HUNTER

by Jessie Cooke

  “You haven’t even given me his name.”

  “That’s because I was hoping you’d tell me who you heard that saying from.”

  “Fuck that. I could have heard it anywhere.”

  “His name is Robert Potter.”

  “Don’t know him. You can go now.”

  “Jon…”

  “We’re finished here.”

  “I’m not.” Hunter opened the file that he’d brought with him. It was information about Jon that he’d compiled over the past two weeks since Chris told him what the cellie reported. Jon didn’t look down at it and he didn’t look at Hunter. He kept his eyes on the wall in front of him as Hunter said, “You joined the army two weeks after your sister went missing. You became a Green Beret. Did you do that to punish yourself for what you did to her?” Hunter believed the man/boy had strangled his sister, hid the body, and then joined the army in an attempt to not get caught. But the bounty hunter was willing to say just about anything that would help him find his brother’s killer and get a serial killer off the streets. Jon didn’t answer him, so he went on. “You served your country, you grew up and became a good man…and now they want to punish you for a mistake you made seventeen years ago. Believe me, I feel for you, man. If I could get you out of here, I would. You have no idea how much respect I have for what you’ve done with your life. Look, maybe if you help me out and we get this killer off the streets, they’d be willing to help you out in return.”

  “Maybe isn’t good enough. If I knew anything, I’d want a guarantee before I said anything.”

  “I wish I could give you a guarantee, Jon, but you have to know that I can’t. I feel for you, brother. I feel for you because my brother, Brett…he was a Ranger too…Special Ops. You may have even crossed paths—Brett Donovan. He might have been one of your brothers too…”

  “I’m telling you, this is a waste of time,” Jon said. “I don’t give a fuck who you are, or who your brother is or was. I didn’t know him. If I met him, he made no impression on me. That part of my life was a long time ago. I’ve done my best to forget it. All I care about now…and I mean all I care about…is my freedom. I’m not stupid enough to sit here and let you manipulate me. You may as well go, now.”

  “Yeah, my brother didn’t like to talk about it either. I can’t imagine what it must have been like. Brett joined up when he was nineteen and went off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. You were there too, weren’t you, Jon, at Fort Sill? You weren’t there the same years as Brett, but you went through the same training and the same selection for Special Forces. You became a Green Beret.” Jon still showed no other emotion than annoyance, but Hunter kept pushing. “You guys, the Army Special Forces soldiers, you’re some pretty special dudes. While the Navy SEALs are getting so much attention for being ‘elite,’ you guys are flying under the radar and going places where the SEALs never dreamed of going. I’ve heard you guys referred to as the Army’s ‘quiet professionals,’ and that description sure did fit my brother. But man, was he smart. I’m guessing you have to be a pretty damned smart guy to be a Green Beret too. Brett, he learned two new languages in a year. And then he was sent somewhere where they spoke those languages and spent almost three years completely incommunicado. We had no idea where he was, and sometimes even if he was alive or dead during those years. It was so hard on my mother…Did yours have a hard time with it too?” Hunter knew that Jon’s mother had testified against him at his trial…but not willingly. She’d been a hostile witness for the prosecution. She either didn’t want to believe that one of her children had killed the other, or she was in denial, simply because he was all she had left.

  The sound of the man’s voice almost startled Hunter as Jon snapped out, “Why are you still here? All I hear is the sound of your voice saying, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ You haven’t said a word that interests me. Guard!” he yelled out. “Guard! We’re done here!” He claimed Hunter’s words didn’t interest him, but something had suddenly provoked him.

  “Your poor mother. She’s been through a lot, hasn’t she? Mine too. First, my brother being gone for so long without a word…and then, he came home safe and ended up dead anyways. Your mom lost a kid too…and now it’s like she lost two of them…”

  “Guard! I’m fucking done here!”

  Hunter pretended to be reading the file in front of him and then he said, “Wow, your mom testified against you, didn’t she? I’m not sure how you get past that. She’s the one that ruined your alibi for the day your sister went missing…isn’t she? That would be hard…”

  “Fuck you,” Jon whispered in a hostile tone. That only egged Hunter on. He was definitely hitting a nerve.

  “Come to think of it, your track record with women isn’t good all the way around, is it? Mom testified against you, and I think I read somewhere that while you were in the army, you were disciplined twice for sexual harassment.”

  “That was bullshit.”

  “Had to piss you off, especially if those women were lying…”

  “Bitches. Lying bitches.” Jon was getting worked up. His face was turning red and the veins on his neck were distended. Hunter might think this guy was the killer if he hadn’t seen the other one for himself. Jon definitely had a problem with women.

  “You know what else I read? You were in jail when they got around to testing that DNA they found on your sister against yours, weren’t you? What was it you were in jail for then?”

  “Guard! We’re done! Get me fucking out of here!”

  Hunter acted like he didn’t hear him. He stood up and started pacing along the wall as he went on, “Oh, I remember. You were engaged when you went into the army, to your high school sweetheart. She stood by you when your sister went missing, didn’t she? I bet she was so sad when you left for Oklahoma for your training. I guess it’s lucky that she didn’t break up with you then…but when you signed up for the Special Forces and got sent to North Carolina, to Fort Bragg for thirteen weeks, that did push her over the edge, didn’t it, Jon? Was that before or after you told her your training was fifty-two weeks total and then you’d be going overseas somewhere and disappearing for weeks, months, or even years at a time?”

  “Fucking bitch didn’t need to be pushed anywhere. She was already unstable,” Jon growled.

  “I still bet it had to hurt when you heard that she married another guy you’d both gone to high school with. I mean, it had to hurt bad, since you were still seething over it enough years later to look her up when you got out…”

  “I just went to talk to her.”

  “I’m sure you did, Jon. But she made it hard for you, didn’t she? She filed a restraining order on you and then had you arrested twice for violating it. Of course the fight you had with her husband was what you were doing time for when they charged you with your sister’s murder, wasn’t it?”

  “What the fuck do you expect to get out of this history lesson?” Jon asked Hunter, looking him in the eye again. His brown eyes had emotion in them now, mostly anger, but it was something Hunter could work with.

  30

  Women pushed Jon’s buttons. He killed his sister, but he’d convinced himself that it was her fault. He harassed women, but they “lied.” His fiancée had him put in jail for assault, but she was “the bitch.” Jon’s invisible wall could be penetrated, after all.

  Hunter shook his head, sighed, and tried to look as sympathetic as possible when he said, “I just didn’t really think about it before…but after all you’ve been through, you must hate women. I mean…they’ve been all bad to you, haven’t they, Jon? I almost wouldn’t blame you if you were the serial killer, the one putting those bitches out of their misery.”

  “I killed my sister. One woman, and it was an accident. She pushed me into it…Fuck, I’m not talking about that and I’m sure as fuck not admitting to killing those other women if that’s what you’re fucking looking for here.”

  “No Jon, see, I know who the killer is and it’s not you. I can’t say I don’t believe yo
u’d like to be.” Hunter chuckled and hoped it sounded natural as he said, “But which of us guys haven’t fantasized about getting even with all the bitches who have made our lives miserable? I know I have.” Jon didn’t say anything and his face was once again neutral as Hunter went on, “Anyways, this guy is acting out our fantasies, Jon. But he got caught and somehow the court screwed up and let him out on bail.” Hunter wasn’t sure but he thought he saw something in Jon’s dull brown eyes change…almost spark with interest. “My cousin paid his bond, but they hadn’t charged him with the murders yet at that point. Once his bail was paid, Robert took off almost right away and he was in the wind again. It took a while, but my brother and I caught up to him, and when we did, he was in the middle of killing another woman. We got there in time to save her, but I had to watch him kill my brother. I should have let him kill her instead, huh, Jon?” The inmate only snorted and Hunter said, “Robert’s been in hiding since then, Jon. I need to find him. I’m not even mad that he put those bitches out of their misery, but he has to answer for what he did to my brother.” Hunter hated talking that way about those innocent women that were murdered. But if Jon thought he was at least on his side about something…

  “Guard!” Jon was growling now. “Where the fuck is he?”

  Hunter shrugged. “He might have taken a break. I asked him not to bother us. You see Jon, I can’t leave until you tell me where Robert is.”

  “I don’t fucking know.”

  “Well then, I guess we have to just keep talking until you remember something…let’s see…what were we talking about? Oh, that’s right, your horrible luck with women. Sometimes I think I have bad luck with women…but you, man! Jon, yours is the worst. I can’t even blame you for hating them. First, your sister tempted you into doing something so horrible that you had to kill her for it, and then your fiancée leaves you for another man while you’re off serving your country, and then women lie on you and say you harassed them, and then your own mother testifies against you…”

  “Shut up!” Jon’s teeth were gritted so tightly that Hunter thought he might break them. “Just shut the fuck up!”

  “Talk to me about Robert, Jon.”

  “I don’t fucking know a Robert Potter! Okay? I don’t know him!”

  “You said you don’t know Robert Potter. Do you know another Potter?” Jon sat silently and Hunter tried to be patient, but he was losing it. “What’s his name, Jon? The man that you got that saying from!”

  “I know a guy named Richard Potter, so not the same guy. Are you fucking satisfied now? Can you leave me the fuck alone now?”

  “Not yet, Jon. I think he is the same guy, and I need to know where to find him, or at least where to look for him. Did Potter tell you what he did to those ‘bitches’? Is that what the dreams were about, Jon?”

  Jon was obviously trying to control his breathing and calm himself down, but it didn’t look like it was working. He spat out his words, one at a time, with murder in his eyes. “You know, you sound more like a fucking psychiatrist than a bounty hunter. I bet you suck balls at your job.”

  Hunter chuckled. “Nah, I’m pretty damned good at my job. But this isn’t about my job, Jon. It’s about my brother. I’m obsessed with finding his killer. I’m relentless, and I’m not going away until you tell me where to look for Potter.”

  A trickle of sweat ran off the man’s forehead and dripped down onto the table in front of him. His shackled hands were shaking and the bulging veins in his neck were pulsating as he yelled, “I haven’t seen him in years, okay? It was three fucking years ago, before that bitch got me locked up…”

  “Where did you see him, Jon?” Hunter watched the man visibly crack.

  “I ran into him at a bar in Boston. We shared a bottle and then we shared some skank he picked up. That was it. I left and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “You shared a skank?” Hunter swallowed bile and said, “Where did this happen, in the bar?”

  “Yeah, no…not in the fucking bar. We took her upstairs to a room above the bar.”

  “Whose room was it?”

  “Fuck, man, I don’t know. I told you all I know.”

  “Was the woman alive when you left, Jon?”

  Jon didn’t answer him. It was like he’d checked out again, snapping his back straight and staring at the wall in front of him. Hunter searched the other man’s face for any sign of emotion, but there was none once again. Hunter almost cursed out loud. For a second, they were on the right track and now he was gone again. Hunter took a deep breath and controlled the tone of his voice as he said:

  “Jon, if you can answer one more question for me, I’ll leave and I won’t come back. I also promise you that if your information helps us catch this scumbag…I’ll go to bat for you with the D.A.”

  “I don’t fucking know anything else,” Jon said.

  “Just one more question, Jon. Where did you first meet him? How did you know Potter before you ran into him in Boston that night?”

  Jon’s cheek twitched and he was silent for so long that Hunter didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally, in a defeated tone he said, “I met him at Fort Bragg. He was my ‘walk’ instructor in Ranger School.”

  “I’m sorry? Your ‘walk’ instructor?” Hunter’s mind was racing. There was no way the Robert Potter that Hunter knew was a Ranger and he’d missed it. Maybe Jon was right and it wasn’t the same guy. Maybe there was another guy that knew the saying…fuck, Hunter was getting rapidly discouraged. He knew for sure that the Robert Potter he was looking for didn’t have any history of military service. He was your typical loner type who seemed to live a fairly normal life before breaking wide open in college. The FBI profile likened him to someone with a “military” flair for preciseness…but there was no history. Despite that, Hunter still wanted to hear what Jon had to say.

  “I thought you said your brother was a Ranger?” Jon was looking directly at him again. Hunter got the feeling he was imagining wrapping his hands around Hunter’s throat.

  “He was.”

  “Then how the fuck do you not know this?”

  “He didn’t like to talk about it. You can understand that, can’t you Jon? Not liking to talk about things.”

  Jon snorted and then he said, “There are three phases to Ranger School. They’re each designed for a specific purpose. There’s the ‘crawl’ phase, which lasts twenty days. They say it’s designed to assess you physically, but if they were being fucking honest, they’d say it was designed to break you. If it doesn’t, you go on to the ‘walk’ phase. It’s also called the ‘mountain’ phase, because that’s where it takes place. That son of a bitch lasts twenty-one days and it’s where you learn military mountaineering tasks and how to employ platoons for continuous combat patrol and shit like that. It’s grueling fucking training and Richard was damned good at it. He got off on making it as extreme as possible.”

  “Jon, what does Richard look like?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. He’s like six-three, two-fifty. He’s got dishwater-blond hair and these really creepy, intense blue eyes…”

  It sounded just like him, especially those creepy eyes. “Does he have any tattoos?”

  “He’s got an eagle on his back.”

  “An eagle?” The scum that Hunter was looking for had a tattoo on his back, but it was a phoenix, rising from the ashes. Maybe Jon didn’t know the difference? Or maybe Hunter was grasping at straws.

  “Yeah, a fucking eagle, and a flag. The eagle has its talons wrapped around a flagpole and the flag is hanging from it. The tattoo is huge, it covers his whole fucking back.”

  Hunter was ready to walk out. It couldn’t be the same guy. His head was telling him that, but his gut was saying something different. He changed tacks again and asked Jon, “When you left Ranger School, how long was it before you saw this Richard Potter again?”

  “The last part of Ranger School was the ‘run’ phase. They stuck us out in a fucking swamp for almost a month. We le
arned how to use combat weapons and survive in extreme conditions. Richard wasn’t the lead instructor there, but he helped out with some of the weapons. After that, I didn’t see him for two years. I was home on leave and it was the first time I ran into him at that bar.”

  “The one in Boston?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ‘share a skank’ that night?”

  He rolled his eyes. “No. We just had a few beers and talked.”

  “About?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “Jon, did you ever tell Richard about your sister?” He didn’t answer that question, instead he said:

  “We got drunk. We picked up some girls and we had some fun that night. Again, a year or two went by before I saw him again. That was the extent of our relationship.”

  “What did he say when you told him about your sister, Jon?”

  “I told you…”

  “He hates women even more than you do, doesn’t he, Jon? What did he say when you told him your sister threw herself at you?”

  “I’m done.”

  “When you told him that your own sister was a skank and you had to kill her, Jon? What did he say?” Hunter had walked over close to him and his mouth was close to the other man’s ear. “I’ll bet he was sympathetic, wasn’t he, Jon? I’ll bet he understood that you only did what she forced you to do, didn’t he?”

  Jon yanked at the chains that bound him to the table and floor and almost growled like a wild animal. Spit flew from between his gritted teeth as he said, “You want to know what he said? He fucking understood. He knew that she’d given me no fucking choice. He believed me when I said I hadn’t meant to kill her. He was the only person in the fucking world that could see it was all her fault.”

  “What else did he say, Jon?”

  “He said that nothing felt as good as putting a bitch out of her misery! Okay? Are you fucking satisfied now? Will you leave me the fuck alone now?”

  “Sure, Jon…one more thing…”