The Follower

by Jason Starr

  “Now, look,” Himoto said. “I was starting to tell you, I was taken off the case.”

  “What?” This seemed like horrible news to Katie, like yet another part of her life was falling apart.

  “Calm down, okay? There’s a new lead detective on the case, his name’s Nick Barasco. I already told him about you and that you called. I’m actually surprised he didn’t get in touch with you already. It sounds like he should definitely look into whatever you’re talking about. Did this guy you mention…Peter Wells, was it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he know Andrew Barnett?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so but—”

  “Does he happen to have dark hair?”

  “No. His hair’s blond.”

  “Okay, look, this is definitely something we should look into, whatever it is. I’ll throw Nick another call and give him your number again. Do you have a pen?”

  “What?” She’d heard, but she was still frazzled. “Oh, yeah, I think so.”

  “Let me give you Nick’s number. If you don’t hear from him, you can call him yourself. You ready?”

  Himoto gave Katie the number and she scribbled it onto the back of an ATM receipt.

  “You just take care of yourself,” Himoto said. “We’ll take care of everything else, okay?”

  Safe in her apartment, Katie tried to take Himoto’s advice, but it didn’t work. Her mind kept churning, inventing worst-case scenarios. In the worst of the worst, she imagined that the woman would be waiting for her when she left for work in the morning; the woman would have a gun and shoot her in the head. And when she wasn’t thinking about ways she would end up dead, she was feeling guilty as hell for kissing a guy Amanda was into. She hoped Will wouldn’t go and tell her. She didn’t see why he would, but guys were such dicks, nothing was beneath them. She wished she hadn’t gone out to meet him. He seemed like a nice guy, but he was probably a scammer, just like Andy. Wearing his scrubs, feeding her that crap, I didn’t invite you out here thinking anything would happen. Yeah, right. He didn’t ask her out to talk—he asked her out because he was horny and wanted to get his rocks off. What a prick.

  And what was the deal with that new detective, Nick What’s His Face? Why the hell wasn’t he calling her? She’d been dating the victim, after all.

  Sick of waiting, Katie called and got his voice mail. She left a message, telling him to call her back right away, that it was fucking urgent, and that she would have her phone on and in bed with her all night.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Holy shit, I know that guy,” Peter said.

  He was at Hillary Morgan’s apartment, sitting next to her at the desk at her home office, viewing a slide show of digital images on the LCD monitor. The photos showed Katie sitting at a bar next to a guy in doctor’s scrubs. In some of the shots Katie was smiling; in others she had a more serious expression. The one that got to Peter most, though, the one that made him sick with rage, was the one where they were kissing.

  “Who is he?” Hillary asked.

  “I don’t know-him know him. I mean, I’ve seen him.”

  “Where?”

  It was when he’d followed Katie and Frat Boy on that double date. He was the other Frat Boy who’d been out with the other girl.

  But realizing there was no point in giving Hillary too much information, he said, “I just saw them together once, I think. At a party or something.”

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “It’s always difficult to find out a loved one has been unfaithful.”

  Peter hated the way she was trying to soothe him, like she thought he needed a mommy to tell him everything would be okay.

  “Did they leave together?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  The slide show was repeating, showing the worst picture of all—Katie with her tongue halfway down Scrub Boy’s throat.

  “Why not?” Peter asked. “I mean, you were there, weren’t you?”

  “There’s something else you should know.”

  Hillary had an ominous tone, but Peter still couldn’t shift his gaze away from the slide show.

  “I was using a concealed camera,” Hillary went on. “She had no idea I was taking the pictures, and neither did the guy she was with, but…but she saw me.”

  Now Peter looked at Hillary and said, “What did she do?”

  “I don’t know. I got out of there quickly—hopped in a cab. There was no confrontation or anything like that.”

  “So she saw you. You were just some woman in the bar. What difference does that make?”

  “No, she looked at me in a knowing-type way, like she recognized me. I think she must’ve seen me earlier in front of her office building.”

  “Whatever,” Peter said. “I guess your job’s done anyway. Do me a favor—delete all the picture files you have—the original images on your camera and anyplace else you might have stored them.”

  “Don’t you want copies?”

  “No.” He was nearly yelling. Calmer, he said, “I don’t want any copies. I want these pictures to be gone forever. I don’t want them stored on your hard drive, and I don’t want them on CDs or thumb drives. I want them erased, wiped out forever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought she seemed frightened. He was probably just imagining it.

  “You didn’t print out any copies of the pictures?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Good.”

  He paid her what he owed and left the apartment. In the cab, going across town, Peter was preoccupied, thinking about Scrub Boy, about what a user, what a total opportunistic pig he was. His friend who’d been dating Katie had been killed and what did he do? Within a week, he ditched his own girlfriend and swooped in and made the moves on Katie. Scrub Boy was even lower and more repulsive than Frat Boy.

  When the cab let Peter out in front of his brownstone, he noticed the cops right away. They were standing on the sidewalk and both had slicked-back hair and were wearing dark suits and were chewing on gum. Even in plainclothes their whole cocky attitude screamed: We’re cops! But Peter wasn’t at all concerned. He knew they had nothing on him.

  As Peter approached, the older one came over to him and said, “Peter Wells?”

  “Yep,” Peter said, trying to sound as confused as anyone would feel when a stranger approaches him on the street and knows his name.

  The man flashed a badge, then said, “Detective Nick Barasco, Homicide. Mind if we have a word with you?”

  Jesus, this guy was so into himself, he reeked of it, and his partner seemed the same way. They were so fake, so see-through. But Peter knew exactly how to talk to shallow, ego-maniacal guys like these. It was time for some good ol’ male bonding.

  “Yeah,” Peter said, “what’s it about?”

  “We just spoke to an acquaintance of yours named Katie Porter. She told us where you live.”

  “Is Katie okay?” Man, he was good. Oscar caliber.

  “Yeah, she’s fine. You know of course that the guy she was dating was killed last week.”

  “I know. It’s terrible.”

  “She said you guys went out a couple of times.”

  “Yeah, it’s true, we’ve been dating.”

  Suddenly very serious, as if he’d hit on something, Barasco said, “According to her, you’re not boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “We weren’t…I mean, aren’t. We went on a couple of dates, yeah, but…I mean, you guys saw her, right? Can you blame me?”

  The detectives looked at each other, smiling. They were three dudes hanging out, shooting the shit in a locker room. They might as well have been slapping each other’s asses.

  “Yeah, she is a pretty good-looking girl,” the younger guy said.

  “I rest my case,” Peter said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Sorry. Tony Martinelli.”

  “Nice to meet you, bro.”
r />   The “bro” was perfect.

  “Katie said you were getting pretty serious about her,” Barasco said, all businesslike, as if trying to keep the conversation focused. “She said you bought an apartment for the two of you to live in.”

  Peter smiled in a purposefully cocky way, then said, “I just told her, to try to impress her, you know what I mean? Of course, I didn’t buy the apartment for the two of us. You think I’m crazy or something?” He laughed. “But she wasn’t the first girl I fed that line to and she won’t be the last.”

  Martinelli smiled, appreciating Peter’s strategy for luring in women, maybe thinking that he’d have to remember to use the buying-an-apartment line himself sometime.

  “She also said you proposed to her,” Barasco said.

  “Her and many,” Peter said. “Her and many.”

  The cops laughed. Peter was scoring major points now.

  Then, suddenly getting serious again, Barasco said, “Can I ask you where you were the night Andrew Barnett was killed?”

  Peter knew it would come off poorly if the day was too fresh in his mind so he said, “When was that again?”

  “Last Thursday evening. But you can start with where you were in the afternoon.”

  Peter waited a few more seconds, then said, “Yeah, I remember now, because Katie called me the next day and I went over to be with her. I walked home from work in the afternoon—I was working at a health club uptown—”

  “The Metro Sports Club,” Barasco said.

  “That’s right,” Peter said. “I hung out in the park for a while, then I think I grabbed a Subway for dinner. No, it was a slice of pizza, that’s right, and then I got to my hotel room at around seven o’clock and stayed there the rest of the night.”

  “Your hotel room?” Barasco asked.

  “Yeah, I was staying at the Ramada on Lex. Renovations on my apartment weren’t complete yet.”

  “Looks like a nice place you got there,” Barasco said, looking at the building.

  “Yeah, it’s really nice,” Peter said.

  “So about the health club. Katie said you started working there just so you could meet her?”

  “No,” Peter said, as if he thought this was ridiculous. “I never said that.”

  “She said you did.”

  “Hmm, there must be some misunderstanding or something. I worked there, thinking I’d become a fitness trainer. I ran into her by accident. But, no, I didn’t start working there just so I could meet her. I mean, I like her, but I don’t like her that much.”

  Martinelli smiled, locker room style.

  “But you don’t work there any longer,” Barasco said. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, I quit just the other day. I decided it wasn’t for me.”

  “We understand you’re independently wealthy.”

  “Wealthy’s stretching it, but I’m doing okay.”

  “Can I ask where your money came from?”

  “My parents were killed when I was twenty-two. I collected an insurance policy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How’d it happen?”

  “There was a fire at my house upstate.”

  “Jesus. So that must’ve been quite a policy to buy this place. I mean, the way the real estate market is now, this place must’ve cost you a pretty penny.”

  “The insurance policy was pretty significant, and I made some good investments, in the stock market, real estate, stuff like that.”

  “Man, I should get you to manage my money,” Barasco said. “The funds I invest in just seem to go right down the fuckin’ toilet.”

  “Tell me about it,” Martinelli said.

  “But there’s one thing I don’t get,” Barasco said to Peter.

  “If you’ve got all this money, why’d you have to work at a health club?”

  “Because I’m a moron?” Peter stayed deadpan for a couple of seconds for comic effect, then grinned. “No, seriously, I’m not exactly rolling in dough. This place did cost me a lot and there are a lot of expenses for renovating, decorating, et cetera. But I worked at the health club because I thought I wanted to become a personal trainer. It’s always been a dream of mine, but now I’m not exactly sure what I’m gonna do career-wise…Is this gonna go on much longer? Sorry, but I really have to go in and use the John.”

  Barasco and Martinelli looked at each other, then Barasco said, “That should do for now. Oh, one last thing—did anybody happen to see you at the Ramada the other night? Somebody who could vouch for your story?”

  “I don’t get it,” Peter said. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s routine,” Barasco said. “We’re asking everybody the same questions.”

  Peter squinted and wrinkled his forehead, as if thinking deeply, then said, “There’s this guy Hector at the desk. He was working that night, I think. He might remember seeing me.”

  “Great,” Barasco said. “We’ll be back in touch.”

  A couple of minutes later, in his apartment, Peter couldn’t resist laughing out loud. Were the cops a bunch of total morons or what? It was obvious to Peter that the detectives weren’t taking him seriously as a suspect; otherwise there was no way in hell they would have let him off the hook so easily. The only reason they’d questioned him at all was that he had started dating Katie. They were probably talking to every acquaintance of Katie’s and Frat Boy’s, fishing for straws. By now it figured that they’d also gotten a description from somebody at that bar that night of the “guy with dark hair and a goatee” who was talking to Frat Boy. Since Peter didn’t fit that description, there was no reason for the cops to investigate him too deeply. When they went to the Ramada Inn, Hector, in all likelihood, wouldn’t remember exactly what time Peter returned to the hotel that night, but he would give the detectives a rave review of Peter’s character. He’d tell them that Peter Wells was a great guy, that there was no way that he would ever hurt anybody. Yeah, the cops were going to get nowhere fast all right.

  Then Peter realized that he could be losing valuable time. After peeking out the window and making sure that the detectives were nowhere in sight, he put on his Yankees cap and a pair of sunglasses and grabbed a pair of latex gloves. Moments later, he was outside, heading toward the subway.

  When he arrived at the Ninety-sixth Street station, he bought a copy of the New York Post at the kiosk, and then headed toward the building where he had seen Frat Boy and Scrub Boy return to after their double date.

  There was a bench alongside the apartment building on Ninety-fifth and Third. He looked around carefully, didn’t spot any security cameras, so he sat, with the open Post on his lap, watching the light flow of people walking to and from the building. He hoped that since Frat Boy had used this entrance, Scrub Boy used it as well. If he was wrong and Scrub Boy used a different entrance, like maybe one around the corner on Ninety-sixth Street, then Peter would be screwed.

  Peter wished he had another option, but he knew he had no choice but to wait. The only other way he could find Scrub Boy would be to follow Katie around until she met him again. But he knew it would be too risky to be near Katie, even in a disguise. They were at a delicate stage in their relationship. He needed to win her back, not scare her off. Besides, what good would it do to find Scrub Boy when he was with Katie? He needed to get him someplace alone, someplace where he could kill him with no chance of getting caught.

  He waited the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. He was watching for Scrub Boy, but he was also looking out for any cops, especially Barasco or Martinelli. It was possible that they could stop at the building to interview Scrub Boy, or one of his roommates—Katie had mentioned that Frat Boy lived with several guys—and Peter knew it would be very difficult to explain why he was hanging out in front of the building.

  The rest of the afternoon, Peter peered through the sunglasses, occasionally flipping pages of the newspaper, watching every person who passed by. It was exhausting work, but he knew he couldn’t let up. Occa
sionally, he stood to stretch, but otherwise he didn’t leave his position.

  After six o’clock, people—mostly anal-retentive-looking twenty-somethings—started returning from work in droves. Peter hoped that Scrub Boy had a normal work schedule and would be among them. Maybe Peter wouldn’t have an opportunity to get rid of him today, but at least it would help him plan for next time.

  Peter was so focused on the people heading toward the building that he almost missed Scrub Boy walking in the other direction. He saw him from the back, as he was waiting to cross Third Avenue. He was wearing scrubs, of course, and looked as disgustingly arrogant as he had on the double date and in the pictures Hillary Morgan had taken.

  Casually, Peter got up and went to the south side of East Ninety-fifth Street, and then waited to cross the avenue at the opposite corner. He was going to follow Scrub Boy wherever he went, but he knew he couldn’t follow directly behind him and be seen by some building’s security camera. He wasn’t an idiot after all.

  The light changed and they crossed Third Avenue, Peter slowing to let Scrub Boy get about ten yards ahead of him. As they approached Lexington, Peter hesitated again, in case Scrub Boy crossed in his direction, but instead he made a right and headed toward the subway at Ninety-sixth Street. Peter crossed to the opposite side of Lexington and continued to follow. He assumed that Scrub Boy was planning to take the train downtown. Peter didn’t like that—too many people riding the trains at this time of day, too hard to kill somebody. Besides, in a subway station there could be cameras anywhere. Peter thought, Don’t go to the subway, don’t go to the subway, don’t go to the subway, and, sure enough, Scrub Boy passed the subway entrance and crossed Ninety-sixth Street, continuing uptown toward Spanish Harlem.

  At Ninety-seventh Street, Scrub Boy crossed Lexington and continued west. Peter continued to follow him on the opposite side of the street. It was a fairly quiet block, not too many people around. There were no stores or large apartment complexes and Peter looked around carefully, but didn’t notice any security cameras. If it wasn’t still light outside, he might’ve been able to do it right there.