The Hunter Inside

by David McGowan

  He drank most nights when he wasn’t driving the rig. It was the best way he could figure out to escape the loneliness he felt. Lately it had also been the best way of forgetting the threat of whoever was taunting him.

  Tonight he needed that little bit more.

  His stress levels were high, and he needed to bring them down.

  On top of this was the added factor of darkness outside. As a child he had been afraid of the dark. In fact, he had been petrified of it. His parents would have to bribe him into his bed at night and it would always take him hours to get to sleep. He would lay and imagine that a monster was about to come flying out of the cupboard, keeping himself awake by shivering with fear all night. Or he would be just falling asleep and he would hear a noise or see a shadow go across the room.

  There had been only two occasions in his adult life when he’d felt this nervous about the dark. One was when his father had been killed and the other was now. He felt susceptible in the dark, as did every child and every adult if they would admit it, and that was why he needed more tonight.

  He added a large whiskey to the two bottles of Bud he had already drunk, and turned the dimmer switch until it became a brightener switch.

  Bill Arnold sat for almost two hours, trying not to think about the letter or the photograph, and shoveling beer, whiskey, beer, whiskey down his throat one after the other.

  He gave up with the TV after he had drunk seven bottles of Bud and as many large whiskeys. It had not had the desired effect of making him forget his troubles. The screen became as dead to him as the old broken lamp that stood in the corner of the room and the table upon which his liquor stood as he dropped the remote control and thought again about whether he should go to the police. Putting himself in their shoes made him reluctant to do so. He’d heard nothing on the TV news, both local and national.

  ‘What if they haven’t found this man and the photograph helps them to find him?’ he slurred to himself. ‘I’ve got no alibi and I must be the only one to have this photograph.’ He could not go to the police. They would suspect him. He would have to face this alone.

  But there were things that Bill Arnold didn’t know. He would not be the only one to receive this vile photograph – there would be others. And he would not have to face this thing alone.

  2

  Paul Wayans sat and stared out of the window of his Stamford residence that overlooked the Long Island Sound. A few colorful sails bobbed up and down on the calm water, a gentle breeze sweeping across the surface, wispy white clouds drifting slowly across the sky.

  Despite the picturesque panoramic that opened out in front of him, he was gripped by a feeling of sadness and uneasiness that he had never before experienced in his thirty-four years. Not even when his wife Marcie had been killed five years previously, after getting caught up in a bank robbery, had he felt as alone as he did at that precise moment. The feeling became unshakable, coursing through his veins – an invisible assailant.

  ‘It’s just nonsense,’ he said to himself, and was shocked by the reverberation of his voice around the walls of his luxurious and spacious two bedroomed house.

  Maybe old Todd Mayhew was right. Maybe he was cracking up under the strain. He could almost hear and see them now, standing at the bar in Chee-Uz, discussing him. Gloria would be polishing a glass, as she seemed to be perpetually doing, and Todd would be hugging a beer and telling Gloria how Paul should put the robbery behind him and get back to work.

  His attempts at putting on a brave face, he realized, were as easy to see through as glass. They could see his loneliness and could probably sense the fear he was living with.

  His shadow was something to be feared lately, and his twitchiness had been reflected outside the Shop2Drop on the previous Wednesday when he had almost dropped his groceries after Todd Mayhew had shouted a lazy ‘hi’ to him across the car park.

  Jeez Paul, you’ve got to get over this paranoia, he thought to himself as he went into the kitchen.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee as his mind raced and his head ached, wondering who was behind the notes containing spine-chilling messages that he had been receiving for the past six months. The letters were always untidy, and he wondered if it were some kind of a sick prank that somebody was playing on him. There were never any postal marks, which meant they were hand-delivered, and they were always anonymous. Despite what seemed like days of thinking about them, Paul could not come up with one single suspect.

  His daze meant that the arrival of his cat, Bristow, scared him nearly half to death.

  ‘Wow, fella. You had me worried there,’ he muttered, one hand scratching under the cat’s chin. ‘Any idea who’s doing this, big guy?’

  The cat’s status as his closest companion had been cemented throughout his isolation. It was Marcie’s legacy to him – a ginger ball with claws. But Bristow was more than that. He seemed to sense Paul’s depression and attempted to comfort him, always around to be petted and provide companionship. In his desperation to keep his wife’s memory alive, he saw qualities in the cat he was sure had been handed down from her.

  The cat had a big heart, and Marcie had the biggest heart in the world. It was beautiful, like his wife – the most beautiful woman in the world.

  Marcie was the most selfless person he had ever known. She had put up with the hours he’d worked, leaving the house at 3.30 AM and sometimes not returning until seven or eight at night, and when the pressure had been on, she had taken it off.

  She had been a tower, but the tower was gone. The pressure he felt now was the pressure of loneliness, heightened by the sense of fear that permeated his entire self. Bristow formed the final link, a grip on the edge of the wilderness from which he tried to hide.

  But he still hadn’t learned how to talk.

  The cat’s dark eyes examined him, and realizing that he wasn’t getting any food for the moment, he jumped down to the floor went back to his early morning ritual of licking clean his paws.

  ‘Oh, what a testing life you…’ his train of thought was broken as he heard the mailbox being rattled and looked out of the window just in time to see the back of the mailman’s fluorescent jacket as he cycled away from the property. He was gripped again by that same unknowing fear that had gripped him every day at that moment for what seemed like an eternity. OK. So he was sure the mailman wasn’t delivering the letters, but he also knew it was that time of the day when he had to see if whoever was delivering them had left another.

  He pulled on a pair of running shoes and went outside, walking down the drive towards the gleaming Mercedes with the license plate ‘PW 1’ that glittered seductively in the early morning sunshine.

  The car distracted his attention momentarily, and he thought back to the day six years previous when they had bought the car. Marcie had been so excited when he had thrown her the keys and now he relived a moment of his life that he had relived a thousand times before. He was no longer in his own drive but outside a car showroom with his bride of six months, and a briefcase containing a considerable amount of money that he had worked his balls off to earn as a salesman at Colins’, the biggest importer of flowers in America (well not any more, not since Marcie died and he left. It was slipping dangerously towards bankruptcy nowadays).

  He’s there. As he stands looking at the car he’s aware of everything around him. The hazy early morning sunlight through the trees, reflecting in a line down the bonnet of the car. Birds singing from the trees as they bathe in the sunlight and prepare for their food-seeking missions. Marcie, standing at the other side of the car, her laughter ringing out as he throws her the keys. She fumbles them as she tries to get into her dream car and now it’s him who’s laughing at her…

  ‘Morning Paul, you okay?’ His neighbor Janice, a retired teacher from Boston, interrupted his daydream.

  ‘I’m never better Janice, never better.’ But he wasn’t okay, because he remembered why he was in the drive, shaking like a leaf, with profusely sweating hands.
The mail.

  He eased open the mailbox in a way that suggested he was expecting to see a cobra, and exposed the two envelopes to lukewarm June sunshine. Moving the top piece of junk mail he saw what he expected. An envelope with his surname crudely written on its front. It was unmistakably from the person who had been sending him the threatening mail. The envelope alone was enough to tell him that.

  They were always the same.

  Taking what was the twenty-ninth letter from the mailbox, he realized just how badly his hands were shaking. Not just like a leaf, but like a leaf in a gale force wind.

  ‘This is stupid,’ he murmured, as he removed the single sheet of A4 paper from its envelope. His false optimism didn’t make him feel any easier, and he looked around to make sure that Janice had gone inside before slowly and deliberately opening the sheet of paper.

  The only words that Paul Wayans was able to get from his mouth before vomiting across the bonnet of his gleaming Mercedes, were:

  ‘Oh my god, Jesus Christ.’

  3

  ‘Kids come on, we’re already late,’ Sandy Myers yelled from the foot of the stairs, becoming impatient with her seven year old twins, Sean and David.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, what are you doing up there?’ she called out when she received no answer, swearing to herself that if they didn’t come downstairs right away they would have to walk to school, alone.

  ‘Okay, okay, don’t get your panties in a panic, we’re on our way.’ The voice belonged to David, the younger of the two by four minutes.

  ‘Can’t we get a moment’s peace in this dump? How are we getting to school, a ride on your broomstick perhaps?’ That cheeky voice belonged to Sean, and Sandy felt, just for a second, like beating the shit out of him. She had taken him to a psychologist to find out what was responsible for his sometimes violent mood swings, only to be told that all children go through ‘phases of rebelliousness’ and that as she had twins, she could expect her ‘other little fellow’ to follow suit pretty soon. Sandy didn’t know how she would cope if this transpired but for the time being, thank god, it wasn’t the case.

  David had picked up some of Sean’s cheekiness, but he never went overboard with his sarcasm. She was told to put up with Sean’s moods and he would outgrow them – probably sooner than later. She hoped so.

  The two faces appeared in the doorway: David smiling like an angel, Sean wearing a sulky expression. Looking at his frowning face, she pictured a set of horns coming out of the top of his head and a laugh escaped her. It was impossible to stay mad at the little imps. They had a direct line to her heartstrings.

  ‘Come on, shake your tail,’ she said, laughing more than ever and grabbing the one piece of mail from the mailbox. It was a thin white envelope with her name on the front. But it was not addressed to Sandy Myers; it was addressed to Sandy Carson, using her maiden name.

  It can’t be, she thought to herself.

  It was.

  The fact that she was already running twenty-five minutes late meant that she would have to wait to find out its contents. She had cursed her boys for their apparent inability to comply with her early morning requests. She should have thanked them for earning her a bit more time before the same process of horror, followed by fear that had started for Paul Wayans and Bill Arnold, re-started for her.

  A process that would change all of their lives, forever.

  4

  Special Agent Sam O’Neill stepped out of his car and into the New York morning. Huddling for warmth inside his thin summer jacket, he cursed his choice of attire. For a June morning it was remarkably chilly. On top of the chill that seemed to be entering his body and pushing the warmth out through his skin, Sam O’Neill had the added knowledge that he was about to witness a pretty gruesome murder scene.

  The fact that he was faced with such a scene didn’t come as anything new to O’Neill. Having been a part of the FBI’s homicide team for more than twenty-five years, he had gotten used to witnessing the kind of scene that most people would find impossible to handle. While many people would almost certainly be mentally scarred for life if they were to see the things that he had seen throughout his career, Sam O’Neill relished the challenge of solving the puzzles that were set before him.

  His love for his job had, in the past, been perceived by some as a very real and very extensive game of Cluedo, with O’Neill the favorite every time. Nowadays he wasn’t always considered the favorite, and this fact made his job difficult to enjoy, and made crimes more difficult to solve.

  The satisfaction that came with the successful conviction of the perpetrator of a crime such as the one he was about to investigate was his reward. The wage he received was a handsome one also. If he so desired, he would be able to afford a holiday in Europe every year for the rest of his life with the money already deposited into high interest accounts.

  What bothered him was the fact that he stood no chance of getting the time off to pursue his dreams of visiting Venice with its gondolas, Paris with its Eiffel Tower or London and Buckingham Palace. Such was the condition of life in New York that he would be lucky if, barring retirement or injury, he ever managed to get any time off again. There was always a murder to be solved, or at least that was how it seemed nowadays. Despite the pressure, early retirement was not an option. He had a strong feeling that some of the people around him were waiting for him to slip up so that they could force early retirement on him, and for the first time in his long career, he was nervous about putting a foot wrong.

  This was the third murder scene that O’Neill had visited within the space of three days in and around New York. The other two had been like so many murder scenes he witnessed – motivated by robbery, and executed with a detachment and randomness that made tracking the killers down a very difficult task.

  Sam O’Neill needed a rest.

  His early morning slumber and his dreams of the Roman Coliseum had been interrupted by his boss, Lineker, who had told him to ‘shake’ his ‘lazy ass’ down to Atlantic Beach where he would be greeted in Number Seven, Hillman’s Point by ‘a particularly gruesome murder scene.’

  Now, as he walked from his car towards the house in question, he got the feeling. It was impossible to explain how or why he knew, but the feeling in his stomach told him that the perpetrator of this crime had already killed, or would kill again. All this before he had even reached the scene. It was a knack many law enforcement officials shared: an ability to sense the nature of a crime outside the methods of criminal psychology. A feeling. That was the best way he could describe it – the reason he got up in the mornings. To stop evil from wreaking havoc on innocent people. He had seen the purest of evil across the years.

  He ducked under the tape that stretched around the perimeter of the house (marked ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Enter’), and walked through the front door. At first glance around, he saw about twenty federal agents, and was surprised to realize that he didn’t know at least five of them.

  He had spent thirty years as part of the policing system of America, quickly graduating from a patrol officer to become a part of the FBI homicide team that he once led, and he had gotten to know an awful lot of people during his time. He was proud to serve the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Now, slowly looking around the room and taking in the scene in the lounge of the apartment he saw nothing amiss. There didn’t seem to be anything strange or out of order, and O’Neill began to build a profile of the crime inside his head. None of the furniture seemed out of place, and the slovenly appearance of the room was obviously a way of life for whoever was the victim of this crime.

  He stood pondering, wondering if the victim knew his killer.

  ‘Mornin’ Chief, have you seen the carnage down the hall yet?’ The voice belonged to Hoskins, a young up-and-comer on the team. Having been told of O’Neill’s arrival, he wanted to seem eager and make a good impression. The note of excitement in his voice only appalled O’Neill.

  ‘No Hoskins, I have not. Ma
ybe if you moved out of my way I’d have a better chance of seeing it,’ came the reply from O’Neill, still pissed at being forced away from his dream and out of his bed at 7:30 am, half an hour before his alarm clock was due to sound.

  ‘Sorry Boss.’

  Hoskins did as he was told, and Sam walked down the hall, entering the crime scene unprepared for what he was about to witness. The amount of blood was unbelievable. There was so much of it that it seemed to cover the entire room from top to bottom. He went over to where the body lay. It was that of a man, aged between twenty-five and thirty. He was shackled to a bed, his wrists tied with twine to the bedposts. He had what looked to Sam like a hundred stab wounds. The amount of damage that was visible was excessive.

  This was someone who took pleasure in his work.

  Hoskins loomed up behind O’Neill. ‘Name’s John Riley, he was a keeper at a zoo not far from here. No sign of forced entry, so I believe he knew his killer. Reckon he’s been dead for two days. Nobody bothered to check where he was because he’d been visiting his friend in Greenwich. Flew out late Friday night.

  ‘When he wasn’t in work on Monday morning they figured he was having such a good time he decided to stay for a bit longer. When he didn’t show on Tuesday they were a little pissed that he hadn’t called. So when he never turned in today, Wednesday, they either got mad or worried. His boss tried to call him and got the answering machine. So he came over. It was him who found the body, the poor bastard.’

  Hoskins’ smugness was another thing that irritated Sam O’Neill. Half of the reason for O’Neill’s dislike was the suspicion he had that Hoskins was being primed to take over as Special Agent In Charge of the Albany office, a position he himself had once held. He didn’t like this, and he had a hard time concealing it, but the eagerness of the young agent meant that he didn’t notice the annoyed or patronizing look on O’Neill’s face that appeared every time Hoskins spoke to him. He thought he was demonstrating his hard studied-for skills as an agent, not undermining the veteran’s ability to notice the most elementary things about a crime scene, which was the way the impatient O’Neill preferred to look at it.