A Self Made Monster by Steven Vivian Read Free Book Online Page A

off my—” Jimmy gestured emphatically, and beer spilled over his hand onto the floor. He was shouting directly into Don’s face.
    Don decided to get Jimmy some fresh air. The little guy was about to blow a gasket. “Let’s check out the crime scene.”
    “Check it out?”
    “Before Edward Sherlock Holmes finds something and runs to show Holly Deep Dish.”
    Alex punched the dashboard several times. It was not enough that he murder the wrong person, drink ill blood, and suffer a titanic headache. No, he had to leave evidence at the murder scene.
    After sleeping off his Bushmill’s, Alex sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee and chain smoking Dunhills. Soon he was out of pocket matches. He thought he had picked up a big book last week at the Blue Flamingo; a talkative bartender insisted on giving them to Alex.
    A maddening fifteen minute search recovered several kitchen matches, loose in a kitchen drawer. He lit one by striking the match head against his thumb nail. He noticed some gray fabric under his thumbnail, then saw that the fabric was under all his nails.
    Tired of striking matches with his thumbnail, he searched his jacket for matches. Still no matches. But more gray fabric was embedded in the right elbow of the jacket.
    Alex then remembered striking Marty with his right elbow, and he remembered how he yanked the wool cap over the victim’s face to muffle any shouts. Alex searched the house twice for the wool cap. After a few minutes of futile searching, he decided to search the shed, where he had stuffed Marty into the plastic bag. If the cap had been left behind, Alex reasoned, perhaps so had a book of matches. The odds of being connected to an errant cap or a lousy book of matches were remote in the extreme, but at this point, Alex believed he could not be too careful. The stakes could simply be no higher.
    Now, parked in the small faculty lot of the gymnasium, Alex lit a Dunhill, stuck a flashlight in his pocket, and followed the sidewalk around the gym to the abandoned utility shed.
    Inside the shed, he searched the cement floor with the flashlight. The beam revealed cracks in the cement, oil stains, dirt, a rusty nut and bolt. A fraying broom rested under the window. Alex leaned against the creaking workbench. The beam scanned the floor a second time. Nothing.
    Alex next walked slowly around the shed, directing the beam to where wall met ground. The frosted ground glimmered and sparkled under the beam and crackled under each step. No wool cap or matches.
    He had circled the shack when the flashlight beam revealed an object: the ski cap. He picked up the cap; the top of it was pinched between the hinged side of the door and the ground. An easy tug freed the cap, and Alex shoved it into his jacket pocket.
    Alex guessed that the cap had fallen from Marty’s head just as Alex stepped into the shack, and the cap got caught as Alex closed the door. And Alex had not even noted the missing cap, a potentially very serious error! Alex congratulated himself with a Dunhill, shut the door. He felt enormous relief. Screw the matches, he reasoned; they were innocuous now that he had the ski cap. And Jesus on his throne, Alex told himself, calm down…you’re panicking about every little thing because the stakes are so high…so very high.
    The beam of another flashlight stopped him.
    Alex hurried behind the shed. Thankfully, the night air was clear, and he could make out two figures among the oaks. One figure searched the ground with a flashlight, the other supervised.
    “No, we already looked there this afternoon,” the supervisor complained.
    “What about over there?” The flashlight beam jumped ahead toward the railroad tracks.
    “Yeah,” the supervisor answered.
    “How about over there?” The beam pointed toward the shed.
    “Why would you search over there?”
    The supervisor sounded irritated. “Mr. Know It All said he always took this path.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “And he didn’t stop to enjoy