Stalk Me

by Richard Parker

  There were plenty of crimes he could have chosen, but the perp had attempted to burn down Virginia Greenspan’s apartment, and that was ideal for Mimic’s needs; the less of a multiple murder scene remained, the better.

  Mimic closed the door quietly and moved to the eldest child’s room. Wearing only shorts, his tanned body was tangled up in the duvet. The masculine scents here were significantly more mature than Kevin’s – sour sweat and cheap deodorant.

  Mimic seated himself gently on the mattress next to Tyler and watched the Windows logo of the screensaver bouncing on the flat-screen monitor. He was just reaching over to cover his mouth when Mimic’s lower teeth tightened against his top ones.

  His rubber palm hovered where it was. The sensation intensified. He’d never experienced anything like this. Wasn’t lockjaw something to do with tetanus? It got tighter, as if screws were being firmly turned. He couldn’t open his mouth. Mimic realised he was forgetting to breathe and hissed air in through his nose. He looked at the kid to check it hadn’t stirred him.

  Now he felt uncomfortable about his waist and stood, shifting his paunch so it was hanging over his leather belt. Jesus, his forehead and the nape of his neck were burning cold. He needed to get some air. He lurched towards the door and tried not to stumble into the exercise bike on the way out.

  This wasn’t his ulcer. He was having a fucking heart attack. Of all the times to happen; he fumbled his cell out of his pocket and dialled 911.

  “What is your emergency?” the female operator wearily asked.

  He was standing on the landing. Didn’t want to wake Mom and the kids up. Couldn’t speak too loudly. Couldn’t speak at all. He grunted instead.

  “Sir? Are you hurt?”

  Mimic managed to activate the muscles in his jaw and opened his teeth half an inch. But the action seemed to displace the pain to his stomach and his legs didn’t want to be in the same neighbourhood. They started trembling at the knees and felt like they were about to give. He rigidly put one in front of the other until he reached the top of the stairs.

  “Sir? You have to speak to me.”

  Mimic headed down the stairs, and it suddenly seemed as if moving his body was like trying to operate a faulty pedal boat. The bottom step didn’t seem to get any closer. He jammed the phone closer to his ear as he tried to speak to the operator. He had to strip his gloves off, get out of the house and back to the car.

  “Sir?” She hung up.

  Chapter 29

  For once, Jody met her eye instead of his usual habit of examining the walls when conversation made him uncomfortable. “So, are you going to tell our guardians?” He already assumed she wouldn’t have yet. “And I guess I shouldn’t ply you with any more of this...” He lifted the nearly empty bottle of Gentleman Jack off the coffee table, where it had taken up residence since Beth had become his houseguest, and put it back in the cabinet.

  Even though she wasn’t a liquor drinker, Beth was aware she’d been responsible for polishing most of it off. What adverse effects had that had on the baby? She was suddenly spooling back through all the things she’d done that would have been harmful, but the trauma of the collision and the assault afterward seemed to eclipse everything. It was a miracle Beth was still alive, and now she’d been given a reason to believe she’d survived for a purpose. “I won’t tell them until I’ve made my own mind up about things.”

  Jody turned from the cabinet, censure in his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re even considering...”

  She was surprised and touched by Jody’s barely concealed outburst, and it wasn’t until that moment that Beth knew for sure it wasn’t an option. “No. I want it.” It was good to hear herself say it. She saw the relief register in his eyes. “I just don’t want any parental interference until I’ve wrapped my head around this.” She seated herself on the edge of the chair and Jody settled on the arm of the couch.

  “How pregnant are you?”

  “Luc and I hadn’t... been intimate for a while. But when we were in Normandy...”

  His eyes shifted from hers.

  “I was in the coma for eight weeks and convalescing for another two. I’ve been out of hospital for nearly three. I make that about thirteen weeks.”

  “So, at this stage...” He reached for words that weren’t part of his vocabulary.

  Until then, they hadn’t been part of Beth’s, either. “It’s a fragile time. Anything could happen, particularly after what I’ve been through. I don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily. Except for you, obviously...” She found herself smiling grimly.

  “I’m glad you felt you could confide in me.”

  It was a very un-Jody like thing to say, but Beth realised she really had no idea who her brother was. They’d both got on with separate lives, been absent from each other’s adult development. He was certainly more mature than the last occasion they’d spent any significant time together.

  “Whatever you need, just let me know.” He wrung his hands as if trying to get the circulation back into them.

  “Any luck finding a way of splicing those clips?”

  He raised his eyebrows and mouthed “clips” and then realised he should have known what she was talking about. He regarded Beth as if she were insane. “Shouldn’t you make an appointment with the doctor? I can start looking up some more relevant information sites about... y’know, parenthood. I do have an expectant mother to care for.” He smiled behind his beard then; it was chary and brief, but for a few seconds, she realised he hadn’t been able to control his excitement.

  Beth realised she hadn’t made any enquiries about his relationships. She’d assumed he was a happy bachelor. Did he crave a woman to share his life with? Did he want children? It was the first time she’d seen him genuinely smile. Maybe her landing back in his life wasn’t the inconvenience she’d thought it was. But she still couldn’t feel even a trace of the tentative elation he’d displayed.

  “Are you not just a little bit excited?” He appeared to have read her mind.

  “I will be.” But she didn’t know if it was a promise she could keep. “Let’s just take it one moment at a time.”

  Jody nodded and surveyed her as if looking for some physical change.

  She interrupted before he could open his mouth: “Please don’t tell me to put my feet up and take it easy.”

  Jody frowned. “However you want to do this is fine by me.”

  *

  Mimic opened his eyes and was looking up at a strip light on a white-tiled ceiling. The knowledge of who he was and what he did was as instantaneous. If you were a killer, it never escaped your waking mind. It pushed to the front of the line, but that was the way it had to be – any delay in recall could have dire consequences. He’d learned that in the military.

  His back throbbed, but he was instantly sitting upright and assessing his surroundings. He wasn’t in a police station as he’d first suspected. He was in a section of a hospital ward segregated by a green curtain to his left and was rigged up to a monitor. His jacket had been removed and lay on top of a tall flip can to his right. He could hear plenty of activity but couldn’t see anyone.

  He quickly removed the sensor from his finger and slowly peeled off the velcro that held the blood cuff to his arm. Its ripping sound made him grit his teeth as he tried not to broadcast its removal. He swung his legs from the bed and found his black leather shoes on the floor. He quickly slipped his feet into them and pulled on his jacket at the same time.

  He peered around the curtain. Hospital staff in blue scrubs attended to other patients on the right side of the ward while their colleagues used a bank of pristine keyboards and monitors at the station to the left. Mimic strode as casually as he could towards the other end of the room where he assumed he’d find an exit.

  He was in ER, and family members were mixed in with the staff and milled around patients that had recently been admitted. The aroma of faeces and disinfectant wafted into his nostrils, but it was the other familiar underlying
scent that he could differentiate.

  He encountered it all the time in his line of work. Humans didn’t need to rot before he could detect it. It was the stale smell of vacated space, like a room gets when nobody visits it. The odour was instantaneous with humans. Although the hospital wing looked clean and new, the essence settled over everything like malign dew.

  As he turned into the corridor and looked down the line of faces attending their loved ones on gurneys, as they waited to be allotted a space on the ward, he speculated how close he’d been to adding the bouquet of his own death to the atmosphere. He knew not everyone got a warning shot. For some it was wham-bam, keel over in the shower, ma’am.

  How had he arrived there? Mimic couldn’t remember anything beyond trying to leave the house. Had he got outside? He had a vague recollection of making it there, but knew he hadn’t driven himself to the hospital. Someone must have rung an ambulance. It was a good job he hadn’t been carrying a firearm. He had a lot to thank the sick fuck with the ketchup bottle for. Whoever had summoned the emergency services, it looked like they’d saved his life.

  He wondered if they would have, if they’d known that perpetuating his would mean an end to others. And then he considered that it actually could have been his target, Marcia O’Doole, who had made the call.

  Chapter 30

  When Beth returned from her first visit to the local surgery, she didn’t know how she felt about being told that everything was “on track”. The midwife seemed too young, but Beth had sat and nodded as she’d been lectured about the folic acid supplements she should have been taking during the time that had elapsed, and how she now needed vitamin D and why eating healthily was vital.

  She’d been offered a date scan, but Beth had told her why she knew exactly how pregnant she was. The midwife had then said respectfully little as she’d checked her blood pressure and measured her BMI. Blood and urine samples had been taken, and she was then given a date to return for her sixteen week antenatal appointment. It was in three week’s time.

  She wanted to tuck it to the back of her mind. As far as she was concerned, it was something happening the other side of a barrier. Beth was still standing behind it, trying to process the remnants of the past not the future. But those seemed to be rapidly deteriorating.

  Another clip had been taken down. That left only three. Is this what naturally happened? Beth assumed that once you posted something on YouTube, it was there forever. It was the sequence that captured Cigarillo Man being interviewed by the police, that had been uploaded by Spike666. It seemed very odd that two uploads of the same incident would vanish within such a short space of time.

  She recalled what had happened to Trip Stillman, the drummer from Blood Legend. Attacked in his own home around the same time his recording had been removed.

  She watched the one she’d cued up which showed Rae Salomon’s alarm at being captured by so many phone cameras. It stopped her dead in her tracks, and Beth paused her expression. She recalled the fear in Rae’s voice when she’d spoken of the man who pursued her. She’d been convinced her presence at the crash and appearance in the clips had led to her discovery.

  It sounded like Rae had been caught up with some brutal people. But, even if she were, why would criminals want to remove the recordings? They were trying to locate her. What would they gain from deleting them? She was being foolish. It was just coincidence.

  She was indulging her new appetite for paranoia when she had something much more immediate to concern herself with. But her encounter in the woods with Roland and Erik was needling her, too. Had the two of them been concealing something?

  Beth was only torturing herself by continually watching the uploads. Shouldn’t she be grateful for the fact the evidence of her ordeal was slowly dwindling? But what would be the reason for taking something down, unless there was a copyright issue or a threat of legal action?

  She continued playing the “smilingassassin” clip. She’d planned to watch all of them again, volume up, to see if she could discern anything else that Luc might have said. But the noise from the crowd stepped on anything that was going on the other side of the road, and she already knew this would be the case in all of them.

  She watched Luc murmuring to Rae as she held his hand. Whoever had recorded it was too far away. Even with the word firmly implanted, she couldn’t really make out the shape his lips were forming.

  Allegro.

  There were no other uploads on smilingassassin’s channel and no links to other sites. Beth sent them a message via YouTube, asking if they’d shot it themselves. She watched again, and heard Jody demonstrably slam his studio door. He was telling her it was time to stop.

  When she heard the knock at Jody’s front door later that day, Beth had no intention of answering. He’d said nobody of any importance would arrive on his doorstep when he was out, so it was how she dealt with all of his day callers. It certainly wouldn’t be her parents, as they’d telephoned and were expecting her to visit them.

  Out of duty, though, she looked down at the visitor from Jody’s lounge window expecting to see a postman or delivery guy. A face was awaiting Beth’s appearance, tilted upwards in readiness to intercept her. It was the dark suited figure of Jerome McIntyre.

  Beth quickly leaned away from the pane as if the reflex would wipe away his obvious recognition of her. “Shit.” She dipped back, smiled then indicated she was on her way down.

  How the hell had he found the address? She had a strong suspicion. Her conversation with Jerome was long overdue, however. There was so much at stake, and she owed it to Luc to make sure she didn’t make things too easy for him.

  When she opened the door, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows had already gathered in a sympathetic cluster on the bridge of his nose. His matching beard was fuller and his hair looked longer than usual and unkempt.

  “Hi, Beth. I didn’t want to catch you at a bad time. But then I realised that every day is going to be a bad time, so I want to keep this as brief as possible.” It sounded like he’d rehearsed it.

  “Would you like to come inside?” She didn’t feel comfortable saying it about someone else’s home.

  “No, really. I’m afraid I used the thumbscrews on your mother, but please don’t be angry with her. First of all, I wanted to say how sorry I am for what happened... personally.”

  It looked as if he’d put on a little more weight since she’d last seen him. And the extra wrinkle below his chin seemed to confirm this. He was standing awkwardly, an attaché case stuffed under his arm that appeared to put his whole body off balance. Or was he drunk? His red complexion seemed to suggest so, but Beth was aware he suffered from high blood pressure. But even though she knew exactly what he was doing at Jody’s, she couldn’t bring herself to be cold towards someone who had just lost Luc from his life as well.

  “Thanks, Jerome.” She waited for him to move onto the real reason for his visit.

  “And I feel very uncomfortable about being here but... as you haven’t returned any of my calls...” He visibly squirmed. “If it was up to me, I’d want you to take as long as you need before you have to address anything like this, but a lot of pressure is being exerted from other quarters...”

  “What do you need from me, Jerome? And, for God’s sake, come in.”

  “No, really, I know I’m imposing. Credit me with a little more sensitivity than that.” For a moment he seemed genuinely hurt. “I just need you to look over this interim contract.” He opened the attaché case and extracted the document. “I feel sick about this, Beth.” As Jerome gulped dryly, she realised how nervous he really was. “Basically, it temporarily transfers executive responsibility to me until such time as you want to discuss matters in more depth. It just means I’m able to run things day-to-day. I simply need your signature.”

  She took the paper from him and his hand was shaking.

  “Run it past somebody. I’d expect that.” His dark blue eyes held hers for emphasis. “Just call the office when
you’re ready. Sorry again for this.” He turned to leave.

  “Jerome...”

  He spun back, as if having to return his gaze to her was painful.

  “Thank you for going to Rouen for Luc’s funeral.” It seemed like the strangest thing she’d said since waking up, but Beth was satisfied she hadn’t made it sound bitter. “My mother said you were very attentive.”

  Jerome shook his head and blinked away her gratitude.

  “Give my love to Lin.” Despite her mistrust of Jerome, she’d always been conscientious about maintaining contact with his wife, even when he and Luc had been at loggerheads.

  Jerome opened his mouth to say something and then didn’t. He recovered quickly, though. “I certainly will.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Lin and I are... not really together at the moment.” He looked at her waist when he said it. “I’ve moved out temporarily. I’m sure things will work themselves out.” He didn’t meet her eye as he turned back down the steps.

  She watched him get into the back of the red Lexus that was waiting for him and get hastily driven off.

  Chapter 31

  As Mimic strode towards the O’Doole home, he was suddenly aware of a volume of birdsong he hadn’t noticed on his previous visits. The sky was an unclouded azure blue and the sun was warm on his skin. A voice at the back of his skull, usually louder than it was now, reminded him of his itinerary and the delay his health issue had already caused. The cab had dropped him off and he’d confirmed his Toyota was still parked a block away, where he’d left it the night before.

  He stopped at the rows of freshly planted cherry trees that demarcated the long strip of grass at the edge of the road. There were deep wheel marks in it. Had it been his unconscious body on a gurney that had made them? He looked across the street to the green there. No house opposite. If he’d collapsed here, it must have been Mrs O’Doole who had seen him and called the ambulance.