Chepter Teen (Chapter Ten)
Jooly Feefe (July 5)
MARTY STU and Elzbeth reunited at the cabin to compare notes.
He sat down and sighed. "Well, I broke into the old man's apartment, but I couldn't find anything incriminating. I did manage to put a hole in his oxygen tanks and light the pilot light, though--"
They heard a loud boom.
He grinned. "That takes care of that. How'd you do, Elzbeth?"
She looked at her notebook. "Well, I interviewed Father Poke. By all indications, he looks like a very good suspect. He was alive when Harried disappeared, and he was the last person to see her. And he's obsessed with scripture. But when I asked him if he remembered the disappearance, he said, and I quote, 'Are you my Mommy? The penguins like bagels.' I have a slight suspicion that he might be senile."
He shrugged. "Even better. If we accuse him, he can't defend himself. Still, I would prefer a suspect who's actually guilty. And we're getting nowhere. I think I'll go jogging through Sniper Park. See if anything interesting happens."
Marty Stu got dressed and set out to go jogging. He jogged down Hoomettoonen, headed up Flerbinharrgin, and turned right onto Reimenastad, and stepped off the sidewalk on Kommavirggin, to head into a wooded area with no street signs. He jogged past a large boulder, turned right at a broken tree stump, and crossed over a stream known as Verggaherg.
As he jogged through the woods, a gunshot rang out.
Marty Stu ducked as a bullet popped into the tree trunk next to him. He broke into a grin. "Finally, something is happening."
He ran through the woods in a zigzag pattern. More gunshots rang out, and he ducked as the trees burst into splinters.
He ran as fast as he could, heart pumping, terrified, knowing the shooter could be right behind him, ready to shoot at any--
He stopped.
He listened.
He looked around.
Marty Stu put his hands on his hips. "Seriously?"
* * *
At the cabin, Marty Stu burst in to find Elzbeth curled up by the fire, reading a copy of a mystery novel way better than this one.
She gasped at the blood running down his face. "What happened?"
He took deep breaths and pressed a cloth to his forehead. "Someone shot at me."
"Finally, some excitement."
"I know, right? It's about time something interesting happened."
She clutched her book to her small breasts. "Then what happened?"
He threw up his hands. "Nothing. Whoever it was shot at me a few times, and disappeared."
She scowled. "That's it? The shooter didn't even chase you?"
"No. What a waste of a good action sequence. The least the shooter could have done was chase me through the woods, maybe I could've fallen a few times, spotted the shooter in the bushes, tried to wrestle the gun out of the shooter's hands. The shooter wasn't even that good a shot. Didn't even hit me in any vital areas. Just grazed my forehead."
Elzbeth slumped. "Great. The one chance we had to put a little excitement into this story, and it's over."
"Yeah, I'm tired of this. I'm going to tell Heartsick that I give up. This case is going nowhere. Let me just check my mail."
He went to his mailbox, and found a letter. "Hey, it's an invitation to dinner from Murderin Avenger."
Elzbeth frowned. "Which one is Murderin again?"
Marty Stu pulled out his chart of the family tree and pointed to one of the boxes. "He's Heartsick Avenger's great-nephew twice removed, Harried's brother. Want to come?"
She snorted. "Of course not. That's human interaction. Not my thing. I'll go check the dusty old archives of the Avenger family."
"Okay. I'm leaving my phone off, because I certainly don't expect anything horrible to happen."
She waved. "Have a good one."
Marty Stu walked through Headcasetad, pausing only to make love to and get kicked out by Seducia Avenger. When he arrived at the large mansion, he knocked on the door.
Murderin opened the door with a warm smile on his face. He wiped blood off his hands with a cloth that looked sort of like a woman's dress. "Oh, hello. I was just, uh, feeding raw meat to stray kittens."
"Aw, that's sweet." Marty Stu held up the invitation. "I'm here for dinner."
"Ah, yes. And where's your little friend?"
"Who, Elzbeth? Oh, we're not friends. She's too mean. No, she's back at the cabin, doing some research."
Murderin clenched his fists. "Curses. I was hoping to kill-I mean, serve dinner to you both. I guess I'll take care of her later. Please, come inside."
He walked into Murderin's house, and waited while Murderin triple-locked the front door and swallowed the key.
Murderin turned to face him with a smile. "How goes the investigation?"
Marty Stu sighed. "Not well. I can't seem to solve this mystery."
"Well, you know, in mysteries, it's never the most obvious suspect. It's always the person you least suspect--"
The basement door burst open. A woman in ragged, bloody clothes with leather straps around her arms and legs came staggering out, screaming, "Help me! He's a psychotic serial killer!"
Murderin punched her in the face and dragged her back into the basement. He came back out and clasped his hands together. "I'm sorry, you were saying?"
Marty Stu looked up from a glass case. "I'm sorry, I was miles away, lost my train of thought. Is that a mint condition Action Comics #1?"
"Yes. Here, let me give you the grand tour of my house. We can start in the basement, where no one will hear your screams."
Murderin led him down the staircase, chuckling with menace.
* * *
Elzbeth flipped through photo albums in the dusty basement of the Avenger archives. She yawned, growing bored of turning page after page. With her photographic memory, she had memorized the entire thing within two seconds of entering the vault.
She picked up her Apple Macbook. "It's time to do a little hacking to solve this problem."
She typed furiously, writing an automatic clue solving program, until one of the photographs floated up in front of her face. She snatched it out of the air and squinted at it. "Well, in this photo, it looks like Murderin is wearing the same sweater as the person Harried saw across the street, so they're one and the same. And that means he lied when he said he wasn't in Headcasetad when the bridge was blocked. By itself, this means nothing. But I choose to believe it means Murderin Avenger is the Bible Killer. I've got to warn Marty Stu."
She picked up her phone and dialed Marty Stu's cell phone. The voicemail came on, "You've reached Marty Stu Bonkvist's cell phone. He's currently unavailable because he's being tortured by a vicious serial killer. Please leave a message after the beep."
Elzbeth frowned. "Well, that doesn't sound good."
* * *
Marty Stu woke up to find himself bound and lying on the floor of a horrific dungeon. Whips and chains covered the walls, and a steel cage sat in a corner of the room.
He looked up at Murderin, who sat on a chair and watched him.
Marty Stu sighed. "I don't believe it. You're the killer? Why didn't I see that coming?"
"Because you're a fool."
"Well, can't argue with that."
"And now I shall explain my entire life story and the solution to the murder mystery you've been pursuing."
Marty Stu narrowed his eyes. "Really? Isn't that the kind of thing that cartoonish James Bond supervillains do?"
"Yes. And also villains in bad mystery novels. As you apparently surmised, someone has been murdering women and turning them into sandwiches based on scriptures from Leviticus. That someone was my father, Gottevil Avenger."
"So it wasn't the priest? Huh, that's odd. That actually would have made more sense. But why was your father basing his murders on the Bible? Was he inspired by religious fervor, believing himself to be sent by God to show the world the error of their sins, like the killer in Seven?"
Murderin shrugged. "No. He was just crazy."
"But that was an awfully specific way to kill people. Some of it didn't even make sense in the context of the scriptures."
"I said, he was crazy. What more do you want from me?"
"But I thought the murders would have more to do with his Nazi connection, like maybe the women were all from the same concentration camp or something like that, and he was trying to keep them from revealing his identity as a Nazi war criminal."
"Nope." Murderin rolled his eyes up. "Actually, that would have been a good one."
Marty Stu frowned. "Oh. Bummer. Where do you fit in?"
"Well, my father trained me to kill women, too. I took over where he left off, but without all that religious nonsense."
"But you're the CEO of a huge company under intense scrutiny. How could you have done all this without anyone noticing?"
"Because evil men can get away with all sorts of horrible crimes against women. That's the moral of this story."
"Okay. But what does all this have to do with Harried?"
"Well, she found out about it, and killed my father. She was going to tell somebody before she disappeared."
"And how does it tie into her disappearance?"
Murderin shrugged again. "It doesn't, really. I don't even know what happened to her."
"Oh, I thought you killed her. So the murders really didn't have anything to do with Harried's disappearance?"
"No, not really."
Marty Stu sighed. "Wow. Have to say, it seems like ninety percent of this story had nothing to do with Harried's disappearance. Kind of a waste of time."
"True. But now that we've exhausted all possible material out of it, it's time for you to die."
Murderin pulled on a chain attached to a collar around Marty Stu's neck. The chain pulled Marty Stu to his feet, and began to strangle him. Marty Stu gurgled as all the sandwiches he'd ever eaten flashed before his eyes.
"Hey, if anyone's the maniac in here, it's me!"
Elzbeth came lunging out to whack Murderin over the head with a golf club.
Murderin stagged back, clutching his head. "Curse you, woman! How did you get into my locked house?"
"I used my computer to hack into your security system and unlock your door."
"But I don't have a security system. Just regular locks."
"Shut up." She pounded on Murderin until the fat man ran screaming out of the dungeon.
Elzbeth pulled Marty Stu down from the ceiling, unwrapped the chain from his neck, and ran off to chase Murderin.
She ran outside just in time to see Murderin get into his car and drive off. Elzbeth leaped onto her motorcycle and roared off in hot pursuit behind him.
As they weaved through traffic, her heart raced as the prospect of a high-speed chase lay ahead of her.
Murderin suddenly swerved his car into an oncoming truck and exploded.
She made a face as she drove past the fireball. "Great. Another opportunity for a cool action sequence wasted."
She turned around and drove back to Murderin's mansion.