The Tracker

by John Hunt

  Taylor said, “I know. Hannah told me as I was laying in the dirt with piss all over me. She let the others get ahead of her so she could ask me why I accepted her invitation because she thought for sure Rosie would have told me. Now, Rosie couldn’t have guessed they were going to beat on me and piss on me but she knew something bad would happen. And she let it. All because I liked Hannah and not her. Of course I wouldn’t call her after that. I hated her and missed her at the same time. She was the only person, other than my mother, I could talk to. And some conversations you don’t have with your mother. Rosie? I could talk to her about everything. She was supposed to be my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry that such a thing happened to you. I really am. And so was Rosie.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “She was afraid for you. That’s why she came to talk to us. She still cares for you, Taylor.”

  “Sure sounds like it. I get telling you my name, I really do, but why did she have to tell you that story about me? Wasn’t it enough to have allowed it to happen? I don’t even know why we’re talking about it at all. Congratulations officer. I feel like a piece of shit again. Good one. Still, the Tracker has nothing to do with this.”

  “Well, that’s where you and I have a difference of opinion.” Owen reached for the folder, searched through it and removed four sheets of paper. “These are recent driver’s license photos. Do you recognize the people?”

  Owen placed all four on the table and Taylor leaned over to look at them. He scowled and said, “Of course I do. That one there is Brad. That’s Hannah, that’s Jake and that one is Melissa. I wouldn’t forget those people.”

  “But Taylor, you said the four people killed by the Tracker were strangers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Taylor. These are the four dead people. People you know. People who took part in your cruel humiliation.”

  Taylor eyes bulged and then he squinted at Owen in anger. He said, “What the fuck are you talking about? You making this shit up?” Taylor’s face screwed up and tears sprung from his eyes. With a thick voice he said, “That’s not true. You can’t just make shit up and it becomes true. This is bullshit! That’s not how its supposed to work! Fucking police! You’re supposed to help me!”

  “You’re right. I can’t make stuff up. I can’t lie or fabricate evidence. I can use trickery but I can’t make stuff up. I’m not allowed. The courts would throw this statement out. So that should tell you I’m not lying.”

  “You have to be! It wasn’t them. It couldn’t be them. I was looking right at the people the Tracker killed!”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “I did!”

  “But you never told us their names.”

  “What don’t you understand here? I didn’t tell you their names because I didn’t know them!”

  “Do you remember their faces?”

  “Of course I do! I…” and then Taylor stopped. He remembered terror twisting their features but faces? The memory blurred, like a pencil sketch that had been smudge by an artist’s thumb.

  Taylor swallowed and said, “I, uh…,” he rubbed a hand across his face and shook his head.

  Owen said, “This is one of those moments in an interview I like to call selective memory. You remember everything else, right? You gave me a very detailed account of how it all happened and how you weren’t responsible. Except for the part where the people killed happened to be the same people who had tortured you in high school. I say torture because in my opinion, it was what they had done to you. Point is, that’s the part you leave out. And that’s interesting because it’s the part that puts you in a different light, doesn’t it? It kind of makes you look really guilty, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No, no, that can’t be right. You’re wrong! You’re lying! The Tracker is real! You’re just trying to trick me!” Taylor ran his free hand through his damp hair and said, “The USB! You find it and it’ll show the Tracker, clear as day. That’ll show you.”

  “We found it Taylor. Under you mattress where you said it was. We executed a search warrant on your house. We thought it might be important, being where it was and we opened it up and all we saw was Indigo. A small five minute feed of the inside of the store. No Tracker, Taylor.”

  “You’re lying. You have to be! Yup. You have to be.”

  “I’m not lying Taylor. It’s what we do as police. We investigate and collect evidence.” Owen opened up the file, found the pages he was looking for and laid them out on the table beside each driver’s license photo. “These are the crime scene photos. Look at them Taylor. You telling me these aren’t the same people from high school?”

  Taylor leaned over the photos as far as he could. His mouth hung open and his breath came in short gasps. His round eyes studied the images without blinking. He started muttering to himself and Owen strained to hear the words, “Is this right? It can’t be. No, they’re fucking with you, Taylor. They think you’re a fat loser like all the others. Like everyone you ever knew. Fucking with you…”

  “I’m not fucking with you. We talked about this. I can’t fuck with you. Not in that way. If I made up these photos, digitally enhanced them and offered them as evidence to you or the court I could be charged criminally with creating a forged document. So you see? I can’t do that shit.”

  Taylor waved at the photos lined up and said, “This isn’t possible! Don’t you get it! It’s not possible!” He slapped at his own forehead with his free hand and continued, “It’s not in here! It’s not in my head! I can’t see it! I can’t see their faces! They’re blurred! Why isn’t it in my head?”

  “Once again, a convenient blank in your memory. The person on the mower? That was Melissa. We investigated her like we do with every victim and guess what we found? A report of a suspicious person seen around her house. One report a recent as a month ago. A big man, hiding in the dark at night around her house. We sent a patrol car only the person was gone before police made it there. Sounds like you, doesn’t it? Sounds like someone who was planning something was out scouting, doing their homework. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you had been following the others either, to know where they worked and lived. But of course, you wouldn’t remember that. Another convenient memory gap.”

  “That’s also a convenient way for you to paint me with more guilt! You don’t know if that person outside the house was me but it fits right? It fits your theory. It’s easy to pin it on me. I sure as hell know it wasn’t me. I didn’t sneak around spying on people at night and I certainly didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Well, on that Taylor, we’re going to have to disagree. You see, those other two in the kitchen? The young people? Only one of them left. The teenage boy, Richard, slipped past you. I don’t think you were really focused on him or the young girl. Because they weren’t who you were after. They didn’t hurt you in high school. The young guy snuck out but the young girl, Callie? She stayed in the kitchen. She crammed herself into a corner of the kitchen. A real tight spot between the steel counter and the wall. I saw the photos that Forensics took. I don’t know how she fit into such a tiny area but she did. She couldn’t explain it either but I bet being scared out of her mind helped her squeeze inside. She kept saying she wanted to be away, to get away, but wouldn’t dare to try to sneak pass you and so she hid. Point is, she was in the kitchen the whole time. Because of the angle, she didn’t see you shove poor Hannah into the stove…”

  “Hannah?”

  “Yeah, that was Hannah. But she did see you swing that cleaver into Brad’s neck. And she did see you pull his head clean off his body. She went hysterical recounting it. That poor girl may never get over that. But she saw you do it, Taylor. No dark man. No shadow man. No Tracker. Just you.”

 
Taylor’s mouth became a straight, white line. He started shaking his head and he said, “I don’t believe that. Not one word. You’re just like everyone else in my life.” In a singsong voice, he said, “Hey, look, it’s the fat guy, let’s pick on him. He doesn’t have feelings!”

  Taylor’s eyes glistened and he sounded like his throat was filled with liquid. He said, “I never had a chance. Not with you. Not with anyone. ‘Cause I’m a fat loser and fat losers are disposable. It’s a vicious cycle, you know? I eat because it makes me feel good and because I feel so sad all the time, for being fat, I eat more and all of a sudden, I wake up and look down and I can’t see my feet. Hell, I haven’t seen my dick since I was twelve! Don’t you get it! I hate who I am! I hate being like this! All your looks of disgust and pity are wasted on me because I feel them all the time!”

  Owen held up his hands and said, “Whoa, Taylor. That’s another thing I have to address. It’s confusing the hell out of me. Why do you keep referring to yourself as fat?”

  Taylor’s eyes snapped up. Owen saw anger in them and he leaned away, as casually as he could because the anger scared him, a tingling fear in the base of his guts. Taylor’s face crumpled and a sob erupted from his chest. In heaving gasps he said, “You k-k-know wh-wh-wh-why! I-I’m ffffff-fat. I’ve always b-b-been fat!”

  “Taylor. Calm down, okay? You’re safe in here. No one is going to hurt you. We’re just talking okay? Just talk. That’s all we’re doing. I need you to take a deep breath for me.”

  Taylor nodded. He wiped the tears from his face with his free hand and sucked back a stream of snot sliding from his nose. His breathing still shuddered though in time, the manic tinge faded. He shivered in his chair and waited for Owen to speak.

  Owen said, “Let’s go back in the tale to when you said you had called the police to check your house for someone in the basement? The intruder call?” Taylor nodded and Owen continued, “When we found out your name, we checked our records and there was the report for your mom passing and when you called about an intruder. I spoke to the officers who went there and they verified your basement had been crammed, like you said. From all of your mother’s hoarding. They couldn’t get to the bottom because of all the towering stacks of…crap. Rosie’s statement, your boss’ statement and the statement of the poor girl in the restaurant helped us write the warrant to get in. That’s when we found the USB. We looked all through your house and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Except for the basement. All the crap that was supposed to be down there, from what we read in the reports, was gone. No crap anywhere. No towering stacks of magazines or old furniture. Instead, there was a complete gym down there. Free weights, a heavy duty weight bench, a squat rack, protein powder and steroids. All the essentials of a hard-working bodybuilder. ”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, no it’s not. It surprised us too. So then we spoke with your neighbours. All the crap in your basement is now in your backyard, getting ruined by the weather. Your neighbours saw you putting it there, as best as they can remember, shortly after you made the call to us about the intruder. Late at night, making repeated trips from the back door of your house to dump all the stuff from your basement onto the grass. Once again, I have to say from speaking with you, you’re behaving like a truthful person. Even still, I find it hard to believe you didn’t happen to notice your giant muscles since they’re on your own body.”

  Taylor ran his eyes over his arms and body. When he returned his eyes to Owen, they swelled and twitched from side to side and they weren’t seeing Owen. Taylor had gone somewhere else. His body was there, muscular and powerful, only his mind had gone elsewhere. Owen didn’t need to be a doctor to see there was something seriously wrong with Taylor. He wasn’t faking this shit, only Owen had to operate as though he was because he wasn’t a doctor. He couldn’t say for certain Taylor had a diseased mind. And so he had to keep poking at him and poking at him without giving the impression he badgered him into confessing. It had to appear voluntary to the courts. They had to decide the evidentiary value of the statement while determining if the statement had been obtained in compliance with the rule of law. Owen continued, “Rosie almost didn’t recognize you running on the video. The person looked like you and moved like you only the change was so drastic she wasn’t sure. Until she heard the name of the first victim on the news and then she knew it was you. It had to be you. And your boss commented on your change too. Jill saw the change in you and thought it was a good thing, a healthy thing after your mother died to try and take care of yourself. She said close to a year or so ago, you were the Taylor you’re purporting you still are. Heavy, an unhealthy fat man who breathed hard going up a short flight of stairs. A nice man and a good worker and a friend. And then you started to change. You lost weight and were putting on muscle and not only did Jill think a good healthy thing, your coworkers did too. They even commented on it to you, in a positive way, to encourage you. Are you saying you don’t remember any of it? Your boss recounted an hour long conversation you both had over lunch about the exercise regimen you had going. You were doing two-a-day workouts. In the morning before work and then late at night before bed. She said you told her you sometimes did three workouts in a day on the weekend. She thought you were pushing yourself too hard but didn’t want to say anything to discourage you.”

  Shaking his head, Taylor said, “I just figured it out. You, you’re crazy. Not me. I can feel the fat on my belly. I can feel my arms jiggling. I can feel the sweat under my tits! I can fucking feel it!”

  “Taylor. Look at yourself. See yourself. You’re not a lean, underwear model type. You’re like, I don’t know, those guys who compete in the World’s Strongest Man contests. Bulky and powerful. Your shoulders are stretching out that suit.”

  “What are you telling me? I dreamed through getting into shape and taking steroids? Had conversations with the people I work with and I don’t remember any of them?”

  “You said it yourself, man. You were always tired. You went through days you didn’t remember. Now, I’m not saying that’s true, but supposing for a moment it is, why do you think you were so tired all the time? Why were you so exhausted? You had your blood taken because it concerned you so much. You thought something was wrong with you. Your blood was clean, the tests were clean. So if there wasn’t anything medically wrong with you, why were you so tired all the time? I would say it’s because you were working out for hours at a time, every day, taking steroids, vitamins and protein to help your body recover but you were working so hard, your body needed the rest and that’s why you felt exhausted all the time.”

  Sweat poured from Taylor’s face. His head darted to all corners of the room and rested on the door. He stopped looking at Owen and Owen knew why. He wanted to escape and he needed a way out. Owen had seen it plenty of times when he worked the streets and happened to stop someone who was wanted. They would look over Owen’s shoulder, thinking of how to get past him and Taylor wore the same expression now. That meant he felt trapped and Owen needed to keep pushing. “There is no way out of here, Taylor. There is no where you can go. You need to stop thinking about that. You need to focus here.” Owen pulled the folder close to him and found the picture he wanted. He said, “This is your mugshot photo. This one here captures your shoulders and up. I was told the camera guy had to back the whole set up by a foot to get you in the frame. Take a look at this Taylor. This is you. This is you now and you’re not fat. You’re far from it.”

  Owen dropped the photo on top of the others.

  Taylor studied it for a second and lifted his eyes to Owen, brow furrowed, mouth open and breathing hard. His whole body shook. Sweat from his face and spit from his mouth peppered the desk and photos like raindrops. Taylor once again ran his eyes over his own frame. He jumped in his chair and stood. The cuff clinked against the eyebolt. Owen stood and moved back from Taylor.
Taylor snatched the photo of himself off the table with his free hand and brought it within inches of his face. He stared at it and then back at his body. He dropped the photo and with the fingers on his right hand poked his own chest, shoulder and then his bulging bicep, feeling the strength under his fingers.

  Taylor said, “How? What?” And his eyes rolled up until they showed white and he dropped. His left arm, still shackled to the eyebolt levered across the edge of the steel table and Taylor’s falling weight snapped his arm. Owen heard the crack and flinched. Taylor’s head rapped against the wall and settled at a sharp angle. Blood streamed out of his mouth.

  Owen said, “Shit.”

  -20-

  Imaginings…

  Owen yelled, “Call an ambulance!”

  He left his chair and kneeled by Taylor’s head. The door opened behind him and Owen turned to see Earl rushing to help him. Bubbles of blood swelled and then popped outside of Taylor’s mouth. At least he was breathing. Owen glanced at the arm levered on the edge of the table. The flesh bulged underneath. The bone pushed against the skin. It would burst through if they didn’t lessen the pressure. If it did rip through the skin and cut an artery Owen feared Taylor would bleed out before the ambulance arrived.

  “Help me pull him back a bit, away from the wall.”

  Earl said, “Should we move him?”

  “Look at his arm. I don’t want that bone popping through.”

  Earl winced and nodded.

  “Grab a leg then,” said Earl.

  They picked up a foot each and pulled. Taylor’s sheer size made it difficult to move him but with much grunting and heaving, they moved him so his head lay flat on the floor and the strain on his arm wasn’t so pronounced. Crowding the doorway were other police officers trying to get a peek inside.

  “Ambulance on the way?”