Stalk Me

by Richard Parker

  It was Lauren, the waitress that had served Beth, wearing a dark overcoat. She casually walked into the alleyway, puffing on a cigarette with a slightly nettled look on her face, as she squinted through smoke and scanned the darkness for the source of the obstruction.

  The man stood further back in the shadows and briefly slid the knife behind his back to conceal it while he assessed the situation.

  “He’s got a knife!” Beth cried, trying to stand while the heels of her hands skated in clammy blood.

  But the man had already stepped forward, elbow quickly drawn back.

  He reversed his steps as swiftly, staggering with blue smoke billowing about him in the yellow light through the door. The waitress remained where she was, the exhalation still pouring from her mouth.

  The man collapsed backwards and landed hard on his spine, two curled red wires connecting his chest to the plastic gun in the waitress’s hand. She’d tasered him, and his one arm jerked as breath whistled in through his nostrils.

  The waitress opened the fire exit wider, so more light could spill into the alleyway. It slammed into the wall.

  “There’s someone dying here!” Beth skidded and slammed into the dumpster behind her as she found her feet. The blood felt slick on her hands.

  “Jesus. Let me get Francis.”

  Momentarily, Beth was alone with the homeless woman and her attacker’s paralysed and twitching body. Keeping one eye on the man’s prostrate form, she knelt and held the old lady’s bunched hands. They felt like cold leather, and her matte eyes looked straight through Beth. The music stopped and suddenly she could hear the sounds of the neighbourhood – cars, people on the beach.

  “Police have been called, hon.” The waitress was at the fire exit again, a tall man silhouetted behind her. He stepped past and briefly examined the dead woman. “Fuck.”

  In the light, Beth could see he was a black man in his forties, his square-cut hair greying at the sideburns. He knelt his considerable weight on the chest of the man on the floor. “This motherfucker ain’t going nowhere.” He turned to Lauren. “How long you been packing a taser?”

  “Since they found those kids trussed up with their throats slit under the pier.” The waitress looked down at the woman, the light from the door illuminating her pale blue features. “It’s Maggie. Is she dead?”

  Beth nodded.

  The waitress took a step nearer to the body but didn’t appear to want to get any closer. “Maggie?”

  The woman remained motionless.

  Francis looked over at her. “Maggie never did nobody no harm.” He held the man’s head firmly against the floor by his neck. “You sick fuck. Looks like we may have the Butcher.”

  “He was waiting for me.” She could feel her suede jacket was heavier.

  “Is this the guy that stood you up?” The waitress took the cigarette out of her mouth as if its taste suddenly disgusted her.

  Beth nodded. She knew it was. Her name had been on his lips. He’d lured her there and had waited for her in the alleyway.

  The waitress dropped the cigarette.

  “Chrissakes, Lauren. This is a crime scene now.”

  The waitress quickly retrieved it and gripped it like she was holding it for someone else. “Be careful, Francis. He’s still got a knife here somewhere.”

  Beth saw it glint blue on the other side of the alleyway. “It’s here.” She stood and walked over to it.

  “Don’t touch it! Jesus, don’t either of you watch CSI?” Francis shifted his position on the man and shook his head. “Just be ready to kick it away if he tries to make a move.”

  Two men that she recognised as members of the band joined Francis and helped restrain the man.

  “Come on, hon. He ain’t going nowhere now. Step inside.”

  As she entered, the waitress turned and Beth saw an expression of revulsion solidify her features. She looked down at her suede jacket and held her arms up to examine the dark blood on the backs of her sleeves.

  “Don’t bring that in here. Drop it outside.”

  “Help me,” Beth said, a tremor of panic in her voice. “Get it off.” She couldn’t manoeuvre it from herself without getting more chilled blood on her hands. The waitress was behind her, pulling at the collar to drag it down her back so it would slide off her arms.

  “Quickly.” Her ordeal in the alleyway suddenly impacted and she felt her blood draining to her feet. “I’m not feeling good.” Beth could hear the sound of police sirens and more people pushed past her to get to the alleyway.

  “Lean against the wall, hon.” The waitress continued to yank at the jacket.

  Beth slid down the wall on her side, the blood greasing her descent. As she bent her knees, she looked back out of the fire exit. She could no longer see her attacker; he was surrounded by a ring of men all telling each other how best to disable him.

  “Stay with me, hon. I’ll get you some water.”

  The jacket came off her and she looked at it piled in a sticky mess of the old woman’s congealing blood. It should have been hers.

  Chapter 43

  Mimic bided his time as he was driven to the precinct on Olympic Drive. His neck throbbed and the back of his head still buzzed from being forced against the floor in the alleyway. His ribcage was bruised from the taser and being knelt on by the owner and several other men. Not good for a man with his health issues. He’d requested they cuff his hands in front of him, as he was experiencing tightness in his chest. He hadn’t been kidding.

  His arresting officers were both thickset Latino men, and he looked sideways out of the back passenger window at the nightlife, knowing they’d be nervously and repeatedly checking their big arrest in the mirror. The vehicle smelt of shampoo, like it had just been valeted, but he could discern their tart sweat wafting back at him through the metal grill.

  They entered a half-empty parking lot at the rear of a grey cinder block building with Police Department in silver letters across the front. The two officers got out, the vehicle tipping and rising as they shifted their considerable weight off the suspension. His door was opened.

  “Follow,” one officer said, and led the way purposefully up a ramp to the rear entrance. The other was behind Mimic. Three uniformed officers sharing a joke were coming down it. They passed them, as they were a third of the way to the doors.

  At the top, the first officer yanked the door and held it open. Mimic stepped through and found himself in a small entrance area between the door he’d just entered and the next set that led to the desk lobby. Both officers were now behind him, and he waited a couple of seconds, estimating they were all inside the same space. He knew it was his only window of opportunity.

  Mimic interlocked the fingers of both hands and pivoted his body, bringing his cuffed wrists up and feeling the metal halt against the first officer’s skull. The second was drawing his weapon just as Mimic swung them back the other way and found his temple.

  The first officer slammed unconscious against the wall, his bleeding head streaking the plaster. The second remained upright. Mimic slugged his dazed expression again, the metal clunking hard as it cut through layers of skin to find bone. The officer’s spine banged noisily into the door behind him.

  Mimic darted a look through the glass to the lobby and saw two officers leaning against the counter talking to the female behind it. As the second officer slid down the pane, he quickly retrieved the keys to the cuffs from his belt, but didn’t hang around to unlock them. He opened the door with his shoulder, trotted back down the ramp and around the side of the building from view.

  *

  Finally back at the Francisquito, Beth stood in the shower cubicle under the sunflower head, eyelids closed and letting the warm water blast harshly against them. It made her hold her breath and blocked out the sound in her ears as she tried to let the spume wash away the smell of the alleyway. She wanted to stay there until morning. Having been given two cups of black coffee by Lauren, while a softly spoken Italian detectiv
e named Cabrini had taken her statement, she suddenly felt light-headed and queasy. Her jet lag had been waiting in line but now wanted its turn.

  It was only she and Lauren who had witnessed the attack in the alleyway. None of the other customers had seen the man in the vicinity of the Oyster Shack or had heard any noise or cries for help. The zydeco band had done for that. The diners had been dismissed quickly, and Beth and Lauren had been told they would have to make themselves available for further questioning. That meant she had to stay in LA until they’d finished with her.

  Beth hadn’t told them exactly what she’d been doing in the restaurant, simply that she’d been stood up by a date and had then been attacked by the stranger outside. She hadn’t said she’d first made contact with him online, or that he’d lured her there with one word. Why had she withheld that from the police? Was it her old mistrust resurfacing, or because she suspected revealing it might compromise Luc in some way?

  But Luc was dead. Her internal retort chilled the acid already washing around in her stomach. She would have to tell the police. There was no way of finding out what her attacker knew about it otherwise. Or maybe he didn’t. Had it just been a ploy? She couldn’t work out how he’d deceived her. If he had, it seemed so intricate.

  Lauren had said the attack on the old woman was identical to a murder that had happened the previous December. Two students, boyfriend and girlfriend, had been discovered bound with plastic cable ties and their throats cut under the Santa Monica Pier. Another woman had been slain in the same way the previous April in Palisades Park. The media had dubbed the killer the Beachfront Butcher. If it was the same man, why had he targeted her and not another local?

  After towelling herself down and putting on the scratchy robe, she started to tremble. Even as she turned it down, Beth knew it wasn’t the overwrought air con unit. She didn’t feel remotely hungry but knew she’d have to eat soon. She’d had nothing since the plane. Beth rang down to the desk.

  “Yes?” The receptionist sounded out of breath.

  “This is 234. Really sorry to ask, but is there any chance of getting something to eat sent up?”

  “Sure, no problem. There’s an all-night deli next door. What can I get you?”

  “Anything. A sandwich? I just need solids.”

  Even though she sounded more exhausted than Beth, she laughed. “OK. I’ll see what they’ve got left. Coffee with that?”

  “No thanks.”

  She hung up and opened the tiny safe to double-check her passport was still there. When she’d been dropped at the hotel, the officer had told her they’d need her to report to the precinct the next day with her ID. She gripped it for reassurance. As soon as they were finished with her, she would be gone. She slipped it into her robe pocket and seated herself on the edge of the bed. She wanted to be back in her tiny bedroom at Jody’s, listening to him snore through the wall. Beth badly needed to call him, to hear his voice, but she didn’t want to have to explain why she’d been in the Oyster Shack. Not yet. She didn’t have the energy for that conversation.

  She picked up her iPhone from the bed. 1.44am. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the shower, but her fingertips and the heels of her feet were wrinkled deep.

  After applying some cream to both, she grabbed the remote, but the TV wouldn’t come on. She checked it was plugged in. It was, but none of the buttons responded. She had to distract herself, not think about the old woman and the man standing over her telling her to calmly accept his murder of both of them. That disturbed her more than anything else.

  Did they really have the Beachfront Butcher in custody? If so, she wondered again why he’d singled her out. She thought about the other murder that had recently impacted her life. Trip Stillman, a guy who had recorded her at the roadside, had been attacked in his home. She searched for more details online and found them. They chilled her stomach.

  The killer had used a claw hammer. No cable ties, no hunting knife. But it hadn’t been in the place where the other students went to college. She used her iPhone to search for more details online and found them. They chilled her stomach. She put Kalispell into a search and looked for recent local news stories. She skated over one but having found little else, read it in more detail. One name immediately stuck out.

  LOCAL GIRL DIES DEFENDING HOME AGAINST THUGS

  After responding to a 911 call, Kalispell police found the dead body of trainee teacher, Kelcie Brooks, in her home on Four Mile Drive. Miss Brooks, 22, had been repeatedly bludgeoned but had discharged a firearm resulting in the deaths of three men who have been identified as Jebediah Lindsay, Spike Freeman and Benjamin Wright.

  Police say the weapon used in the attack on Kelcie Brooks ties the three deceased males to a spate of recent attacks in Lone Pine State Park and the surrounding area.

  Spike Freeman. One of the clip uploaders was Spike666. His was the last one to have been removed. Beth went to his YouTube page, but there were no other links to click through to. She searched for him online and found Freeman’s sparse Facebook page. Nobody had posted anything there yet. Was it the same Spike?

  Calculating it would only be late afternoon in France, she found the number for the Normandy Gendarmerie and spoke to the secretary of the investigating officer, Sauveterre, asking if she could be given the list of the witnesses’ names from the crash site. The woman reluctantly agreed to speak to him about it and took her number.

  She waited, trying to sleep but seeing the old woman’s leaden eyes. She went to smilingassassin’s YouTube page to watch the clip of Luc speaking to Rae Salomon again. She was disappointed that she hadn’t got a reply to the message she’d sent them. It was the recording that gave her the most uninterrupted view of that moment

  Allegro. She was becoming obsessed.

  The clip was no longer there.

  Before she could react her phone rang.

  “Mrs Jordan?” A breathless American accent, not French.

  She didn’t recognise the voice but guessed it was the police. “Speaking.”

  “This is Officer Rimes from the LAPD. Detective Cabrini gave me your cell number. Now, please try not to panic.”

  Which, to Beth, meant exactly the opposite. “What is it?”

  “The man who attacked you tonight, he’s... no longer in police custody.”

  “What?”

  “He escaped as he was being escorted to interrogation.”

  “Escaped, how?”

  “We’re doing all we can to locate him...”

  Four knuckles rapped on her door.

  “Ma’am?”

  Chapter 44

  The circulation in Beth’s ear pumped against the screen of her iPhone. She took one pace to the door. “Who is it?” She waited, expecting the receptionist’s cheery response. None came.

  “Mrs Jordan?” the officer’s tiny voice said as she lowered the handset and let it hang beside her.

  “Who is it?” she repeated.

  Still no reply.

  Beth returned the phone to her face and whispered. “There’s somebody at my hotel room door and they’re not answering me.” She walked backwards in the direction of the bathroom.

  The officer seemed as suddenly breathless as Beth. “OK, try not to panic.” It sounded like he was calming himself more than her. “It’s unlikely he would have been able to locate you.”

  She thought about how he’d reserved the table in the restaurant using her number. Was he tracking her phone? Beth had just been using it. “What should I do?” She wondered how old the officer was. He sounded as if he’d scarcely started shaving.

  “Stay on this line. Do you have a phone in your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK – use it to call reception.”

  But she knew that if it wasn’t the receptionist at the door, she was probably away from the desk buying her sandwich. Beth had given whoever was outside the perfect opportunity to enter the hotel. Taking her eyes briefly off the panel to locate the phone next to the
bed, she then whipped her gaze back to the inch of wood that separated her from somebody who was very possibly the Beachfront Butcher. “Please stay on the phone...”

  “Of course, tell me what’s going on. Can you do that for me, Mrs Jordan?”

  She was too scared to be irked by his sudden reversion to whatever script he’d been taught to use.

  “Is the door locked?”

  “I think so.”

  “I have a situation here.” He was addressing someone nearby. “Mrs Jordan, you’re staying at the Francisquito?”

  “Yes.”

  “An officer’s on their way now.”

  “An officer’s on their way now? She repeated loud enough for the person standing outside to hear. “Thank you.”

  “Mrs Jordan, are you calling reception?”

  Beth put his voice in her robe pocket, gently lifted the handset of the bedside phone and gingerly pressed the button to dial down.

  “Reception?” Beth recognised the woman’s voice. “Don’t worry. Dinner’s on its way up.”

  “Wait.” But the receptionist had hung up.

  Even though no obvious gunshot or explosion preceded it, the door cracked and burst. Beth instinctively crouched as varnished splinters blasted into the room. There was a large hole where the lock mechanism used to be, and the handle was now barely attached. She heard several loud thuds as someone kicked at it.

  Beth quickly fled to the bathroom, slammed the door, locked it and immediately turned to the tiny window over the bath. There was no way she could fit through it. Footsteps pounded across the bedroom floor.

  “Beth Jordan.” The pacific voice said from the other side of the door.

  “Get the fuck away from me! The police are on their way!”

  Beth knew the handle of this door could be just as easily obliterated.