The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [1]
Movement in the rear of the apartment caught my eye. Down the hallway and through an open door, a twenty-something woman stood inside a bedroom. Blond and powerfully built, she was throwing vicious kicks and punches at a person I could not see. The rapidity of the blows told me that she was schooled in self-defense, and made me wonder if the blood I’d seen had come from the person she was hitting.
I instinctively relaxed. I assumed this was Naomi Dunn, and could see that she was holding her own with her assailant. I had arrived just in time.
I drew my weapon and approached the door. I’d joined the police force because I thought I could make a difference. Twenty-four months into the job, and that still hadn’t happened. But tonight was going to be different. I was going to save a young woman before something awful happened to her. I had never been more ready in my life.
I tested the door’s handle. It was locked, and I lifted my leg and kicked three inches above the knob. The door splintered but did not come down. As I lifted my leg to kick it again, the door opened into my face. I heard my nose break, and flew backward to the ground.
I lay on my back with raindrops splashing on my face. My gun had left my hand and was lying somewhere nearby. Fighting the urge to pass out, I lifted my head, and saw a giant emerge from the apartment carrying an unconscious Dunn over his shoulder. From my vantage point it was hard to tell exactly how big he was. What registered was how small Dunn looked in comparison. She was a big woman, yet looked tiny slung over his shoulder.
“Police,” I muttered. “You’re under arrest.”
The giant gazed down at me, his face round and bloodied. He had wild eyes and pursed lips, and reminded me of the crazies that I often encountered on the mean streets of Fort Lauderdale. When he spoke, the words only confirmed my suspicion.
“Pigs don’t come to the party,” he said.
“Let her go.”
“No. She’s mine.”
Laughing, he walked around the corner of the apartment building and disappeared. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and looked for my gun. In the distance I heard tires squealing on wet asphalt.
I wiped away the blood coming out of my nose. I was hurting, yet none of that really mattered. I’d failed to stop him. I hadn’t made a difference at all.
“Officer! Officer!” The ghostly woman had appeared again, and was kneeling beside me. “He got away. I saw him throw Naomi into the back of a green van.”
“Did you get a license number?” I asked.
She brought her hand to her mouth. “No.”
I pulled myself to my feet and leaned against the open doorway. The world was spinning, and I felt ready to pass out. “Go to your apartment, and call nine-one-one. Tell them to hurry.”
The woman hurried away. Soon sirens pierced the air. They snapped me back to reality, and to the sad fact of how miserably I’d failed to do my job. Because I’d let my guard down, a young woman was lying unconscious in the back of a van.
I went to the parking lot to meet the responding officers. What had just happened would haunt me, and I promised myself that I would track this crazy bastard down.
I hadn’t known how long that would take.
CHAPTER 1
he ceiling of my rented room was spinning.
My pillow was soaked with sweat, as were the sheets, and my heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. Next to me, my dog Buster was licking my face.
Sitting up, I leaned against the cool plaster wall behind my bed. Sunlight streamed through the slats in the windows, and I listened to the cawing of seagulls scrapping for food on the beach.
I looked at the night table beside my bed. Lying on it was a stack of missing person reports. After becoming a detective, I’d run the Broward County Sheriff’s Department’s brand-new Missing Persons Unit. I’d run the unit for sixteen years before being kicked off the force two years ago. The reports were copies of files that had gone unsolved during my tenure. Every few