The Hunter Inside (6 page)

The door opened and in
walked Special Agent Sam O’Neill. Out walked Pat Forsby. Paul Wayans just about
managed to stop his lower jaw from hitting the floor of the room. O’Neill was
huge; six feet five inches if he was one. Paul had been expecting a little
slimy faggot of a man. Nothing could have prepared him for the actuality of the
person whose accusatory voice had so offended him earlier in the day.

O’Neill loomed over him,
and in the same tone that had left Paul Wayans wanting blood that morning, said
‘So. You’re our man, Paul Wayans?’ His voice was not angry, not mocking, not
anything in fact. It was neutral, calm. To Paul, he sounded almost resigned,
and he was definitely unnerved by this man. He could see by looking at him why
he was in a position of such power, he emanated success and strength.

‘What do you mean, I’m your
man?’ Paul’s question deflected back at him from the cold, stone walls of the
room, confirming to him that the bewilderment and fear he felt were plain for
anyone to hear.

‘I think you know what I
mean, Mr. Wayans.’ The power conveyed in the man’s countenance was backed up by
his tone of voice. He sounded like a man who knew how to get what he wanted,
and his confident, forceful tone was a far cry from the feeling that Paul
Wayans had building up in his own stomach. Now that his earlier thought - that
the police would suspect him of being involved in the murder shown in the
photograph - had been explicitly backed up by the big Special Agent’s opening
remark, the full extent of the fear he felt seemed to ooze through his skin.
His head spun.

‘Let’s talk, Paul. Shall we
talk? Are you ready to talk to me, Paul?’ The repetitive nature of the Special
Agent made him sound like a parrot. Oddly enough, Wayans wasn’t amused by it.
Even if he had been he would not have allowed it to show. He raised his eyes to
the fixed, hard stare of Special Agent O’Neill. It felt hot, like it would burn
through the corneas of his eyes, and he dropped them to focus on the scarred
formica table.

‘Listen O’Neill, you’re
making a big mistake here.’ His voice was shaky and O’Neill countered,

‘If I’m making a mistake,
then why don’t you tell me how you came to be in possession of this
photograph?’ He held the photograph under Paul Wayans’ eyes and Paul quickly
shut them. He didn’t want to look at it again.

‘It came in the mail.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Paul looked up to see the Special Agent’s
response. O’Neill did the thing Paul Wayans least expected him to do; he burst
into laughter. It took him two minutes to regain his composure, and when he
eventually did he said, ‘Cut the bullshit Paul.’

‘I swear to you, it’s not
bullshit. It came in the mail. Well, not literally in the mail. It just had my
name on the envelope, so it must have been hand delivered. I’ve had dozens of
letters from someone who says they’re going to kill me. They sent me that
photograph to show me that they mean business.’ The words came out all at once
and his shoulders slumped outwards and backwards as he inhaled deeply, his face
reddening.

‘If this is true then I
suppose you’ll be able to produce these items of mail?’

‘No,’ he whispered.

‘No? Then where are they
Mr. Wayans?’ He was mocking him now, sensing his vulnerability.

‘I threw them away.’
Okay,
here we go
, Wayans thought to himself.
What comes next?

‘Right, let me get this straight in my
mind.’ He paused. ‘Okay, someone
hand delivers
you a ton of mail to tell
you that they’re going to kill you. Then you, in all your wisdom, throw this
mail away and don’t tell anyone. Is that right, Mr. Wayans? Jeez, that’s some
survival sense you got there.’

‘I figured if I came to you
you’d only tell me it was somebody playing a prank on me. And that’s what I
half thought myself, until today. Or you’d think I was mad.’

‘
Me?
Think you were mad?
Why would I possibly think that, Mr. Wayans?’ He loathed the relish with which
O’Neill exerted this pressure on him. He imagined he’d extracted a few
confessions from innocent men in the past – he was ruthless.

‘So, why did you kill him
Paul?’ The question shocked Wayans. He felt for a moment that he’d fall off the
chair he was sitting on. It was obviously the next step of questioning. He’d
seen it in all the best movies, but it still shocked him nonetheless. He didn’t
know what to say, so he didn’t say anything at all. This didn’t deter the big
Special Agent, who simply moved on to his next question.

‘Okay, so where have you
been for the last seven days?’ This was the question he dreaded the most. He
hadn’t left the house in seven days. It was getting near his and Marcie’s
wedding anniversary, and the depression that he felt meant that he hadn’t faced
the outside world for a whole week. Things were going from bad to worse in the
life of Paul Wayans, and he wished he could change it now. Rewind the hands of
time and try it all over again. Would it turn out the same?

‘I’ve been at home, alone.’

‘For seven days? Why would
you stay at home, alone, for seven days? Who was the last person to see you?’

‘Erm… It was Todd Mayhew,
last Wednesday afternoon outside the Shop2Drop.’

‘Well, that’s no good to
me, Mr. Wayans. You see, if your account of your whereabouts can’t be backed up
by an alibi, then we have a problem. Let me tell you something, Paul. I’ve been
in this business for a real long time and it’s always pretty clear when someone
has something to hide. Kapeesh? How long ago did your wife die? Five years
wasn’t it?’

His methods were designed
to unsettle Wayans. ‘Yes.’

‘So, your wife is killed;
you’re a broken man. You quit your job, move your home and become a loner. But
that doesn’t help, because now you have all this extra time on your hands. And
what does a man do with time on his hands? I’ll tell you what he does, Paul, he
thinks. He does nothing
but
think, and that’s when it all starts getting
garbled. I’ve seen it. When it gets garbled you get angry. Angry that the lamp
she bought – the lamp you never liked – is still there but she isn’t. You begin
to think
‘Damn that lamp’
, and now you’re getting really angry. I really
am surprised just how small that step into killing is to make. You know what I
mean,
don’t
you Paul? I mean, why not hey?’ O’Neill went on
relentlessly, ‘I mean, if someone can turn your world upside down, then why
can’t you do it to them? Makes sense doesn’t it?’

‘I never killed anybody.’
He looked up at the man who towered over him, tears in his eyes, and pinched
himself under the table. Maybe if he pinched hard enough he’d wake up and none
of this would ever have happened. But he wasn’t waking up. He was already
awake.

O’Neill’s gaze was
impassive, and he stared at Wayans, never once blinking in all the time Paul
looked at him. O’Neill stood and picked up the photograph. He held it five
inches away from his face, scanning it slowly from top to bottom. Not even this
brought any change in his countenance.

His expression did not
change because he had a feeling about this set of circumstances that wasn’t
going to go away. He was absolutely positive that Paul Wayans was involved more
closely than he was letting on in this murder. He was sure that if he was wrong
about Wayans committing the murder - and it would be a while yet before he
would consider this - then he at very least knew the man who had committed the
crime. But there were still other avenues of persuasion that he hadn’t tried.

Taking a step towards the
table O’Neill paused. He was now looming over Wayans once more, who lifted his
head and received a back handed slap from O’Neill that nearly knocked him onto
the floor of the room.

‘Mother fuck…’ came the
muffled and predictable response, as Paul threw his hands up to his face, as
much to inspect the damage as to ward off any further blows that might be
coming his way.

‘Now tell me, you bastard!
WHY DID YOU KILL JOHN RILEY?’

Removing his hands from his
face, Paul was not surprised to see blood smeared across his palm. He figured
it came from his lip, which he had felt snag on his tooth and which began to
swell instantly. This was a strong man. All he had done was slap Paul, and boy
had it hurt. He did not relish taking a serious punch off this guy; he was a
man mountain.

‘I didn’t even know the
sonofabitch,’ Paul yelped defiantly, his speech affected slightly by the
swelling to his bottom lip.

‘I’m only going to ask you
one more time…’

‘You’ve got to believe me
here. I didn’t know this man, I never met this man, and I sure as
hell
never killed him. The letters were real. I can see the problems you have with
this but it’s the truth, and that’s all that I can tell you.’ He was pleading
with the Special Agent. It was all he could think of to do.

‘This is a crock of shit,
Paul. I know you aren’t that keen on talking yourself into life without parole,
but you don’t expect me to believe that out of these ‘letters’ you never kept
one?’ He walked around the edge of the table. This made Wayans nervous.

‘I never thought that this
guy was serious. Anyway, I don’t have to talk to you. I know my rights.
Attorney and a phone call, right? Well, I’d like to take up those two options
right away. And before I also take up my right to silence I’ll tell you this:
You haven’t got anything but that photograph as evidence against me. You won’t
find anything else to link me to that murder and do you want to know why?
Because I didn’t commit that murder is why. When my attorney gets here you’ll
have to let me go.’ With that Paul Wayans shut his mouth. He wasn’t keen on
talking himself into life without parole, as Special Agent O’Neill would have
put it. Defiance had replaced desperation.

‘You’re one cocky bastard,
aren’t you?’ O’Neill spat the words at him. ‘Well, Paul, I’ve just got one more
thing
I’d
like to make clear.’ He stepped back and his face hardened.
Paul knew what was coming, but he wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way of
it. The pain gushed through his face and he fell backwards off the chair he had
been perched upon. Sam O’Neill walked out of the room and locked the door
behind him.

*

Paul sat, nursing a busted nose that
went nicely with the split lip he had already received. He was dazed and
shaking, and he couldn’t wait to get out of the police station.

It would be evening before
he could get home. It was three now and Jim Brown, his attorney, would have to
get there and work his magic first. Forsby entered the room and asked him for
his attorney’s details. Paul took a pen from him and wrote them down. He wasn’t
prepared to speak to this man only to feel stinging pain from his busted lip.
Forsby took the paper and left the room.

Paul began to think of what
he would have to face when he did arrive home. Thinking about it, he reasoned
with himself that this could be even worse than the pain that spread through
his face from his nose, which he suspected was broken. He mused upon the fact
that this probably meant a black eye come tomorrow, but this didn’t seem too
important in the grand scheme of things according to Paul Wayans.

It was to more worrying
matters that he turned his attention. He thought back through his life, trying
to think of somebody who might hold a grudge against him. But as much as he
thought about it, he couldn’t think of anybody that he thought capable of
committing such a barbaric act. It was only when he thought back to his
childhood that something came into his mind.

But surely that was absurd?

He thought about the
stories his grandmother had told him when he was a child. He remembered the
dreams that plagued him as a result of those stories. His grandmother had died
when he was seven, but he had researched the legend of Shimasou when he was old
enough to understand what had caused the dreams. Surely, it couldn’t be that?
But what if it was?

Paul felt the absurdity of
his situation again plainly. It was surely madness to put these happenings down
to an old legend, but he couldn’t think of anything else. He would have to tell
someone. But who? He couldn’t tell these cops. Hell, O’Neill would probably
beat him to death and Jim Brown, as good an attorney as he was, couldn’t be
expected to believe such a fantastic story as the one he had to tell.

He would have to wait for
his ordeal in Atlantic Beach to be over. Then he would go back home and talk to
Todd Mayhew. He would believe him. Good old Todd would believe him. He was a
good friend.

Yes. He would tell Todd –
before it was too late.

Bill Arnold’s Wednesday morning was
not as traumatic as Paul Wayans’. It was, however, filled with the same
turbulent feelings as the ones that Paul Wayans was experiencing.

He awoke at 8:30 AM, with a
mouth that felt as dry as the Sahara Desert. Groaning, he lifted up his head to
realize that he was still on the sofa, the TV blaring out MTV, a corkscrew
turning through his head.

He wondered just how much
he’d drunk, and was answered by looking at the table in front of him. Three
quarters of the whiskey was gone and nine bottles of Bud stood empty, not
looking anywhere near as gloriously appealing as they had the night before.
Bill wondered why on earth he poisoned himself so badly, and decided that he
would never drink again. Worms tunneled deeper and further into his brain as
the room swirled in a haze of grogginess that was half-hangover, half-sleep.