The Hostage

by Saul, Jonas

  Thinking became a chore. What next? He ran for the front door to grab his jacket and leave. But wait. What about the vomit? He had to clean that up first. Although wouldn’t that look suspicious? If they ever found out he’d been here and then he’d taken measures to conceal that fact he’d look even more guilty. It could take years to sort out.

  No one had samples of his DNA. No one had his fingerprints anywhere. There was no way they could tie him to this apartment, let alone the building. This part of Scarborough was new to him. No one would recognize him or know him. The best thing to do was get the fuck out.

  He reached for the door handle but stopped when he heard shuffling on the other side. He wondered if he would pass out from being too nervous as he edged close to the door to look through the peep hole.

  What he saw paralyzed him.

  Four Toronto Police Officers stood on the other side of the door. One of them was motioning with his hands to someone down the hall to continue forward. Then he pointed at the apartment door of 1408.

  Behind which stood Drake Bellamy and a dead female.

  He had to do something. He needed to leave. He’d done nothing wrong. The bald guy killed the girl, not Drake. The cops’ job wasn’t to play the judge and jury. They would arrest him and let the courts figure it out. He couldn’t spend the next year in jail waiting for that to happen. It wasn’t fair. He’d done nothing wrong.

  Fuck it.

  Paralysis broken, he made a decision.

  Drake turned from the door, grabbed his jacket and ran for the balcony. Behind him, he heard knocking. Then a cop yelled, “Toronto Police, open up!”

  Drake moved the curtains aside and unlocked the balcony door. His fingers were wet from the jacket. He couldn’t maintain a solid grip on the lock. He tossed the jacket onto the nearest couch, wiped his fingers on the leopard blanket beside him and turned to yank on the lock.

  It snapped open as the police knocked again.

  Drake slid the door aside quietly and then the screen door. A table and two chairs were on the balcony. He moved the table nearer to the retaining wall separating the neighbor’s balcony from the one he was on and climbed onto it.

  A loud bang emanated from inside the apartment. The police were attempting to break the door down.

  Certain only seconds separated him from being caught, Drake got up on the table and looked around the edge to the other balcony. Being careful to not look down, he managed to get a full view of the mountain bike and golf clubs that this neighboring tenant stored on their balcony.

  He heard another bang from inside the apartment behind him. The rain poured down past his shoulders. He put his foot on the railing and tested it for good measure. With only seconds left, Drake lifted off the table and fully stepped onto the wet ledge of the balcony one hundred and forty feet above ground, his hands gripping the cement partition as best he could.

  Then he looked down.

  It was unavoidable. His balance wavered as his hands struggled for purchase.

  Fourteen floors up and he could count eight cruisers parked in front of the building.

  In the seconds he stood there he also saw a cop looking up at him. The cop raised his arm and pointed. Other people were looking up now too but Drake had something else more important to deal with.

  His feet were slipping on the wet railing.

  He spun towards the other balcony as best he could and reached for the far side. As luck would have it, his hand found a piece of cement jutting out. It gave him something to hold onto as leverage. His right foot came around and plunked down on the neighbor’s railing at the exact moment his left foot slid off the other. Without delay he hopped down onto the floor of the neighbor’s balcony and relative safety.

  A large sigh escaped his lips as he realized that he almost met the Grim Reaper.

  More noises could be heard from the other apartment. They must’ve gotten inside. How was he going to get out of here? They were right next door. The cops would be watching every door in the hallway. A cop had seen him jump to this balcony. He would radio up to his fellow officers what he had seen.

  It was over. He had tried to run but they caught him.

  “Damn,” he said as he slammed a fist into his palm. “I forgot my fucking jacket on the couch back there.”

  He grabbed the balcony door to see if it was locked. It slid open with ease. Under normal circumstances he would be happy with this fortuitous break but he was in their trap as sure as being mired in quicksand.

  Unless…

  He quietly ran through the apartment, heading for where he thought the bedroom was, with no regard for the fact that someone could be home. If his plan didn’t succeed, whether someone was home or not mattered little. Yet the fact the apartment was empty affirmed in him that his chances of getting out of here were increasing.

  In the bedroom he located the closet, grabbed two random T-shirts, changed into them one on top of the other, tossed the damp shirt he came in on the floor and ran back into the living room. He got to the apartment door and looked through its peep hole to the hallway. A cop ran by the door. Then another. They had the floor covered. This was going to take brains, courage and a ton of luck.

  He turned from the door and screamed at the empty living room.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment? Get outta here. How did you get in?!”

  With his right hand he smacked his face hard enough to leave red marks.

  “Heh, what the—”

  He smacked himself again. Then with both hands he reached up to the collar and ripped the outside T-shirt a little.

  “I’m calling the police if you don’t leave right now,” he yelled to the empty apartment.

  Then Drake ran and body-checked the door.

  A moment later he unlocked and opened it.

  Three Toronto Police officers stood there staring at him. One of them had his hand up with a container of pepper spray in it. The other two had their hands on the butts of their guns.

  “Where did you guys come from? How did you get here so fast?” Drake paused and stared back. He breathed in and out like he’d just ran a marathon. If only they knew it was his nerves and heart rate causing him to nearly collapse. “Don’t just stand there. Do something. Some guy jumped onto my balcony from that apartment,” Drake pointed in the direction of the snake head drug dealer’s place, “and accosted me in my own home.”

  Two of the officers reacted. They brushed past Drake and into the apartment behind him. He stepped aside and moved down the hall a bit, holding his face where he’d been slapped.

  “Wait a second. Don’t get too far. We’re gonna need to talk to you.”

  Drake turned around. He was ten feet away now and only five feet from the door to the stairwell.

  “I’ll wait over here. I don’t want to be too close when that thug comes out.”

  Someone yelled from inside the apartment.

  They’d found his wet shirt on the floor in the bedroom.

  The ruse was up.

  Drake bolted for the stairwell. By the time he got through the door and was down the first flight of steps he could hear heavy footfalls directly behind him.

  They were close and moving in fast. He had to think of something. The trap had not been completely sprung yet.

  On the twelfth floor he opened the door to the hall and turned to close it. As fast as his weak legs would carry him, Drake bolted down the hall. He needed to get to the other end before a cop could come through the door behind him and offer to use his weapon.

  While running the length of the corridor he began banging on the apartment doors. He knocked on every door he passed and yelled out one word over and over.

  “Fire!”

  Then with deft precision, he yanked down the red handle on a fire alarm unit as he passed it. The entire building went live with the sound of the shrill scream of the alarm, telling everyone to get out.

  Doors started opening behind him. He looked over his shoulder to se
e one of those doors was to the stairwell and numerous cops were barreling through. One of them lifted his arm and yelled for him to stop.

  Other doors were opening. Some of the ones he’d knocked on moments ago. Five or six people randomly entered the twelfth floor hallway standing between the cops and Drake. He saw all this as he ran, nearing the door to the far stairwell in record time. He was sure the cops were yelling things like ‘Freeze’ and ‘Get outta the way’ but no one would be able to hear them as the fire alarm drowned them out. It would appear to be a normal or routine event seeing authorities on the floor of your apartment building while the fire alarm raged.

  Drake hit the door running and raced down the stairs to the floors below. Other people were entering the stairwell ahead of him, alerted by the alarm and not wanting to risk the elevator. He mixed in with the running crowd. By the time he got to the sixth floor he removed the torn T-shirt and tossed it onto the floor, its purpose served.

  Now dressed in an orange Dead Head T-shirt, he tousled his hair and continued down. Where the strength to continue came from he didn’t know. Adrenaline pumped through his veins like it’d been injected straight from a can of Red Bull.

  He’d lost the hundred bucks as that was in his jacket pocket back in the drug dealer’s living room. He’d lost his jacket and his cookies in the same apartment. He’d even left his fingerprints on the plate and utensils he’d touched at the dining room table. The only thing he still had were his car keys. Luckily those were something he always placed in his jeans pocket and not the jacket.

  He wondered, as he passed the third floor completely surrounded by people, if he also lost his sanity. Was he crazy now? Why was he running? He’d done nothing wrong. By that rationale, there was zero reason to run.

  Yet he ran.

  He didn’t even get to buy the drugs, thereby committing no act of breaking the law. He was as innocent as they come.

  Yet he ran.

  The first floor was coming up. He’d have to deal with the semantics of his situation another time.

  The door was wide open, but most people continued down the stairs racing right by the first floor door. When Drake turned the corner he saw why.

  A large red exit sign hung over the door to the outside where the people ahead of him were filing out. It was slow going as everyone seemed to clump together at the door.

  He was almost free.

  Through the opening it looked like the rain had stopped. People were gathering in groups. Neighbors, friends and relatives stood talking to one another, asking if the others knew anything.

  The moment Drake got to the door, his heart dropped. Two Toronto cops were standing on either side monitoring the faces of the people exiting the building.

  Back into his acting mode, he turned his face into a mask of discontent, looking miffed at the intrusion of a fire alarm. He even yawned as he stumbled out the door. As a last minute thought he turned to the guy behind him and said, “Working the night shift sucks when you get these alarms in the middle of the day like this.”

  Both cops were in earshot. He knew they heard him. As he passed them they waved him on and Drake was out.

  They weren’t looking for a thirty year old in an orange Dead Head T-shirt who was yawning and complaining about being woken up. They were looking for a guy who was running ragged, with a ripped neck line on his T-shirt and who had wet hair. When he’d tousled his hair it only looked like he had gel in it.

  Through the throng of people on the lawn, up to the sidewalk and across Victoria Park Avenue Drake walked. On the way to his car his legs weakened, the adrenaline wearing off. He turned around several times, but no one was following him. He’d gotten away clean.

  Ten minutes later he saw his car parked right where he’d left it. Now sitting in the front seat, his hands were shaking too much to get the key in. Drake sat there and tilted his head back to lean it on the headrest, trying to get his breathing controlled. Tears came. He wept for what he had seen. For the nameless girl that had been so brutally killed. He cried for the people who could’ve done such a thing. How was this possible? Why set him up? How was his father involved? Nothing added up and everything felt wrong on so many levels.

  Pictures of the woman’s naked corpse assailed his mind over and over causing him to feel sick again.

  He needed to get home to feel safe. He needed out of here, but could he drive? Was he capable of operating a motor vehicle?

  Drake tried the key again and this time it went in without a problem. He turned the car on, dropped it into gear and looked over his shoulder.

  The bald guy was about a hundred feet away.

  He was smiling, watching him.

  Drake froze. His Pontiac 6000 sat idling, his foot on the brake, hand on the steering wheel.

  The bald guy was in a large blue pick-up truck about thirty meters back, parked in his own spot. Drake watched as he got out of the truck and stepped down to the pavement. Snake head closed his door and stood there watching Drake. Their eyes locked for what felt like long minutes but were only seconds.

  Then snake head did something that made Drake almost lose it completely.

  He reached to his midsection and jerked his hand up and down indicating the vivisection wound on the girl in the apartment. With his left hand he pointed at Drake to indicate he was next.

  Then he ran a hand across his neck in the international symbol of cutting one’s throat.

  Drake pulled away. It was the only response he had. The only thing he could do. It was obvious the bald guy meant him harm. Somehow he had been pegged for this.

  What the bald guy didn’t account for was that Drake would make it out of the building.

  The bald guy also missed that now Drake would be a wanted man. Once you strip a man’s liberties and toss him to the wolves, any man would come out fighting.

  Drake wasn’t the fighting type. He didn’t want this nor did he ask for it. But fear had a way of changing a man. The fear of being taken by the police caused him to act in ways he never thought he would have.

  The fear of threats caused anger to rise in him.

  Staring at the bald guy as he mocked the death of the girl in the apartment and then slit his throat with his finger to indicate to Drake what’s coming caused a violence to stir in Drake that he never thought possible.

  In that moment he realized he would have to kill the bald guy or be killed by him.

  Chapter 2

  Drake made it to his apartment without delay. A couple police cruisers passed him on the Gardiner Expressway but none paid him any attention. Exhausted from the ordeal, he sat on his couch to rest and gather his thoughts.

  What was he going to do? He had no idea who that bald guy was or why he tried to set him up. Who was the girl and why did she have to die? The big question was how long it would take the police to catch up with him. After all, Drake would be an easy guy to find. He had a health card, debit cards and a Visa. He paid rent, worked as a forklift operator at a loading dock in Etobicoke and paid his taxes on time. Any government computer could be summoned to give up everything from his middle name and date of birth all the way to when he had his last shit.

  There was no future in hiding. By that rationale, there was no future in running either.

  He turned to his side and spread out on the couch to lay down. It was just past five in the afternoon. If there was ever a time to stop and think it would be right now. After today he would be like the guy in The Fugitive, running from the police attempting to solve the murder before they caught up to him.

  Can I really do it? Seriously, he asked himself, is this what my life has become?

  And what about his father? Why would he send him to meet Charles Manson’s brother? Didn’t he check into the name and address before just randomly delivering his son up shit river?

  Drake closed his eyes and monitored his breathing. Other than the shakes that were wearing off, he was coming back around, the rush of the past few hours ebbing.

 
When he opened his eyes the apartment had grown dark. He shot up and looked around assuming that someone had been here and turned off the lights. No one was in the apartment. The drapes were open and the street lights were lit.

  He must’ve fallen asleep. After standing and a quick stretch to awaken the muscles, he walked into the kitchen and saw that it was 10:49pm.

  “Shit,” he said out loud. “I fell asleep for over five hours.”

  So much could have happened in that time. He turned around to the fridge and began to prepare something to eat. In under a minute he’d made a sandwich and ate it in four bites.