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

by Sandra’s hunches than his entire twenty years in the division before her.

  “Come on in detectives, would you like something to drink?” asked a sleepy-eyed Thomas. His smile, and pleasant demeaner masking a raging sea of anxiety crashing against his psyche just below the surface.

  Detective Connor and three of his most seasoned colleagues entered his home and immediately began a grid pattern search of the home. A uniformed officer stood guard at the door, eyeing Thomas with the cold impassionate stare of a man who just wants to make it home on time to watch the game, regardless if he must put someone down to get there.

 Detective Connor personally took charge of the basement area search. Based on Sandra’s, unofficial, information of Thomas Lorey, he, like Sandra, suspected that any medical procedures, mixing of drugs, or other illegal activities, would take place in the privacy of the basement. As a classic sci-fi and horror connoisseur, he could not help but imagine frail average Thomas sewing pieces of the recently deceased together and screaming at the top of his lungs, “It’s alive, its alive,” as lightning bolts sparked his monster to life. Using his luminol mixture, Connor sprayed random areas of the basement with camera in hand waiting to take the shot. Luminol only illuminates the area where blood was present for just a few seconds, making the urgency to take a quick snapshot essential in accumulating admissible evidence.

  Connor continued to spray the areas most likely to contain traces of blood. He sprayed the middle of the room, as Sarah explained, because this is the most likely spot for a make shift operating table. After an hour of work, he admitted defeat and continued with his search. Overturning loose concrete, wooden beams, and inspecting any place that may hide evidence, he gave up the search and returned to the upstairs. Both detectives were waiting for him in Thomas’s living room.

 “We found nothing,” replied the stockier detective of the two.

  Detective Conner replied, “what about the coat?” referring to the fabric found between the serrated teeth of the steak knife.

   “Nothing sir.”

   He looked at Thomas and felt a familiar rage surge through his ageing frame. Even after thirty years since the academy, he often felt the blind aggression of combat nip angrily, as he watched suspect after suspect smile smugly during a search that turned up empty.

  As he passed the smiling Thomas on his way to the front door, he whispered in his ear, “Its not over yet punk.”

  “Yea, we turned up nothing Sandra. You know what this means. It means its over. You have nothing on this guy, and we will doubtfully ever get a warrant again, that is unless he decides to leave all the evidence sitting in his front yard for a garage sale. But I doubt that any evidence exists. He burned it all up by now.”

  Sandra listened over the phone as she sat on her living room sofa with her arm draped around Eric’s neck. He was snoring lightly after spending the entire night listening to her ramblings about Thomas Lorey. If she did not realize it before, she realized it now. She was in love with the man.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she replied into the receiver. “This one is clever, and he destroyed all that evidence right under my nose.”

  “Listen Sandra, and listen good. Leave this alone. If the chief knows your this involved, you’re not only getting fired…you’re going to prison.”

  Sandra knew she was becoming too involved. Thomas Lorey was now a full-blown obsession. But his smugness could not go unpunished. She considered the arrest and capture or, death, of Thomas Lorey to be her last, and greatest, act of her career. Time was ticking bringing both her and him to an inevitable ending, and she would not cheat destiny of its chaotic design.

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  Thomas watched from his upstairs bedroom window as the detectives drove away, feeling a heavy burden pressing on his mind. He was now certain that Sandra no longer worked for the department in an official capacity. Otherwise, he considered, she would have been present during the search. Sandra was more dangerous than ever. He could not help feeling a vague sense of respect or, admiration for her. Her dedication to catching him was beyond reproach.

  He thought, with a new growing sense of excitement, that she was in the game until the end. He ran through scenarios in his mind, each one opening and closing doors to possibilities on how to wrangle himself from under her tightening grasp. Killing her would be a mistake and, as he knew, too dangerous an undertaking. She was too aware of that that, which normally lurks quietly behind the mask of others. He did not doubt that she would anticipate the strike long before he could deliver, like a preying mantice with its unmatched speed and agility in the natural world. He considered simply taking photographs of her unauthorized surveillance of his home and filing another complaint with his lawyer. However, he realized, this would only bring more undo attention to himself. His final option, the only option left, was to kill Detective Sandra Becks, but not by his own hand.

You’re not Fooling Me

 “Hello Chief, what can I do for you?” asked a sleepy Sandra Becks. She looked, as she always did first thing every morning, at Eric laying beside her in his bed. He was on his first personal vacation in years, and she felt guilty at not planning a nice get away for just the two.

  Forgetting the world around her, she whispered toward the direction of his peaceful form, “Two days away from it all, just me and you, I promise babe.”

  “Who the hell are you talking to?” came the angry gruff voice of the chief over the other end of the line.

   Sandra gave a little embarrassed laugh and replied, “Sorry chief, I guess I drifted again.”

   “Well get your shit together, because you’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

   Sandra knew that she was betrayed by those she asked for help. No, not asked, she thought to herself., I coerced them with my charm, like a spoiled child using others for some type of petty personal gain. She already, preemptively, forgave her partner Ralph, the kind Fatherly figure of Dr. Zeigler, and the ambitious patrol officer, Conner. These men had families, ambitions, lives that were not part of her own. Under the persuasive pressure from the chief, she could forgive their confessions.

  As if reading her mind, the chief began, “Yea, that’s right detective, I had a little talk with several of your colleagues. I know you have been conducting surveillance on Thomas Lorey. I know about your little trips to the morgue, the phone calls, and most damaging, your little trip to Charlies Diner. That’s right, as I already knew but could not prove, you were not just a patron on the night of Kathy Brier’s killings.”

  “Chief, I will resign from the department,” she stated with, strangely to her, no feelings of disappointment, or sense of loss.

  “Well you have a choice. You can stay with the department after a long suspension without pay, but Ralph then takes the fall for lying about your whereabouts.” After a brief pause he continued, “you see detective, I don’t care who takes the fall, and I do hate to lose someone with your specific talents, but the choice is yours.”

  Sandra already knew the answer, but felt like she would be betraying her human nature not to at least consider throwing Ralph under the bus. But the decision was clear, she was ready to step down from the department and begin, what she hoped, a long life together with Eric.

  “I will turn in my badge and every other cheap equipment owed by the end of the week. Without another word, Sandra hung up the phone, laid her head back on her soft pillow and thought about Thomas Lorey.

Getting Away

   Sandra and Eric happily packed their suitcases surrounded by the familiar stale shadows of Sandra’s efficiency room. For her, this was the death of her old life of living among the shattered hopes and dreams of the dead, and the beginning of a new life, filled with the typical pain and joy among the loving. For Eric, this was an opportunity to incorporate something with meaning into his own mundane existence, a type of merger that he never thought possible in a life full of contracts, figures, and meticulous planning of other’s success.

 “I promise a tropical paradise vacation once we have time for a little more planning,” she stated, as she ran her hand gently back and forth across his back.

 “No worries dear, I could spend two days anywhere with you and it would feel like the golden beaches of Tahiti.”

  Sandra laughed playfully and replied, “even in, let’s say, a Russian gulag.”

  Eric laughed, stopping his packing and placed his hand under his chin. He smiled and replied, “Ok, maybe not anywhere.”

 Sandra slapped him lightly on the shoulder, laughed, and squeezed his left ass cheek, just enough to make him jump a few inches off his feet. Both lovers embraced and kissed each other passionately as if the world beyond their embrace no longer existed.

   Sandra pulled away, laughed, and said, “now let’s get to Vermont and break our legs skiing.”

   “Plenty of time to break our legs,” he replied, “the lodge is only a few hours from here, and I might add, I will be travelling as fast as I can, so I could limit the amount of time listening to your playlist.”

    Sandra smiled, but said not a word. She knew that her playlist of eighties pop was not for the weak of heart. Two hours of big haired bands could be enough to send anyone into the much more pleasant atmosphere of an eighties flashback induced coma.

   “Ok, smart ass, lets roll,” she stated, still giggling as they left her shadow laden apartment into the bright January light.

Tiny Pieces of Guilt

   Detective John Conner was having difficulty sleeping since the search of Thomas Lorey’s home. He never considered himself much of an empath, but his thirty years’ experience gave him that special type of intuition, only gained by dealing with the lies and deceits that dwell within the human heart. He was also no stranger to encounters with psychopaths. He did not need a mental health textbook to list the personality traits of a psychopath or, sociopathic personality. As a practical man, he knew that every human on the planet shared psychopathic, narcissistic, and neurotic traits. Examining himself, a well-adjusted family man whom always lived within the confines of civilization, and the law, he could list some very disturbing traits. He considered how good he felt when he pulled the trigger of his pistol, bringing the ultimate justice to a criminal hurting others. He never felt the withdrawal, nightmares, or depression characteristic of those suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, after any of his seven shootings. He understood that dispensing justice made him feel like God and, he suspected, those who prey on others, kill to feel like God, or the Devil. Either way, he surmised, the feelings are equal, equal in power. However, there are those who stalk among us that feel nothing for others. He went down his list and considered the complete lack of empathy, pity, or remorse of the psychopath. He thought about Taylor Dobbs, the South End Strangler, infamous for killing sixteen young gay men around the area. He killed Dobbs, in Dobb’s own kitchen, after piecing all the evidence, what little there was, together like a macabre jigsaw puzzle of shattered dreams and lives. He recalled the look in Taylor Dobbs eyes, just before he pulled the trigger three times, sending Dobbs back to the abyss. His eyes were lifeless, like a mannequin’s eyes.