Lost At Sea - Arthur Limbada (cat reading book .txt) 📗

up at the end of the room. The trapdoor was opened.
“Hey Tyron, come check this out.” The call, which was in Terrance’s voice, came from the hole in the floor.
Chevan walked over to the trap door and peered down into it. A light was on inside the room below, a staircase leading down. She couldn’t spot Terrance though.
She gingerly stepped down the stairs, brushing her hand against the right wall.
Terrance was leaning over a large white bathtub, positioned right in the centre of the room. It looked very odd since the underground chamber wasn’t a bathroom but instead a plain, empty room. The rectangular tub was the only object in the large secret room. A single light bulb suspended over the bath, dangling from the roof. Spotlighting the bath tub and whatever was inside.
The dirty bulb reached out with its musty tendrils, straining to reach the distant walls but coming short by several feet. The wall near her that she could see was made of a rough, dark red brick and the floor was bare grey concrete. She couldn’t spot a single speck of dust anywhere around the room. The room was spotless and would have been empty if it weren’t for Terrance. And the dead man in the bath tub.
Chevan slowly walked towards it, wary and cautious.
“So what do you make of it,” Tyron asked Terrance as he walked in front of Chevan?
It seems like, according to the pictures that Gene sent me, this is Albert Guss, the scientist. I’m guessing he was killed by strangulation, see the ligature marks?
“Yeah”, Tyron responded, “but look at the hand prints, don’t you notice something strange?”
“Um, they’re very small.”
“Exactly, they are small, like a child’s hand, but look how deep they are pressed into the skin. Whoever strangled him obviously was extremely strong. I doubt most adults could even apply that much force on someone or something. I’m guessing whoever did it was in some kind of rage, maybe Albert Guss said something, the child or midget got really mad, and just killed him.”
“Why would he put him in a bath tub?”
“That is strange isn’t it, the bathtub thing. How this room is set up, it almost seems like a stage, and its centre piece is the bath tub. The killer probably killed him, and then set up the tub and put him in it. It definitely was a prearranged murder. Whoever did this thought about it well before doing it.”
Chevan stepped in.
“Think about it. Why a bath? You think there is meant to be a connection between the bath tub and the Bermuda Triangle?”
“It’s possible, Terrance replied.”
The same slip of paper was tacked on the head of Albert Guss. Tyron reached out to pick it off but Terrance held out his hand in front of him.
“Don’t touch it, you don’ want to disturb the evidence. Everything thing here is going to be carefully inspected, even the water. We don’t have much else to do here, I’m calling Head Quarters.”

* * * * *

Samantha gazed nervously up and down the darkened street. She shivered, more out of fear than the cold, and looked at her watch. It was 7:13 p.m. She had just been walking home from her sister’s apartment and that guy who asked her for money really gave her the creeps for some reason. She has never been comfortable around beggars. “No one was following you home”, she told herself, “you’re just being paranoid.”
Never the less, she couldn’t shake the feeling of danger. Her mom always used to say she had some kind of sixth sense, like she knew about stuff before they happened. When she was younger she believed that was true. Little things would happen, like once when she was seven, she was out, and she suddenly got worried for her Brandy her dog. A few minutes later her father called her, saying that her pet had got run over by a car.
Now that she was older though, she left it to coincidence.
But now she was just being paranoid. She’d been jumpy the whole day; nothing bad was going to happen. She was just going to have a long, hot bath, prepare a small dinner, and watch television till she fell asleep. There was nothing to worry about.
She said it, but she didn’t really believe it.
She unlocked the door, switched on the light, and closed the door as soon as she could. She locked behind her, latching as well. She dropped her hand bag on the dining room chair and headed straight to the bathroom.
She turned on the water for the tub and stepped back. She peeled out of her rough work clothe, letting it fall on the floor. Once the tub filled, she got in and lay there with her eyes closed until she reached a type of relaxed stupor.
After some time, Samantha heard a faint noise from the other side of the house. But she was right, nothing bad was going to happen to her, she was just tired before, that was all. It was probably only the wind.
She giggled as she remembered Toms face this afternoon. He acted like a child asking his parents for a new toy. He really was cute and she wondered if maybe she should have went out with him tonight, but she was really set on just relaxing. And besides, he truly wasn’t her type.
She heard another noise, but this time she knew it wasn’t the wind. And it came from really close. She was afraid to open her eyes but she did and looked up. Someone was standing in the bathroom doorway, just looking at her. His arms were alongside his body but he was flexing them intensely. The hood from the black sweater he wore covered his face so that Samantha couldn’t see any of his features.
Samantha grabbed a towel and hurriedly stepped out of the bath tub. The cold hand of fear gripped her heart.
“What are you doing in my house”, she screamed, hoping her neighbours would hear her and scare the stranger away?
He didn’t move an inch; he just looked at her, straining at every muscle as if he was trying to hold himself back.
All of a sudden he relaxed and Samantha could see his spittle covered lips raise in a smile.
And then he lunged.

* * * * *

Twenty two miles from the Palm Street police station, the spot where Damon Thatch, only known survivor of the Caribbean Dream, was shot and killed, a green Peugeot pulled up at a police road block. Laurence Young and Lloyd Black, two police officers, walked carefully towards it, and knocked on the driver’s window with their hands on their guns.
The Caucasian man in the vehicle looked blankly up at them but slowly rolled down his window. A small cloud of smoke escaped from the car coming from the cigarette in his hand. Although this man who seemed to be in his mid thirties, was wearing a red t-shirt and blue jeans, the officers immediately spotted a black cloak lying on the passenger seat behind him, exactly like the one that was described to the two officers.
Laurence and Lloyd hastily pulled out their pistols and pointed them at the man.
“Get out of the car and put your hands up,” Laurence yelled!
The man slowly and obediently opened the driver’s door and stepped out, keeping both of his hands above his head the whole time. Following the police men’s orders, he turned around, put his head against the bonnet, put his hands behind his back, and got cuffed by Lloyd Black.
When Laurence repeated what happened to his superiors later, he remembered that there was something strange about the man that he couldn’t put a finger on while he was arresting him. As he was cuffing him, the man seemed as if he was in some kind of daze. And unlike all of the other various criminals he had arrested over the years, this supposed brutal killer was the most complacent of them all.
Lloyd pushed him into the back of the cop car as Laurence started it up. Twenty five minutes later they were at the police station. Andrew and Gerald were standing outside. It was around five in the afternoon and it was even colder than how it was when Gerald and Andrew first arrived. The light drizzle that cleared away an hour ago had come back with a vengeance and had transformed the drizzle into a steady rain.
The two police men got out of the car and quickly escorted the prisoner to where Andrew and Gerald were standing directly in front of the police station door. They exchanged names as they scurried into the building.
“We really appreciate your urgency”, Andrew remarked to the two police men.
“Our pleasure,” Laurence replied, “is there anything else that we can assist in?”
“Well, I’d like to detain you two here for a short while so that we can ask you several questions after we put this man in prison,” Andrew answered, “and then you’ll need to write a report, but that should be all.”
“Okay, sure,” Lloyd, who was holding the prisoner, answered.
“If you’d just follow me; I’ll lead you to the holding cells.”
After ten steps though, the prisoner they were escorting stopped. He abruptly began violently coughing and shaking. Though he stayed on his feet, he looked like he was about to fall down. He leaned forward facing the ground and blood and spittle flew out of his mouth onto the floor before him.
Lloyd worriedly let go of his shaking arms and stepped away from him. He seemed like he was afraid that whatever sickness this murderer was experiencing could be transmitted to him if he was to close.
And then, as abruptly as he started, he stopped.
The prisoner stood up with blood in his eyes. His juddering and coughing mysteriously and seemingly miraculously was gone but replacing his former trance like stupor was a focused and alert appearance.
He closed his eyes and then he did something most people in that room thought was impossible. It happened in two seconds but Terrance noticed the straining arm muscles of the cuffed man before he snapped his shackles.
Everything after that was simultaneous. It all seemed to happen in a blur. The man who just broke the iron fetters from behind his back moved in four, quick, and smooth forethought movements. His first was to move in two fast steps to Lloyd. He did this with such speed that no one saw it coming and that being so; no one was able to respond in any form of applicable action.
The second move was to grab the gun straight from Lloyd’s holster. He did this in one swift motion. Empty hand in, hand holding gun out. By the time he had completed the