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The Hunter Inside

Page 6

by David McGowan


  He drove the few remaining kilometers to the cemetery that was situated on the outskirts of Glen Rock. He pulled into the small parking lot provided for visitors to the cemetery, and sat still for a few moments. He saw nothing that should make him worry, but the chill that went through his body at that precise moment would leave his skin tingling for more than a couple of minutes.

  The sunshine provided no more than a backdrop for Bill as he stepped out of the car and into the cool June afternoon. Leaning back inside the car, he pulled a sweater out of the carryall, before straightening up, pulling the sweater over his head, and leaning back into the car a final time to retrieve the flowers from the passenger seat.

  It took Bill two minutes to walk the distance from the car to his father’s grave. When he saw how overgrown it had become he felt a twinge of guilt.

  ‘Hell, I’m sorry Dad,’ Bill said. Over the years he had visited less and less. After his mother had left, he had gone as often as he could to the grave. That was mainly to see if his mother had visited and left any flowers that might contain a message for both of them, but as the months had gone by and no flowers appeared except his own, he had become disillusioned, and eventually had begun to drive the big rigs, which made it impossible to visit most of the time. His visits had dwindled until it had gotten to the stage where he only visited once a year, on this day.

  Now, as he leant down and began to tear out the weeds from the foot of his father’s grave, he began to speak to his absent father once more. ‘Hell, Dad. I wish you were here. I’m in a right mess.’ He continued to tug out weeds as he spoke, moving from the foot of the grave towards the black marble headstone.

  ‘What am I going to do, Dad?’

  Bill Arnold was already drained, and he still had a difficult journey to undertake. He started thinking about his father’s death. This was something that was inevitable for him every time he visited the grave. How had he died? Bill was not one hundred percent sure, and his mother refused to talk on the subject. He’d always felt that she knew more than she told him. All she would ever say was that he was murdered, but nobody was ever arrested for the crime, and the police had quickly forgotten the case when they had no leads; their budget would not support an extended investigation.

  He reached the head of the grave and tore out weeds from around the overgrown headstone that spoke of his father so richly; ‘William Arnold, Loving Husband and Father, Taken Into The Arms Of Our Lord.’ The fact that what Bill actually looked at was his own name did nothing for the nerves that continued to chew up his stomach. With a resounding explosion inside the head of Bill Arnold the link was finally forced that only his subconscious fear had allowed him to avoid.

  He couldn’t believe that he’d never considered this before. Could whoever was stalking him be the same man who had killed his father ten years ago?

  Shit, the time.

  He tried to put the thought to the back of his mind, and instead concentrate on his journey. He had to travel right through New York, negotiating the lunchtime rush, and therefore a drive that should take one and a half hours would now probably take double that amount of time.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you soon hopefully, Dad,’ he said, and grimaced at the dual nature of the statement he had made. He stopped a moment longer to remove some of the weeds that were growing around the back of the headstone.

  Bending down behind the headstone, he was surprised to see a piece of sticky tape holding a piece of paper to its rear. He tore the paper from the marble and unfolded it, before looking at it with his mouth wide open, incredulous.

  I am watching you.

  The shock of this sudden revelation provided the final straw for Bill Arnold. He reeled backwards, stumbling over another headstone and falling flat on his back, coating the seat of his pants in grimy soil as he struggled to breathe. It felt as though an anaconda had wrapped itself around his body and was quickly squeezing the life out through his skin. His eyes moved rapidly around the cemetery, too rapidly for him to register what he was looking at, but nobody attacked him and after a minute of feeling that he was about to pass out, his breathing began to calm as his heart came to terms with the shock and adrenalin that surged through his body.

  As the world began to regain its colors, he was able to look around more slowly, though his technique of surveillance did not feel as safe as when he had been protected by windows and walls, and the fact that he was in a cemetery made him doubly scared. Had it been night and darkness, then maybe it would have been the dead that Bill Arnold was most afraid of, but he certainly didn’t intend to stay around long enough to find out which carried most threat. Like most of his visits, he would be glad to leave the cemetery with its narrow rows of headstones, something which made it look like a war cemetery with its dead buried in unmarked graves, searched for over many decades by families who couldn’t bear to have somebody else mourn their loved ones.

  These graves were not anonymous though, and Bill Arnold looked at a headstone with his name on it and thought about his desire not to become a victim to irony. He had to leave.

  He was surprised his bowels had not given way when he’d seen the note, for the shock of the realizations it awakened in Bill Arnold would have reduced most men, even ‘hard’ men, into a mass of feces and urine. He got to his feet and ran back to the small parking lot where he had deposited his car under a huge Cherry Blossom tree that shed its pink leaves all around like confetti.

  As he approached the car it looked more and more like a distant prize. Even a short run through the cemetery took the wind out of Bill Arnold, and as the pink blossom fell around his vehicle the fading gleam of the sunlight caught it occasionally, making it look like glitter.

  He reached the car very out of breath, with stabbing pains in his shins and thighs, and fumbled for several seconds trying to get the key into the small lock that he had to stoop to reach. Finally, he was able to wrench the door open and dive inside the car, locking the door behind him.

  ‘How does he know?’ Bill said out loud as he gasped for air. ‘How does he know?’ Seconds passed as Bill processed all of the information and its implications in his mind. As he did he became more and more frightened.

  The first thing he thought about was this person’s ability to go undetected. He had not seen anything during his surveillance operation of the perimeter of his house, but this person must have been watching him all of the time to be able to follow him to the cemetery. He was going to be looking over his shoulder with every step and at every turn for danger. Whoever was stalking him was waiting to pick their moment, and he could never be sure when that might be.

  His aching head and his aching mind were trying to tell him something else. But it was not until his thought train had reached the end of the line. Then he understood. It was the second thing that Bill Arnold realized as he sat looking all around, trying to spot his stalker. He realized that whoever wanted him dead knew his next move, and finally he made his ultimate connection. The note had been waiting for him at his father’s grave. It was the same man. It had to be. His being stalked was the continuation of his father being stalked and killed. This was the same man that killed his father.

  How long has he been watching?

  He must move, right away. If he was being watched then he could be followed from the cemetery. Then his journey would be a waste of time. He would have nowhere else to run, and he didn’t think he would have the energy to run more than once.

  Bill Arnold jammed the key into the ignition and stubbornly held on, despite the struggling sound that came as the car appealed to him to leave it be. He won the battle as it shuddered into life, and was relieved that he had not managed to flood the car’s engine. With a squeal of tires that he thought might have woken the dead in the cramped confines of the space behind him, he roared away from the cemetery, exiting the huge gates that stood at the front of the parking lot. The roads around Glen Rock would be quiet, despite it being rush hour, and this meant he could put his foot dow
n in an attempt to shake off anybody that was following, and make the first part of his journey in the least possible amount of time. Another bonus was the fact that if anybody were following him then they would be obvious from their excess speed. He just hoped he didn’t come across any cops.

  Bill pushed his foot against the accelerator and the Ford began to pick up speed. Not as much or as quickly as he would have liked, but he would not have been able to turn down an RAF Tornado fighter jet if he had been offered one.

  As he headed down the long streets towards the freeway, he looked constantly in his rear-view mirror, trying to see if anybody was following, and hoping that it stayed clear as he maneuvered through the sparse traffic on the roads. He received a few disgruntled honks from people who were not impressed with his desire for control of the road, but at that moment other motorists were the last people he was worried about.

  He was normally a conscientious driver. Driving the rigs meant that he had to be, but now he didn’t, and he damn sure as hell wasn’t going to be when his life was under threat. If he had the time to stop and explain his situation to the people who honked, then he was pretty sure they would understand his traveling at nearly one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. But, that luxury denied him, he ploughed onwards until he got to the freeway and was forced to slow considerably by the swelling of traffic that came inevitably with the lunchtime rush.

  His pace decreased as he entered the freeway, leveling off at a steady hundred kilometers per hour. This seemed like a snail’s pace to Bill, and he weaved in and out of traffic for the first few minutes, trying to pick up speed. This was impossible for him to achieve, however, and he was forced to remain at a steady hundred.

  The freeway brought its own heightened sense of danger and made him more nervous. While he had not seen anybody following his departure from the cemetery towards the freeway, he still was not convinced that he wasn’t being followed, and on the freeway it would be impossible for him to tell.

  The thing for him to do now was hope. And he had to have hope, right? Without hope what did he have? There had to be a light at the end of the tunnel or else he might just as well give up the ghost and accept his fate right now. The hope came from the fact that he didn’t see it possible that to be murdered could have anything to do with fate. It was an unnatural thing.

  The freeway rolled out in front of Bill Arnold, a never-ending merry-go-round that never closed. Through winter, spring, summer and fall and back to winter, things on the freeway stayed the same. Except for the moments when life was lost as accidents occurred, and when vehicles were turned into weapons by drunks who did not have enough sense to take a cab. But it rolled on, sometimes at eighty, sometimes at ninety, sometimes at a hundred.

  Today it was a hundred, and this meant that Bill Arnold’s journey took around one hour and forty minutes. As usual, it seemed as if some parts of the freeway had become giant parking lots, but thankfully these were few and he was not held up for long. At the times when he was stationary he found that his heartbeat increased at an alarming rate. Every time he was forced to slow to a halt, he found himself looking around anxiously to see if there was anybody staring at him from the other cars that surrounded him, only to see quizzical looks from confused motorists who wondered how they had managed to offend him. That, or looks from people who thought he might be a madman like the one he feared seeing.

  By the time he arrived in Atlantic Beach, his eyes were exhausted from constantly trying to look in eight directions, his mind was exhausted from endlessly spinning speculation, and he was just about ready to find a motel and surrender himself to the sleep that he so desired. His patience wasn’t helped as he traveled around the streets, attempting to find the refuge that he hoped would be able to protect him from what he recognized as a possibly life threatening storm. His thought that he would have no trouble finding a motel in a place next to the ocean gave way to frustration after ten minutes of seeing only residential properties. Then he came across a police station.

  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 sayin
g, ‘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.

 

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