The Follower

by Jason Starr

  Peter didn’t like the way she’d said just a carriage ride when it was so much more than that. He also didn’t want her to be preoccupied with something and the experience to be spoiled, the way the kiss had been spoiled for him.

  “If you want to go home, we can,” he said. “We can do this over the weekend or—”

  “No, I’m being stupid. Let’s just go. It’ll be fun.”

  They got on and the carriage started away. Somehow it didn’t seem as romantic as he’d imagined. There was a lot of street and people noise, and the smell of manure was a big distraction. As they got deeper into the park and after they covered their laps with the fuzzy red blanket, the mood improved, but she was looking away a lot and wasn’t very talkative. He wondered if she was still hung up about Frat Boy. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake, pushing for too much romance, too fast. He knew from past experiences how tenuous love was, how quickly things could go to pot, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “fine.”

  He wanted to change the mood fast, get rid of the negativity. He leaned in. There was the sound of the horse’s hooves against the asphalt and the taste of mint in their mouths and a breeze blowing back their hair. Finally, they had a perfect kiss.

  TWENTY

  It had been the longest, weirdest first date Katie had ever had. The strangest thing was, it had started so normally. On the way to the park, the conversation was good and she thought it had been very thoughtful and generous of him to buy her flowers and pack the picnic. It must’ve cost him a fortune for the paté and the seafood salad and all the other food and for that expensive wine, Jesus. But when he held her hand, near the pond, she started getting weird vibes. He built up to it so slowly, sliding his hand along the blanket and getting this intense look in his eyes, that she almost started to laugh. She managed not to and was glad because she’d had the feeling that would’ve offended him big-time. But then he wouldn’t let go, even when their hands started to sweat. A few times, she tried to wriggle free, and he squeezed harder. She didn’t want to say anything, though, because it was only slightly uncomfortable and she kind of liked how seriously he was taking everything. Yeah, it was a little over the top, but there was a sincerity about it that she thought was kind of charming.

  Their first kiss, near the ducks, seemed way too planned, as if the only reason he’d asked her to look at the ducks was to have an opportunity to kiss her, but it was still a nice kiss—she thought so anyway. Afterward he started acting weird again. She had no idea what was wrong. She wondered if she’d said something to offend him. She didn’t think she had, but he seemed distracted and angry. Then she decided it must have to do with his old girlfriend. He’d said they’d broken up, what, a few days ago? She wondered if he was just rebounding and felt guilty about kissing someone else. Then her guilt, for getting so close with another guy so soon after Andy was killed, set in again. She thought, What kind of person am I? Can’t I even, like, let his body get cold? She was going to make up an excuse, say she was tired and wanted to go home, but she was afraid if she left, it would ruin things with Peter, and she definitely didn’t want to end the date on that kind of note.

  They went on the carousel, which she had to admit was a lot of fun. Later, when they were sitting on the rocks near Wollman Rink, she decided to bring up the ex-girlfriend issue. She knew she’d hit on something, because he seemed evasive and guarded. She didn’t press him on it, but felt good that at least she’d gotten an inkling of what was going on in his head.

  When they left the park, she was looking forward to getting home and relaxing in front of the TV, but then he suggested going out to dinner. She didn’t know how to say no without sounding rude; besides, she was hungry and it was a free meal. The food was excellent again, and she was impressed that he was spending so much money on her. She didn’t know how much he was making at his job at the health club, but it couldn’t be much. She wanted to offer to pay half, but she didn’t, getting the vibe that he’d take that as an insult. Then he kept insisting that she have a chocolate mint. She didn’t want to because she already felt guilty about all the calories she’d had today—she was going to have to go to the gym every day next week—but she felt self-conscious, like he thought something was wrong with her breath or something, so she had some of it.

  After dinner, she was really ready to go home and crash, but he wanted to take her to some surprise place. Although her feet killed from all the walking she’d done, she didn’t complain, and even acted like she was into it. But, at the same time, she felt bad for not asserting herself. She’d done that a lot in other relationships, and she vowed to not let the pattern continue.

  When they got to the horse-drawn carriages, she decided this was way too much for her. She liked Peter a lot, but going on a carriage ride in the park was something you did when the guy proposed, not on the first date. But, again, she didn’t speak up, and instead made up the excuse that she felt guilty about Andy and got into the carriage. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, why it was so hard for her to tell guys what she was really feeling. Then, in the carriage, Peter started kissing her again. She totally wasn’t into it, but she didn’t pull away, afraid it would hurt him if she did, and afterward he rubbed noses with her and smiled, unaware that anything was wrong.

  As she finished her nightly routine of exfoliating and moisturizing her face, she wasn’t sure how she felt about the date. Mostly, it had been a lot of fun; but, at times, Peter had made her uncomfortable. She felt like he wanted to get into a relationship right away, and while she liked him, she couldn’t even think about getting serious with someone right now.

  But she didn’t want to be too hard on Peter, either. Maybe he’d been nervous and had overdone it, trying to impress her. And maybe this was actually a good sign because it showed he actually liked her. Yeah, he’d gone way overboard, but what if he hadn’t done all of the romantic stuff? What if he took her to a cheap restaurant, like Pasta Under Five on Second Avenue? Some stockbroker, must’ve been making two hundred a year, had once taken her there and splurged on pasta primavera for $4.95, the cheap bastard. Or what if Peter’s MO was to get her drunk, then go back to her place for sex? There was no doubt he was a caring, generous guy, a perfect gentleman—she just hoped he toned it down the next time they went out, on Monday night. He’d asked her to go to dinner with him tomorrow, Sunday, but she’d lied and said she had plans. After spending two nights in a row with him, she felt like they needed a break, and she was glad she’d finally asserted herself.

  In her bedroom, she went online to check her e-mail. She opened a message from her friend Jane from high school. Jane, who lived in Berkeley now, had gone on an awful blind date with a guy who had a really greasy forehead—it looked like an “oil field”—and she described how during dinner a zit on his forehead had started bleeding. Katie laughed out loud several times as she read the message, and then wrote back, laughing again as she asked Jane if she was going to go on another date with Oily Man. Then she told Jane all about her date with Peter. She wasn’t sure if Jane even knew Peter from Lenox, because she was Katie’s age and she didn’t have any older brothers or sisters who would’ve been friends with him. Katie loved Jane, but in high school Jane had gone out with a guy, Christopher, who Katie had had a big crush on, and Katie had never gotten over it completely. So Katie didn’t tell Jane about the weird stuff with Peter, only about the good stuff. She even laid it on, telling Jane that Peter could even be the one, knowing that Jane would feel bad, especially coming off her awful date with Oily Man.

  Katie felt good after she clicked SEND, but several minutes later, when she was lying in bed, trying to concentrate on reading the latest Harry Potter novel, she regretted sending the e-mail. It was mean to do something like that, especially to a good friend, and she wished there was a way she could unsend the message. She was obsessing so much that she kept losing her place in the
book and finally closed it in frustration.

  She couldn’t sleep. At first, repetitive thoughts about Jane kept her awake, and then she started thinking about Peter. She replayed the date a bunch of times and then rehashed older memories, like the times in Lenox that they’d talked to each other at the ice-cream parlor and the video store. It seemed like it was always that way with her memories—she could remember unimportant things with total clarity, but major events, like prom night, the first time she had sex, or even the day Heather died, were blurred.

  But then she remembered something else about Peter from years ago. He was in her house—she must’ve been, what, twelve years old? Heather’s hair was shoulder length with bangs, her high school do, so she must’ve been about fifteen. Peter had come for dinner. He and Heather were in the same grade and she’d had other friends over before, so it wasn’t weird that he was there. Katie couldn’t remember anything in particular that had happened that night; like the other memories of Peter, it seemed random, uneventful. Still, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it until now. Also, she had a feeling that Peter had been over to the house several times, but she wasn’t sure. She knew that he and Heather were, at least for a while, pretty good friends. Because Katie was very young, wasn’t even a teenager yet, she might’ve missed some of the signals, but it was possible, even likely, that Peter had a crush on Heather. Heather had been very cute and a lot of guys had liked her.

  Lying on her side, Katie was uncomfortable, and turned fully onto her stomach. For some reason—and she wasn’t sure why—the idea that Peter and Heather may’ve been together in some way kept nagging at Katie. Maybe she’d ask Peter if he’d ever had a crush on Heather, or if he’d kissed her. Or maybe she wouldn’t. What was the point in causing drama when things were going so well?

  Franky Franco looked like the textbook schizo—wide-eyed, fidgety, long messy hair, a scraggly, graying beard. Actually, he seemed so wacko that John Himoto wondered why he’d believed a word the guy had said, despite the polygraph.

  Franco stuck to the story he’d told John earlier, that he’d stumbled upon Andrew Barnett in the underpass at Carl Schurz Park and murdered him. He answered every question John asked in a dead serious tone, without cracking a smile, and even started to cry several times. He seemed to believe that what he was saying was the absolute truth. Unfortunately, he didn’t create any new holes in his story and didn’t give any new details, so the forty-five-minute talk with him accomplished absolutely nothing.

  After some callbacks that went nowhere, John went to the church on Seventy-ninth Street near First Avenue. He’d been there several times before. Every day the church offered free meals for the homeless, and one morning, about two years ago, a stabbing had taken place. There had been several witnesses to the crime, but no one talked, and the case went unsolved. A minor blotch on John’s otherwise stellar record. Yeah, right.

  John talked to the administrator of the food program, Helena Adams, a nearly anorexic redhead in a black dress and an expensive-looking pearl necklace who seemed surprisingly uppity to have the job she had. She knew Franky Franco, said he’d been having meals at the church for the past couple of months.

  “Has he ever been involved in any disputes?” Himoto asked.

  “None that I know of,” she said. “But you’re aware of his psychiatric history, aren’t you?”

  She couldn’t’ve sounded snootier.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “He often talks to himself, and seems, well, I guess paranoid is the word. But, no, I haven’t seen him become violent and, frankly, I’ve never felt threatened by him, either. God knows I can’t say the same about some of the others who come here. By the way, we had an incident last month, a man was urinating inside the church, and we called the police and it took nearly an hour for someone to get here.”

  John apologized and explained that he had nothing to do with that and gave her a number where she could file a complaint. She mouthed off at him anyway about how important the church was to the community and how neglectful the police department was. John wanted to leave, but he also wanted more information from her, so he had to stand there, nodding with fake sincerity while the uppity biddy shit all over him.

  Finally she finished and John asked her if there was anyone else at the church who knew Franco.

  “Maybe one of the volunteers who serves meals could help you.”

  “You have the same volunteers each day?”

  “No, it varies.”

  “What about friends or acquaintances?”

  She let out an annoyed breath and crossed her arms in front of her chest, a not-so-subtle signal that as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.

  “I have no idea who knows him and who doesn’t know him. We finished serving lunch a little while ago. If anyone’s still around, why don’t you ask them?”

  John watched her walk away, the two-inch heels of her designer shoes clickity-clacking along the floor.

  Outside, a small group of homeless people were loitering in front of the church. John asked them if they knew a guy named Franky Franco. Although he hadn’t flashed his badge or announced he was a cop, they all seemed naturally suspicious. He sensed that at least two of the guys knew Franco, but no one cooperated.

  “All right, I’m a detective, like that surprises any of you,” John said. Then, figuring he’d pull the sympathy card, he added, “Look, so here’s the deal. Franco’s missing; he could be hurt or in trouble and his family’s worried. I need to know if anyone was with him on or around Thursday night. I’m talking about yesterday, all day. Did anyone see him or talk to him or does anyone know who saw him or who could’ve talked to him?”

  “Sorry,” an older black guy said, “we don’t know nothing.”

  John knew the guy was full of shit, that he probably had a long rap sheet—actually, he was starting to look familiar—and there was no way he’d ever help a cop.

  Then an old white guy, who looked homeless in a dirty old suit jacket and jeans, and who had awful BO, came over. He claimed he was a friend of Franco’s.

  “What happened to him?” the man asked, seeming genuinely concerned. “Is he okay?”

  John stuck to the story that Franco was missing, figuring this was his best bet to get the guy to be forthcoming.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” John asked.

  “The other night,” the man said. “What was it? Thursday. I slept next to him at the shelter on Seventy-seventh.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Then he was here in the afternoon the next day—yesterday. But at night he didn’t show.”

  “So you’re positive you were with him all of Thursday night?”

  “I wasn’t with him—I’m not a faggot. But I slept on a cot next to him, yeah. Why? Wait, let me guess. He said he killed somebody.”

  “How’d you know that?” As far as John knew, Franco’s confession still hadn’t been made public.

  The man laughed. “He does it all the time, that’s why. I guess he started telling you guys the same crap he’s been telling me. Last week, some guy in the Bronx got shot—he told me he did it. One time, some husband killed his wife in Brooklyn, he told me the cops got it all wrong—he did it. He tells me he killed somebody new almost every time I see him. Funny thing is, at first I believed him…I mean, he seemed for real…then I figured out he was taking it straight from the papers. So who’d he say he killed this time?”

  Trying to put his embarrassment on the back burner, John said, “A guy—the other night in Carl Schurz Park.”

  The old guy and the black guy started laughing.

  “You mean the guy who got it near Grade Mansion?” the old guy said. “Yeah, that’s just like Franky. I bet he really thinks he did it, too.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t leave the shelter Thursday night?”

  “Franky’s not a killer,” the old guy said. “He’s crazy as hell, yeah, but he’s no killer. What, don’t tell
me you believed him?”

  The old guy and the black guy laughed again, louder than before.

  John returned to his car. Maybe some new information would come out on Franco, but John knew that the odds that the nut had killed Barnett were almost zilch. John sat there for a few minutes, with his forehead resting on the steering wheel, trying to think about his next move. It was hard to focus, though, when so many negative thoughts were swirling around in his brain. This case wasn’t getting solved. In forty-eight hours he’d accomplished absolutely nothing. Worse, he had no idea where a break would come from. He was so fucking incompetent, he wondered if he should take himself off the case—do the public a favor.

  “Fuck me,” he said, and pounded the dashboard with his fist.

  He was sick of this shit but, one way or another, this case was going to get solved. He remembered telling Andrew Barnett’s parents that he was the best man for the job and, beneath all the self-doubt, he knew this was the truth. He’d catch a break eventually, but it wouldn’t happen sitting on his ass.

  He felt like he was missing something very obvious. He had to go back to the basics, the crime itself. It was a strangulation, most likely a crime of passion. Maybe there was jealousy, an affair, a love triangle. He remembered one of Barnett’s roommates, William Bahner, telling him about the double date he’d been on the night before the murder with Andrew Barnett, Katie Porter, and a friend of Katie’s. John had a feeling Bahner was hiding something. Maybe Bahner had a thing for Katie and bumped off Barnett to get him out of the way. It was worth looking into anyway.

  Bahner had given John his cell number. John called, left a message to get back in touch with him as soon as possible. Then he called Louis and gave him the news. Louis told him that he better make some headway fast, the clock was ticking.

  John dreaded making the next call, to Mr. Barnett. He was hoping to get his voice mail, but no such luck.