Only the Hunted Run

by Neely Tucker

  “Are you okay?”

  Sully, eyes still closed, wondered if the lady’s bubble of saliva had made a sound when it popped. Just a tiny one. “Why?”

  “Your left eye, it’s doing this weird thing. And your right hand is shaking. Are you cold?”

  Sully flopped his hand around. “Didn’t you sort of get curious, the sirens, the helicopters?”

  “There’s always sirens going by.”

  “True enough.” Exhaustion was hammering at his neck, his shoulders, his fucking knee. “1-D, the precinct, is a straight shot about ten blocks south. So any time they got to go rocketing north, up to H, I, those drug markets up there, they sail right on by.”

  “You’re starting to slur a little.”

  “Forsooth.”

  “Also, somebody named Alexis called. She asked if you were home yet. She sounded like she knew you.”

  Christ, Christ, Alex, he hadn’t called her yet. He would in a minute. In just one minute.

  “She does. She’s a shooter at the paper. May become an editor. She’s in town for that.”

  “Okay.”

  “I been knowing her a while.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Are you actually listening or just spouting one-word answers to anything I say?”

  “Yes.”

  His ears were still ringing from the fire alarm. But it was all less now. Everything was less now. Bourbon was a wonderful thing. Coming down now, a plane for landing, altitude descending. All things shining.

  “So tell me, what’s this on now?” he said, forcing his eyes open. He didn’t like yelling at the boy, clueless as he sometimes was. Must get all he could stand of that at home. Crazy-assed Lucinda. He ought to adopt the boy on general principle. “What are we, what are we watching here?”

  “In the Mouth of Madness.”

  “It has a plot of some sort, I just know it.”

  “It’s awesome. This guy, this one right here—”

  “Isn’t that Sam Neill?”

  “—he’s supposed to go, no, yeah, that’s him, see, he’s supposed to go get the copy of this book that this other guy wrote, this horror-writer guy. . . .”

  Later, a hand on his shoulder, shaking.

  “Sully? It’s over. The movie. You going to sleep here? ’Cause I’m turning out the light.”

  SEVEN

  DEEP BREATHING, SLOW drag on the respirator. Deep and slow.

  Buzz.

  Darkness reigned. He was somewhere, he was somewhere. He was three thousand feet underwater, that’s where he was. No light at these depths. The cold, bitter, empty darkness of salt and water. Currents moved you with them; you could not see or sense them coming, they just waved you from side to side, like a little human palm frond, as they passed. There was no sound at all.

  Buzz buzz.

  That couldn’t be, no no. No buzzing. No sound. That had to be some sort of weird jellyfish squid whale . . . one eye opened, and he was horrifically lifted from the depths of subaquatic oblivion to a roiling, light-shattered room and the jolt sent him upright, lurching, the heave coming from his gut but catching in his throat. He was awake and rolling sideways, upright, the basement a blur, then the sharp, hard edges of reality and right angles.

  Light burst in through the half window. Josh hadn’t pulled the shades. It was whiter than the sun, reflecting off car windows or something out front. He swallowed the bile, the burning.

  There was the buzzing again. A bee sting, a dog’s bite, a tiny tin hammer banging.

  The phone. The motherfucking phone.

  It was there on the glass top of the coffee table, humping up in the air on each buzz. He leaned forward on the couch, finding a paper towel by the pizza box, a lame attempt to wipe the worst taste in America out of his mouth. Wet cigarette butts in old ashtrays, rainwater in a motel gutter spout.

  “Lucinda,” he said into the phone, “I gotdamn well—”

  “Mr. Carter? Mr. Carter?”

  The voice cutting him off.

  He closed his eyes again. Never answer the phone on a day you have a story on the front page. Never answer the phone on—

  “Yes, this is.” And after a moment, “Mr. Carter.”

  Coughing, throat clearing. “Okay. Okay. This is, this is Terry Waters.”

  It didn’t make him jump, he would remember later. It didn’t make him do much of anything. He just tried to lather his dried-out lips with his equally dried-out tongue and leaned back into the soft recesses of the couch, croaking with the voice of a hundred years, “Who thinks this is funny?”

  “I, I thought I said,” the voice came back, after a moment. It was like the guy was talking on a weird radio frequency that was only now beginning to come in clear through the static and sunspots. “This is Terry Waters. You, uh, wrote a story about me. It’s right here on the front page. You, you were the one hiding in the bathroom.”

  The sensation came over him like a tuning fork struck on the spine, his nerve endings lighting up like a dormant Christmas tree. He stood up without realizing it.

  “Mr. Carter? Are you there? I, I’m guessing this is a surprise. I’m sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. But I had to call. When I read about your mother. I think, I think we should talk. Is that okay?”

  EIGHT

  “YOUR MOTHER?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And his?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  “And what specifically about them?”

  “That they were both murdered.”

  This brought FBI Special Agent Gill’s gaze up from her notes to his face. They were looking at each other across a conference table at the paper, a little after noon, maybe ninety minutes since Waters had hung up on him.

  An agent sat on either side of her. R.J. and Lewis Beale, the paper’s attorney, flanked him. Sully had called the paper after Waters’s call and was transferred to Eddie Winters’s office. Eddie had listened and told him to come in immediately. He’d also alerted the FBI, who got there almost as fast as Sully. Eddie had walked them all into the conference room, made the introductions, and then left to run the daily.

  Now everybody had little water bottles and nobody touched them. They were on the eighth floor, the executive suite, far away from the newsroom below. The windows overlooked a parking garage. Haze and glare and shimmering heat.

  She held the gaze—on his eyes, not flitting to his scars; it took discipline not to do that, he knew from past experience—and waited on him to elaborate.

  He didn’t.

  “That is an unusual connection,” she said, finally.

  “Also,” Sully said, “that neither of their killers were caught.”

  “I see.” Another pause. “And how would you say it made you feel, when he said that?”

  Sully tilted his head to one side, ever so slightly, and crossed his bad leg over his good one. All three of them, she and the men flanking her, looked like they ate nails for breakfast and shit steel before lunch. Suits, folders, and briefcases. Acting like they owned the place ever since they walked in.

  After a while, he said, “What did you say your name was, ma’am?”

  “Agent Gill.”

  “Do you have a first name, Agent Gill?”

  “We seem to be losing the thread,” she said.

  “Your thread,” Sully said, “and mine are not the same.”

  He got a glare this time, from the guy on her right. The guy’s pen had been twitching the whole time, taking notes, and now he raised his chin and leaned into the table, like you do when you have to pull up your socks. “Look, Carter,” he said. “This—”

  “Special Agent Alma T. Gill,” she said.

  “Well then, Special Agent Alma T. Gill,” Sully said
, “the fuck business is it of yours?”

  “Hey hey HEY,” Chin Man said, bolting upright, his partner doing the same on her left, R.J. and Lewis matching them, everybody pointing and raising voices, tempers flaring for the second or third time now.

  “I’d heard about you, Carter,” the man on her right started in again, “and I’m not going to—”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, champ,” Sully interrupted, not even glancing his way. “I’s talking to your boss.”

  “—put up with, what did you say to me?”

  “You heard. I’m not being deposed here. My boss calls to tell you we have likely contact with the nation’s Most Wanted and you guys show up twenty minutes later all ‘hunh who what,’ like we work for you. Which we don’t. So mind your fucking manners. Agent Gill here, she asked an odd question. You don’t like my answers, yonder’s your door.”

  Now he stood, pushing his chair back and taking three steps, no fooling around with this bullshit.

  “I was asking,” she said, her voice smooth as buttermilk, “because I wanted to know if you thought he was baiting you. Taunting you that your mother’s killer was never caught.”

  Sully stopped, the room heavy, the hum of the air-conditioning the only sound. He eyed her for a moment, then sat back down.

  “No,” he said.

  There was nothing else, her just looking at him, waiting.

  “He was commiserating. In my opinion.”

  “How do you think he could have learned of your mother’s death?”

  “He would have seen my byline then looked me up on the Internet. It’s not hard.”

  She nodded. No recognition in the eyes, though, that she knew what he was talking about.

  “Like you could have, before you showed up.”

  “Sully,” R.J. whispered, thumping a knee against his.

  “We’ve had a rather busy morning,” she said. “We came as soon as your editor alerted us to the contact. There wasn’t, isn’t, time for research. Apologies if you’re offended I don’t know who you are.”

  Sully gave her a half smile.

  “Don’t get it twisted, Special Agent Alma T. Gill. I know a misquote when I hear one. I said you could have found out who my mother was. I didn’t say shit about me. But I got blown up in Bosnia. This being Washington and my employer being a fancy newspaper, it got reported. A couple of stories, some segments on the nightly news. My mother’s murder was mentioned as biography. Nothing huge but it’s on the Web. All I’s trying to tell you is that he didn’t have to be a genius, or take a lot of time, to get that intel.”

  “May I ask how your mother was killed?”

  “Shot to death. Tula, Louisiana. In her hair salon, such as it was. Cash left in the register. No apparent motive, no suspects. Three shots, two to the head.”

  “Did he say how his mother was killed?”

  “Thanks for asking her name.”

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  “Cyndy. Cynthia.”

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “You’re so kind to say so.”

  “Did he say how his mother was killed?”

  “No. I asked. He said he might could tell me later.”

  “Did he blame Representative Edmonds for her death?”

  “No. You’re getting ahead, though.”

  She gave him the full-on I’ve-about-had-it-with-your-skinny-white-ass look.

  “Look, it’s your interview,” he said.

  She sat back in her chair, listening.

  “What he said, what he asked, was about my mother,” Sully said, and as he spoke, his words came more slowly, more absently, as if he were forgetting the people in the room, that he was talking to anybody at all, save himself.

  “He wanted to know, he asked, not so much about the method of how she was killed and what the scene was like, and where I was when I heard. That’s usually what people ask about, you know. Details. Gunshots. People running. Like the last five minutes of their lives was all that mattered. People, they’re interested in murder. They are. Grief? No. You want to talk about a killing, you’n do that on television. Grief, the long arc of it, you have to pay somebody to listen. Shrinks. Doctors. Counselors. He, what he asked, was about me, and what it was like living with that all these years. Growing up with it. He wanted to know how that ate at me. He wanted to know, if I had the chance, if I would kill her killer. If that would make me a bad person if I did.”

  The room had gone silent, everyone staring. He looked up.

  “It’s my two cents that you have to have that experience to be interested in that, those, questions. Our boy’s mom died hard.”

  “You say that,” Chin Man said, “like you feel sorry for him.”

  Sully looked at the agents. “I don’t know I’d say ‘feel sorry.’ I’d say, talking to him, seeing him yesterday, he’s a sick man. I’d say he’s been corroding for a long time, bones wasted down to rust. You want to say that’s feeling sorry, go ahead.”

  “He hurt a lot of innocent people yesterday,” Chin Man said. “Killed several. That’s the only reason we’re here, the only reason anybody gives a damn about this guy.”

  “That’s the problem with victims and perps,” Sully said. “Line’s so thin. Stop the clock yesterday morning, he’s a sad story. By nightfall, he’s a monster. I don’t buy he made the transition in the afternoon. Grief is a patient bastard. It’ll take its time, twist you into something you never were.”

  Gill put both elbows on the table, leaning in now. “So. The point. Did he blame Representative Edmonds for his mother’s death?”

  “Not exactly. Waters, he said he had to get the attention and get his attention. My emphasis, not his.”

  “Did he elaborate?”

  “No. I didn’t get it either. By ‘his’ I thought he meant Edmonds’s, but there wasn’t a lot of time for follow-up. He was scattered, he stuttered, he kept thinking somebody was going to trace the call. The whole thing was, what, three, five minutes.”

  “Did he seem in possession of his senses?”

  “I would say so. Scared. But I mean, look, he had the presence of mind to pick up Edmonds’s cell phone, either from his body or from his office, and use that to call 911, right? He saw my story, in the paper or online, looked up my name, then, I guess, called the paper’s switchboard, got transferred to my line, got my cell from the message on the machine, and called me, again from Edmonds’s phone.”

  Gill nodded, looking down the row of seats at their recorder.

  “And then, then he quoted a poem?”

  “Used a line. I wouldn’t say quoted. He was talking about the killing—Edmonds—and he said that after he stabbed him, Edmonds ‘lay there like a patient etherized upon a table.’ He stopped, and then said, sort of to himself, ‘as the evening was spread out against the sky.’ It seemed like it just occurred to him. It wasn’t a grand statement. Then he went back to the killing, and how he thought he saw somebody in the bathroom, which turned out to be me, and he said something about how we could have spoken when we were all but face-to-face, and then I said, because I had remembered the poem, ‘but you went through certain half-deserted streets.’”

  She looked at him.

  “T. S. Eliot,” Sully said. “‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ Then Waters sort of laughed. Sort of. Some noise. He said that he was glad he called and that he would call me back when he could. He said he was tired and hungry and then hung up. The end. It’s the second time we been over this.”

  Gill nodded to the man on her left. Writing on his notebook, he got up and left.

  “Agent Ginsberg will get research at Quantico pulling that poem apart immediately,” she said. “Maybe he’s trying to—”

  “They’ll like the line about there being ‘time to murder and create,’” Sully said. “I look
ed up the thing, too.”

  “—tell us, okay, see, that’s one of the problems here,” she said. “We have an apparently mentally disturbed Native American, lightly educated and living in rural squalor, and yet he’s broken into the Capitol, killed his target, escaped, and now he’s got his feet up, calling reporters and chatting about dead moms and obscure poetry. How would you explain that, Mr. Carter?”

  Irritated, like she had been since she’d walked in. The air in the room, it felt recycled, musty, run through rusting vents.

  “I would say I don’t have to,” he said. “Terry Waters doesn’t need me or you or a psychiatrist to explain him. Neither did Oswald or Booth or Manson. They just are.”

  “He’s got help,” she said. “He didn’t do this himself.”

  “Possible. But, look, let’s don’t go calling this guy a criminal mastermind. I’m a mongrelized Anglo from eastern Louisiana, very lightly educated, to use your charming phrase, and grew up in rural squalor. You, you’re an African American, the most trod upon of all Americans. Most of your accent is gone, but it’s still got a trace of soft South to it, I’m going for Georgia, South Carolina, a big city rather than a small town, which means—given that people of your parents’ generation were not moving from north to south but the other way around—your people have been down there a long time. And yet here you sit, a big-shot profiler for the FBI, at the center of the number-one criminal manhunt in the nation.”

  He took a drink from his bottle of water, swirled it around his mouth, aware that he was displaying a monstrous chip on his shoulder, and swallowed. “So how would you explain either of us? We shouldn’t exist. Except here we sit. Ma’am.”

  “It’s unusual because of his ability to plan, the escape, the poetry.”

  “I already done said. He told me he wasn’t planning to escape. Walked down the hall, expecting to meet the cops, give himself up. Nobody ever stopped him, so he kept walking. Went down what he called a little staircase. Wound up with a bunch of people running out of their offices. Said they all went out what he called a side exit.”

  She and Agent Chin exchanged glances and Chin reached down and turned off the recorder. They started putting papers in folders and briefcases, not bothering to tell him they were finished. R.J. and Lewis finally exhaled.