The Cat Hunter

by Krishna Ahir

  Harold let out a breath that he didn't know he had held. Relief washed through him like a wave.

  Settling down into his own bed, he sat upright and continued to watch Joslyn sleep. He couldn't bring himself to return to sleep. Both out of fear of the nightmares, and the worry that his wife would need him.

  Harold remained awake, his vision tuned on the dark outline of Joslyn. As he watched, he counted the small ministrations of her breathing.

  Chapter 16

  Christopher held his phone under the desk, shielding it from the attention of his teacher as he quickly dashed out a reply to Maddie. Not that he needed to hide it. With a few minutes remaining until the start of the History lesson, Mr. Mandrell was preoccupied with attempting to link his laptop to the projector at the front of the classroom. Every so often, his characteristic Birmingham drawl would drone across the room.

  Smiling to himself as he blipped his thumb against the "send" icon, Christopher prepared to slip his phone back into his pocket when he noticed movement in his peripheral vision. Whether it was due to his recently acquired feelings of paranoia, or something altogether more sinister, he felt a shudder prickle across his neck.

  Georgina Bell settled down beside him, into her assigned seat, and began to unpack her textbooks and stationary. Elaborate in its disorganization, the contents of her bag soon littered her desk.

  In addition to the chaotic way she was unpacking her belongings, Georgina's attire also seemed geared towards drawing as much attention as possible. She wore a short sleeved red and white polka-dotted shirt, and a tight black pencil skirt. Her bright blonde hair had been curled into ringlets and bunched around her head, bouncing as her hands moved erratically about the desk.

  As if waiting for Christopher to say something to her, she momentarily flicked her grey eyes over him.

  It was then that Christopher realized something: He hadn't seen Georgina at all, since the day of the party, when she had turned up at his front door. He wasn't even sure if she had been at junior college on Friday or Monday; the only lesson they had together being History on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  Turning fully to look at Georgina, Christopher attempted to fight the awkward feeling that drew across his nerves, like a bow across violin strings.

  "How've you been?" he asked, cringing internally at his attempt at conversation. "I haven't seen you around college. Or at — uh — Eric's do. Have you been sick or-..."

  Christopher stopped mid-question as he lost the ability to form words. A bumbling string of phrases, he had done little to dispel the strained tension he felt in the air. In fact, he felt as if he had just made it worse.

  "No, no," Georgina half stammered in reply, shifting in her seat to face him. Resting on a pile of notes, her hands momentarily trembled as if from nerves. "I haven't been ill-... Well I have. Sort of. I mean... I did go to the party on Thursday, but I think you might have missed me. I turned up pretty late."

  Her eyes flicked about as if trying to latch onto something, or rather in an attempt to avoid meeting Christopher's.

  "Yeah, um... I'm sorry about missing you. I don't know what to say really. I think by the time you got there I was-"

  "With Eric's sister?"

  Despite the fact that Georgina had interrupted him, her voice didn't have an angry tone to it. Or much of a tone at all. Christopher was surprised by just how restrained her expression was when she had spoke.

  Christopher didn't have a reply for her. He sat, desperately wracking his brain in an attempt to think of something to say.

  "It's alright," she continued, attempting a lighthearted air. "It's not like I'd called dibs or anything. I was just too late, right? It's my own fault for not making it earlier. I mean my parents are-" Georgina stopped momentarily as she caught herself. "It's just bad timing. Ida didn't get with Kirk either."

  The change in topic threw Christopher for several seconds. Perplexed, he only managed to blurt out a questioning "huh" of confusion.

  Georgina's face plucked into a mirthless smile. "Me and Ida had this bet, or agreement, or whatever, that we would both... Well... Both try with the boy we liked, at the party. Like, we'd only do it if the other did. It's silly."

  This time Christopher's face dropped into a sad and apologetic expression. "I'm sorry."

  Georgina again attempted a humorous and airy tone. "It's okay. You didn't know."

  "Still..."

  "Don't. Please." The same halfhearted smile gripped her face. "Anyway, you really like this other girl. And I get that, it's not your fault. Besides... If it really bothered me that much I would have just locked you away somewhere. You know, to keep you away from all those other girls."

  Her attempt at humor was forced and strained. Christopher smiled out a reply but, again, didn't know what exactly to say.

  The next two hours passed at a crawl. Whether it was the awkward tension between himself and Georgina or the droll and tiring way that Mr. Mandrell taught his lessons (or perhaps a mixture of both), by the time the second bell rang, to signal the beginning of lunch, Christopher couldn't get out of the classroom fast enough.

  Hurrying through the hallways at a strong pace, Christopher left the building and made his way to his group's daily meeting point. So eager was he to get out of the class, he managed to arrive early, despite typically being one of the last to arrive.

  His fast pace an attempt to put as much distance between himself and the stilted atmosphere of the classroom, Christopher moved in a listless and distracted way. His footsteps, typically uniform and rhythmic, fumbled in an odd pattern that betrayed the stress rising through his brain.

  Avoiding the grass verge, fearing the damp grass would ruin his trousers, Christopher sat down on the bordering wall that ran alongside the stairs leading to the Athletics court. From his perch, he stared over the junior college and attempted to place his friends. He was disappointed, however, to find that none of them were in sight.

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Christopher was surprised to see that he had no messages from Maddie. That was very strange. Despite her off texting habit of messaging full paragraphs, punctuation and all, she was always prompt with her responses. Or she had been over the past five days.

  Maybe she's in a meeting with one of her tutors... Christopher hypothesized, scratching at the side of his head as he slipped the phone back into his trousers.

  Leaning back, he cocked his head to the side and stared up at the sky. Clouds, whispers of grey, crawled their way along overhead, spurred by the chilling wind that plucked at Christopher's clothes. His hazel eyes darted around the grayscale blanket, in an attempt to locate even the faintest sliver of blue.

  But clear skies never came. Everything remained dull and muted; a varying pattern of grayscale.

  He wasn't sure why, but the sight of the clouds filled him with an odd sense of trepidation. A disquiet that swam through his system, chilling and unsettling him with the slick strokes.

  When Christopher finally turned his attention back towards the junior college building, he spied Lou Preston crossing the grass and heading for him. Usually at their designated meeting point well before anyone else, Lou distorted his baby blue eyes into a confused expression. Lifting his hand in a half-hearted wave, Christopher beckoned his friend closer and began to talk long before Lou arrived at the grassy verge.

  "You're a bit late today."

  "Fuck off," Lou laughed in reply. "You're just early. What happened? Mandrell finally give into the stress and leave you with a sub?"

  "Nah." Christopher scratched at the side of his head. "He actually let us go on time though, which is a change. I guess I must have just walked fast to get here."

  "More like sprinted," Lou teased, finally sitting down on the opposite wall, bordering the other side of the concrete stairs. "I've seen you walk; you're a plodder."

  "I keep up with Barbara alright when we walk in the mornings."

  "And she ambles." Lou unzipped his backpack and pulled out a sandwich, w
rapped in cling film. Tearing through the plastic, he stuffed one half of his lunch into his mouth.

  "So what you're saying is that both of us are slow, and that's why I never noticed?" Christopher asked, playfully.

  Lou hummed out a response through the cheese and ham wedged into his mouth.

  Christopher tutted and, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from why he had been moving so fast, settled into the mundane. "Did you hear the new Ed Sheeren s song?"

  Shaking his head and swallowing, Lou wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. "Any good?"

  "It's alright," Christopher replied. "Nothing amazing, but it's better than most of the stuff on their last album."

  "It feels more like they're going back to the first record then?"

  Christopher reached for his pocket as his phone vibrated. "Eh, more like a combination of that and the second."

  Glancing around absent-mindedly, as he fished out the device, he spied a figure stood outside of the main college building. Static and unmoving, Georgina's expression was impossible to read at the distance. Waiting for her own gaggle of friends, she stood alone, phone in hand.

  When she turned her gaze onto him, Christopher instinctively turned his attention away, to the device in his palm.

  The liquid screen of his touch screen lit up with a chemical sheen, as it came to life in his hand. Swiping his finger across the cool and slick surface, his eyes reflected the harsh glare of white as his messages were opened.

  Several lines of Maddie's long and articulate response filled the screen.

  A comforting ease flooded him, in a wave of content. Their correspondence brought back memories of their time together, of the calming effect of her conversation. Her witty responses to his words.

  Even thinking about her brought a smile to his lips. Maddie's dark curly hair and olive skin were things that he regularly thought about over the course of his days. Her bright green eyes and sharp features a constant presence in his mind.

  Barbara had even commented on how much happier he had seemed since meeting Maddie.

  Christopher's fingers danced over his phone as he responded, a peaceful smile clinging to his face.

  Across the open stretch of grass, Georgina continued to watch him.

  Drake knocked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as he set the phone down on its receiver. Across the room, lounging behind his desk, Osborne crumpled up a sheet of paper and tossed the wad into the wire-mesh bin next to the door. Barbara sat at her own desk, fingers clacking away at the keyboard as she typed up some kind of report. Opposite Drake, taking up the entire south side of the large central desk of the incident room, Byron and Caroline were hunched over paperwork. Wilson was out of the office on a coffee run, having collected everyone s orders a half hour earlier.

  It had been three days since the discovery of Odette Tate body, and progress in the investigation was moving at a crawl. That isn’t to say that there had been no progress at all. However it was beginning to dawn on Drake that, perhaps, the majority of Detective work was nothing more than a mixture of educated guesswork and patience. Not that he was adverse to the notion. Drake s natural patience was extremely broad.

  The thing that was bothering him about the slow advance of the investigation was the tension that pervaded the air in the incident room. While he himself was less than thrilled about working with Osborne, Drake at least recognized that the man was a competent Detective. His obsessive nature alone meant that, despite his numerous character flaws, he was at least efficient in his work. Byron and Caroline, however, failed to see that much. They thought him arrogant and slow-witted.

  Drake counted his blessings that they were all currently busy and working. Had they not been, then he was almost certain that there would be some kind of argument. At the very least an exchange of snide comments.

  The brief reprieve was more than welcome.

  Drake s eyes moved up to the clock mounted on the wall. It was almost four o clock. Detective Inspector Harold would be arriving soon for a progress report on the case. Though Drake doubted that he would be very interested in what they had uncovered and obtained.

  The Detective hadn’t seemed right recently. Something about the way he held himself and spoke betrayed a strange hesitance. As if he were terrified of finding the culprit, for fear of what they would turn out to be. Because he knew all too well what kind of person would do these things.

  He hated seeing him like this. Seeing how vulnerable and exposed the situation made him. By all right and logic, he should have enjoyed it, but something strong held him back. Until that point, he had been far from Harold s biggest fan. He held a particular distaste for him, perpetuated by how painfully human he made him feel. Harold had made him feel inadequate; too bogged down by emotions. And now Drake was seeing those elements of himself in the Detective. And he hated it.

  Once again picking up his phone, Drake prepared to dial another number, in an attempt to take his mind off of Harold.

  He was interrupted when Byron reached over the table and tapped him on the forearm.

  “What’s this I’m seeing about a missing girl?” he asked, squinting his eyes and pointing down to the sheet of paper in front of him.

  “Maybe missing,” Drake corrected, putting down the phone. “Osborne,” he nodded his head towards the burly Detective, “thinks that our Cat Killer dumped the cats on the train tracks to stop the trains. To get someone on their own. Because nobody really travels out from Rosefield station.”

  Byron knitted his brows together. “Right?”

  “When we got there, the station attendant told us that there had been a girl on the platform,” Drake continued. “One minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t. He said that a car might have picked her up, but he couldn’t be sure what kind.”

  Holding one hand up in front of his mouth, Byron rested his elbow on the table and hummed pensively.

  “But...” Drake leant back in his chair and folded his arms over his broad chest. “Because no one has been reported missing, and because we couldn’t get an accurate description of the girl, we haven t been able to follow it up.”

  “Don t you think it’s strange?” Byron suddenly asked.

  “Don t I think what s strange?” Drake repeated back.

  “That their haven t been any missing cats reported in the past six days. The cats in Mrs. Tate house were killed more than a week before you found her body; the same with her. So why... Why hasn’t our perp been active since last Friday, when they made the dump on the train tracks?”

  “You think something is keeping them busy?” Drake asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Like our missing girl?”

  Byron nodded. “That or they’ve gotten bored and given up.”

  “No. No, not this one... He wouldn’t get bored. If anything, he’d escalate. Try his hand at something more dangerous.”

  “Like a person,” Osborne said, from across the room.

  Fishing into the satchel next to his desk, the Detective Sergeant pulled out a tangerine and started to peel the fruit. As he spoke, he slipped wedges into his mouth.

  “Things like this are either a slow build, or they escalate quickly.”

  “But they already killed Odette Tate,” Byron replied. “They can’t really escalate more than that.”

  “That was an accident,” Osborne said, picking a fleck of white membrane out of his beard. “The next one won’t be. Plus... Something is keeping him occupied. I’d wager it’s the girl that s missing.”

  “So, you re sure someone is actually missing?” the Rosefield officer asked.

  “No solid evidence yet,” the burly man replied. “But that’s not to say he didn’t use the cats on the tracks for something. And, like I said to Drake... It’s what I’d do.”

  Drake watched as Byron eyed Osborne cautiously. The way that the large man spoke often gave credence to the idea that, had he not been a police officer, Osborne would have made a pretty good criminal.

  “Not
much we can do about it though,” he continued. “Not until we at least have a missing person s case to go off of.”

  Caught in the middle of a half-hearted sigh, Drake heard Wilson breeze into the office through the door behind him.

  “Good afternoon gentlemen.” He nodded at Sydney and Caroline. “Ladies.” Setting down the cardboard cup holder, he began to dish out the coffees. “Anyone want to bring me up to speed?”

  His lighthearted tone elicited a grunt from Osborne, as he grabbed his beverage. “Fuck off Wilson.”

  Byron had to fight back the urge to laugh. His distaste for the two men was so strong that he was left teetering in the middle of a comedic limbo.

  Noting his friend almost literally biting his tongue, Drake stifled a chuckle. It wasn’t often that he saw Byron holding back from speaking his mind. Even in front of Harold, the young Constable was strangely loose with his words. His sarcasm was biting, to the point that many often misunderstood it as being mean-spirited.

  Drake figured that the only reason why Byron hadn’t so much as said “boo” to the Detectives was to ensure that they would be able to work together without issue. Arguments did very little for work ethic, even less so considering they were visitors in the Grand Stone Bay station.

  “I’ve got a question,” Caroline said, raising one knobbled and boney finger. Until that point, she had stayed silent for most of the day. Even as she spoke, her eyes remained fixed to the page in front of her.

  Wilson sipped his coffee and wiped the corner of his mouth. “Go on.”

  “Don t you get smart with me,” Caroline snapped, finally looking up and locking eyes with the young man. “I’m not above giving you a smack ‘round the ‘ed.”

  While Byron at least had to good grace to restrain his tongue, the same could not be said of Caroline.

  Wilson recoiled from the sharp tone and grimaced out an apology.

  “That is better,” she continued, returning her attention to the paper set down in front of her. “Now... What I had a question about was this boy. Christopher... Douglas.”