, as he shrugged his shoulders. He quit the University after I gave him a bad review on his early submission thesis.”

  “Why a bad review?”

 “He wrote a brilliant piece that took nothing of ethics into consideration. In addition, he did not have the necessary evidence to back up the claims.”

  “What was the theory?”

  “Well, he believed that you can control human aggression. Kind of turn it on and off by way of, what he termed, the M1 neural pathway.” He believed that he pinpointed the exact location of the, so called, M1 pathway in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain.”

  “Thank you, professor, I have one more question. Did he have any friends I could talk to?”

 Professor Richardson placed his right hand under in his chin, rubbing his beard and looking off into the distance as if deep in thought.

 “He was a real loner type, but he did meet with a young man after class at times. He was about Thomas’s height, glasses, with long black hair tied in a pony tail, kind of a modern hippy type. My guess, an engineering student.”

 “Hello professor Jones, I am detective Sandra Kline.” She guiltily flashed her identification in front of the eyes of the unconcerned looking man. She felt strange flashing her ID since her suspension. She did not feel like a true member of the department since the diner incident, like a terminally ill person still going through the mundane routine of life.

  “How can I help you?”

   “I’m looking for a student in your department, average height, glasses, and a long greasy ponytail.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back and without hesitation stating, “Oh, you mean Ronald Dorfman. A brilliant, eccentric, and typically aloof young man. I haven’t seen him in a few days. Not like him to miss classes.”

   “Thank you, professor, stated Sandra, as she rushed out the door without giving him the chance to make any replies.

I Need a Warrant

   Sandra drew her pistol as she carefully walked to the front of Ronald Dorfman’s garage. She felt a chill pass through her from bottom of her spine out the top, as if death itself walked through her without any concern or interest. She looked at the ground where the bottom of the door meets the cement driveway and could see a small pool of blood slowly squeezing from underneath, like a living thing with a mind of its own, trying desperately to escape the carnage inside. She made her way to the side of the garage and placed her weapon back into the shoulder holster under her left arm. The killer is long gone, she considered as she turned the knob of the windowless paint chipped door. She felt a warm breeze wash over her face as she stepped inside. Normally the warm breeze would have comforted her on such a brisk November afternoon, but not here in Ronald Dorfman’s garage. The coppery smell of blood recently released from shredded organs, choked any comfort she may have felt upon entering the garage. She walked over to Ronald’s bloody corpse, now in the later stages of rigor mortis. Her only business with the body was to check for any scaring of the frontal portion of Ronald’s scalp. Running through the greasy blood-soaked hair of Ronald, and satisfied that he was not a victim of unauthorized brain surgery in, what she now suspected, Thomas’s basement laboratory, she walked to the middle of the garage. Sandra looked down at the bloodstains on the dirty cement. She looked at the strange blood patterns, made on the floor and quickly shut her eyes, leaving the image of the stains to dance briefly behind her eyes before fading into darkness.

 “You wore a suit Thomas. Very smart my boy. A plastic suit I bet, with a matching plastic cap to boot,” she stated to the dark silence of the room.

 “Ralph, get over to 3174 Cricket Place Circle immediately. There you will find the body of a Ronald Dorfman. He was the only friend of Thomas Lorey. He was an engineering student, and you will find some type of, what I now know is a, receiver.in a cardboard box under a loose piece of cement in his garage. The same type of receiver pulled out of the head of Kathy Brier.”

 Before Ralph had time to respond, Sandra hung up her phone. She realized that it may take days, weeks, months, or never for Ralph to find an excuse to go to Ronald’s garage, and receive a search warrant for Thomas Lorey’s home. In fact, she thought, we may never get a search warrant for his home. The evidence is still very sketchy. “However, she stated as she made her way to the vicinity of Thomas’s home, I am getting close, and you are soon to run out of time my friend.”

#

Thomas Lory spent the next several weeks disposing of all evidence that could link him to the Ronald Dorfman, Kathy Brier, and consequently, the diner bloodbath and his Fathers suicide. He also spent time following Sandra from her apartment, to Eric’s house, and finally to the abandoned house just across from his own. He was starting to enjoy the surveillance as part of a game. His experiments were curbed, for a short time, so he decided that a little fun was just what the doctor ordered. His young life was devoid of pleasure and dangerous games of cat and mouse awakened the child within him, the child that never had a chance to develop under the totalitarian sadistic kingdom his Father carefully constructed. He carefully removed any trace of the activities of his basement laboratory, removing the plastic from his walls, burning clothing, equipment, monitors, and notes. He was certain that his last experiment would be a complete success. He had one more receiver left in his possession, and enough knowledge to perform the procedure anywhere he needed. He already scoped his final Guinee Pig for his final test. Now he would simply have to wait until the right opportunity presented itself. I better hurry though, he considered with a growing sense of both urgency, and anxiety. To him, Sandra was a certain intellectual match, and if not an intellectual match, a definite superior in the realm of intuition. He was impressed and afraid of the almost clairvoyant nature of Sandra’s mind. He followed her for three weeks now, and never suspected even a hint of her losing her resolve. It was obvious to him that she would never quit until he was safely behind bars, “depriving the world, he whispered, of the greatest discovery society has ever benefited from.”

This is your Last Chance

  “Hello Mr. Lorey, I have a warrant to search your premises,” stated Detective John Connor, lead investigator of Sandra’s homicide division. He knew Sandra well enough to take this particular search seriously. In his time at the department more homicide cases were solved