The Hunter Inside (9 page)

Great
, he thought,
I’ll ask
directions from the police
. This seemed a better option than continuing to
drive. He had the feeling that he would fall asleep at the wheel of the car.

He pulled off the street
and into the lot in front of the small brick building, which looked as if it
were at least two hundred years old. He walked towards the door, admiring the
building as he went, recognizing an appeal in the decay caused by time and
generations of civilization. The wind screamed around his ears in a way that it
only did near the coast. Bill Arnold had forgotten just how strong it could be
- it was such a long time since he had been near the coast.

Pushing open the large door
of the police station, Bill looked inside to see a small room with beige walls
and a desk that was occupied by a computer with a blank screen. Equally blank
was the face of the sole officer who sat at the front desk, staring at the
screen in front of him as though waiting for it to boot, while not realizing it
had a blown fuse. To the right of the desk was a corridor that stretched away
some thirty feet. At the near end of this corridor he could make out doors that
led off to the left and right, probably a variety of rooms, maybe cells and
offices.

‘Can I help you sir?’ The
police officer perked up on Bill’s arrival, sensing an escape from the monotony
of a shift that was still only two hours old and would last until eight the
following morning.

‘I hope so,’ Bill answered,
‘I’m looking for…’ Just then a buzzer sounded, surprising Bill into silence.

‘Sorry about this,’ the
officer said. The sound of a door opening and footsteps coming from the
opposite end of the corridor made them both turn and wait in anticipation –
silence taking over the small room.

After a moment three men
appeared, shoulder to shoulder due to the cramped confines of the police
station’s reception area. Bill studied each of the men in turn. The first man
was huge, even bigger than Bill himself. This was a rare occurrence for Bill
Arnold, and the inquisitive stare that the big man fixed upon him made him
pretty sure that he was a member of the policing services. It also made him a
little nervous, and he shifted his glance away from the large man and onto the
second of the three men. This man was a lot shorter than the first and wore
black-rimmed spectacles that brought attention to his slightly large nose. He
wore a dark blue, expensive-looking suit, and the combination of these two
things made Bill Arnold sure that this man was an attorney. He wondered if the
length of his nose had anything to do with his level of ethics in his work, and
allowed his eyes to drift over to the face of the third man, who looked as if
he’d gone five or six rounds with Lennox Lewis - his face was in such a mess.
He sported a split lip that looked painfully swollen. A trickle of dried blood
adorned his chin. As if this was not enough his nose looked broken. Bill could
see dried blood around the man’s nostrils, and a slightly purple tint was
present under both of his eyes. He did not look happy.

The wounds were
obviously fresh, and Bill wondered whether or not he had received them at the
hands of the large man.

‘Can you please help Mr.
Wayans complete a release form Josh?’ he said, with a tone that suggested he
had not gotten what he had wanted from his time with Mr. Wayans.

‘Sure Chief,’ came the
reply from Josh the Officer, who stood up and turned to a filing cabinet behind
the desk, taking out a form and reoccupying his seat. Upon his beginning this
task the large man turned and walked back the way the three men had come, an
action that improved the atmosphere in the small room immediately.

The man who Bill recognized
as an attorney turned to the bruised man and said, ‘Are you going to be okay,
Paul? Do you need money to get home?’

‘Yeah, thanks Jim, if you
don’t mind. Thanks for your help today.’

‘Don’t worry, the bill’s in
the post,’ Jim the Attorney replied and laughed lightheartedly.

The two men shook
hands. Then that was it. Jim the Attorney turned and left the building and Josh
the Officer passed over the partially completed form to Paul the Wounded before
saying, ‘Can you please sign here Mr. Wayans?’ and pointing to a dotted line at
the bottom of the page.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ the
disgruntled Paul the Wounded moaned, as he took the pen held out to him by Josh
the Officer and signed the form without so much as a cursory glance at what it
actually said - such was his eagerness to leave the police station.

Bill continued to stare at
the man. He couldn’t stop himself from doing so; his inquisitive nature
demanded that he be interested, and he found himself mumbling, ‘Hell bud, what
happened to you?’

He knew this was probably
the last question that this man wanted to hear at that moment, but he also knew
that if he allowed him to leave the small room without asking him he would
probably curse himself for not having the guts to do so later.

Paul the Wounded looked up
at Bill Arnold. ‘It’s a long story,’ he replied, holding the stare for a
moment, before dropping his eyes to the form again.

Bill looked at Josh the
Officer, thinking how bizarre the scene looked, only to be answered by a small
shrug of the shoulders; the desire to conceal the shrug obvious both to Bill
Arnold and to Paul the Wounded.

The form signed, Paul the
Wounded handed it over to Josh the Officer, looked one more time at Bill
Arnold, and then walked past him and out of the building through the heavy
door.

‘Sorry about that, what can
I do for you?’ Josh the Officer’s attention had now shifted back to Bill
Arnold, his final relief before he returned to the monotony of his still young
shift.

‘I’m looking for a motel,
some place to stay for a few nights,’ Bill replied, glad that he would finally
be able to get directions and find somewhere to rest.

‘Yeah, I know what a motel
is, sir,’ Josh the Officer replied with a friendly smirk etched across his
face. He followed this with a chuckle, which was not protracted, as the look on
the face of the man opposite him demanded that he get down to business.
A
bad attitude seems to be catching tonight
, he thought to himself.

‘Right, okay. You need to
go right from here…’ His speech was interrupted as the big man suddenly came
into the room again. Both men turned and looked at him in silence. ‘Right,
Josh. I’m gonna leave now so I’ll see you later okay?’

‘Sure chief,’ Josh the
officer replied, and both men watched the big man as he left the police
station, swinging the heavy door open as if it were made from polystyrene.

Josh the Officer then
continued, ‘If you take a right from here there’s a motel about a kilometer
away. Turn out of the parking lot and travel to the end of the block. You’ll
see the Atlantic Ocean; you can’t miss it. It’s a huge blue thing.’

His feeble attempts at
humor were beginning to grind on the nerves of Bill Arnold, but the man who had
been struggling with frayed nerves for most of the previous night and certainly
for the whole of the day clung on to his temper and tried to maintain an air of
equability while Josh the Officer continued, ‘Take a left and drive alongside
the ocean and you’ll see motels dotted about up there. You may have to try more
than one though, what with it being June and everything.’

‘Okay, thanks. I’ll give it
a try.’ Bill was eager to get away from the police station and find one of the
motels so that he could get some sleep and recharge his batteries. That was all
he desired at that moment, not jokes or advice, just rest.

‘My pleasure,’ Josh the
Officer called, as Bill pushed open the door and stepped out into the cold
wind. The fresh air was a relief, and he inhaled deeply before moving towards
his car; itself taking a well earned break from the pressures of the road.

After attempting to start
the engine four times unsuccessfully, he started to worry that the old car had
had enough. It had held out through the strain being put on it by the earlier
excess speed plus the distance traveled, but he was concerned that it had given
up on him before he was ready to give up. Thankfully, it finally sputtered into
life on the fifth attempt.

He heaved a sigh of relief,
releasing the handbrake and turning right out of the parking lot, renewing his
quest to find asylum in Atlantic Beach.

Further down the road he
saw the outline of a figure sitting on the curb with a car pulled up beside
him. As he drove towards their position he saw that a man leant out of the
window, speaking despite the fact that it appeared the man on the curb was
ignoring him.

His suspicions were
confirmed as he reached their location: it was the huge police officer and Paul
the Wounded who were having a tête-à-tête on the sidewalk.

Upon his approach both men
fell silent and looked towards his Ford. He slowed slightly as he passed, his
curiosity demanding he show an interest while his tiredness told him to
accelerate, not decelerate. The huge police officer gave him a salute, while
Paul the Wounded sat with a look of bemusement similar to the look that Bill
Arnold himself wore. It portrayed his desire to be as far away from the scene
as possible.

Bill listened to the voice
of tiredness, continuing past the two men, intent on leaving them behind and
getting back to the present and, more importantly, the future. But the first
thing for him to do was to find a motel, and as thoughts of the two men he was
leaving behind him on the sidewalk began to quickly fade, that was just what
Bill Arnold set out to do.

Sandy Myers felt rotten.

Her afternoon had been
interrupted by the rattle of the mailbox, but her fear to venture outside, or
even look out of the window, meant that she did not see the hulking figure
skulk back into the shadows to conceal its identity.

Twenty minutes had passed
before she was able to coax herself outside the house. When she finally did,
she found the envelope. A feeling of abject terror rooted her to the spot with
the envelope held in her trembling hands, preventing her from running back to
the house.

The effect of shock upon
the human body and senses was the same for Sandy Myers at that moment as it is
for every other person in the world - unpredictable. She thought flight would
win over fear every time in the situation in which she found herself. But she
stood and stared at the envelope, knowing that it held something which she did
not want to see.

It was addressed to Sandy
Carson, and there was only one person in the world that referred to her as
Sandy Carson.

The presence of a credit
card bill in the mailbox was usually enough to inspire in Sandy a feeling of
terror. As it did for most people, money ruled the life of Sandy Myers, but
when she opened the beige envelope and saw the words ‘
I am watching you’
,
money was the last thing on her mind.

It was the fear that came
out of shock that made her run inside the house and lock the doors. It was
shock that made her drop the note as she went, tripping over her feet and
afraid of the shadows.

Once she was inside the
house she went around every window and door, double-checking the locks to make
sure the house was impenetrable from the outside. Then she sat down on the
floor in the lounge, holding her head in her hands and weeping for what seemed
like an eternity. She was scared to move even an inch, and while she was aware
that this made her a sitting target, she was also aware that she must see Joe
and tell him what had really happened to her parents before she could do
anything else.

She sat for four hours,
nervous as hell, emotional as hell, and jumping a couple of inches off the
carpet every time she heard a noise. There were thousands of noises for her to
cope with on this particular afternoon.

Despite drawing the blinds,
Sandy felt like she was being watched. She found herself wondering about the
power of the thing that was out to take her life. The situation was very real
for Sandy Myers, and not one percent of her mind could offer a sense of safety
or security. A thousand locks would not make her feel safe, and the glass in
the windows was easily smashed if her parents’ killer, her would-be killer,
decided now was the moment to take her life.

As a result of this, her
fear spiraled outwards, manifesting itself in a form of paranoia, which made
her fear that something had happened to her husband when he was fifteen minutes
late arriving home from work.

What if he’s been watching
us and decided to take away the obstacles to his success?
she wondered to herself.
The sense of control that she had so craved in her topsy-turvy existence ebbed
away from her senses quickly, and by the time Joe turned his key in the door
her strength was sapped.

The door opened about six
inches, before the chain that she had applied came taut with a crack that was
echoed by the crack of Joe Myers’ head as his momentum took him into the door.

‘Honey, what’s going on?’
he called out, while trying to look through the small gap that was open to him,
immediately nervous. Sandy did not normally use the latch, in the daytime at
least. It was now 5 pm, and they only normally put the latch across when they
were on their way to bed.