Should I go over and talk to them? Why didn’t they come inside and talk to me if that was what they wanted? But I knew that wasn’t it. They were just watching and waiting for me to slip up. To lead them to the piece of the puzzle they were missing. I was their prime suspect in several murders, but there was something—something big—missing from their 3D puzzle. Something at the bottom that meant, without it, the rest of the puzzle wouldn’t hold up. I was one of those bottom pieces, and they wanted me to lead them to the rest. Make it whole.
The waiter dropped off my hamburg steak with a slight nod. “Take care. It’s hot.” His voice was as dead as my feelings for my own job. I forced a smile and nod in return and resisted the urge to say, “I know that feel, man.” The service industry sucked. No, that was wrong. Just a lot of people in it sucked.
I cut into the steak, watching the juices escape and spread out through the hotplate like a flood. I popped a piece in my mouth and looked back outside. The restaurant sat on a main road opposite the town lake. It wasn’t a big lake, but it was big enough, and the view was beautiful. Soothing, even. Well, other than the cop car constantly in my peripheral vision. “Go away!” I wanted to shout. “It has nothing to do with me!”
Except it had everything to do with me.
I finished lunch in silence and checked my phone. It was merely a habit. I had no friends to text me, and Aya still didn’t have a phone. “I don’t like them,” she said when I suggested she pick up a cheap one from the store. “The last time I had one, my father used it to keep checks on me.” When I informed her, as gently as possible, that he wasn’t able to do that anymore, she just shook her head and that was that. So I opened the weather app instead, saw a cold freeze was coming over the next week, and closed it again. Good thing I liked the cold, at least.
I paid for lunch and started the brief walk back to work. The police car followed at walking pace. I stopped and turned around.
“Can I help you?”
The short officer wound down his window.
“Going to work?”
“Yes. Would you like to join me?”
“I could use a coffee, actually.” He looked at the slim officer. “You need anything?”
“Oh, I saw they have those new limited edition banana pastries out this week! I want one of those!”
“Well the store is right there. Feel free to go on ahead.”
I was angry. They had no right to be harassing me like that. But that just played to their strengths. Angry suspects were more likely to do stupid things. Stupid things that revealed the truth.
“Would you like a lift? I know it’s not far, but surely you must be tired after all the running around you’ve been doing lately.”
Lately? How long had they been following me? I clenched my jaw and stood up taller. “No, thank you. My legs are working just fine.” I started walking. Let them play their games with someone else. I wasn’t having it. They tailed me, slowly, building a line of traffic behind them because no-one was brave enough to overtake a cop car on a main road. I sighed as the doorbell tinkled above me. The police pulled into the end of the parking lot. Neither officer got out.
“What the hell are you doing?!” It was the boss.
“I’m sorry?”
He tapped his watch. “You’re late!”
I looked at the clock. “But, my lunch finished at 1:30…”
“And what’s the time?”
I squinted at the clock. “It’s… 1:30. Sir.”
“1:31! It’s 1:31! You’re late! I’m not paying you to dawdle while you eat! If your appetite is that large, then perhaps you should eat a little faster, or maybe go on a diet. Might do you some good so you can get back to your job a little faster, huh?”
I clenched my fist and fought the angry red dots filling my vision. The officers were sitting just outside. Needless to say, it wouldn’t be a good look to punch the boss in front of them, nor to trash the store like I wanted to do. “How’s that for a diet? Huh? Oh and you can shove your shitty job up your ass, where it belongs!”
But instead I took a deep breath and forced my well-practised polite smile. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn well right it won’t,” he said. “Or you’ll be fired!” I repeated the words in my head at the same time. I knew they were coming. If I had a yen for every time he said that, I wouldn’t need his shitty job anymore.
I just had to stick it out. The computer course would be over soon. Once that was done, I’d at the very least have a qualification and could start looking for something else.
Just stick it out.
It’ll all be over soon.
24
The original officers were gone by the time I got home, but another car was waiting outside the building for me. I didn’t recognise the officers. I walked right past them and into the building. They didn’t try to stop me.
I reached the top of the second flight of stairs and looked outside. There they were, just sitting there. One officer was eating a rice ball, the other reading a newspaper. I turned back and saw something move at the top of the stairs.
“Hey! Wait!”
I ran up, jumping the stairs two at a time. I reached the entrance to the third floor—my floor—but there was nothing there.
No, there it was. Above me. Turning the corner again.
I continued up the stairs. I reached the fourth floor and saw it move around the corner at the end of the hall. I ran towards it. Unlike most of the other apartment buildings in the area, our building resembled a hotel more than anything else. The halls and entrances to the apartments were on the inside, not the outside. I reached the end and realised it was a dead end. Where did it go?
It was the shadow. It had to be. I turned around and saw a dark figure go up the stairs. I ran down the hall, my shoes thudding on the hardwood floor, and hit the stairs in a bound. I propelled myself using the railing, narrowly avoiding tripping over my own feet as I reached the top.
“Hey! Stop!”
I ran after it again. I turned the corner, but nothing was there. Just lines of doors belonging to people I may or may not have seen before. It was a large building. How was I supposed to know them all? How was I supposed to know some old guy who lived several floors above me and why on earth would I want him dead? Were the police stupid? It made no sense. Even they had to see that.
Something moved out the corner of my eye and I started running towards the other set of stairs. I ran up and out into the hall. The shadow disappeared before the third door down. I looked around and realised where I was. The sixth floor. There were remnants of tape left on the door. It didn’t take a genius to know whose apartment that was.
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not playing this game anymore.” I kept walking. I skirted past the room the shadow had brought me to. I didn’t even look at it. I walked back to the stairs and saw rain was starting to fall. The window to the outside world was covered in tiny droplets, clouding the view. But it was enough to see the shadow approaching the police car parked at the bottom of the building.
“Oh shit. No!”
I ran down the stairs as fast as my feet would take me. I leapt two and even three stairs at a time. No. No, no. They might be stupid and trying to take me down for a murder I didn’t commit, but they were just officers doing their job. They didn’t deserve to die.
“No! No! Come on!” I jumped the last four stairs and threw myself through the door into the pouring rain. I hoped against hope that I was in time. I ran across the street without looking and started pounding on the driver’s side window.
“Hello? Hello?”
The door opened. I jumped back onto the road and an officer stepped out.
“Ma’am, is something wrong?”
I checked him over, and looked inside the car. The officer was wide-eyed as he looked up from his newspaper, but otherwise fine. No blood. No exploded hearts. Nobody was dead.
Everyone was fine and the shadow was g
one.
“I’m sorry, I just-” I just what? Saw a dark shape heading for your car. A dark, murderous shape. Or perhaps I just had a tiny mental breakdown because of all the pressure and I was seeing things. My father did tell me that I had a period when I was a child of terrible sleepwalking. They’d find me in front of the fridge, or watching TV with no memory of how I got there. Apparently once they even found me in the front yard of our house at three in the morning. But I was a child then. I grew out of it.
“I just… I thought I saw someone approach the car. It looked like they had a knife.” It was a terrible lie, but it was the only thing that came to mind.
“You saw somebody approach the car with a knife?” His face said it all. He looked at the other officer. “Did you see anyone?” The man shook his head.
“Ma’am, is everything okay? Have you been under a lot of stress recently, or is there something you’d like to talk about?”
I shook my head and started to back across the street. “No. No. I’m fine. Really. I swear I thought I saw someone.” That wasn’t a lie. Well, only partly. “That’s all. And maybe I’m just a little tired, sure. Haha. Work’s been really busy lately, I don’t even remember the last time I had a day off. You know, that’s gotta be it.” I bumped into a bike parked on the side of the road. I laughed it off and shook some of the water out of my hair. “I’m just gonna go inside and get some rest. I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’m just gonna…” I pointed to the building. “Rest. Yeah. Good night. Sorry!”
I ran into the building as fast as I could. What an idiot. What was I expecting to happen there? Even if I reached them before the shadow attacked, what exactly would I be able to do against it? If anything, that would just give the police even more evidence that I was connected to the crimes, putting me at the scene of yet another murder under the same mysterious circumstances.
I took the elevator, not feeling ready to take the stairs again. I stepped out as it pinged and froze in my tracks. The shadow. It was waiting in front of my apartment.
“Stop screwing with me!” I ran towards the door. It stepped through. I fumbled for my keys, dropping them like people always did in the movies before the murderer arrived to stab them. My trembling fingers finally picked the correct key and I threw the door open.
“Aya!”
She sat up on the couch, her eyes bleary. “Huh? What?”
I slammed the door and ran inside. The shadow was gone. There was no-one there but Aya.
“What’s going on?” She was asleep on the couch.
“Nothing,” I said, looking past her into the bedroom, and then the bathroom. Nothing was there.
“Nothing at all.”
25
Aya’s disappearances were becoming more frequent. More often than not, when I got home she wasn’t there, and she was coming back later and later. “I’m just sorting things out with my brother,” she said. It wasn’t my place to argue. But as the long nights went on, it started to weigh on my mind more and more.
“I’m not feeling so well,” I said to the boss. It was 4 p.m., and he looked at me like I’d just run over his puppy.
“And what exactly do you expect me to do about that?”
Truth of the matter was, I hadn’t been feeling well for days, but now it was manifesting physically. My head was pounding with a three-day-old headache, and my stomach was in so many knots that I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and even that was meagre.
“I think I need to go see the doctor.”
“And? Go see them after work. You’re on the clock, so get back to work and stop hassling me.”
“Sir, I think I’m going to be sick. If you’re happy for the customers to be walking around my vomit-”
His face screwed up. I’d only ever taken a single sick day the entire time I was working there. It was about time he did something for me.
“Go. Get to the hospital. And I better see you back here tomorrow morning. I don’t care if you’re dead. If you’re not-”
“-then I’m fired, I know.” I finished the sentence for him. It took everything I had not to roll my eyes. I was sick. That part wasn’t a lie. But I wasn’t going to go to the hospital. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see if Aya was still there, and if she wasn’t, what exactly she was doing. She’d been out seeing her brother for well over a week, not coming home until 2 or 3 a.m. Funeral preparations surely weren’t taking that long. Not after all this time. Something else was going on, and I was going to find out what.
I walked home and noticed that, for the first time in days, the police cars were gone. There wasn’t one waiting outside the store, nor was there one waiting in front of my apartment building. Did they finally realise that it wasn’t me? That they were barking up the wrong tree? Or were they up to something else?
I took the same position they had, waiting behind some trees opposing the building. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I didn’t know what time Aya usually left the house, but when I returned at six in the evening she was usually gone. I waited. At 4:30 p.m. on the dot, Aya exited the building, turned right, and started walking. She walked a few blocks before getting into a car. I didn’t recognise the driver. Why would I?
“Shit.”
I hailed a nearby taxi and jumped in. “Follow that car.” I felt like one of those detectives in the old movies. Step on the gas, my man! We got felons to catch! But this was no felon, and I was no detective. Just a tired, strung out convenience store worker with more worries than time.
The taxi followed a few cars behind as we drove across town. Aya’s car pulled up outside the entertainment district. She stepped out, wearing a fancy dress, and bowed to the driver as he pulled away.
“Here will do, thank you.” I paid the driver and stepped out. Aya walked down a side alley and I crept as close as I could without being seen. She entered a building with a large, glaring sign flashing above the door. “Wild Nights.” How on the nose. I waited. The sun set, and as it went, it took any remaining warmth with it. I pulled my sweater closer and tried my best not to look like a pervert hanging out in front of some seedy clubs waiting for a little action. Because that was what I felt like.
10 minutes later Aya stepped back outside, this time with a man by her side. I swallowed as my heart began to beat furiously. Was that Tatsuya? No, it couldn’t be. Why would he be inside a bar at this time of day, and all the way out here? He was a big shot CEO—or CEO-to-be, as Aya liked to keep reminding me—so it made no sense. The man was tall; a good head taller than Aya and well-groomed. Immaculate suit, not a hair out of place, and teeth so shiny I could see their whiteness from where I was standing. The perfect Japanese businessman.
Aya nodded as he spoke but said nothing. She looked at the ground, never at his face. He put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched. He didn’t remove it. In fact, he gripped tighter, and when the pain started to show on Aya’s face, he let go. He put a hand under her chin and forced her to look at him. He spoke slowly, deliberately, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Aya nodded and then he let her go. He wrote something on a business card, handed it to her, and then walked in the opposite direction. I debated revealing myself, running over to ask if she was okay, but I couldn’t. I was spying. Regardless of why, I was still spying, and that was a breach of trust.
A man stepped out of the bar. He staggered and caught himself on the railing. He saw Aya and smiled. She nodded politely and he grabbed her by the waist. Aya spoke a few words to him. He nodded and she put the card in her bag. They disappeared back inside the building.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I stood by the street corner for another 30 minutes trying to figure out my next move. It was dark and it was cold, but it was nothing compared to what was inside my heart. My mind was a haze. It pounded with a migraine that wouldn’t go away, and my stomach grumbled for food I knew it wouldn’t be able to keep down. Not now. Not after what I’d seen.
All this time, she was playing me. I couldn’t fi
gure out why, but it didn’t matter. While I was at work, she was also out ‘working’ for her brother. It made me sick to my stomach. My world came crashing down around me, just like that.
Suddenly everything made sense.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I waited. I stood on the corner in the freezing cold night air, thinking about how much of an idiot I was, and how I was being even more of an idiot for waiting. But I wanted to see. I wanted to see her when she came out, and where she went next.
Forty five minutes after entering Wild Nights, Aya and the man stepped outside. He had his arm around her naked shoulders and staggered as they hit the steps. She propped him up, and he said something to her. I couldn’t hear, but when he was done, Aya steered him in another direction, this time behind the club. There was a large P sign. Parking. To his car.
I made my way down the alley and slipped in beside the club. There was a two level parking lot behind it. The man opened the back door and Aya stepped inside. Her feet were steady. She wasn’t drunk. Not fully drunk, anyway. I didn’t know why, but that made it all the worse.
My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. The man got in behind her and closed the door. I turned away. I didn’t need to see what was happening. I could hear the man’s voice on the cold wind. The words were intelligible, but that was for the better.
What was I doing out there? Was I happy now? Everything I suspected was true, so now what? Go home and pretend it never happened? Tell Aya she needed to get the hell out and find someone new to screw over? And in the end I still had to go back to my dead-end job in the morning and listen to my deadbeat boss talk about how awful his afternoon was because I left an hour early. I sank to my knees on the ground. Just end it. End it all now. Where was the black shadow when I needed it? Here I am, a willing victim. I don’t need my heart anymore, so feel free to rip it out and eat it or do whatever it is you do with them.
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