The Follower

by Jason Starr

  “So?” Mr. Barnett asked.

  “We don’t think he did it,” John said.

  Dead silence, then Mr. Barnett said, “Why’s that?”

  He sounded too calm, as if he were ready to blow.

  John explained about Franco’s schizophrenia and affinity for taking credit for murders.

  “So what the fuck’re you gonna do now?” Mr. Barnett asked.

  “We have many other leads that we’re following up as we speak,” John lied. “I guarantee you that we’ll do everything possible to catch the son of a bitch who killed your son.”

  “Everything possible,” Mr. Barnett said. “That’s not saying a hell of a lot, since so far you’ve done total bullshit.”

  Mr. Barnett continued his tirade and John kept saying “Yes,” “Yes,” “I understand,” “Absolutely,” until he was able to get off the phone.

  Suddenly John had a pounding headache. He was exhausted, too, the sleepless night catching up with him big-time. He pulled over at the Starbucks on First and Eighty-fifth for a double espresso. While he was on line, William Bahner called and John arranged to meet him in the cafeteria at Mount Sinai Hospital in twenty minutes.

  Back in his car, John felt like shit for stringing Mr. Barnett along. His son had been killed and he had a right to yell and he had a right to demand results. Then John thought about his own son, who was alive and well, but whom John hadn’t seen in, Jesus, over a year.

  John wished he could understand what the Barnetts were going through, but the sad truth was, he had no fucking clue.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sunday morning, at the gym, Peter looked at his watch for what must’ve been the hundredth time and said to himself, “Where the hell is she?” Yesterday, in the park, she must’ve mentioned three times that she was planning to go to the gym in the morning and yet it was almost noon and there was no sign of her. Peter feared that something was wrong—she was sick or something. She’d seemed perfectly healthy all day yesterday, but he couldn’t think of any other logical explanation. She had a great opportunity to spend more time with him today and he knew she wouldn’t willingly miss out on it.

  He resisted calling her. He wanted to, desperately, but his discipline was being tested. He had to stay cool, in control.

  But as noon approached it was getting harder and harder to not do something. He had started his training for the membership consultant position but was barely listening to Jimmy. He took several breaks, to get water and go to the bathroom, but they were really just excuses to walk around the gym to see if he’d possibly missed Katie.

  His agitation must’ve become very noticeable because during one of the breaks Jimmy came over to him and said, “You feeling okay, guy?”

  “Yeah, my back’s a little tight,” Peter said. “Must’ve pulled it doing abs yesterday.”

  “You should ice it, bro.”

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  They continued the training but, for Peter, focusing on anything other than Katie had become impossible.

  “Sorry, my back’s spasming,” Peter said. “Can we pick this up tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, no problema, man,” Jimmy said. “But I can’t pay you for the time you’ll miss today.”

  Peter, thinking, Yeah, like I care about your nine fifty an hour, said, “I totally understand. That’s cool.”

  Working at the health club was getting to be a pain. He couldn’t wait to quit and start his new life with Katie.

  He took a long time leaving the gym—going to the bathroom again, striking up mundane conversations with a couple of trainers. He was hoping Katie would eventually show, but she didn’t. He remembered how she’d said she couldn’t go out with him tonight, and instead she suggested going out to dinner on Monday. At the time, he’d thought she was just trying to avoid going out two nights in a row with a new boyfriend—very typical dating behavior—but now he wondered if it was because she had other plans—i.e., she was dating someone else. She’d never mentioned a guy in her life other than Andy, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone. Many girls dated more than one guy at a time so there could be “another Andy” in her life, some other Frat Boy she’d met somewhere, or maybe she was seeing someone at her office. The only guy at her job who she talked about was her boss, Mitchell. It sounded like she hated him, but anything was possible. Maybe the tension meant something was going on.

  Or maybe she had guy friends—you always had to look out for them. Girls always naively assumed that guys they were involved with platonically didn’t want anything from them, but that was never the case. Peter knew that all guys—himself excluded—were pigs. They hung around, waiting until their female friends got into vulnerable positions, and then they went in for the kill. Peter had no idea how many guy friends Katie had—it worried him how little he knew about her—but he assumed there were some. If not friends, then acquaintances—pigs waiting in the wings for the going to get rough, for her to need a shoulder to cry on, so they could swoop in and take advantage of her.

  Peter couldn’t let this happen. He had to prevent it. He didn’t care if he had to kill a hundred Frat Boys. He’d do whatever he had to do to keep Katie safe with him.

  Leaving the gym, Peter’s heart was beating wildly. He started walking, then running toward Katie’s. Then a voice in his head screamed, Don’t do it! and he turned around. He sat on a ledge outside a building and tried to settle down. While his first instinct was to get rid of whoever was in his way, he knew if he went over there and demanded to get into her apartment, it would lead to disaster. If she was with a guy, what would he do, kill him in front of her? He had to be a lot more clever about it than that. And what if he was wrong and there was no other guy? She’d think he was a lunatic and would never forgive him.

  Rushing over there like a maniac would’ve been the biggest mistake of his life, and he was glad he’d had the wherewithal to talk himself out of it. He had to bide his time, keep watching her and gathering as much information as he could, and proceed from there. But, from now on, hanging out across the street from her building was out of the question. Although Katie had claimed that someone had confessed to the murder, Peter didn’t believe it. There had been nothing on the news or in the papers about a confession. For all Peter knew, the police had found a witness from the Big Easy who had seen him talking to Frat Boy the other night, and maybe his disguise hadn’t worked as well as he’d thought. Even going over with a different look could be a mistake if the police were watching Katie for some reason.

  Peter racked his brain, trying to figure out what to do, and it didn’t take long for the answer to come to him. Suddenly feeling back in the driver’s seat, he walked down Second Avenue to a coffee shop that had Internet terminals. He purchased a half hour of time, then went online and searched for private detectives in New York City. He avoided the large companies, figuring they wouldn’t answer the phones on a Sunday or wouldn’t be willing to start immediately. Instead, on a piece of scrap paper, he made a list of ten or so independent investigators. Then, on the street outside the café, he started making calls on his cell.

  A couple of the numbers were disconnected and he reached the answering services of several others. He was beginning to think it would be impossible to reach a PI today when Stanley Ross answered his phone. Peter explained that he suspected his girlfriend was having an affair and wanted Ross to follow her. Ross, an arrogant, gruff-sounding guy, said he was currently working on two other cases and couldn’t start until sometime next week.

  Peter reached a couple more answering services and was losing hope again. Then, on his second-to-last call, to Hillary Morgan Investigations, Hillary herself picked up. She lived across town, on West Seventy-seventh, worked out of a home office, and seemed interested in taking on the case. She said her specialty was infidelity.

  “You sound perfect,” Peter said. “The thing is, I think my fiancée’s cheating on me right now. Can you start immediately?”

  “I’m sorry, I have a p
ersonal commitment today,” she explained, “but I can start first thing tomorrow.”

  She sounded tough, competent, and Peter wanted to use her. Besides, he didn’t know if he could even reach another PI who was willing to start immediately, so for all he knew, she could be his only possibility.

  “Look, I really need you to start today. Whatever your fee is, I’ll pay double.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Triple.”

  She paused, not for long, then said, “Well, I guess I can rearrange my schedule.”

  While he was talking to her, giving her basic information about Katie, he hailed a cab and headed toward her place. When he clicked off, he was riding through the park, halfway there. When he arrived at her apartment, a brownstone, she was amazed that he’d gotten there so fast.

  She looked younger and less competent than Peter had expected. She had short dark hair and wore glossy lipstick. She had a raspy, smoker’s voice, which was probably why she’d sounded older on the phone. The small one-bedroom apartment was cramped and dingy. She led him into a small alcove, her home-office area. She had a Jack Russell terrier, which kept yapping at Peter, trying to climb his legs.

  “Stop it, Duncan,” she said, and the dog scampered away. Then she said to Peter, “Sorry—he hates new people. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “I’m fine,” Peter said. “Actually, I was hoping you could go over to her place right now. Here, I can give you some money. I’ll give you more tomorrow, or even tonight if you want to meet then.”

  Peter opened his wallet and took out several hundred-dollar bills and said, “This enough for now?”

  Without taking the money, Hillary said, “Why do you think she’s with someone right now?”

  The questions were getting to be a pain. “Look,” Peter said, “you said you can start immediately. That’s why I’m giving you all this money.”

  “I’ll take the job,” she said. “I’m just trying to find out as much background as possible.”

  “This isn’t that type of job,” Peter said. “I just need to know if she’s seeing someone else. If she is, some pictures of the guy would be great. But I think what I’m asking for is pretty simple.”

  “Do you have a photo of her?”

  Shit, Peter hadn’t thought of that.

  “I can describe her. She’s short to average height. Medium-length straight brown hair. Wait a second.”

  He asked her if he could go online for a second, and she said that was fine, to go right ahead. He sat at her desk and did a Google image search for Katie Porter and scrolled down to one of the photos he’d found on the Internet while he was in Mexico. It had been taken a couple of years ago, while she was in college and was working as a career resource assistant. It wasn’t the best picture of her—no photo did her justice—but it would do.

  After printing out the photo on a regular piece of paper, Peter wrote her address below it, along with his cell number.

  “This is all the information you need,” he said. “Just watch her all day today and tonight, and if we could talk this evening, maybe around ten or eleven, that would be perfect.”

  Hillary seemed hesitant—Peter couldn’t tell if she was suspicious of something or not—but agreed to get to work immediately.

  Peter took a cab to his hotel. He was relieved that the problem had been taken care of, that Katie was being watched.

  Last night and early this morning, Peter had packed all his belongings into two suitcases. After he took a last look around in the closet and under the bed, he wheeled the suitcases onto the elevator and went down to the lobby.

  Hector saw him and said, “Say it ain’t so, man.”

  “It’s so,” Peter said.

  “Yo, it won’t be the same here,” Hector said. “Serious. Who’m I gonna talk to?”

  “You have Lucy.”

  “That’s true, but she ain’t here at night and I can’t talk on my cell all the time, know what I’m saying? Yo, where’s your new apartment at again?”

  “Thirty-second Street.”

  “Yo, that shit’s close by. You can still come by here and hang sometimes, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s cool, yo. And we’re gonna go out with our girls sometime, right?”

  “Yeah, let’s definitely do that.”

  Hector gave Peter a printout of his bill. Peter signed it without bothering to even glance at the total. Then Hector came around the counter and gave Peter a big hug goodbye.

  “I’m gonna miss you, man,” Hector said.

  Peter told Hector he would miss him, too. But then, walking down Lexington, pulling his luggage behind him, he doubted he would ever talk to Hector again. He had nothing against the guy—he’d actually enjoyed all of their conversations and the guy couldn’t have been nicer to him—but he didn’t expect his future with Katie to include interacting with many other people outside their marriage. Once they settled down and quit their jobs, the world would be about them and them alone. He couldn’t see them as one of those couples that socialized a lot. They’d definitely be homebodies.

  It was Sunday, so the workers at Peter’s apartment had the day off. When he arrived, he took a look around, delighted with the progress that had been made since his last visit. The final coat of paint in the master bedroom had been applied and Peter was relieved that the Martha Stewart delicious melon looked as good on the walls as it had on the color palette. More furniture had arrived—the Crate & Barrel maple coffee table, the Charles P. Rogers wrought-iron canopy bed, the dining room table and chair set from Domain. The sixty-four-inch wide-screen LCD TV had arrived and the home theater system was all hooked up. Considering he had only hired a contractor and not a decorator, Peter was very pleased with how well everything went together. He had purchased most of the stuff from catalogs, wanting to get the place together as quickly as possible. If Katie had other ideas, he’d let her redecorate however she wanted to. Hell, if she didn’t like the apartment, they could sell it and buy a different one, or buy a house in the country. Peter had only bought the apartment because he wanted to show Katie he was serious about starting a life with her. When he’d arrived in New York from Mexico, he’d immediately gone to several real estate agents and told them that he only wanted to see apartments that he could close on quickly, where the sellers were desperate to make deals. On the second day of looking, he’d found the apartment he ended up buying. He paid for it in cash and was able to close within three weeks.

  Settling down on the leather couch, Peter imagined that Katie was next to him. It was a normal weekday night. They’d just had dinner and now they were cuddling. He was looking intensely into her eyes, hanging on every word she said. Then they started talking about the future, about the kids they’d have. They would make great parents, and Katie especially would make a great mother.

  Instead of ordering in for dinner, Peter decided to christen the kitchen and the new stainless steel appliances. He could never even imagine trying to cook without following a recipe, so he walked to the Borders on Second Avenue and bought a cookbook by Jamie Oliver, which had a recipe for pot-roasted pork with fennel and rosemary. Then he cabbed it to a Bed Bath & Beyond across town and bought the utensils he needed, and on the way back to his apartment he stopped at a gourmet grocery and bought all the ingredients, and went to a wine store and bought a nice California zinfandel. He wished his stereo was connected so he could play some music to help put him in the mood, but he had to make do by singing an off-key version of “You Light Up My Life.” Although he had an awful voice, he loved to sing, especially while cooking or showering, and as far as he was concerned, the love ballads from the seventies were where it was at. He also liked seventies and eighties soft rock and as a teenager lived on Barry Manilow, Air Supply, and REO Speedwagon. As with movies, he only liked music that was uplifting, that made him happy. He could never understand how people could listen to stuff like grunge or metal or—the worst—the blues. Wasn’t l
ife depressing enough?

  Although he made sure to measure all the ingredients precisely and he worked slowly, following every instruction, he must’ve done something wrong somewhere, because the food came out awful. The pork was too dry, the rosemary was bitter, and the fennel made the whole dish taste like licorice. Even the arugula salad disappointed. Although he’d washed it carefully, he bit down on a pebble and nearly cracked a tooth, and the vinaigrette was too garlicky. He trusted that Jamie Oliver knew what he was doing and the food wasn’t supposed to taste like this, so the only explanation was that somewhere along the way he had screwed up. Furious with himself, he slapped his head a couple of times and said, “You fuckin’ moron.” Then he sat at the dining room table and poured a glass of wine and tried to enjoy the meal, but he couldn’t even stomach the first bite. He spit the food out and, in total disgust, flung the plate across the room and swatted away the glass and the bottle of wine.

  He cleaned up the mess, but decided not to order in any dinner or cook an alternate meal. Maybe if he went to bed hungry, it would teach him to cook his food properly next time.

  As nine o’clock approached, he started worrying about the detective. Not about her doing her job properly—he assumed she was qualified—but about what she might find. Peter had no idea how he’d react if it turned out there was some other guy in the picture. While he couldn’t imagine Katie deceiving him in that way, he had to prepare himself for the possibility. He knew what he’d do—get rid of the guy as quickly as possible—but he just hoped that his emotions didn’t get the best of him, and that he was able to deal with the situation in a rational, controlled way.

  At a little before ten, his cell rang. He was disappointed to see Hillary Morgan’s number on the display rather than Katie’s. Still, he answered eagerly, saying, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I’ve been doing a surveillance since a little after you left this afternoon.”

  “And? What’d you find out?”