The Follower

by Jason Starr

  Her pulse was pounding and it wasn’t only because she had started walking even faster. She couldn’t believe she’d let this happen. She’d had a feeling about this guy, got bad vibes, whatever you wanted to call it, and yet she’d stupidly walked to a fairly unpopulated part of the park. Yeah, it was unlikely that he’d try to assault her in broad daylight, but she could’ve easily avoided the situation by cutting over toward Bethesda Fountain, where there were tons of people, when she’d had the chance. Now all she could do was try to get away.

  When she reached the next path, she continued straight, toward the east side, hoping that he’d turn right. But she didn’t even have to turn her head to know he was still following her. Although she was walking at an even quicker pace, he seemed to have gained ground because the sounds of his footsteps and kicked-up bits of gravel seemed to be getting louder. He was probably still at least ten yards behind her, but there was no doubt in her mind now what was happening. He was going to continue behind her, hoping she’d head into a semi-secluded area. If she didn’t, and left the park, he’d follow her home. Maybe he wouldn’t try something today, but he would find out where she lived and then, some other night, when it was late, and she was alone, he’d follow her into her vestibule and rape and murder her.

  Like hell he would.

  She crossed the park’s East Drive and went along the path toward the exit to Fifth Avenue. Of course he was still tailing her. She acted oblivious, but then, moving fast, she reached into her purse, turned, and rushed up to him. She grabbed his arm, squeezing it as hard as she could, and said, “Stay the fuck away from me, you fucking scumbag.”

  “What the hell?” the guy said, stunned. Yeah, he was stunned all right. He was probably used to following girls all the way back to their apartments and attacking them. No one had ever turned the tables on him before.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “I was just walking.”

  He sounded so innocent.

  From her purse, she removed a small canister of pepper spray.

  “You want me to burn your fucking eyes out?” she said. “Huh? That what you want?”

  He held his crossed hands up in front of his face like a big coward and said, “What’re you, crazy or something?”

  “You think I won’t do it, huh? You think I won’t?”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, and he turned and ran away.

  “Stalking bastard!” Katie screamed after him.

  She waited until he was out of sight, then she continued on her way out of the park, the pepper spray still in her hand. She doubted he’d have the balls to show his face again. If he did, God help him.

  Read on for an excerpt from Jason Starr’s upcoming book

  Panic Attack

  Coming soon in hardcover from St. Martin’s Minotaur

  Adam Bloom was having a nightmare. It was the one he’d had before where he was in his office in midtown, treating a female patient, maybe Kathy Stappini or Jodi Roth—both of whom, interestingly enough, suffered from agoraphobia—when his office suddenly became a white, square-shaped room, the size of a prison cell, and Kathy or Jodi turned into a large black rat. The rat had long fangs and kept chasing him around, jumping at him, making a loud hissing noise. Then the walls started closing in. He tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound, and then a long, narrow staircase appeared. He tried to run up it, but couldn’t get anywhere, like he was trying to go up a down escalator. Then he looked over his shoulder, and the rat was huge now, the size of a Rottweiler, and it was coming at him, baring its long fangs, about to bite his head off.

  He felt a yanking on his upper arm. Startled, he tried to turn away, onto his other side, when he heard, “Mom, Dad, wake up, wake up.”

  He opened his eyes, disoriented for a moment, terrified of the giant rat, then realized that he was home in bed in his house in Forest Hills Gardens with his wife, Dana, lying next to him. He had the comforted, relieved feeling he always had after a nightmare. It was a rush of reassurance that everything was going to be fine, that thank God the world wasn’t such a horrible place after all.

  But then he heard his daughter whispering, “Somebody’s downstairs.”

  Marissa had graduated from Vassar last year with a degree in art history—Adam and Dana hadn’t been exactly thrilled about that choice—and was back living at home, in the room she’d grown up in. She’d been acting out lately, exhibiting a lot of attention-seeking behavior. She had several tattoos—including one of an angel on her lower back that she liked to show off by wearing halter tops and low-rise jeans—and had recently dyed pink streaks into her short, light brown hair. She spent her days listening to awful music, e-mailing, blogging, text messaging, watching TV, and partying with her friends. She often didn’t come home until three or four in the morning, and some nights she didn’t come home at all, “forgetting” to call. She was a good kid, but Adam and Dana had been trying to encourage her to get her act together and get on with her life.

  “What is it?” Adam asked. He was still half-asleep, a little out of it, still thinking about the dream. What was the significance of the black rat? Why was it black? Why did it always start out as a patient? A female patient?

  “I heard a noise,” Marissa said. “Somebody’s in the house.”

  Adam blinked hard a couple of times, to wake himself up fully, then said, “It was probably just the house settling, or the wind—”

  “No, I’n telling you. There’s somebody there, I heard footsteps and stuff moving.”

  Now Dana was up, too, and asked, “What’s going on?”

  Like Adam, Dana was forty-seven, but she’d aged better than he. He was graying, balding, had some flab, especially in his mid-section, but she’d been spending a lot of time in the gym, especially during the last year or so, and had a great body to show for it. They’d had some marriage trouble—they’d nearly had a trial separation when Marissa was in high school—but things had been better lately.

  “I heard somebody downstairs, Ma.”

  Adam was exhausted and just wanted to go back to sleep.

  “It was nothing,” he said.

  “I’n telling you, I heard it.”

  “Maybe you should go and check,” Dana said, concerned.

  “I’n really afraid, Daddy.”

  The Daddy part got to him. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him Daddy and he could tell she was seriously frightened. He was up anyway and had to go pee so he might as well go check.

  He breathed deeply, then said, “Fine, okay,” and sat up.

  As he got out of bed, he cringed. He’d had on-and-off-again lower-back pain and stiffness for the past few years, an overuse injury from running and golf. His physical therapist had given him a list of exercises to do at home, but he’d been busy lately with a couple of involved patient crises and hadn’t been doing them. He was also supposed to ice his back before he went to sleep and after he went running or worked out, and he hadn’t been doing that either.

  Massaging his lower back with one hand, trying to knead out the stiffness, he went across the room, opened the door, and listened. Total silence except for some faint wind noise outside.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

  “I heard footsteps,” Marissa stage-whispered. “Keep listening.”

  Dana had gotten out of bed and was standing, in her nightgown, next to Marissa.

  Adam listened again for around five seconds, then said, “There’s nobody there. Just go back to bed and try to—”

  And then he heard it. The house was big—three stories, five bedrooms, three and a half baths—but even from where he was, on the second floor, at the end of the hallway, the sound of maybe a dish clanging or a vase being moved was very clear. It sounded like the person was either in the kitchen or the dining room.

  Dana and Marissa had heard the noise, too.

  Marissa said, “See, I told you,” and Dana said, “Oh my God, Adam, what should we do?”

  The
y sounded terrified.

  Adam was trying to think clearly, but it was hard because he was suddenly worried and frazzled himself. Besides, he always had trouble thinking when he first woke up and he never felt fully functional until after his third cup of coffee.

  “I’n calling nine-one-one,” Dana said.

  “Wait,” Adam said.

  “Why?” Dana asked, the phone in her hand.

  Adam couldn’t think of a good answer. There was someone downstairs; he’d heard the noise clearly and there was no doubt what it was. But a part of him didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to believe he was safe, protected.

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to remain calm and logical. “I mean, it’s impossible. We have an alarm system.”

  “Come on, Dad, I know you heard it,” Marissa said.

  “Maybe something fell,” Adam said.

  “Nothing fell,” Marissa said. “I heard footsteps, you have to call the police.”

  Then from downstairs came the clear sound of a cough, or of a man clearing his throat. It sounded closer than the other noise Adam had heard. It sounded like the guy was in the living room.

  “Okay, call the cops,” Adam whispered to Dana.

  While she was making the call, Adam went to the walk-in closet, flicked on the light, reached to the top shelf, and grabbed his Glock .45. Then he bent down, moved some things out of the way, and opened the shoe box where he kept the bullets.

  “What’re you doing?” Marissa asked.

  Adam was still bending down, loading the clip, and didn’t answer. He’d bought the gun four years ago after a couple of houses in the neighborhood had been robbed. He practiced shooting once in a while in the city, at the West Side Pistol Range. He enjoyed shooting and it was a great way to relieve stress and safely express anger.

  He came out of the closet with the gun in his hand and Marissa said, “Are you fuckin’ crazy?”

  Dana was still on the phone, finishing up the conversation with the 911 operator, whispering, “Yes, we think he’s in the house right now…. I don’t know…Please hurry…. Yes…. Please hurry.” Then she ended the call and said, “They’re coming.” She put an arm around Marissa, then she saw the gun in Adam’s hand and said, “What the hell’re you doing with that?”

  She hated the idea of having a gun in the house and had been asking Adam to get rid of it.

  “Nothing,” Adam said.

  “Then why’re you holding it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, “Just put it away, the police’ll be here any minute.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Adam, the police’re coming. There’s no reason to have a—”

  She cut herself off when there was another noise. There was no doubt this time—there were footsteps, the guy heading upstairs.

  “Oh my God,” Marissa said, covering her mouth, starting to cry.

  Adam was trying to think again, focus, but his brain was overloaded and he said, “Hide in the closet.”

  Dana said, “What’re you—”

  “Nothing. Just go, goddamn it.”

  “Come with us.”

  “Just hide…now.”

  Dana seemed hesitant. Marissa’s crying was getting a little louder.

  “He’ll hear her,” Adam whispered urgently.

  Dana and Marissa went into the closet and hid. Adam went to the door, the gun at his side at the level of his head. For several seconds, he listened, but heard nothing. He hoped this meant the guy had decided to go back downstairs. Maybe he’d heard Marissa crying and would simply leave the house and run away.

  But then there was another creaky footstep on the stairs—the son of a bitch was coming up. It hit Adam as if he were realizing it for the first time—someone was inside his house.

  He’d grown up in this very house and then his parents had given it to him when Marissa was a baby, when they moved to Florida. He’d loved growing up in Forest Hills Gardens, with all his friends so close by and the houses with the big backyards, but the neighborhood was safer now than it had been back then, and when he was ten years old, an older kid had stolen his bicycle—just came up to him with a knife one afternoon and said, “Give it up.” As a teenager, he’d been mugged on Queens Boulevard twice, and when he was in his twenties—living in Manhattan while he was going for his doctorate at the New School—he was once robbed at gunpoint in the vestibule of a friend’s apartment building in the Village.

  Standing with the gun drawn, listening to the intruder take another step up the stairs, he remembered how awful and helpless it had felt to be a victim, and how he didn’t want to be a victim again. His thoughts were frantic, but he was trying to be logical. He thought, What if the guy has a gun? What if he’s a total maniac? What if, any moment now, he charges up the stairs and starts shooting? What if he shoots me?

  Adam imagined getting shot, lying dead in the hallway, and then the guy finding Dana and Marissa in the bedroom. The guy could be some crazed rapist. There were always stories in the news about home invasions, men breaking into houses and raping women, but he’d never thought it could actually happen to him, in his own house.

  But it could be happening now.

  The guy was on the staircase, getting closer. In a few seconds he could be at the top of the landing and then it would be too late.

  All of this was going through his mind at once and he didn’t have time to think it through clearly. If he’d had more time, if he’d been in a calmer, less scattered state, he might’ve realized that the police would be arriving at any moment. There was a private security company in Forest Hills Gardens and there was supposed to be a response time of less than five minutes. If he locked himself in the bedroom, hid with Dana and Marissa, the guy probably wouldn’t be able to get to them. He might try the locked bedroom door, but then he’d give up and the police would arrive.

  But Adam wasn’t thinking about any of this. He was only thinking about how he wanted to protect his family, how he didn’t want to be a victim again, and how some son of a bitch had broken into his house, the house he’d grown up in, the house that his father had bought in 1956.

  He heard the guy take another step on the staircase, and then another. Was Adam imagining it or was the guy approaching faster? There was only a nightlight on in the hallway, a little candle-shaped orange light plugged into a socket at ankle level. Adam’s eyes had adjusted, but it was still hard to see very clearly. At any moment, though, the guy would appear. After he took another step or two, Adam would see his legs, or the guy might rush up to the landing and it would be too late.

  Adam was standing by the entrance to his bedroom, and then, an instant later, he was in the hallway, running with his gun drawn, yelling, “Get the fuck out of here!”

  It was darker near the stairway than it had been near the bedroom door. Now Adam could tell that the guy wasn’t as far up the staircase as he had thought. He was maybe halfway up and Adam could tell that he was a big guy, but that was about it.

  Then he saw the guy’s hand reaching for something. It was a sudden movement and Adam knew that it had to be a gun. He even thought he saw a glimmer of something, shininess near the guy’s hand. If he waited any longer, the guy would shoot him first. Then he’d shoot his way into the bedroom, find Dana and Marissa, and kill them, too.

  The guy started to say something. Later Adam would dwell about this moment and remember that the guy had said, “Please don’t—” but at that moment everything was happening so fast that he wasn’t even aware that the guy had spoken. He was only aware of the danger he and his family were in as he started firing his gun. He wasn’t sure if the first shot hit the guy, but the second one did, high up, in his neck or head. The guy was falling backward, starting to tumble, and Adam remembered his shooting instructor saying, Always go for the chest, not the head—and he emptied the rest of the clip, the other shots going into the guy’s chest or mid-section. Then the guy fell out of view, into darkness, but Adam heard hi
s body land with a loud thud at the bottom of the staircase.

  There was silence for a long moment, and then there was noise from downstairs, but it had nothing to do with the guy Adam had shot.

  There was someone else in the house.

  There were footsteps, then deep breathing. Adam was out of bullets. If the other guy came upstairs or started shooting, he was screwed.

  “Get the hell out of here or I’ll shoot!” Adam yelled.

  That was smart, brilliant maybe. Make the guy think he still had bullets. Why wouldn’t he think so? Adam had fired off the shots so quickly the guy couldn’t have possibly counted the shots. And even if the guy had counted them, knew Adam had shot ten rounds, how would he know he didn’t have more ammo?

  The strategy worked or maybe the guy just panicked. Adam heard him running away, knocking into something—the console?—and then the front door opened and closed, and the guy was gone.

  “Adam.”

  He turned suddenly, felt a sharp jolt in his chest. Then he registered Dana and Marissa standing there.

  “Are you okay?” Dana asked.

  “Back to the bedroom!” Adam shouted.

  “Are you okay?” Dana asked again.

  “Just get back!”

  Dana and Marissa went into the bedroom and Dana shut the door. Adam was worried about the guy on the stairs. What if he was still alive?

  He reached toward the wall at the other end of the landing and put his thumb on the light switch. He hesitated, wondering if this was a great idea. Maybe the guy was aiming his gun up the stairs, waiting for a clear shot.