Protect All Monsters (2 page)

He crafted the same response every time she reprimanded him. “No, sis, it ain’t like that. It ain’t like that.”

The tears couldn’t be stopped. “Yeah, it is, Deke. It is like that.”

Failing to find the combination once again, he said with a sharp tone, “
It ain’t like that
.”

She had to do something to chase him out of the office.

“I’ll call the police. I’m not going to jail for you. I can’t believe you’re pulling this shit. Have you been casing my workplace? I make an honest living. It may not be the best job on earth, but it’s work.”

That’s when Deke overtook her, slapping her face with a cruel backhand and seizing her shoulders, then shaking her twice. Her hold on the moment vanished. She was blinking the blots out of her eyes and doing her best to gain her breath.

Her brother’s face was bent into something devious.

He gave the orders. “Watch—the—fucking—door.”

He removed a .28 caliber pistol with masking tape around the handle. He aimed it at her when she didn’t address his demands. She attempted to reach out to her brother, to reason with him. “Deke, put it down. I’m your sister.”

He was a split second from cracking the gun handle over her skull. “Watch the door, and I won’t shoot you.”

The way his hands trembled, he was craving heroin, and nothing would stop him from gaining the money for his fix. That was Deke’s favorite drug. He wasn’t a brother anymore, and she wasn’t his sister. She was only an outlet to more money, more drugs.

She feared to protest anymore. He would shoot her. Family did it to each other all the time. The stories in the small columns of the daily newspaper reflected those facts.

Addey prayed under her breath that Junior or anybody else didn’t come along and discover them.

Just open the safe and get the hell out of here. Nobody gets hurt. Finish it, Deke. Finish it fast.

He rolled the combination. The safe’s lock failed to disengage. “I watched that piece-of-shit roll those numbers. Why isn’t it opening?”

“Please stop this. You’re not getting any money, so get out of here. I’ll write you a check, okay? You want my ATM card? This isn’t necessary. I’ll give you whatever I’ve got if you just go right now.”

She hadn’t seen Deke in nearly a month, and now this unexpected visit. He’d been following her to work, casing the rooms and peering into Junior’s window to watch him roll the combination to the safe all this time.

He tried the numbers three more times to no success. He’d sweated through his top, the article pasted to his chiseled body. He turned toward the door, keeping the gun drawn. “Then we’re waiting until your boss shows up. He’ll open it for us. I had the combination wrong. I’ve seen the cash. He’s got thousands in that thing.” Boiling from his throat, “
It’s all mine
.”

Deke’s wish came true. Junior walked up to the doorway. He was wearing a Lakers jacket and smoking a cigarette. Junior was in his fifties, with large-rimmed glasses and a tired expression.

He saw Addey first. “What’s wrong, Addey? You look upset.”

She was speechless and reacted too late. Deke forced Junior forward by the arm, driving him to the floor. He bashed the gun against the back of his head with an uncouth crack.

“Open the safe, or I’ll shoot you in the head!”

Addey screamed, “I had nothing to do with this, Junior, I swear it. This is all him.”

“Shut the fuck up, both of you.” Deke jabbed the muzzle into Junior’s face. “Open it, and I’ll be going. It’s that simple, old man.”

Junior’s face was fuming with anger, but he was also smart. He returned to his feet, agreeing to the plan. He opened the safe without a word of protest. With a gunslinger’s speed, Junior withdrew the Ruger pistol hidden inside. Addey’s eyes widened. Her ears absorbed the clap of the double shots. It happened so fast. Deke’s chest bloomed red. The wall behind him splattered from floor to ceiling in red. He landed against the wall, the life taken out of him in seconds. He was motionless, blood spooling from his open lips.

Junior aimed the gun at her now, avenging what he considered a brother/sister operation. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me, Addey. I trusted you. I was going to promote you to evening manager.” Face flecked with blood, Junior became another criminal’s mug shot posted on the evening’s news. “And this is the shit you pull?”

She tried to back out of the room. He shoved her next to Deke’s body. Addey slipped on all the blood that had pooled across the floor. Her pants were sodden, arms painted in what kept gushing from Deke’s chest.

She was hysterical. “No, no, no—I had nothing to do with this! I was working, and he came out of nowhere. I tried to stop him. And you shot him.
You shot him
!”

“Boy had it coming.” Junior was callous to Deke’s demise, jaded from so many robberies that he’d been victim to. “I make an honest living. I don’t push drugs and rob people. It was self-defense. He was hopped up. He didn’t know what he was doing. I wasn’t going to be one of those victims killed by some idiot on PCP, or whatever the hell was pumping through his veins. I’m nobody’s victim.”

The man was becoming less and less human. His expression was that of a murderer. “I’d be in my right to shoot you too, Addey.”

A cough. “You won’t touch her.”

Junior caught the bullet on the left temple. Half his head blew away. She closed her eyes too late. The split-second death would relive itself forever in her memory. The body then collapsed, though she only heard it happen.

Addey was too shocked to be touched by the act of brotherly protection. She couldn’t work up the courage to dial the police. The blood in the room was neon, beading its harsh tones against the artificial light. She shifted each time the widening circles from both ends of the room threatened to touch her until she had no choice but to step out of the office and into the night air. Sirens wailed in the distance. Someone else had summoned the police.

She waited at the curb and wept.

Chapter Two

Paramedics collected the two bodies. Junior’s office was a crime scene. She was guarded by two officers, neither of whom had spoken a word to her. She waited awkwardly by the police cruiser for someone to initiate conversation. She wasn’t hysterical anymore. The weight of the events forced her into calm. She refused to think about tomorrow, or the next week, or even now. She was a blank slate.

A half hour passed. Addey couldn’t help but again wonder why nobody had talked to her. She was a lead witness. The only witness. She reached out and touched the officer’s arm in front of her. “Excuse me, can I ask you what’s happening? Is…is there anything I can do?”

The man’s nametag read
Chief Kinderley
. He regarded her with empty eyes. His thoughts were elsewhere. “Be patient, Ms. Ruanova. You’ll soon be informed.”

I didn’t tell him my name.

How does he know my name?

The chief stood by as if guarding her. She wasn’t a crime scene or investigative expert, but wasn’t it customary to ask the witness questions? Perhaps it was that obvious, she thought, what had occurred.

Officers nearby worked to ensure that the patrons in their rooms stayed back from the scene. She glanced at Junior’s office again. The yellow tape skewed her view, but she distinguished a crew mopping up the blood and cleaning the wall. Another was spackling the bullet hole where Deke was gunned down. Each of the crew wore painter suits. The room was clean within fifteen minutes.

Why are they cleaning up the room already? They haven’t combed it for evidence.

She had turned around to question another officer when she experienced another strange observation. The police cruiser was unmarked. The license plates were blank too.

The police chief grabbed her by the arm, suddenly interested in her. “I’m going to escort you to the station now. Just typical questioning, Ms. Ruanova.” His smile was forced. “Can you handle this?”

She wanted to protest, but what was she protesting? “Who are these people? Why are they cleaning up the crime scene like that?”

He stared at the other officers. “You’re safe. I’ll help you into the car. We’ll take a trip to the station.”

The twist of her stomach was instinct. The hairs on the back of her neck went rigid. The chief opened the back door and urged her inside. Once she was sitting, the sudden urge hit her to try the doors and run. They were locked from the inside as if childproofed. The chief piled into the front seat and sped onto the main road. She was trapped.

She needed a form of validation that this was the real police. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“You’re going to make a statement. Then I’ll take you back home. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. I’m sure it’s all happening so fast for you.”

She was overreacting. Nobody could absorb two murders, never mind a death in her own family—both very brutal—without anxiety. She was shaking now.

This will be over soon
was the best her mental voice could summon.

But it wouldn’t be over soon. Deke’s funeral would have to be worked out. Then she’d have to tell her parents what happened. They were proud of their children, and it would break their hearts to learn of Deke’s death.

Bitterness filled her up her while watching the empty shells of apartment buildings and run-down housing districts whiz by in the window. The cruiser crossed 45th and Hawker Boulevard. The change was instant in the surroundings. The poor housing district slowly turned into suburbia: cookie-cutter houses, strip malls, car lots and Herington Park. This was Herington City.

One block makes a hell of a difference, doesn’t it?

“Yeah, I’ve got Addey Ruanova on the way,” Chief Kinderley spoke into the dispatch radio. “She’s good to go. Ready as I’ve seen them.”

Ready as I’ve seen them.
What did that mean?

The police station was four or five miles from her workplace. They’d cleared ten miles at least. So where was he really taking her?

“Um, wasn’t the station behind us?”

The chief glared at her in the rearview mirror. The eyes were harsh.

“Tell me what’s going on? You owe me that much. My brother died tonight. Have you ever watched a family member die? You don’t know what it’s like. Talk to me. Quit leaving me in the dark. Haven’t you ever heard of empathy in your line of work?”

The chief mouthed,
Brother was a goddamn hop-head.

Did he just say what I thought he did?

Self-righteous prick.

Then he answered her question. “We’re not going to the booking station. You’re not being arrested. I take witnesses to a different location. You can relax.”

I won’t relax until this is over. This is crap.

She was wearing her work uniform, an ugly peach fabric with burgundy sleeves. She looked like a bellhop from the fifties. Blood had dried on her sleeves and her stockings. She wanted to expel the scene from her body. A cleansing, hot shower would do the trick.

The chief announced, “We’re here.”

His words tore her from her worries—at first. The station appeared legit. The Camden County Police District sign stood proudly at the entrance. The two-story, brown brick enclosure was surrounded by parked police cruisers. Black iron gates secured the perimeter. They stopped at a hub to check in. Here, they were greeted by three armed security guards. When they were allowed inside shortly after, she observed the cop cars were identical to Chief Kinderley’s, each without markings of identification.

The chief parked, got out and helped her from the vehicle. This time he cuffed her hands behind her back. “This is for your own safety.”

“Excuse me?”

She thought back to the article she had read in the newspaper about the chief of police recently. This man’s name was Kinderley. The chief’s in the paper was McCullough.

Then who the hell is this guy?

He talked into the receiver strapped to his shoulder. “I’ve got her right here in the parking lot.”

Two men in business suits stepped out from a side entrance. The black-suited one guided her into the building, and the gray-suited one stayed behind to chat with Kinderley.

“Two in one night,” the business man said jovially. “Good work. You’re up for that bonus. I’ll see to it you actually get it this year.”

They both laughed raucously.

Their talk faded once the doors slammed closed behind them. Inside, two men in beige uniforms stood vigil six yards out from her and watched them as they proceeded down the long, narrow hall. The overhead lights were muted, the color of a brown beer bottle held up to the light. The black-suited man was stern faced, his ruddy-colored beard finely trimmed, his black hair combed back with gel. He smelled of expensive cologne and breath mints. His eyes were cold like Chief Kinderley’s. They were concentrated on unknown concerns.

The hall was barren of posters or plaques or details about the establishment. They bypassed a public restroom and water fountain. The hall ended, and they started down an outlet toward a larger foyer, but the man turned left to a white door first.

“Follow me inside, Ms. Ruanova.”

The room’s walls were a drab off-white—an eggshell yellow due to cigarette smoke—with a large two-way mirror in the corner. A television set was propped on a cart beside the cheap foldout table and chairs.