The Hunter Inside (14 page)

Todd had chuckled, saying
‘Where else do you think I’m gonna be, Paul?’ When Paul told him it was
serious, Todd had gotten concerned, asking him what was the problem, but Paul
had merely deflected his questions by saying ‘I’ll tell you later Todd. I gotta
go’ and slamming down the receiver without telling of his current whereabouts
or the danger posed to him. It was not something he wanted to tell Todd over
the phone.

It had to be face to face.

He had then been taken back
to the same small room to wait for Jim Brown and to contemplate his future.
When Jim arrived he was interviewed again and asked the same questions as
before, the difference being the level temper of Special Agent Sam O’Neill.
After probing questions, that were obviously desperate gestures from a Special
Agent whose best efforts had not yet yielded results were answered, Jim Brown
had quickly and surely told the Special Agent that he had no strong evidence to
hold Paul Wayans, and it was obvious to all in the room that there were no
charges to make. His confident manner and proficiency meant that O’Neill had no
option but to release Paul, despite his reluctance to do so, and his offer of
help when the big Special Agent left the room was quickly turned down by Paul
Wayans. He was not planning on asking anyone else for help until he absolutely
had to; such was the feeling the day’s events had provided in him. Todd Mayhew
would hear the whole story, but he would be the only person Paul would tell.
For now at least.

O’Neill had returned and
taken them to the front desk of the cop shop to sign release forms.

After walking once more
down the nondescript corridor, they had reached the reception area, and Paul
had been surprised by the presence of another big man. Despite not being quite
as large as O’Neill he was still over six feet and Paul wondered who he was.
His reason for being there could not have been that important, as he had waited
for Paul to be dealt with before he had spoken.

He had a big nose.
He
must be a cop
, Paul thought, when the large man asked him what had happened
to his face; and he had just about had enough of cops for one day. He gave an
answer that wasn’t an answer and looked at the ground before signing the form
that was passed to him and leaving the building.

Now, Paul Wayans sat on a
low wall that was about twenty or thirty feet down the road from the aging
building, shivering slightly in the cool night air.

He forcibly relaxed the
muscles in his shoulders, only to realize within ten seconds that they had
tensed again.

The confinement of the
previous hours gone, he sucked in fresh air. He looked at the ground, wondering
how and what time he would get home. In a moment, the sound of a car
approaching made him raise his eyes. In the fading light, the headlights
dazzled him. He watched as it approached, frozen with fear due to its slow
pace. His inability to see past the lights and into the car made him shiver
harder, as it pulled to a halt at the curb next to him. The tinted window
opened with a low buzz, to present Special Agent O’Neill wearing a familiar stern
gaze.

Not a psychotic killer,
he thought,
but not far
off.

The silence that ensued
lasted twenty seconds before O’Neill finally broke it. It seemed like twenty
minutes to Paul, who was determined not to piss the big cop off. When he did
speak it was in a low and grumbled tone.

‘Listen Wayans… I’m gonna
put my eye on you, so you’re gonna have to watch yourself. Do you understand
me?’ Wayans could gesture only with a tired nod as he wished feverishly that
the cop would leave him the fuck alone. O’Neill’s attention was
distracted by the approach of another vehicle, this time without its lights on.

As the car drew closer,
Paul Wayans could make out a male figure. As it approached it slowed, and when
it got near he saw that it was Pinocchio from the cop shop. The big man who had
poked his big nose into what was none of his business only minutes ago. He was
doing it again now. O’Neill tipped him a salute as he drove by, all the time
rubbernecking like he was witnessing a car accident and couldn’t avert his eyes
even if he tried. Both men watched as the car shrank into the distance, before
O’Neill turned to Wayans once again and repeated, ‘Do you understand me?’

‘Yeah I understand,’ Paul
replied. Despite his reserved and placid approach to the situation, the inside
of his stomach was beginning to churn. Paul felt like an animal that attacks
only after it has backed off and been cornered by its aggressive stalker. Eat
or be eaten was the way that life was beginning to seem for Paul Wayans, and he
feared he might strike out and present a vulnerable spot to his attackers. That
could be fatal. He had seen nature programs on TV where the scared and cornered
animal lashed out and was dead within two minutes.

Paul determined that if he
had to sit quiet for two hours he would try and do it just for the chance of
getting away and seeing Todd before it was too late. He knew it would be
difficult, and he feared he was being watched, one way or another. Also, he
knew that if this were a straightforward multiple killer then it was a
determined one who was prepared to travel and premeditate his crimes.

Thankfully, O’Neill was
finished with Paul Wayans for now. His gaze never shifted from the bruised face
of Wayans as the electric window buzzed up smoothly, further and further, until
the Special Agent’s face was finally gone. The car’s engine purred and it moved
away slowly to a sigh of relief from Paul Wayans. He was glad to see the back
of the big cop and continued to watch as the car disappeared down the block,
before taking a right turn and leaving him alone once again.

Left with his thoughts,
Paul decided it was time to get moving. He got up from the wall and brushed the
seat of his pants, ridding himself of the accumulated dust, and walked in the
same direction as the two cars had gone, wondering what means of transport he
would be able to find to get him home. He would not welcome a cab fare; it
would cost him a small fortune, and he was mightily surprised and relieved to
see a road sign pointing directions to a bus station when he reached the point
where the two cars had gone in opposite directions. He was almost as equally
glad that the direction in which he had to travel to reach the bus station was
the one that Pinocchio had taken, and not the same way O’Neill had gone, making
their chances of encountering each other along the way a lot slimmer.

As he set out on his
journey, not knowing how long it would take him to find the station, he felt a
renewed sense of purpose. He was moving again, and therefore he was making
progress. He would get home and collect what he needed, talk to Todd, and then
get the hell out of dodge. With every second that passed, he knew he was a step
closer to achieving his goals. This spurred him on through what turned out to
be a journey of only ten minutes, before he turned a blind corner to see a line
of buses that looked like a line of giant gold bars, such was his relief at
finding them.

When the clerk in the
ticket booth told him that a bus was to leave in ten minutes time, and that it
would be going right through to Stamford, he began to cheer. Things were
finally looking up.

Paul bought a ticket and
boarded the bus, settling in a seat near to the front and taking the chance to
relax as the bus pulled away. The journey was two hours long and Paul rested,
preparing himself for what was to come over the next however many hours.

His only distraction to
rest was the small, round and inquisitive face of a little girl who peeped out
from around the corner of her seat at the front of the bus, cautiously
inspecting his bruised face and shying away when Paul made eye contact with
her, preferring the comfort of her mother to the gaze of a stranger who must
look, to a five year old, somewhat like a monster. Paul’s repeated attempts to
make eye contact so that he could smile at the girl and thus dispel her fears
were thwarted, always by the girl’s fear.

He mused on the young
girl’s submission to fear and considered the vicious circle that she, and most
human beings, were part of. He always marveled at great feats of bravery such
as skydivers and tightrope walkers risking their lives to conquer their fear,
but always fell prey to his own fear when confronted with anything that placed
threat or restriction upon his existence. He saw a similar future for the young
girl who had still not managed to see him smile even once when she and her
mother left the bus at one of only four stops; the one before Paul himself
reached home and the bus terminated its journey.

His continued sense of
renewed purpose was further bolstered by how near to his house the bus actually
went, leaving him with just a five minute walk before he surveyed the darkened,
lifeless windows of his house with a mixture of fear and relief. He stood still
for more than a moment, wondering just what awaited his arrival at the house.
Standing in front of the mailbox made adrenalin surge through his body, and his
arms felt like they were made from elastic as he reached forward and opened the
flap on the mailbox, dreading an inspection of its contents.

It was empty.

He heaved a sigh of relief
that he thought might well have been heard by his neighbors if they had been
listening for it. He thanked his lucky stars as he stood in the drive and
decided that he would be safe enough to quickly clean himself up before he left
for Chee-Uz to see Todd Mayhew.

He walked up the drive
towards the front door of the house, making his way with ease, unobstructed by
the darkness that shrouded his surroundings. Suddenly his heart thudded in his
chest, and his renewed sense of hope drained away abruptly.

Nailed to the door was a
single square of paper.

Now he would be
unable to stay and clean himself up. He would have to go immediately to
Chee-Uz. He was part of a race where he wished to set the pace.

He ran inside the house and
up the stairs to the main bedroom, fumbling through the dark recesses of the
closet until his hand came to rest upon the file that he sought, and fearing
with every second that something would loom out of the dark towards him.

He grabbed the file and ran
as quickly from the house as he had entered, not pausing to make sure the door
was properly closed behind him, and pursuing a pace down the street that left
him out of breath before he had lost sight of the house, such was his eagerness
to escape to the warmth of Chee-Uz and the company of Todd Mayhew.

By the time Paul turned the
corner at the end of the street his pace had reached that of walking.

He looked at the piece of
paper that he had torn from the door of his home. It was not unlike messages that
other people had received through the years.

In fact, it was a message
that two people had received that very day, but he didn’t know that. It
contained those same four words, ‘I AM WATCHING YOU’.

But for Paul Wayans that
didn’t matter. The night was still young and the morning sunlight would be
something that he might never see. For the piece of paper that he dropped as he
continued his journey at a brisk pace was correct.

Paul Wayans
was
being watched as he moved towards Chee-Uz.

He was being followed.

‘The consciousness of being hunted,
snared, tracked down had begun to dominate him.’

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

It had been cold for a couple of
weeks. Too cold for Connecticut at this time of year. The nights were like
winter and the mornings always brought a frost that coated the ground and
affected anybody who was forced to venture through it. Paul Wayans had been
affected by this. He had never been a big fan of cold weather, and although he
didn’t have to rise early in the mornings, the cold often kept him awake at
night, yearning for the warmth of a wife to comfort him through to a warmer,
sunnier day.

For five years he had hoped
that day would come – the day when the torture of losing Marcie would be
replaced with something other than depression – but each day he had felt the
same chill that now bit at his joints and made getting out of bed difficult.
The chill went further than his stiff fingers; it went all the way to his
heart, and Paul did not think the sun would ever rise on that warmer day he
envisaged. It was like a sailing boat that bobbed up and down on the horizon
but never got any closer.

It was normally about
eighty degrees at this time of year. The theory of global warming actually
making the Earth hotter seemed to have by-passed New Jersey; the temperature
hadn’t gotten above sixty for four weeks. Bill Arnold had been affected by
this. The journey he had undertaken had been made ten times more difficult by
the cold. Extra layers made it difficult for him to turn the wheel at any great
pace and this, coupled with the effect of the early morning frost upon the
roads, had made him fear being part of an accident not unlike the one he had
witnessed as he returned to Glen Rock. It also made him wonder if he had made
the correct choice of career.

It had affected Sandy
Myers, who was finding it nearly as difficult to get herself out of bed as she
was to rouse the children each morning. Sean and David’s reluctance to come to
life each morning, and their subsequent disinclination to move away from the
fireplace each day made her wish for sunny, warm mornings when the world seemed
better and children wanted to play and everybody had an extra spring in their
step. Sandy loved the sun.