Hunter (9780698158504)

by Carroll, Michael

  While Roz checked the refrigerator, Lance popped the tape out of the recorder and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. “I’m suffering from a severe deficiency of vitamin pizza. Thirty minutes is enough time if we go out. If we phone Fernando’s now, then by the time we get there, the pizzas will be almost ready.”

  “But we won’t have enough time to eat.”

  “Sure we will. We might be, like, ten minutes late, maybe twenty, but we can make it up later. Bet Mrs. Gianneschi won’t mind just this once.”

  “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

  “Then I’m getting a burger from around the corner,” Lance called over his shoulder as he walked toward the door. “Want anything?”

  “Cheesy fries!” Roz called back.

  “Large?”

  “No. Yeah, all right.”

  Lance stopped off in his room and grabbed his jacket from the hook on the door, and his backpack from under the bed. He opened the bedroom window and dropped the backpack out. It crashed down onto the lid of a large bin in the alley far below.

  He’d packed the bag shortly after he’d moved into the apartment. It contained spare underwear and T-shirts and a few items he couldn’t bear to leave behind.

  He left the apartment, rode the elevator down to the ground floor. At the door, two burly black-suited men nodded to him.

  “Lunch,” Lance explained. “I’m going for a burger. You guys want anything?”

  “Get me a raspberry soda on the way back?” one of them asked as he unlocked the door.

  “No problemo.” As the man fished around in his pocket for change, Lance added, “It’s cool—you can pay me later.”

  Outside, Lance walked in the direction of the burger restaurant, but at the corner he turned left instead of right. He circled around the block and, in the alley next to the building, retrieved his backpack.

  I have to assume that Max also knows everyone I know, every place I’ve ever been, so I’m going to have to be creative.

  Lance had stashes of spare clothes and cash hidden around the city—one bundle buried under a bench in Central Park, another hidden behind a ticket machine in Court Square subway station in Queens, and a third under the fender of a car in long-term parking in SoHo—but he knew that all of them would take too long to get to, and was sure that Max would have learned their locations from his mind.

  He started walking north.

  On Morningside Drive a man in his early twenties brushed past Lance, muttering, “Whoa, sorry, dude.”

  Lance turned around immediately and followed the man. He’d felt the man’s quick-moving fingers touch the inside of his jacket, deftly searching for a wallet. Not to me, Lance thought. You don’t try that one on me and get away with it.

  The crossing signal was red at the next corner, and Lance pulled off his jacket as he strode up to the waiting pickpocket. As the signal changed, Lance quickly dropped to one knee and held on to one sleeve of his jacket as he whipped the rest of it around the pickpocket’s ankles and grabbed the other sleeve.

  The man tried to step off the sidewalk and immediately toppled forward, throwing out his arms at the last second to stop his head from smacking into the asphalt.

  “You OK?” Lance asked, doing his best to sound concerned.

  The pickpocket seemed a little dazed, but otherwise unharmed.

  “You just, like, collapsed or something.” He took hold of the man’s arm and helped him to sit up, and in the process he relieved the pickpocket of three wallets, a coin purse, and an expensive-looking penknife.

  To an old man who’d stopped to look, Lance said, “I’ll call an ambulance. Can you make sure he doesn’t try to stand?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Lance ran toward the nearest phone booth, then skirted around it and kept going.

  He stopped in the shadow of a doorway to transfer the cash from the wallets into the front pocket of his jeans, quickly counting the bills as he did so. One of the wallets was the pickpocket’s own. Lance dropped it down a drain, and pushed the others—now relieved of all their money—into the door’s mail slot.

  He knew that Max was due to return to the apartment at about four in the afternoon. That gave him less than three hours to get as far away as possible.

  With just over one hundred newly acquired dollars backing up his own cash, Lance jumped onto the first bus heading north.

  As he rode the bus, Lance realized he was sweating, and his heart was racing.

  The moment he’d heard his own voice on the tape, saying things that he didn’t remember, he’d known that the recording was genuine. His memory told him that Casey had broken into Max’s base to steal information from the computers, but now he was certain that it hadn’t happened that way. Casey Duval had come back to the base to warn them not to trust Max, and Max had altered their memories of the event.

  How many times? Lance wondered. How much of my life is real?

  The bus swayed as it rounded a corner, and Lance gripped the bar on the seat in front of him. How can I know for sure whether anything is real? This could all be an illusion created by Max. I can feel the cold chrome of the bar, but for all I know there’s no bar, no bus. I might not even be in New York.

  He knew where he had to go next, but wasn’t sure how he was going to get there, or how long it would take.

  But even that was just a step on the way to his ultimate goal. Somehow, he was going to find the woman who murdered his family. No matter what it took, even if it killed him, he would make Slaughter regret that their paths had ever crossed.

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, on the outskirts of Morgantown, West Virginia, a baker’s delivery truck came to a slow, shuddering stop at a roadside diner. In the back of the truck, covered in crumbs from the seven Danish pastries he’d decided the driver wouldn’t miss, Lance snapped awake.

  He stuffed two more pastries into his backpack and crouched lower, waiting for the driver to open the back. There was the sound of the driver’s door slamming closed, out-of-tune whistling that briefly came closer before fading away, then silence for a couple of minutes.

  Lance made his way to the rear doors and prepared himself. As soon as the driver opened the doors, he’d leap out and run.

  The whistling returned. There was a dull clunk of metal on metal, the faint ratcheting sound of a key being inserted into a padlock. Another, louder clunk. Then a pause, and a woman’s voice said, “Hey, Bob!”

  “Hey yourself, Maureen.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Same old, same old. You? Still takin’ them down and lockin’ them up?”

  Lance froze. A cop. Just what I don’t need right now.

  The woman replied, “Yep. Getting on for twenty-five years now, and they still haven’t put me behind a desk. I must be doing something right. Or wrong.”

  Lance thought quickly. Twenty-five years, so she’s got to be in her forties. Maybe older. I can probably outrun a middle-aged woman.

  The driver asked, “So who’s that driving you around today? Your latest rookie?”

  But not if there’s two of them and they have a car.

  “Yeah. Look at him. Still has zits and he could shave with a facecloth. Were we ever that young?”

  The driver laughed. “My youngest is older than him. Hey, you get that thing from that guy that day?”

  “Nah, he never showed up. But Jimmy was able to fix it. Propped it open with my good spatula. How’s about you? Heard you and Sandy are history. What’s that now, five ex-wives? How do you afford all the alimony on a driver’s salary?”

  “I sold the kids into slavery.”

  “Ha-ha! I’ve seen your kids. There’s no way you got more than ten bucks apiece.”

  “Nah, you got me there. I sold your kids into slavery.”

  The police officer laughed again. “Mine wouldn’t get you ten bucks for t
he lot!”

  Oh, come on! Lance thought. I don’t have time to listen to two old people flirting with each other!

  The driver asked, “You want a coupla donuts to take home? Jimmy likes the chocolate ones, right?”

  Lance looked around the dark interior of the truck. There’s donuts?

  “Thanks, but I’m set. Trying to watch the waistline, and Jimmy’s got so much cholesterol in his arteries, you could use it to re-point all your brickwork.”

  Then the doors swung open, and Lance flinched back at the sudden burst of light. I’m caught.

  The driver and the police officer were standing directly in front of him, facing each other. They hadn’t noticed him yet.

  “Anyway,” the driver said, “got to get Gabe’s dry rolls in before he freaks out. Good seeing you, Maureen.”

  They’re going to turn my direction any second, Lance thought. There’s only one way I’m going to get away with this.

  He burst out crying.

  The driver whirled around to look. “What the . . . Who are you? What are you doing in my truck!?”

  Sobbing, Lance climbed down. “They . . . they . . . they . . .” He sniffed. “They threw me in there and I couldn’t get out and . . .” Another sniff, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I was shouting and banging all the way from Cumberland and you didn’t stop!”

  The driver and the police officer exchanged a look, then the officer stepped closer to Lance. “Son, what’s your name?”

  Lance sniffed again, and wiped his eyes. “George. George Burdell. My mom is going to kill me!”

  “You’re from Cumberland, George?”

  He shook his head. “No. We were just visiting, and I went to the comic-book store and these guys stopped me and they wanted my money and I ran and they chased me and I nearly got killed by a white Toyota when I ran across the street to get away and they still kept chasing me and then they caught me and they took my bag but I took it back and then the back of the truck was open and they punched me and picked me up and threw me inside and I hurt my head.” Lance pointed to an imaginary bump on his forehead. “Look.”

  The driver, Bob, shrugged. “Geez . . . Listen, kid, I don’t know about that. There’s no way I left the doors open.”

  Through tear-filled eyes, Lance snapped, “Well, they were open!”

  “OK, OK. I’m just sayin’ . . . Maureen, can you take care of this? My schedule . . .”

  The officer nodded. “Sure, yeah. You go on, Bob.” She put her arm around Lance’s shoulder. “Come back with me to my car, George, all right? I’ll get on to the station, ask them to find your mom. Does she have a cell phone? Do you know how to get in touch with her?”

  “We were just visiting Cumberland,” Lance said. “Just for the day. We live in Morgantown, and Mom wanted to go to a store in Cumberland because . . .” Lance looked around. “This is Morgantown.”

  “Sure is. Come on, I’ll take you home. What’s your address?”

  “No, I’d better wait here. She’ll be coming back this way. I’ll call her.”

  “Maybe you’d better let me do that, George. Don’t want you getting in trouble for something that wasn’t your fault. How old are you?”

  Lance wondered, What’s the youngest age I can get away with without her calling the Child Protection Services? “Twelve.”

  “You’re kinda tall for a twelve-year-old,” the driver said as he climbed down from the back of the truck carrying a large wooden tray of bread rolls.

  He’s getting suspicious, Lance thought. “I’ll be thirteen on my next birthday.”

  The driver gave him an odd look as he headed into the diner.

  The officer smiled at Lance and said, “Yes, of course you will. But that’s true for all twelve-year-olds, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I guess.” Please, someone commit a crime somewhere and get them called away! “Am I in trouble? I didn’t do anything wrong! I tried to open the doors from the inside but I couldn’t see because it was dark in there.”

  “No, you’re not in trouble, George.” She unclipped a cell phone from her belt and handed it to him. “Call your mom.”

  Lance eagerly keyed in a number at random, then held the phone up to his ear. “Mommy? It’s me. I’m . . . No, I’m . . . Mom, it wasn’t my fault! I’m nearly home and you have to come and get me. I’m at the little mall on Powell Avenue. I’ll explain when you get here. OK. Yes. I’m sorry—it wasn’t my fault!” He pressed the phone’s “End Call” button, and handed it back. “She’s mad.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stick around.”

  “There’s no need. I’ll be OK. She said to wait in the diner but I’m not allowed to eat anything because she’s making dinner later.”

  The police officer looked at him for a moment, and Lance knew she was deciding what would be the best course of action. “All right. . . . Come with me.” She put her hand on his shoulder and gently steered him toward a small shoe store. The bell above the door tinkled as she pushed it open, and the officer nodded a greeting to the old woman behind the counter. “Florence, this young man’s mother is coming to pick him up. Can you keep an eye on him until then? He won’t be any trouble.”

  The old woman looked at Lance for a moment, then turned to the officer. “How long?”

  “An hour, tops.”

  “Sure.” To Lance, she said, “Sit in the corner and touch nothing.”

  Lance nodded. “Thanks.” After a pause long enough to make the police officer think that he was remembering his manners, he added, “And thank you for letting me use your phone.”

  “You’re welcome. Will you do me a favor? When you get home, call the station and ask them to tell me that you’re all right. Just so I can be sure, OK? My name’s Maureen, but everyone at the station calls me Mo. Can you remember that?”

  “Sure.”

  Smiling, Lance watched her return to her car, then he waved as it pulled out onto the road.

  He waited a good five minutes, under the constant suspicious glare of the old woman, before he pretended to see his mother’s car approaching. “There she is! Thanks! Bye!”

  He ran out of the shoe store, and ten minutes after that he was in the back of a truck delivering sporting goods to Smithfield.

  LANCE CLIMBED DOWN from a rusting, smoke-belching bus and watched as the other passengers dashed past him toward the bus terminal with newspapers held over their heads to shield them from the pounding rain.

  He was exhausted, hungry, and in desperate need of a good shower. In the early days of his journey he’d spent a few nights in motels, and now he regretted that luxury. His money was almost gone.

  He trudged after the other passengers into the terminal to wait out the rain. All three of the short benches were occupied, so he found a spot next to a vending machine and sat down on the ground while he looked longingly toward the small coffee shop on the other side of the terminal. The strong scent of fresh coffee permeated the air, and while Lance didn’t care for the stuff—he’d always found it a bitter and rather pointless drink—he knew that where there was coffee, donuts usually weren’t far behind.

  Don’t think about food, he told himself. Don’t think about donuts and sandwiches and pepperoni pizza and a big lemon meringue pie and . . . Stop it!

  Now that he was so close to his destination, Lance felt a little uneasy, uncertain that he was doing the right thing. It’ll work, he told himself. It has to work. And then everyone will see I’m right and then . . . And then what?

  And then I go after Slaughter.

  He felt like an idiot. She’s going to kill you, Lance. She’ll snap your neck within a second of seeing you. Is that really what you want? You want to give that psycho the opportunity to murder the last remaining member of your family?

  Since his money started to run low, Lance had been mostly travelin
g by night and, when possible, sleeping during the day. Libraries were the best for that purpose. Art galleries and museums tended to have enthusiastic security guards who frowned upon scruffy young men sleeping in the corners, but many libraries had quiet sections where he was able to put on a set of headphones and pretend to be listening to a CD of classical music or a foreign language lesson.

  From Ottumwa, Iowa, Lance had walked to Oskaloosa, where a stranger had unknowingly donated a bicycle by leaving it unlocked outside the post office. The bike had taken him a further twenty miles before the back tire developed a puncture.

  He’d continued northwest, and when he reached Des Moines, he spent the day sleeping in the airport, stretched out across three seats in the departures area: He’d found a discarded boarding pass on the sidewalk outside the airport and held it folded up and clutched in his hand as he slept, in the hope that it would help convince anyone who might be checking that he was waiting for a flight.

  When he reached Omaha, Nebraska, Lance found himself in a large shopping mall shortly before closing time. With nowhere else to spend the night, he hid in the bedding department of a furniture store, and had his first good night’s sleep in weeks.

  Omaha had proved to be less fruitful than he’d hoped. On the morning of his second day, Lance waited at a bus stop close to the more affluent part of the city, watching for the right sort of person to come along. After almost an hour, he spotted a well-dressed elderly woman walking a tiny yappy dog of indeterminate origin.

  He had timed it perfectly. As the woman passed him, Lance stepped out from the bus stop and allowed her to gently bump into his arm. He let his pocket watch fall from his hand. It hit the pavement and split open, leaving an assortment of tiny gears and springs rolling and bouncing toward the gutter.

  He yelled, “No! Grandpa’s watch!” and darted after the pieces, scrabbling on the ground to scoop them up as the little dog darted in circles around his owner’s legs, almost entangling her in his leash.

  With his face screwed up to make it look like he was on the verge of tears, and his lower lip trembling, Lance slowly gathered all of the watch components and held them cupped in his hands. As he’d hoped, the old woman was still watching him. Come on, he said to himself. Believe me! He knew that he was a little too old for this trick to be as effective as it once had been. Little old ladies usually doted on preteen boys, but once they hit their teenage years, the old women tended to be a lot more cautious.