The Tracker

by John Hunt

  “You want to go to the farm?”

  “To the barn.”

  Earl rubbed his chin and said, “That’s pretty weak.”

  “I know. But what else we going to do?”

  “But first, pull over.”

  Owen said, “Why?”

  “I’m driving. You’re too wired to drive.”

  -29-

  Where it all began…

  Taylor drove down a long gravel drive, green weeds and tall grass stretching fibrous fingers towards the bright morning sky and scraping against the underside of the car. A barn, desolate and faded, with missing boards resembling gaps in teeth, sat at the end of the drive. Taylor drove around the side and parked behind the barn, out of sight from the roadway. A cloud of dust caught up to her window and swirled from a gust of wind before dissipating into nothingness.

  Rosie said, “What is this place?”

  With cheeks still stretched wide into a rictus he turned his eyes on her and her stomach dropped. She had never seen a look so devoid of feeling. Am absence of humanity. Hard nodules of skin rose on her arms like mini volcanoes. In that moment, she knew she would die and there wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do about it. She imagined it must be like seeing the headlights of a semi the instant before it turned your car into debris. Rosie had held onto hope on the long drive. It was Taylor after all. Her old best friend. The only person whom she believed possessed true kindness. Not the self-serving kindness someone gives out and expects at some point, a payback disproportionate to the kindness given. No, his had been completely altruistic and no matter how evil his actions had been recently, there had to be some of that altruism left inside even if it were only a minuscule amount. Once the insanity of his revenge passed he would see his good friend Rosie beside him. The girl who had rolled the first joint they ever smoked together. She had rolled it badly, so it resembled a flaccid penis and oh, how they laughed at the reference when Rosie pointed it out, holding the joint between thumb and index finger and bouncing it up and down so the end flopped about. He would see her and he wouldn’t kill her because it was her and not someone who had pissed on him in front of a crowd. They used to walk to grade school together discussing books, music and movies. He would see her as his friend. The only one he ever had. Looking into the face staring at her as though she were as inconsequential as an ant underfoot, she realized the Taylor she had known no longer existed. His hatred had swallowed him whole leaving this smiling maniac with murder in his heart behind. In those dark eyes in the face of an old friend, she saw a stranger and her death at his hands.

  He picked up the gun from the cup holder staring at her all the while. She whimpered and reached for the door handle with teary eyes on Taylor. He shifted the gun to his left hand, the silver duct tape on his forearm reflecting an errant sun beam and wrapped his right hand around the upper portion of her arm. He squeezed and she peeled at his fingers with her other hand. Saliva slid down his chin from maintaining the static carnival grin. The smile never touched his eyes. No, they were cold and alien to her. He popped open the driver side door and pulled her towards him. She knew if he got her out of the car, she would die. Rosie thought it that simple, as though the inside of the car held all the oxygen in the world and outside of it, the vacuum of space. To leave the car meant death. Rosie wasn’t ready to die yet. She dug her heels inside the foot well on her side of the car. Taylor continued to pull. Her arm felt compressed in his grip and it hurt, it hurt all the way to the bone. He backed out of his seat and got a foot on the gravel, continuing to pull. Her feet slipped. A toe bent the wrong way and she yelped and still he dragged her from the car. A hip hit the centre console gear shift and the hard plastic dug a furrow into her skin. She didn’t just yelp then. Her skin pulling away from her body burned her and she screamed, feeling blood spill from her side and still he pulled her out of the car.

  Crying, desperate to stay in the car and live, she said, “Taylor! Please, it’s me, it’s Rosie! Don’t do this!”

  Without slowing down, he said, “Taylor doesn’t live here anymore.”

  A string of drool slid from his mouth and ran down her shoulder. She flinched and using her free arm, she grabbed the steering wheel before being yanked from the car. Taylor dropped the gun. Her eyes darted to it, a source of possible salvation but the hand now free of the gun clamped onto her other shoulder and he jerked her from the car with such force, she heard a pop and thought, that was my shoulder, he dislocated my shoulder, which followed a bright shining pain all the way to her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. The sudden yank from the car peeled three fingernails back. Taylor dropped her to the ground and planted a dirty, blooded white boot on her chest. He picked up the gun with his left hand and with his right, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and walked towards the darkness of the barn. Her heels left furrows in the dirt.

  ***

  Inside the barn, cobwebs gathered in the ceiling. Through the hard packed dirt, grass and weeds sprouted, attempting to reclaim what man had built over. Stall doors hung on rusty hinges. Some had fallen off, the wood too rotten to hold the screws. Sunlight cut like golden swords where it penetrated between the cracks and missing pieces of wood. Rosie didn’t have the time or the inclination to pay attention to the scenery considering her scalp burned from being dragged by her hair. It wasn’t until Taylor sat her back against a post did she look around. A brief time to survey her surroundings before he squatted down in front of her with his crazed smile inches from her. Without warning, he slapped her across the face. The barn disappeared for a moment and she blinked and blinked until her focus returned. Her head lay on the dirt. She didn’t remember falling over. Only the hit. She felt the imprint of his hand on her face. It was warm.

  Taylor said, “Don’t move.”

  “I-I w-won’t.”

  He stood and she didn’t bother straightening herself. It would be near impossible to push herself upright. Her shoulder and arm were numb. A strange kind of numb because intermittent bursts of pain would make her gasp if she moved it or even thought of moving it. He told her not to move and she would comply. His liberal use of violence was convincing. She shifted her jaw back and forth. It throbbed. A molar felt loose and she probed it with her tongue. She spit blood on the dirt and stared at the star pattern. She couldn’t remember a time ever being this afraid. No help would come for her. No one knew where she was. She knew she would die. Hell, she didn’t know where she was. She assumed it was the place Taylor had been humiliated in front of his peers but she didn’t really know. She hadn’t gone. She hadn’t warned him not to go. And now she would pay for it.

  Taylor walked to the centre of the barn where a white plastic Home Depot bag sat. She frowned. Had he brought it here before? She hadn’t seen him carry it in. And she would have. Besides, he hadn’t had enough hands to carry it. He’d had a gun in one hand and a fistful of her hair in the other.

  He kneeled down and opened the bag. He took out yellow rope, a metal pail, what looked like a portable propane torch and a box-cutter. A cry escaped Rosie and she struggled to her knees and using her good arm, crawled to the door they had entered. She could see the open driver’s side door and she knew he hadn’t taken the keys out. They were still in the ignition because she could hear the car beeping the way it does to remind you to take the keys out. She got a foot under her and stood. She cradled her injured arm to her side and walked to the light, ignoring the heavy tread and loud breathing bearing down on her from behind. If she could just get in the car, close the door, start it, she could get out of here! She licked salty tears off her upper lip and increased her speed. The car door, and potential freedom, was only a few short steps away. It was right there.

  Grabbing hold of her hair, Taylor ripped her off her feet. She hit the ground on her back hard enough to expel all the
air in her lungs. She heaved, trying to suck in air and once again, while she struggled to breathe, Taylor dragged her back into the barn. As the darkness closed around her, she screamed.

  -30-

  Retirement is boring…

  Joel Briere dreamed of retiring the day he started working. Retirement had been the light at the end of the dark, aggravating tunnel known as employment. He inherited his dad’s farm after he died because his elder sister never wanted it and neither did his mom. His mom had left to live with her spinster sister in the city after his father passed away. His mother lived another fifteen years after him and even though Joel would never admit it to himself because he thought it would be a betrayal to his old man, he knew his mom was happier without his dad. He even suspected she had a few gentlemen callers because more than a few times when he called her to check up on her, he heard a man in the background. That would be followed by a muffling sound as though someone were covering the mouthpiece of the phone and whenever he asked if she had a guest she would say no, that was the TV in the background. And Joel accepted it because to think otherwise would be gross. His elderly mother doing it? Ugh.

  His dad had been a good man but he could count on the one hand the times he had seen him smile. He worked hard, didn’t drink, didn’t yell and from what he could tell, didn’t talk. Definitely not a barrel of laughs but running a farm without losing it was hard work. He wished his dad had told him how hard it was before he agreed to take over the farm. But the old man didn’t talk.

  Joel knew farm work was rough. He had been doing chores since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. He did them before school, after school and on weekends. His parents paid him and his sister an allowance for helping out. Not like they had a choice. More like they had been pressed into service with minimum pay. When he was younger the whole process of working on the farm was rewarding and it seemed like his parents always had money so, on the surface, it looked like a good way to make a living. They had the new cars, the new TV’s, and the renovations and, at one point, they considered putting in a pool. Joel and his sister began a ruthless campaign of begging and pleading when they learned a pool was a possibility but in the end, his parents decided against it.

  It wasn’t until Joel took over the farm that he realized the situation. Farming was hard. Real hard. He worried all the time and his wife used to tease him that he had worried all the hair out of his head. Would there be enough rain this year? Would the pesticides keep his crop free of infestation? Did he have enough money to buy the seed? Repairs to the equipment. Repairs to the barn. Money this, money that. Joel worried himself an ulcer. He drank Maalox like he had stock in the company. His kids, spoiled ingrates that they were, left the farm the day they stepped on college campus. They only ever called or came home if they needed something. It broke his wife’s heart and Joel would never forgive them for it.

  After the kids left, he retired. He sold one hundred acres to some development company for a pretty penny and left himself two acres of land to putter around on. And putter he did. It took him almost two hours to mow the lawn, even on a riding mower, and he loved it. Loved it so much, he thought of getting a job at a golf course. Be a groundskeeper or something. He loved the smell of cut grass and the heat of the sun on his back, like a warm comforting hand. He was thinking of what places he could apply to while standing at his window, willing the grass to grow faster, sipping on a coffee. The news radio station updated him. Joel treated it as background noise. He heard it but wasn’t concentrating on it. It spoke of an escaped murderer and a kidnapped girl. Interesting, but not his problem out here.

  The barn stood off to his right. He couldn’t see Rosie’s car. It had been parked at such an angle the barn screened the car from his house and the road. He could seed the lawn again but the last time had cost him a lot of money and he didn’t see the necessity of it. The phone braying startled him from his thoughts.

  “Margaret! You close to the phone?”

  From upstairs, he heard her faintly reply, “On the toilet!”

  “Alright!”

  Joel hustled to the kitchen counter and picked up the portable phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Henderson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Detective Owen Gayle of the Guelph Police Department. How are you today?”

  “Fine. What can I do for you?”

  “Do you have a barn on your property?”

  “Not technically, no.”

  He heard the officer sigh and say, “Oh.”

  “Yeah, it’s on the land I sold to developers. I can see it out my window.”

  “Did it used to be a popular place for kids to have parties?”

  “Well…yes. Is that why you’re calling? There hasn’t been a party in some years now and I didn’t exactly endorse them. My wife would let the kids do whatever they wanted, you know?”

  “Uh, no that’s not why I’m calling. I was wondering if, from your house, could you see if there is a car parked around it?”

  “Let me have a peek here.”

  Joel moved back to where he had been standing when the phone rang. He moved around from side to side trying to get a look, “No, sorry, I can’t. But someone could have parked it on the other side. I wouldn’t see it then. You want me to check?”

  “No. I’m actually on my way there and thought I’d call you first and ask if you could stay in your house until we’re done.”

  Joel, excited, said, “Does this have something to do with that murderer? The one that escaped?”

  “Yes.”

  “He got a girl with him? I heard something on the radio.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you know, I can slip out of my house and check. I won’t get close and I can circle around it until I can see the other side.”

  “No, no. This guy is dangerous. I want you to stay in your house. We’ll check it out and after I’ll call you to let you know it’s clear. It’s a long shot he went there anyways.”

  “Nonsense. You gonna drive all the way up here from the city? When all I have to do is take a hundred foot stroll? Look, I’ll keep you on the phone and I’ll just take a walk.”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t…”

  “It’s my land. I’m walking and there’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, it’ll be helpful.”

  “Alright. Please don’t get close.”

  “Settle down there. I know what I’m doing. I’ll take my .22 with me.”

  He heard the officer groan on the other end and say, “Just please hurry up then. And be careful! I don’t want you tripping and blowing a hole in your chest.”

  Offended, Joel said, “I know how to carry a rifle. Don’t you go worrying about me.”

  ***

  Joel put the phone down, picked up his .22 rifle and loaded it. He heard the toilet flush and wanting to be out of the house before Margaret could badger him with useless questions, he scooped up the phone and walked out the side door.

  “Joel?”

  He stopped, rolled his eyes and opened the door and yelled, “Just checking on a patch of grass dear!” And he kept moving. If he told her he was helping out the police, he would be pinned under a barrage of questions and he might not even get out of the house if she saw him carrying a rifle.

  “Officer Owen? You there?”

  “Yes, Mr. Henderson. I think it would be best if you…”

  “Hid in my house? No, no. Don’t worry. I’m not going to get any closer than I have to. I’m just going to get a look-see at the back. No car, no worries. Then you don’t have to drive all the way out here.”

  “We’re almost there.
”

  “Hush now. I’m almost there myself.”

  From the house, “Joel? Why are you carrying that rifle?”

  “Goddamnit!” Margaret couldn’t help herself could she? Probably peering out the stupid window. Can’t let him have a moment’s peace.

  Joel didn’t turn to answer her. It’d be best to let her think he hadn’t heard. She thought he was losing his hearing and he took every opportunity to enforce that belief. Besides, he was almost there.

  Phone in one hand and his rifle in another, after leaving the perfect portion of his groomed lawn to the field he used to work, he navigated the stones and dips with the confidence of a man who had done it a thousand times. And he had.

  Joel stood maybe a hundred foot out when he saw Taylor dragging Rosie away from the car.

  “Good God!” The hairs on his body stood at attention. His stomach gurgled and he clenched his butt-cheeks because for a second there, he thought something might escape.

  A tinny voice reached him in his frozen state, “Mr. Henderson? You say something?”

  The cops! The police were on the way!

  He raised the phone to speak into it only his mouth had gone dry. Like someone had stuck a sponge in there and sucked out all his spit. He moved his tongue around and said, “He’s here! He’s got the girl! He’s dragging her into the barn! A big son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he?”

  Suddenly, the rifle in his hand seemed a toy.

  “Go back to the house, Mr. Henderson. We’re on the way.”

  Rosie screamed. A high pitched wail causing Joel to jump. He had never heard a person scream like that before. Pure terror. He didn’t know terror had a sound until now. He couldn’t go back to the house and leave her to that. Could he? He swallowed a hard lump of air. It stuck halfway down his chest. It hurt his heart.

  He turned his head back to the house. He imagined he could see Margaret from the window, wrenching her hands the way she did when she worried. And she would worry for him, kind soul she was. But if he walked back into the house to later find out he left the girl with the monster in the barn, would she feel shame? Thinking on it, Joel thought she would. And if he did that, he should be ashamed.