Hunted: A Suspense Collection

by J. L. Drake

  Jason scraped the eggs into a bowl and slid it in front of the boy. “Now, the capital of Germany?”

  “Berlin.” Ted sputtered, a mountain of eggs already in his mouth.

  “Not fair, I tell you,” Jason said, settling across from his son. “How could you have memorized the world’s capitals? We started on them last week!”

  “Practice,” Ted answered.

  Jason focused on the back of Ted’s right hand. A light black smudge ran across his skin. He must have written the cities on his skin, studied them all night, and hastily wiped it off this morning.

  A silence swept through the room. Not awkward or cold, but content. A silence that often filled the Flynn household. Jason took a deep breath, then let out a small cough; the smells of eggs and coffee did not mix.

  He spread out the newspaper’s crossword puzzle between the two of them, the rustling pages crumpling up the silence like it was paper itself.

  Ted leaned forward and studied the crossword. He picked up a pen and began to fill in the answers he recognized, which were surprisingly numerous for a ten-year-old boy.

  Jason picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, what?”

  “Guess what I learned in history the other day.”

  Rubbing the remaining sleep from his eyes, Jason responded, “I’ll never guess. What?”

  Ted paused briefly, his head tilted to the side ever so slightly, his jaw clenched in deep thought. He seemed to remember something, then snapped his fingers in victory and filled in a few blanks of the puzzle. He behaved just like his mother at times.

  Jason gulped at that last thought and literally shook his head to banish it.

  “In World War I,” Ted continued as if he had never paused, “there was an American sergeant named Alvin York. He was walking with his platoon in the woods one time, and he got lost. Then, with nothing but a rifle and a handgun, he went out to try to find them.”

  “Poor guy,” Jason smirked, then tapped the crossword. “Ten across,” he said.

  Ted quickly read ten across’s clue: “capital of Egypt.” He immediately filled in “Cairo,” and said, “So, he went to look for his platoon.” Jason often had trouble keeping up with the boy. “And he came across a huge German platoon.”

  Jason readjusted in his seat. “I take back what I said earlier. Now he’s a poor guy.”

  Ted smiled. “And so what does he do?” the eagerness in his face telling Jason this was a rhetorical question. “He attacks them! With only his rifle and handgun!”

  Chuckling, Jason swirled the coffee around in his mug. “I’d have loved to know that guy. May he rest in peace.” He pantomimed laying flowers on a grave.

  “You know what happened?”

  Jason raised his eyebrows, encouraging Ted to continue.

  “He kills thirty Germans, wounds fourteen, and then…” Enthusiasm made the small boy vibrate. “The remaining hundred and thirty-two surrender!”

  “Wow, really?”

  “Yeah, to one guy!”

  Jason laughed and ruffled his own hair. “That’s unbelievable.” He thought about the story for a second longer, then laughed again. Very few things in life deserved the word wow, but the tale of Alvin York was an exception.

  Ted squinted at the page. “Twenty down, ten letter word. Clue: ‘violently patriotic.’”

  “Jingoistic.” Jason wrote in the answer with his own pen. Ted, clearly befuddled by the word, smiled his thanks then quickly returned to scrutinizing the puzzle.

  The quiet returned, disrupted only by the pens’ occasional scratching. The calm of the moment was a magnificent thing, like a sunrise behind a grand mountain. The stresses of police work were mere minutes away, Jason knew, but he treasured the scarce times of pure, unadulterated enjoyment with his son.

  Then, out of nowhere, Jason felt a chill. No windows were open, however. Besides, it was California in the middle of May. An intuition had just poked him, like the one that makes dogs act rabid right before a storm.

  Was there a storm coming?

  No, no. Jason focused on the crossword. Enjoy the moment, Jason, he told himself. He squeezed his knuckles to crack their joints, more to preoccupy his mind than anything. Enjoy it.

  “Who were you talking to so late last night?”

  Jason glanced at Ted, who hadn’t looked up from the newspaper. “Hmm?”

  “On the phone?”

  “Oh, just a co-worker. Detective Cheyenne Childers.”

  He had, indeed, ventured far into the night speaking with Cheyenne over the phone. Shane Drake was to appear before the press this morning, three days after his climactic and long-overdue capture. It was sure to be eventful, although half the words Shane said would most likely be too “colorful” for the press to cite.

  “Have I met her before?” Ted tapped his pen against the table, thinking about both the crossword and the female detective.

  “Um, yes you have…” Jason bit his lower lip, staring at one of the puzzle clues. “Two down: ‘an employment, or humanity’s scapegoat.’ Three letters.”

  No sweat for Ted. “Job.”

  Jason nodded, “Right, right,” and scribbled it in the boxes. “But, yeah, you’ve met Cheyenne. She and Garth have had dinner here a couple times. Brown eyes, round chin…”

  Ted cut him off. “Dimple in her right cheek, brownish-black hair? Oh, yeah. I remember her. I liked her.”

  “Five down,” the boy said, immediately changing topics. “Clue: ‘Latin pop singer’s last name and Goodfellas director’s first name.’”

  “Martin.”

  Ted, once again, kept his mouth clamped shut for several seconds as he worked. Only the ghostly hum of the electric lights and the distant buzz of a mosquito filled the air. Jason let out a small yawn and swirled his coffee.

  “Dad?” Ted asked in a small voice.

  Jason tilted his head toward the opposite side of the table, not moving his eyes from the newspaper. “Yeah?”

  “How did you and Mom meet?”

  All the air left the room. Jason’s hand froze as it reached for the coffee mug. A wooly mammoth crashing through the wall would not have been as surprising as little Ted’s little question. A barrage of memories, thoughts, emotions, and scenes stampeded through Jason’s brain, each one unbridled and competing for his attention.

  Then he smiled softly.

  Ted scribbled in some more of the crossword’s tiny boxes and gazed up at his father, eyes wide.

  “Well,” Jason shifted in his chair, already lost in the deep memory, “I was seventeen at the time, a junior in high school, getting asked from every direction…” He scrunched up his face and said, in a high, mocking voice, “‘What college? What college?’”

  Ted giggled, his eyes laughing along.

  “So,” Jason continued, “I attended a school visit to Point Loma University, on the oceanfront of San Diego. A good friend of mine, Chris White, and I were intending to have careers in the ministry—”

  “I know Chris!” Ted interjected with the buoyancy of a helium balloon. “He’s a pastor now across town, right?” Jason nodded once, and Ted continued. “I didn’t know you were gonna be one too.”

  Jason quickly cleared his throat and resumed the story.

  “Anyway, the day was very bright, very hot, as usual. Chris and I were walking across campus, about to sign up for the ministry tour, but then, a hundred feet away, among a huge crowd of dozens of other very attractive girls, I spotted her.”

  He couldn’t help but smile as he remembered.

  “I coulda sworn she was a mirage. A gorgeous, angelic, well-manicured mirage. Five foot nine, she carried herself fully and proudly. Smooth, blonde hair that just grazed her shoulders. A group of friends surrounded her, but she didn’t seem to depend on them. Her eyes…”

  Her eyes. Jason grinned slowly.

  Eyes the color of the ocean, the only ocean I wouldn’t mind drowning in. If they were a wind
ow to her soul, she was the most loving, kind, genuinely caring person on the planet. And when she would gaze at you, eye to eye, you felt as scared as a little kid, yet so overjoyed at the same time. Those were your mother’s eyes, Ted.

  Were.

  Jason refocused and gave his son a small grin. “Her eyes,” a soft chuckle, “were beautiful.”

  Ted leaned forward, the crossword puzzle forgotten like a used tissue.

  “And so,” Jason spoke, his voice back to its usual, powerful tenor, “I whispered to Chris…Then again, I don’t know why I was whispering; we were outside and she was a hundred feet away. Anyway, I say to Chris, ‘Look at her.’ ‘Which one?’ he says. To me, that was the stupidest question in the world. The gorgeous one, of course!”

  The scene from years forgotten played through Jason’s mind perfectly as if it had happened minutes before. Each detail was vibrant and extraordinary, almost to an unwanted point. Some select memories were best left skewed.

  “Then, I started to march right for her. I had no plan, no idea what my feet were doing, but I knew I was going to meet her, at the very least. I then realized that she was leaving for a tour of the college’s business classes. I didn’t know a single thing about business, but joined the tour, just to keep her in sight. As the group moved through the campus, I inched closer and closer to her. My heart was beating so hard, I thought she would’ve heard it. But she didn’t notice, which was even worse. Eventually, I was directly beside her. Wow, was she beautiful! I still couldn’t believe that I had followed her halfway across the college to talk to her, but, at the same time, I didn’t regret it for a second. At that time, the tour had reached the class for the principles of financial accounting. To this day, I have no idea what that means.”

  Ted laughed, nodding his head.

  “The professor of the class, a tall, stiff man who could probably give a first-hand account of the Gettysburg Address, started droning on and on about percentiles and accounting and debt and finances and blah, blah, blah. I figured this was the moment to act. I guess I thought I’d seem edgy or funny, talking to her while the prof spoke, I dunno. So, I leaned over to her and opened my mouth to talk, but I became so nervous, I ended up coughing like a cat. Just this hideous hack! hack! hack! Not even close to the Casanova I thought I was.”

  Jason paused for a moment and studied Ted’s expression, then smiled. How many ten year-olds would understand that Casanova reference? One: Ted Flynn.

  “She shot me a glance. A glance,” he held up a finger, “not the glare I was expecting. I cleared my throat and began a little light banter. Then again, banter involves two people; I was talking aimlessly and she was just kinda nodding along. I didn’t care, though. She was just too beautiful. Then, the grizzly old prof barked at me, ‘Young man!’” Jason donned a deep, mocking voice. “‘As you’re obviously an expert on the history of our country’s financial accounting…’ At this point, my gut hit the floor. I was about to look like a moron in front of this angel. It didn’t take a psychic to figure that one out. The prof growled out, ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t mind telling us all who first printed America’s traditional five-dollar bill?’”

  Ted was enraptured by the story. Jason continued.

  “That guy wasn’t too nice. I bet he was enjoying his little pop quiz. Of course, I had no earthly idea. I coughed again, on purpose this time, to bide my time. Then I looked at the old prof and squeaked out in the most pathetic little voice, ‘Abraham Lincoln?’”

  Ted giggled and giggled and giggled. “Lincoln?” he managed to say through his fit. “You said that…?” His fitful laughter continued.

  Jason groaned. “Yeah, ha freakin’ ha. It sounded a lot more logical in my head.”

  The boy’s laughs died down, although he took his sweet time.

  “But,” Jason raised his eyebrows, “that was exactly what the entire tour did. They laughed as if I had split my pants on the first day of school. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I was. I felt like I needed to crawl under a rock and die. I actually started to walk away, but…”

  Ted straightened, absolutely enthralled. “But…?”

  “But I looked over at your mother, and she had the sweetest smile. She saw how red my face was and giggled a bit, but then put her hand on my arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. She just smiled and giggled, like a little bell. I couldn’t help but smile too. Then, she raised one eyebrow the way she always did and said, ‘Honest Abe invented the five-dollar bill?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, a little weakly. ‘Didn’t you know that? He was on a roll after the telephone.’ Finally, after waiting all day, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself: ‘Jason.’ She smirked, took the hand, shook it once, and said, ‘Keri.’”

  The silence of the inside of a casket settled over the kitchen. The speaking of her name seemed to sober both of them, like a slap to the face. Ted cleared his throat and glanced down at the puzzle, the muscles in his throat clearly tightened.

  He had never seen his mother. Her likeness was never conveyed to him, especially not as intimately as Jason had. She may as well have looked like a model for Sketchers tennis shoes plastered on the walls of the subway terminal.

  A small photo of Keri was kept on the desk beside Jason’s bed, but Ted never ventured into the bedroom. Jason didn’t know why, and he had a feeling that Ted didn’t know either. Each time the boy passed the door, whether closed or ajar, he picked up his pace and stared straight ahead, as if scared to even peek at it.

  Once, several years before, Jason had found Ted standing in front of the closed wooden door, staring. Just staring at it. Ted had never believed in the boogeyman or other follies, but the way he had stared at that door, with both eyes wide as eggs and mouth open in a silent scream, it seemed it was the object of his nightmares.

  Why? Jason didn’t know. He pondered the thought as he watched his son absently searching the puzzle. The boy’s apprehension was almost tangible, as much a part of his physical description as his two eyes and one nose. Jason had approached the situation from every possible angle, but he couldn’t pinpoint what event or emotion caused this pervasive fear that his son had developed.

  He, a top-notch detective who had captured serial killers that left the FBI scratching their heads, deduced conclusions from thin air, and built a reputation for never being at a loss, couldn’t figure out why his own son was so afraid.

  Some genius.

  Some hero.

  Jason leaned back in the chair. Took a sip from his coffee mug, stroked his scratchy chin, blinked heavily once, twice, three times, perused an article over pollution, refilled the mug popped his knuckles yet again. Meaningless distractions, all of them.

  “Believe it or not…” Jason muttered, eyes on the table.

  Ted looked at him, as shocked by the breaking of the silence as Jason was.

  “We went on a date soon after that.”

  Always testing, always skeptical, Ted was. A puppy that had been locked out of the house one too many times.

  With a small voice, Ted finally squeaked out, “Fifteen down, date.”

  “Hmm?” Jason asked.

  “The crossword, fifteen down is ‘fruit of the palm, or a romantic rendezvous.’ Date.”

  Jason looked at the puzzle’s clue and laughed. Sure enough. He filled in the four little boxes.

  “What happened then?”

  A grin spread across Jason’s face. He looked at Ted and marveled at the boy.

  “Well, three days had passed. Chris and I had just—”

  A deep ringing came from the counter. Jason’s cell phone sat on the countertop, vibrating like a caffeinated grasshopper.

  He held up a finger to Ted. “Just one moment.” He left the table and walked toward the phone. He picked it up and glanced at the name on its display: Cheyenne.

  Speak of the devil.

  He glanced back at the dining table, but Ted had disappeared, leaving the two pens and the crossword half-finished.

  A gurgling that reminded Jason of a
hungry, hungry hippo thundered from outside the house. Ted’s school bus had arrived.

  “Bye, Dad!” Ted called, halfway out the door.

  “See ya!” Jason yelled back, although he was sure the bus’s roar covered him up. “I’ll tell you about our date later!” he added, just in case.

  The front door slammed shut.

  Jason answered the phone. “Good morning, starshine,” he smirked.

  Empty static filled Jason’s ear for a second, a tell-tale sign of bad news. Nine times out of ten, the anticipation was worse than the actual news. Hopefully, this wasn’t the one time.

  Cheyenne answered, “We’ve got a body on the east side.”

  Monday Funday. Hooray.

  Jason sighed and idly walked back to the chair. With the weight of the situation, he flopped down.

  “Suicide? Homicide?” he asked. My two favorite words.

  “That’s why they called us. Forensics are doing their preliminary investigations. Garth and Sam are running up there now.”

  “All right.” He sounded exhausted and weak already. The looming cloud of death always seemed to zap him, no matter how used to it he tried to convince himself he was. “What’s the location?”

  “I’m heading that way now. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Sounds great. Thanks.”

  “See you in about four minutes.”

  She hung up first. The feeling of angst appeared to be mutual.

  He slid the phone into his pocket and stood. Despite the tranquility of the house, his head throbbed. The last death he had gotten called to was a suicide seven months ago, and he had forgotten how morbid it really was.

  No transition from light to dark, from life to death. Reality wasn’t that gracious. Just poof, gone forever into the unknown. If you were lucky, truly lottery-winning lucky, someone cared.

  Jason’s feet slid across the floor as he walked into his bedroom.