by John Hunt
He could see out the back window the glow from the lap top computer in the cruiser illuminating Samantha’s face. She didn’t look pleased. She didn’t want the overtime. She had made it clear to Rajinder the last thing she wanted at the end of a night shift was a longer shift. Night shift messed up the sleeping schedule and the older she got, the harder it was to sleep during the day. Rajinder didn’t think he’d be able to sleep much anyways. Not after the night he had. Guard duty for a notorious mass murderer? Yes, please! Best first night ever!
His eyes ran over Taylor. The bottom of his feet hung over the end of the stretcher by a good foot. Rajinder had never seen a bigger man before. He’d seen really tall people who had to duck their heads to go under door frames and they were usually lean and lanky people, all knees and elbows. Taylor resembled a professional wrestler with his size. He could see the cuff barely fit around his wrist. They were almost not big enough. His chest and shoulders expanded over the sides of the stretcher. Good thing the guy was out. Rajinder, being a new recruit, possessed a high level of fitness. Some of the officers, the older ones, could barely get their vests strapped on. Some of their bellies stuck out from the bottom of the vest and rolled over the top of their duty belts. There were no yearly physical tests after you’ve been hired and sworn in. You only had to be fit to get hired. Rajinder could bench more weight than most of the recruits in his class at Police College and from seeing the officers on his shift, he thought his fitness level surpassed all of them. Even taking all that into consideration, he wouldn’t want to mess with Taylor alone. No way. The guy could twist him into a pretzel and not even break a sweat. And it’s not like the guy would hesitate to kill him either. He had murdered four people in two days and from what he heard at the station and saw on the news, the guy did it in gruesome and violent ways. Taylor’s injured arm lay across his stomach. Misshapen and lumpy, Rajinder worried the jolting ambulance would cause enough pain to wake up Taylor.
Rajinder said, “He’s out, right?”
“Oh yeah, well out. Look how low the heart rate is. Although from what I understand, he had fainted and those don’t usually last this long.”
“So, he could wake up at any minute?”
“In theory, yes.”
Rajinder’s eyes returned to Taylor and he swallowed.
The paramedic smiled and said, “I don’t think he’ll be waking up anytime soon. I’ve seen lots of people who have been out before. This guy’s responses, or lack of them, and his vitals indicate to me he is out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he slips into a coma. Maybe he already has. He may have hit his head after he fainted, I don’t know.”
Rajinder’s hand patted the butt of his gun and with effort, he rested his hand in his lap. He said, “How much further to the hospital?”
“We should be pulling in any minute now. Ah, see, we’re slowing down.”
Taylor’s broken arm, the one the paramedic insisted didn’t get cuffed, swung into Rajinder’s face. His front teeth separated from his gums and shot down his throat. The back of his head rang off the metal wall of the ambulance and before he even realized what happened or why he couldn’t see or why white pain exploded behind his eyeballs, Taylor swung his arm again and the angle of it pushed the bridge of Rajinder’s nose into his brain killing him instantly.
The paramedic’s mouth hung open. The violence had been so sudden and unexpected, he hadn’t even moved before Rajinder slumped against his seatbelt, dead with blood raining out of his nose and mouth.
His hand reached for the radio mike on his shoulder. Before he could depress the button, Taylor’s hand encircled his neck and squeezed and his radio was forgotten. His hands scratched and beat at Taylor’s forearm, pulling and gouging at the fingers sinking into his flesh. The paramedic eye’s pulsed and his head flooded with blood. He heard gurgling and knew it was him. The grip tightened on his throat, squeezing, squeezing and he could feel the grip on his spine in the back of his neck. His vision darkened on the edges. He locked eyes onto Taylor. Taylor grinned from the bed and his mouth stretched so wide his eyes were slits in his gleeful face. The paramedic heard a crunch, felt it in his neck and thought in a clinical detached way, he just broke my neck. Darkness dropped like a curtain over his eyes.
***
Samantha followed the ambulance and could see the hospital towers looming large in the morning sky. EMERGENCY in bright blue hung above the overhang where the ambulance was headed. She knew she should be happy about this opportunity. It would probably be the biggest or most important moment in her career. Rajinder couldn’t contain his excitement. It sparkled from his eyes and she wondered when her enthusiasm for the job had waned. It hadn’t been a fast process. Experiences dulled the shine. A barrage of people complaining about a situation they created and wanting you to extricate them from it without ever telling the whole story or even the truth grated on her. She had learned people’s version of truth to be an elusive ideal evolving and constantly changing based upon their perception or their objective. Parents wondered why their kids wouldn’t listen to them even though it was their lack of parenting and lack of consequences that had led the toddlers throwing temper tantrums in the store to become teenagers throwing temper tantrums when their cell phone bill wasn’t paid or they couldn’t have the keys to the car. No one ever wanted to be told their children’s behaviour was their fault. No, it had to be Oppositional Defiance Disorder or ADD or something they weren’t to blame for. Then there were the dead bodies, the suicides, the children stealing their elderly parents’ blind thinking they were entitled to it. The experiences mounted, pressing on her shoulders like a heavy hand, and the desire to come into work vanished to be replaced with a dread at the thought of it. She started to hate the people and hate the calls and she worried for a time when a real victim needed her help, would she even recognize them? Still, she prided herself on doing the job right. She completed excellent reports, had high enforcement numbers and the brass regarded her with respect. And her platoon mates knew she could be counted on in a fight and most times, that’s all an officer ever needed to satisfy to be accepted by their peers. She decided her problems were ones she created and a small smile touched her lips thinking of the irony. She would have to do better and would do better if only to be a good coach to Rajinder. Because the job could be awesome. She only had to let it.
The ambulance pulled into the bay and she parked behind it. She let the dispatcher know she had arrived at the hospital and unclipped her belt. She pulled out her notebook and wrote in the time of dispatch and time of arrival and continued with other pertinent call details. In her peripheral, the back door of the ambulance opened. She didn’t look up, thinking it would be the paramedic climbing down. She heard a door slam and in the back of her mind thought the paramedic’s partner, the one who had been driving was exiting to help. On the second point she had been right. Samantha only looked up when she heard the driver scream.
She saw Taylor running towards her, his right hand extended and pointing a gun at her. Behind him and to his right and Samantha’s left was the female paramedic screaming and reaching for her shoulder microphone.
Samantha ducked below the dash just as the first shot slammed through the windshield. She flinched from the sound of the gun. All her training with her sidearm had been done while wearing ear protection and the gun’s loud report shocked her. Her hand slapped at the emergency button on the computer terminal, the 10-33 button, telling all officers she needed help. It opened the microphone on her portable and the radio in the car. All officers and dispatchers with a radio in the city could hear her. And they could hear the shots.
Samantha thought she was being cool, thought ice was flowing through her veins and even though aware of her peril, believed she was in control and speaking in a calm manner in between the shots pelting glass on top of her. She wasn’t. She was
screaming, “TAYLOR IS COMING! HELP! OH GOD, HELP!” And the whole city police force heard her and the whole city police force raced towards her. She remembered in training, when officers were interviewed after life and death situations and they huddled on the ground bleeding out, the best sound they had ever heard in their life was the wail of sirens converging on them. It meant help. It meant life. Samantha strained to hear them and sucked back a sob when all she heard was the sound of Taylor’s footsteps, his laughter and the gunshots. She was on her own.
Because of the way she ducked under the windshield, she was contorted over the handle grip of her sidearm and feared straightening up would mean taking a bullet in the face. She had to dig her hand into her side, searching for the safety catches on her holster to release her gun. She heard Taylor laughing and her own voice saying, “Fuck no, fuckity-fuck, fucking gun!” And then Taylor was outside her window pointing the gun at her, inches from her face. She imagined she could see the head of the bullet in the barrel. Over the length of the barrel were Taylor’s eyes. His smile looked like it would split his face down the middle if he tried harder.
With the cheek straining grin on his face, he said, “Taylor needs your car.”
“You can have it.”
“Tsk-tsk. Taylor wasn’t asking permission.”
He shot her in the face. It went in though her eyeball and out the back of her skull.
***
Brenda, the paramedic, wanted to check on her partner in the back of the ambulance and she didn’t want Taylor to turn his attention on her so she huddled in front of the ambulance and peered around the chrome headlight casing watching as Taylor jogged to the cruiser firing shots and laughing. She saw the windshield crack, heard the officer screaming and witnessed the execution. Brenda spoke into her portable mic to her dispatch, updating them knowing the police dispatch would be listening in. She whispered a running commentary and later, when she heard the tapes, she would be surprised how robotic her voice sounded, “Taylor shot the officer. She’s stopped yelling so I think he shot her. Taylor’s opening the door now. He’s pulling the officer out. He’s dropping her on the ground. He’s taking her gun. He’s getting in the car now. He’s reversing, no, now he’s pulling forward. He’s driving over, oh no, d-driving overtop the officer and now he’s heading past me and he’s gone, he’s heading towards the Hanlon Expressway.”
When Brenda was sure Taylor had gone, she checked on her partner and the policeman. Both dead. When Taylor had passed her, she had caught a glimpse of his face in the glow of the computer screen. The smile he wore racked a chill through her body so violent she felt it in her bones. Sometimes at night, right before sleep, the grin would flash on the screen on the inside of her eyelids. It’d take her hours to find sleep after. Within a year, she would quit her job. She found the most non-violent work she could think of. She became a yoga instructor.
-24-
Rewind…
Owen didn’t go home. Instead, he went into the washroom, splashed some water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes burned red. He hadn’t really slept since the first murder two nights ago. It was what police did with homicides. They front-loaded the case with resources to gather information and evidence. And when the killer wasn’t known and going on a rampage, all detectives pushed away the notion of getting sleep because there wouldn’t be any until they caught the guy. His body burned with exhaustion only his brain wouldn’t stop churning. Taking deep breaths he muttered, “Get a grip, Owen. You didn’t see what you thought you did because that shit is impossible. There is no dark man. There is no Tracker.”
He wanted to believe it. In the interests of his own sanity, he needed to believe it, only the goddamn scene kept replaying in his head and he couldn’t shake it loose. Not even with his highly developed, skeptical and cynical cop brain. No rationale he offered diluted the image of those dark eyes measuring him from Taylor’s face. He shook his head and exhaled. He turned on the tap and ducked his mouth under the faucet to suck in the cold water. It tingled on his teeth. He flipped the tap off and ran through the facts. Fact one: Taylor killed those people. They had evidence, video and witnesses that said he did. Fact two: He had motive. Fact three: Taylor put himself at every scene. Those facts could not be disputed. They were…facts. And the Tracker was a conjured scapegoat created by Taylor to either try to be deemed not criminally responsible or to displace the blame in his own mind which would limit or reduce the guilt from killing four people. Either way the story of the Tracker couldn’t be true because, well, it was ridiculous.
Taylor believed the story of the Tracker though. Taylor’s expression when Owen told him he did know those people and that they were the same people who humiliated him in high school told Owen Taylor didn’t believe him. Not even when he showed him the crime scene photos. And what about the basement with all the weights, protein powder and steroids? Owen could tell Taylor believed he was still fat. Believed it to the point where the reality of it caused his mind to shut down. What did that mean? Because that shit was no act. No fucking way did he fake passing out and cracking his forearm that way without waking up. Say he did do the whole fake pass out because the questions were tearing apart the load-of-crap story he tried to sell and he dropped to the floor to add dramatic veracity to the tale, there was no way in hell he could keep up the charade when his arm snapped like that. No way.
Taylor was crazy. Simple as that. In Taylor’s mind, the Tracker killed those people. And that made him not criminally responsible. That was something the courts would have to determine. The only other alternative wasn’t an alternative at all. It was preposterous to think the Tracker was real and had possessed Taylor so he could set up Taylor for killing the people he hated most in high school. But you saw his eyes and they looked just like Taylor said they did. Say he’s crazy all you want if it makes you feel better, if it will help you sleep. Owen shivered. Taylor is a killer. Taylor is the Tracker. They are the same person. Owen straightened, dried his hands on a paper towel and left the washroom. Fuck it. The best way to satisfy his own mind would be to rewind the damn interview and see for himself.
***
Owen sat in the video monitoring room. A portable radio chattered by his elbow. He listened to the dispatcher communicating with the officer detailed to follow the ambulance. He knew Samantha to be dependable and hard working. If she wanted to, she could be a detective when the next spot opened up. He also knew she was coaching a new guy. Really? They sent a new guy? Owen frowned at the radio. They only sent two officers with Taylor? His stomach churned with anxiety and he considered calling down to the boss on the desk to complain. He dismissed it, knowing Earl would have stressed the need to send other officers. For all Owen knew, maybe the boss was waiting for other officers to be available before dispatching them and he didn’t feel like arguing with a superior officer. He knew from experience he would lose because in their own minds they were never wrong.
While he had been interviewing Taylor, there were officers in another room watching. One of the officers was typing out what had been said. Each entry was time stamped. He rewound the video to the time where Taylor stood after hearing he was the size of a professional wrestler and let it play forward at regular speed. Owen leaned toward the screen, his body a question mark. Taylor’s face twitched and moved like putty. And then he dropped. Owen cringed when he heard the arm snap, again. Loud, like a heavy box dropping. Owen hissed and stopped moving when he watched himself lean over Taylor. C’Mon! My stupid body is hiding his face from the camera. Owen sat back in his chair, disappointed and relieved. Relieved because it’d be easier to convince himself it hadn’t happened if it couldn’t be seen on the video. He thought of finding Earl and talking to him, to convince him to let Owen stay on a little longer before going home. He wanted to be sure Taylor got to the hospital and would be guarded properly. He
didn’t think he’d be able to sleep until he knew. He stood to find Earl and a voice bellowed out of the police radio, “TAYLOR IS COMING! HELP! OH GOD, HELP!”
The hair stood along Owen’s body as though it tried to pull away from him. He snapped up the portable and held it closer to his ear and glimpsed hard nodules on his wrists and hand while running towards the locker by his desk to get his vest and firearm. The dispatcher spoke over the radio, cutting off the transmission, “10-33. Officers at the Guelph General Hospital need assistance.”
He strapped on the vest and saw others in the office doing the same. He caught sight of Earl vesting up and he yelled overtop the cubicles, “I’m coming with you!”
“Yeah!”
Owen strapped on his full belt, the one he used to wear on uniform patrol, and took his gun from the detective holster and dropped it into the holster on his hip. He secured the velcro and flinched. When the dispatcher finished broadcasting the location, Samantha’s portable continued transmitting so the responding officers could hear and have a better idea of what they were rushing to. Owen heard gunshots and laughing. He heard Samantha say, Fuck no, fuckity-fuck, fucking gun!
He finished with the vest and scooped up the portable and yelled, “We gotta go, Earl!”
“I know!”
Owen heard another voice on the radio, a deep gravelly voice. He didn’t know who it could be and gritted his teeth in confusion when the voice said, Taylor needs your car.
