The Hunter Inside (22 page)

Mayhew slowly shook his
head and replied, ‘Not if the police couldn’t do anything to help me.’

‘What do you mean, Todd? If
the police couldn’t help you? You’re gonna have to help
me
here because
none of this is making much sense to me. Why do you think the police couldn’t
help? That’s our job. It’s what we’re here for.’ The Special Agent had gone
through his whole repertoire of moods in front of the old man to try and make
him tell him what he knew. It was hard work and slow progress, and O’Neill was
beginning to feel impatient. It would have to be now or never if Mayhew had
something serious to tell him; dealing with waffle was not something he had the
time for.

Mayhew grabbed the file of
papers back from O’Neill. ‘He told me the whole story last night.’ Mayhew knew
this statement could be taken literally. Paul had been dead a few hours after
he had seen him, and therefore had not had much more to tell.

On a grander scale though,
finish did not mean finish. Not by a long chalk. Mayhew reflected on this for a
moment before continuing, ‘Its origins came from his grandmother. She was a
Chinese woman who came to America. Of the few possessions that she held upon
her arrival, there was a statue. It was reputed to embody a spirit that
channeled strength from its surroundings to its owner. But this was not true.
It was actually a spirit that that had been banished thousands of years ago in
China.

‘When Paul’s grandmother
took the statue out of China the spirit awakened. It had lain dormant for
thousands of years, waiting for the day to come, when it would be free to take
on the world.’

‘You’ve gotta be fucking
joking!’ O’Neill had given this man a chance, and this was the best he could
do? It was impossible for him to hold back any longer; he was not about to
believe that this multiple killer was a Chinese spirit that had been awakened
after thousands of years to kill randomly.

‘Hold on and let me finish
before you pass judgment Special Agent. I’m not telling you I didn’t have
trouble believing what he told me either at first, but I listened – despite
thinking it was mad.’

‘Well, you’ve got a lot of
work yourself if you’re going to convince me that
you’re
not mad.’ It
was all O’Neill could do to prevent himself from shaking his head at Todd
Mayhew, and he expected to be leaving the Coffee House within a couple of
minutes.

‘When the spirit awoke it
must already have been huge. It had been absorbing people’s strength for many
years.’ The eyes of the wizened old man fixed on the big Special Agent’s and he
said deliberately, ‘I’m serious here. When I read what was in the file it got
me worried, seriously worried. It doesn’t kill randomly. It forms links with
the minds of others through killing their relatives. It targets succeeding
generations by controlling their destinies through their minds.’

O’Neill stared at Mayhew,
incredulous. It was preposterous, but the old man was deadly serious, and his
gut feeling told him he should listen. His mind told him it all had to be
nonsense, but it was something he would have to check out discreetly when he
got the chance later in the day. He would have to keep it to himself though; he
didn’t want the likes of Hoskins thinking
he
was going crazy too. ‘So,
did it kill Paul’s grandmother?’

‘Yes, it did. It drove her
mad, and she took her own life. Apparently, it spoke to her inside her head and
told her what it was going to do. Maybe it was fear, or guilt at what she was
responsible for awakening.’

‘Okay, so let’s say I
believed you on this. How would we find out who it has already killed, and how
would we stop it from killing their relatives?’ O’Neill studied Mayhew with an
intent look.

Mayhew returned his gaze
and spoke quietly, ‘Legend has it that it will not move from the area where it
awakes until it has forged its links. The psychic bonds it makes with the
generations of these families holds it in one place until it has taken them
all. We’ve got to stop it before then, because it’s the final twist that is the
most serious.’

‘What’s the final twist,
Todd?’ Special Agent O’Neill felt as though he were looking inside the mind of
Stephen King. The story that was unraveling before him was amazing, and he couldn’t
help thinking that King could have added to his considerable fortune through
writing about a set of circumstances and events as crazy as the ones being
detailed to him by Todd Mayhew.

‘Did anybody ever tell you
that through meeting seven people you could be introduced to everyone in the
world?’ Mayhew studied O’Neill to see if he grasped what he was trying to tell
him.

‘Erm, no they didn’t. Why?’
The Special Agent’s hesitation allowed Todd Mayhew to continue, although he was
reluctant to say what he had to say out loud. ‘It goes like this: if you know
seven people and they introduce you to everybody they know and they introduce
you to everybody
they
know then you’ve met a lot of new people.
Correct?’

‘Correct.’

Mayhew looked at O’Neill,
waiting for the penny to drop. The Special Agent continued to look at him
blankly, waiting for him to continue. He was determined not to lead or
encourage the man.

‘It would spiral out of
control. Don’t you see?’

‘I think I get it Todd.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear you say it though. I want you to prove
to me why you think it’s so real.’

A look of sadness was
visible in the eyes of Mayhew. He looked out of the window and said, ‘Paul got
the stuff in that file before the days of the Internet, Special Agent. To the
people that wrote it, it was just an old legend, a fairytale. None of them
really believed it was true. To them it was like a movie, and to me it was too.
But it’s true. It must be true. I did some research of my own using the
Internet. Shimasou has its own version of the theory that I just mentioned to
you. Once it has completed its first chain it will be unstoppable. Its power
will be so huge that it will start to stretch its psychic links and begin to
control more and more people across the country and then the world. It will
just keep getting bigger. Scientists now think that they can trace everybody
back to one woman, our earth mother. Everyone who is alive now is related to
that first woman. It will take over the world. Unless it is stopped now.’

‘I really would like to
believe that this is a wind-up Todd,’ the bemused Special Agent said ruefully.

‘Me too, Sam. Me too.’ A
note of resignation sounded in his voice as he repeated himself to the Special
Agent.

‘With all due respect to
you Todd, you don’t have any concrete proof of this.’

‘That’s where you come in,
Sam. You can help me find out who it’s killed and where it is going to be.’
Mayhew had thought carefully about what his next move was going to be. As
reluctant as he was to be a part of this seemingly crazy story, he had resolved
to take it seriously.

Special Agent O’Neill
considered the situation for a moment before he spoke. ‘I don’t know about
this, Todd. I mean, me and my boss have had some differences of opinion
concerning this case, and I don’t think he’s in the mood for listening to
anything unorthodox at this moment.’

‘So don’t tell him about
it. Check it off the record. If you can find out the links it has made then the
others can beat it. That’s if we can find the others. Find out the names of the
relatives killed by it, and they might just stand a chance.’

The two men sat tensely
monitoring each other’s expression. O’Neill wondered how he knew so much about
this thing.
It could be an attempt to deflect my attention
, he thought
to himself, before addressing Todd Mayhew. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about
this Shimasou.’

‘I told you, Sam. I
researched it using the Internet. Everything I found is included in that file.’
He gestured toward the file that lay between the two men. It hadn’t gone
unnoticed by O’Neill that Mayhew was now on first name basis with him, and he
decided to give it a shot. Any lead was better than no lead at all.

‘Okay Todd. I’ll take the
file and check it out. But it’s off the record, and I’m not making any
promises, okay?’

‘Yes. Yes. Sure, thank
you.’ An elated look spread across Mayhew’s face. The Special Agent would not
be able to deny it was true once he checked it out. He would have to help, and
he would have the means for doing so.

He felt in his pocket
before taking out a biro and jotting down a telephone number across the back of
the file. ‘That’s my number. Call me once you’ve checked it out. Thank you,
Sam.’ Mayhew smiled, extending a hand toward the O’Neill. The big man grasped
it and shook it firmly.

‘If all of this is true
then I’ll be thanking you, Todd.’ But O’Neill wondered if he would. If all this
were true then even he might not be alive long enough to thank Todd Mayhew.

Both men stood, and Todd
watched O’Neill walk out through the door of the Coffee House, before sitting
down on the leather chair and taking a deep breath. His heartbeat was rapid,
and the stress of the pressure of the situation in which he was involved was
immense.

The cop had to help.

Sam O’Neill walked out of the Coffee House
and into the afternoon. The sun had managed to peep through the clouds, and it
was a lot warmer than it had been when he had first met Todd Mayhew. As he
began to walk in the direction they had driven three-quarters of an hour
earlier, he felt a sense of detachment from the people that were going about
their everyday business all around him. If Todd Mayhew’s Shimasou story were
true then the people that walked around oblivious to it were wasting their
time. They’d be better off getting drunk and having a wild time.

He walked onwards; making
steady progress, clutching the file that Mayhew had given him under his left
arm. Taking out his cell phone, he was annoyed to see that the display telling
the strength of the signal was blank, meaning that he had been unable to
receive any calls for up to forty minutes while he’d been with Mayhew.

‘Damn it,’ he lamented to
himself, and switched the phone off and then back on in an attempt to
reestablish the signal. He’d been meaning to buy a new phone; one that didn’t
lose its usefulness whenever he went indoors, but he had made do with this one.
Now, he watched as three lines appeared in the top left hand corner of the
screen, registering a strong signal. This was accompanied by a beep that was
followed by two more, indicating the arrival of a text message. He fumbled with
the small keys on the cell phone as he tried to retrieve it.

The sender’s name was the
first thing that appeared on the screen. O’Neill saw that it was from Hoskins
and got even more annoyed.
Now he’ll think I’m slacking off
, he thought,
and pressed the OK button to reveal the content of the message, which read,
‘CHIEF – CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS MESSAGE – IMP. NEWS’.

He stopped as he scanned
through his stored numbers, looking for Hoskins’ number. When he found it he
pressed the OK button and held it to his ear. He was greeted by the crackle
that always accompanied his calls, and heard Hoskins’ cell phone ring for two
seconds before Hoskins answered it with, ‘Hi Boss.’ Without pausing for O’Neill
to answer him he continued, ‘you’d better get down here. There’s a break on the
case.’

‘I might have a chance of
getting down there if you tell me where you are,’ O’Neill replied, both unable
and unwilling to mask his usual annoyance from Hoskins.

‘I’m at the forensics
laboratory on May’s Street.’ Hoskins himself was having trouble keeping his
temper and not telling O’Neill to go and screw himself.

‘Okay. Listen, I’m not that
far away from there. Stay there and don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in ten minutes
or so.’

He hung up before Hoskins
could reply, and ran towards Paul Wayans’ house where he had left his car,
getting out of breath very quickly due to the fact that he never exercised. He
did not have far to go though, and he reached the car within a couple of
minutes, wheezing and needing a glass of water as he got into the car and drove
away past the remaining agents that guarded the crime scene he had witnessed
earlier.

Only a couple remained.
They were good at their jobs; bagging up everything quickly and with the
minimum amount of fuss and maximum amount of organization, ensuring that
nothing was lost from the majority of the crime scenes that they visited.
O’Neill thought again about the file as he turned the corner and lost sight of
Wayans’ house in his rear-view mirror. It would have to wait. Todd Mayhew would
have to wait.

May’s Street was a short
distance from Paul Wayans’ house. He had driven past it on his way to the scene
of Wayans’ murder earlier that morning, and it did not take him long to
negotiate his way back to the drab two-story building through the sparse
traffic. Parking directly in front of the building, he took out a police
parking permit and placed it in the window of the car, to ensure it did not get
towed away while he was inside, before exiting, locking the vehicle and walking
towards the building.

O’Neill pushed open the
door and strode up to the counter. He did not recognize the woman who sat with
her head bowed, studying paperwork. As he approached she lifted her head to
look directly at him and he was pleased when she said, ‘Good afternoon Special
Agent O’Neill. How can I help you?’