All four them stood over the still dazed attacker. Nick shone the flashlight over the man’s face, noting the bedraggled clothes and bare feet. “Who is he?”
Quentin had popped open a can of beer before swallowing a tepid mouthful, a few dribbles of the foamy alcoholic beverage dripping from the sides of his mouth. He had recognized the other man the moment he had been stabbed. “His name… is Emeric Morgenstern,” he said in between more swallows of beer.
Scott felt nauseated. He had just seen the corpse and now this. “He stinks. This whole place stinks.”
Nick glanced back at Quentin. “I think I’ve heard of him. He’s the brother of the billionaire, right?”
Quentin nodded. “Emeric’s the younger one and the bad boy of the family. While his older brother Kazimir was in charge of the firm, Emeric did nothing except mingle in high society. My paper did many articles on him and his excesses.”
“If he’s a party animal then what’s he doing out here?” Cathy asked.
“It’s complicated,” Quentin said. “His mother killed herself when he was young and it might have affected him. Emeric was a drunk by the time he turned twelve and into heavy drug use before his eighteenth birthday. Of course, with his family’s influence he never spent more than a few days in jail over it. There were rumors that his father sent him into an asylum for treatment of mental illness for a few years too.”
“Look at him,” Nick said as he continued to shine the beam of his flashlight at Emeric’s semi-conscious face. “He’s definitely nuts.”
“The last scandal Emeric was involved in was the biggest one, and he went underground after that,” Quentin said. “This is the first sighting of him in years.”
“So what’s the story?” Cathy said.
Quentin downed the last bits of beer before he continued. The alcohol dulled the pain a little and he needed it. “He fell in love with a fellow socialite named Barbara Woodward, and she seemed to calm him for a time. About six years ago there was an announcement from their publicist that Barbara was pregnant. Since there were rumors about Kazimir never having children due to low sperm count, and the family fortune needed a successor, so I believe Emeric was determined that it be his child.”
Cathy was eager to keep looking for her daughter. “Can you summarize what the big deal is with this nut?”
“Sorry, I tend to ramble about mundane stuff,” Quentin said. “Anyway, the world was awaiting news of the birth, but all we got was silence. After that we never heard from either Emeric or his wife other than rumors and unconfirmed sightings. Morgenstern Group publicists kept stonewalling us, telling everyone that the couple wanted privacy.”
“What kind of rumors?” Cathy asked.
“All sorts of stories were bandied about,” Quentin said. “From Barbara having a miscarriage and dying afterwards, to the baby being born addicted to opiates since both parents were known to be heavily into drugs and all that. Another rumor I personally heard from a former hospital staffer was that the child was born with some sort of deformity, and Emeric went insane and killed his wife because of it.”
46
THE BOY POINTED AT Emeric, who had begun to stir. “Look, he’s waking up.”
Emeric Morgenstern fluttered his eyes open and regarded them silently for a few seconds before giving a wide, bucktoothed grin. His shoulders began to shake and he started laughing once more while facing the spotlight.
Quentin Everett sneered at him. “You crazy rich bastard. Why did you try to kill me?”
“You… you all keep coming here,” Emeric said in between the chuckling. “I-I keep telling you not to, but like little ants you all make your way over here anyway.”
Cathy gave him a sad look. “We’re only here to look for our daughter. Her name is Kimberly Dirkse. Has she been here by any chance?”
Emeric sat up and glanced sideways into the darkness while smacking his chapped lips. “The couple from last night? Oh, I suppose so.”
Nick immediately knelt down, his face only inches away. “Where is she?”
“He had to do it, he had to. Was running out of food, so he needed them. I helped out by sinking the boat.”
Nick grabbed him by the throat, twisting Emeric’s head in order to force him to look into his eyes. “What do you mean? What did you do to her?”
Emeric stared back at him with wild eyes. “Me? I didn’t do anything. I can’t eat anything that’s live and raw. I once had sushi when I was eight, and I threw it up you know.”
Nick’s anger was rising. “Tell me where she is!”
Emeric’s eyes shifted sideways. “Oh, I think he brought them over to where he used to swim around in. You know, his old habitat.”
Stooping over slightly, Quentin placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder, hoping to calm him down as he kept his focus on their prisoner. “You keep referring to this other man, who is he?”
Emeric grinned while his eyes looked up at the tabloid reporter, showing his stained molars. “My son, my only begotten son. I thought he was lost to me, but Dr. Reeves, she was able to bring him back.”
Nick backed away slightly as he took his hand away from Emeric’s throat. “Your… son?”
“Yes, yes. He was born so weak you see. His poor, poor mother died during the procedure to bring him into the world, but we saved her too, though that’s another story.”
Cathy pointed towards the room they had just come from. “You mean that your son out there is the one attacking the people at the resort?”
Quentin shook his head in disbelief. “That can’t be. If he had a son, he would have been born a little over six years ago.”
“Correct, correct,” Emeric said. “You know so much about me, you must be one of those paparazzi people. The ones who keep attacking me and Dr. Reeves. That’s why we had to stay here, so you people could stop hounding us.”
Quentin raised an eyebrow. All the snippets of information were starting to come together, but he just couldn’t believe the whole story. “Your son. Something happened when he was born, yes?”
Emeric’s demeanor abruptly changed. He closed his eyes and began to sob. “It w-wasn’t fair! Why did God put him into the world without arms and with a single eye like that! Why?”
Quentin’s mask of contempt quickly turned to pity. “Your child had severe birth defects.”
Emeric’s grin had turned into a grimace as the tears began to roll down his ruddy cheeks. His ranting didn’t seem to be addressed to anyone in particular. “What did my boy do to deserve that, what? Barbara went into cardiac arrest when she saw what he looked like. I told her not to take a look, but she insisted!”
Quentin let out a deep breath. One of his colleagues had covered a similar story for the Daily Sky, and he was told about the sickening details. “Cyclopia.”
Scott looked up at him. “What’s that?”
“It’s a very rare congenital disorder,” Quentin said. “The baby is born with a single eye, and also no mouth or nose in most cases. These types of infants rarely live past a few hours.”
“I couldn’t just watch him die,” Emeric said softly. “I knew he was crying out to me, telling me that he wanted to live. I told the doctors to save him, and they made a cut on his throat so he could breathe.”
Nick was back up to standing position. Cathy stood close to him and placed her left arm around his thigh.
“So you brought him over to Dr. Reeves,” Quentin said. “For what?”
“She had spent a whole year out of the public eye,” Emeric said as he looked up at him, his sadness turning back into anger. “After you people crucified her in the media. Lauren was desperate, she had so much expertise, so much to offer to the world, and you pigs, you all just spat on her contributions to world science!”