Read The Shadow Hunter Online

Authors: Michael Prescott

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Psychological, #Suspense Fiction, #Stalkers, #Pastine; Tuvana, #Stalking, #Private Security Services, #Sinclair; Abby (Fictitious Character), #Stalking Victims

The Shadow Hunter (9 page)

BOOK: The Shadow Hunter
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He got back in the car. Two blocks later he stopped at a convenience store and used another pay phone.

He felt it was important to call from a variety of locations.

To stay on the line too long at any one place might have been dangerous. He wasn’t sure why. He just knew he had to stay on the move.

This time he called her work number, reaching her voice mail service.

“Hello, Kris. I guess you’re busy getting ready for the six o’clock show. I wanted to ask if you got the flowers I sent last week. I hope you liked them. I picked the same arrangement you had on your desk in the LA Magazine photo shoot. It was hard to match the bouquet exactly.

You should cut off the tips of the stems every few days to keep the flowers fresh.

Oh, this is Raymond, in case you couldn’t tell. Break a leg.”

He drove for another mile, parked at a mini-mall, and used a pay phone outside a submarine sandwich shop. He called the KPTI switchboard.

“Kris Barwood, please.” The operator said Ms. Barwood was unavailable.

This might have been true, but it was more likely that the woman simply recognized Hickle’s voice. He did call the switchboard nearly every day, after all.

“May I take a message?” she asked.

“Yes, please tell her Raymond Hickle called. I have some urgent information for her, but I can’t convey it through an intermediary.

It’s important that I speak with Kris directly.”

“I’ll pass that on,” the operator said, sounding bored. He noticed she did not ask him for a number where he could be reached.

He hung up, drove three more blocks, parked at a fast-food restaurant, and used the pay phone, calling Kris’s home number again and shifting his weight restlessly until the answering machine beeped.

“Kris, hi, it’s Raymond. Look, I wanted to tell you this directly, but it looks as if we keep playing telephone tag, so I’ll have to leave a message. The thing is, I had a dream about you, and it might have been a prophetic dream. I saw you doing the news, and you were reporting on a murder, one of those driveby shootings, and then a car came careening right through the wall and into the TV studio, and shots were fired, and you were hit, Kris. You were hit, and there was blood all over. You were a bloody mess. I don’t think they caught who did it, either. I thought it was something you should know. Sometimes dreams foretell the future, or so people say. Gotta go now, bye.”

He drove a half block, parked at the curb, and risked returning to the same pay phone for a quick followup that had just occurred to him.

“One more thing,” he said when he got through to her home number.

“You know that flower arrangement I sent you? It would look good at a funeral, don’t you think? Talk to you soon.”

He thought he was done, but three blocks later he pulled into a supermarket parking lot and used his last thirty-five cents to call the KPTI switchboard again.

The same operator answered.

“Kris Barwood, please,” Hickle said.

She let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry, but Ms. Barwood—”

“Is unavailable. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“Yes, sir. I can take a message—”

“Would you, please? Uh, tell her Raymond called.

Just Raymond, no last name. She knows me.”

“Fine, sir, I’ll do that.”

“And one more thing? Hello?”

“I’m still here. What is it?”

“Tell her I hope a fucking rat crawls between her legs and chews out her fucking cunt.”

He hung up. He had raised his voice at the end. A woman with a small child was staring at him from across the parking lot. He spat at her as he walked back to his car. She hurried away, and her little boy began to cry.

Hickle arrived home shortly after five o’clock. He parked in his assigned space under a carport and went inside.

The Gainford Arms, one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood, was a relic of the era before garden apartments became fashionable—a rectangular brick pile, five stories high, with rows of small windows looking out on the dismal street in front and the parking lot in the rear. Iron fire escapes climbed the back of the building. Hickle sometimes sat on the fire escape outside his bedroom window and watched the sunset fade over the towers of more expensive real estate to the west.

In the lobby he checked his mail. There was a bunch of junk, a gas bill, and a reply from a TV station in Cincinnati. The station regretted to inform him that it had no photos of its former weekend anchorwoman available for public dissemination. It thanked Hickle for his interest.

He threw away the junk mail and the station’s reply.

A couple of months ago he had written to every TV station where Kris had worked, requesting her photo from the archives. So far the responses had all been negative. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore.

He rode the rattletrap elevator to the fourth floor.

The elevator was slow. He passed the time reading graffiti on the walls.

His apartment, number 420, was halfway down the hall. He was fumbling for his keys when he noticed that the door to the apartment next door was open. A large, battered suitcase stood at the threshold. As he watched, a slender, dark-haired woman in a T-shirt and jeans stepped out of the doorway and picked up the suitcase.

She glanced at him and smiled.

“Howdy, neighbor.”

Hickle nodded.

She carried the suitcase into her apartment and shut the door. Must be moving in. He wondered who she was.

Once inside his apartment, he forgot her. This was his private place, his refuge from the world. Appraised objectively, it was a narrow, depressing hole. Cracks veined the plaster walls. There were no curtains anywhere;

the windows were covered by sagging blinds, raised and lowered by pull-cords with paper clips at the ends. The carpet was a nauseous shade of gray green, like mold, and its short-nap fibers had been stamped flat in the heavy-traffic areas.

Heat was supplied by an upright gas furnace against one wall, with a vent feeding into the bedroom.

Nearly all furnishings were provided by the management. In the living room there was a battered sofa, the cushions flattened and misshapen; an armchair with a vinyl seat; chipped and mismatched end tables; undersized lamps with spotted shades. The landlord had also supplied the thirteen-inch TV with rabbit ears—no cable here—but Hickle had purchased the VCR that rested underneath. Lacking shelves, he had customized a few tables out of apple crates to fill up empty corners and undecorated walls. He had wanted to buy a computer but couldn’t justify the expense, so he used the public terminals at the Goldwyn Hollywood Library on Ivar Avenue a mile away.

The kitchen area was a tiny alcove, equipped with a gas oven that had not been cleaned since he moved in, and a refrigerator that leaked on the linoleum floor.

Two stained potholders hung forlornly from hooks under the cupboard.

Empty soda cans and glass jars were assembled on the counter; he redeemed them for nickels at the local Safeway.

Sharing a wall with the kitchen was the windowless bathroom, smaller than a closet. A ribbon of rust ran down the wall from the medicine cabinet to the sink.

More rust fringed the frame of the shower door, competing with a patina of mildew.

Finally there was the bedroom. The bed sagged.

Some of the mattress springs were broken. One spring had punctured the mattress itself, its jagged end poking up like a weapon. When Hickle had informed the landlord of “this problem, he had been told to flip the mattress. Isn’t it time to get a new bed? he’d asked quietly.

The landlord had answered. Maybe it’s time for you to get a new apartment. What do you think this is, the Ritz fucking Carlton?

He had no air-conditioning; when the hot Santa Ana winds blew in from the desert, he sweltered like a beast in a cage. At night he was kept awake by the radios from cars moving in and out of the parking lot, where drug deals had been known to go down. A few months ago a dealer had been fatally shot by a rival.

The Gainford Arms was a crummy place, yet it offered him privacy. With the blinds pulled and the door locked and chained, he was as free as he could be from watchful eyes. He was free-There was a knock on his door.

Hickle looked up, his head canted at an odd angle, his breath held.

Momentarily he was baffled by the prospect of company. Nobody ever visited him. He had no friends, and the apartment building’s outside doors were locked to keep out trespassers.

Could it be the people who were watching him? The people Kris had hired? Would they be so brazen as to approach him directly?

He crossed the living room, moving warily. Before opening his door, he peered through the fish-eye peephole.

It was the dark-haired woman, the one who’d said howdy.

He removed the security chain and drew back the deadbolt. This was an adventure—talking to an unfamiliar woman—and he felt his heart beating harder than it should.

The door swung ajar under his hand, and he was facing her.

“Hi again,” she said brightly.

He nodded, then realized a response was called for.

“Hello.”

“Sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where the phone outlet is?”

“Phone outlet?”

“Not the one in the living room. I found that. But there must be one in the bedroom somewhere. I’ve been crawling around on my hands and knees like a moron, but I can’t find it.”

“There isn’t one.”

“There’s gotta be.”

“Only one. All these apartments have the same layout. The only phone outlet is in the living room. If you need a phone in the bedroom, you’ll have to get an extra-long phone cord.”

She sighed.

“Any other surprises the landlord didn’t want to spoil for me?”

“Probably quite a few. There’s not enough hot water in the mornings, so take your shower early. Don’t hook up too many appliances on any circuit, or you’ll blow a fuse.”

“This gets better and better.”

Hickle risked humor.

“Not exactly a garden spot, is it?”

She rewarded him with a laugh.

“That might be an understatement.”

“So are you an actress?” Damn. He hadn’t meant to say that. It had come out of nowhere and sounded strange.

She didn’t seem put off by the question, though.

“No. What makes you think I might be?”

Because you’re so pretty—but what he said was “We’ve got a fair number of aspiring show-biz types in this building.”

The explanation was lame, but she appeared to buy it.

“Well, I’m not an actress. Actually, I’m not much. of anything right now. I just came here from Riverside-you know, everybody’s favorite desert hellhole. Spent last night in a Motel Six.”

“No job?”

“I’ll find something. I can type. I use all ten fingers.”

She held up both hands, as if to demonstrate that she really did have the full complement of digits.

“How about you? What do you do?”

“I work at a restaurant.” He wasn’t sure why he had lied. Not lied, exactly. Exaggerated the truth.

“Really? A restaurant around here?”

“Beverly Hills.” Another untruth.

She was impressed.

“Wow.”

“It’s just a job.” He looked for a way to change the subject.

“So what’s your name?”

“Abby Gallagher.”

“I’m Raymond. Raymond Hickle.”

“Glad to meet you, Raymond Hickle.” She smiled.

“It’s good to have a nice neighbor.”

This was too much for him. He had no idea how to handle anyone’s kindness, and certainly not the kindness of an attractive young woman.

“Likewise,” he said weakly.

“Good luck getting moved in.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

He watched her walk away. When she was inside her apartment, he slowly shut his door.

She ought to be an actress, he decided. She was pretty enough. She had hazel eyes and smooth skin and dark brown hair in a cute pageboy cut, and she was fit and slim. Nice, she had called him. How often had a woman said that about him? Said it right to his face? And she had smiled.

Then he wondered if it wasn’t a little odd that Abby Gallagher had come to him for help when the landlord was still on duty. She had found one phone outlet. She could have called the office to ask about an outlet in the bedroom. Instead, after making eye contact in the hall, she had knocked on his door.

Could she be… interested in him? Interested, the way women sometimes were interested in men?

New to the city. Friendless. Lonely.

“Impossible,” he whispered.

Anyway, he had higher priorities. He had the shotgun and what he meant to do with it.

He had Kris.

Most nights Hickle dined on beans and rice, a cheap and nourishing repast. At 5:57, right on time, he ladled the pot’s steaming contents onto a plastic plate and carried the plate to a card table, setting it down beside a can of diet soda, a spoon, and a paper napkin. He sat on the couch behind the card table and used his remote control to turn on the TV. It was always set to Channel Eight; he never watched anything else. His VCR was loaded with an eight-hour tape and set to record automatically at 6 and 10 p.m. every weekday.

“That does it for us,” the male half of the 5 p.m. anchor team was saying.

“Let’s check in with Kris and Matt to see what’s coming up at six.”

Hickle leaned forward. It was always interesting to see what she was wearing. Today she had on a bluegreen blouse, open at the collar to reveal the taut skin over her collarbone. She said something about a fire in Ventura, an arrest in a murder case, a good outlook for weekend weather. The words didn’t matter. He studied her face. Was she thinking of him right now? Could he see fear in her eyes?

“All of that,” her partner concluded, “is straight ahead on Real News at six.”

Theme music. The faces of the anchors and reporters against a montage of news images. The Channel Eight logo. An announcer saying, “KPTI Real News, number one at six, with Kris Barwood and Matt Dale…”

Hickle sat and watched. When the camera was not on Kris, he lifted spoonfuls of beans and rice into his mouth, washing them down with soda. When she was on the screen, he did not move or even blink. There were so many details to watch for. Even after all this time, he had not yet decided on the exact color of her eyes. Were they blue or gray or some mysterious blend? She wore earrings today but not the ones he’d sent her. The shade of lipstick she was using seemed different than usual. A lighter, more natural shade, a good decision; it brought out the glow of her skin. She laughed during the weather segment. He saw the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth, the explosive flash of her smile.

BOOK: The Shadow Hunter
5.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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