The Hostage (26 page)

“Wait a second. Don’t get too far. We’re gonna need to talk to you.”

Drake turned around. He was ten feet away now and only five feet from the door to the stairwell.

“I’ll wait over here. I don’t want to be too close when that thug comes out.”

Someone yelled from inside the apartment.

They’d found his wet shirt on the floor in the bedroom.

The ruse was up.

Drake bolted for the stairwell. By the time he got through the door and was down the first flight of steps he could hear heavy footfalls directly behind him.

They were close and moving in fast. He had to think of something. The trap had not been completely sprung yet.

On the twelfth floor he opened the door to the hall and turned to close it. As fast as his weak legs would carry him, Drake bolted down the hall. He needed to get to the other end before a cop could come through the door behind him and offer to use his weapon.

While running the length of the corridor he began banging on the apartment doors. He knocked on every door he passed and yelled out one word over and over.

“Fire!”

Then with deft precision, he yanked down the red handle on a fire alarm unit as he passed it. The entire building went live with the sound of the shrill scream of the alarm, telling everyone to get out.

Doors started opening behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see one of those doors was to the stairwell and numerous cops were barreling through. One of them lifted his arm and yelled for him to stop.

Other doors were opening. Some of the ones he’d knocked on moments ago. Five or six people randomly entered the twelfth floor hallway standing between the cops and Drake. He saw all this as he ran, nearing the door to the far stairwell in record time. He was sure the cops were yelling things like ‘Freeze’ and ‘Get outta the way’ but no one would be able to hear them as the fire alarm drowned them out. It would appear to be a normal or routine event seeing authorities on the floor of your apartment building while the fire alarm raged.

Drake hit the door running and raced down the stairs to the floors below. Other people were entering the stairwell ahead of him, alerted by the alarm and not wanting to risk the elevator. He mixed in with the running crowd. By the time he got to the sixth floor he removed the torn T-shirt and tossed it onto the floor, its purpose served.

Now dressed in an orange Dead Head T-shirt, he tousled his hair and continued down. Where the strength to continue came from he didn’t know. Adrenaline pumped through his veins like it’d been injected straight from a can of Red Bull.

He’d lost the hundred bucks as that was in his jacket pocket back in the drug dealer’s living room. He’d lost his jacket and his cookies in the same apartment. He’d even left his fingerprints on the plate and utensils he’d touched at the dining room table. The only thing he still had were his car keys. Luckily those were something he always placed in his jeans pocket and not the jacket.

He wondered, as he passed the third floor completely surrounded by people, if he also lost his sanity. Was he crazy now? Why was he running? He’d done nothing wrong. By that rationale, there was zero reason to run.

Yet he ran.

He didn’t even get to buy the drugs, thereby committing no act of breaking the law. He was as innocent as they come.

Yet he ran.

The first floor was coming up. He’d have to deal with the semantics of his situation another time.

The door was wide open, but most people continued down the stairs racing right by the first floor door. When Drake turned the corner he saw why.

A large red exit sign hung over the door to the outside where the people ahead of him were filing out. It was slow going as everyone seemed to clump together at the door.

He was almost free.

Through the opening it looked like the rain had stopped. People were gathering in groups. Neighbors, friends and relatives stood talking to one another, asking if the others knew anything.

The moment Drake got to the door, his heart dropped. Two Toronto cops were standing on either side monitoring the faces of the people exiting the building.

Back into his acting mode, he turned his face into a mask of discontent, looking miffed at the intrusion of a fire alarm. He even yawned as he stumbled out the door. As a last minute thought he turned to the guy behind him and said, “Working the night shift sucks when you get these alarms in the middle of the day like this.”

Both cops were in earshot. He knew they heard him. As he passed them they waved him on and Drake was out.

They weren’t looking for a thirty year old in an orange Dead Head T-shirt who was yawning and complaining about being woken up. They were looking for a guy who was running ragged, with a ripped neck line on his T-shirt and who had wet hair. When he’d tousled his hair it only looked like he had gel in it.

Through the throng of people on the lawn, up to the sidewalk and across Victoria Park Avenue Drake walked. On the way to his car his legs weakened, the adrenaline wearing off. He turned around several times, but no one was following him. He’d gotten away clean.

Ten minutes later he saw his car parked right where he’d left it. Now sitting in the front seat, his hands were shaking too much to get the key in. Drake sat there and tilted his head back to lean it on the headrest, trying to get his breathing controlled. Tears came. He wept for what he had seen. For the nameless girl that had been so brutally killed. He cried for the people who could’ve done such a thing. How was this possible? Why set
him
up? How was his father involved? Nothing added up and everything felt wrong on so many levels.

Pictures of the woman’s naked corpse assailed his mind over and over causing him to feel sick again.

He needed to get home to feel safe. He needed out of here, but could he drive? Was he capable of operating a motor vehicle?

Drake tried the key again and this time it went in without a problem. He turned the car on, dropped it into gear and looked over his shoulder.

The bald guy was about a hundred feet away.

He was smiling, watching him.

Drake froze. His Pontiac 6000 sat idling, his foot on the brake, hand on the steering wheel.

The bald guy was in a large blue pick-up truck about thirty meters back, parked in his own spot. Drake watched as he got out of the truck and stepped down to the pavement. Snake head closed his door and stood there watching Drake. Their eyes locked for what felt like long minutes but were only seconds.

Then snake head did something that made Drake almost lose it completely.

He reached to his midsection and jerked his hand up and down indicating the vivisection wound on the girl in the apartment. With his left hand he pointed at Drake to indicate he was next.

Then he ran a hand across his neck in the international symbol of cutting one’s throat.

Drake pulled away. It was the only response he had. The only thing he could do. It was obvious the bald guy meant him harm. Somehow he had been pegged for this.

What the bald guy didn’t account for was that Drake would make it out of the building.

The bald guy also missed that now Drake would be a wanted man. Once you strip a man’s liberties and toss him to the wolves, any man would come out fighting.

Drake wasn’t the fighting type. He didn’t want this nor did he ask for it. But fear had a way of changing a man. The fear of being taken by the police caused him to act in ways he never thought he would have.

The fear of threats caused anger to rise in him.

Staring at the bald guy as he mocked the death of the girl in the apartment and then slit his throat with his finger to indicate to Drake what’s coming caused a violence to stir in Drake that he never thought possible.

In that moment he realized he would have to kill the bald guy or be killed by him.

Chapter 2

Drake made it to his apartment without delay. A couple police cruisers passed him on the Gardiner Expressway but none paid him any attention. Exhausted from the ordeal, he sat on his couch to rest and gather his thoughts.

What was he going to do? He had no idea who that bald guy was or why he tried to set him up. Who was the girl and why did she have to die? The big question was how long it would take the police to catch up with him. After all, Drake would be an easy guy to find. He had a health card, debit cards and a Visa. He paid rent, worked as a forklift operator at a loading dock in Etobicoke and paid his taxes on time. Any government computer could be summoned to give up everything from his middle name and date of birth all the way to when he had his last shit.

There was no future in hiding. By that rationale, there was no future in running either.

He turned to his side and spread out on the couch to lay down. It was just past five in the afternoon. If there was ever a time to stop and think it would be right now. After today he would be like the guy in The Fugitive, running from the police attempting to solve the murder before they caught up to him.

Can I really do it? Seriously
, he asked himself,
is this what my life has become
?

And what about his father? Why would he send him to meet Charles Manson’s brother? Didn’t he check into the name and address before just randomly delivering his son up shit river?

Drake closed his eyes and monitored his breathing. Other than the shakes that were wearing off, he was coming back around, the rush of the past few hours ebbing.

When he opened his eyes the apartment had grown dark. He shot up and looked around assuming that someone had been here and turned off the lights. No one was in the apartment. The drapes were open and the street lights were lit.

He must’ve fallen asleep. After standing and a quick stretch to awaken the muscles, he walked into the kitchen and saw that it was 10:49pm.

“Shit,” he said out loud. “I fell asleep for over five hours.”

So much could have happened in that time. He turned around to the fridge and began to prepare something to eat. In under a minute he’d made a sandwich and ate it in four bites.

It was two minutes to eleven in the evening when he sat down in front of the television to check in on the local news.

He turned on
City Pulse 24
, the all-news channel.

A picture of him sat on the screen. A police sketch artist had done a mock up of his face from all the witnesses. The reporter was at the scene of a brutal murder in an apartment building in the 700 block of Victoria Park Avenue. A woman had been beaten, raped and stabbed to death.

“Homicide detectives are looking for this man. He was witnessed entering the building by a woman with her two children. The woman said he appeared to be quite rude.”

The screen changed to film the legs of two men.

“
These two men claim the suspect called them on in the lobby of the building as they came off the elevator.”

“Can you tell us anything else?”

“Yeah, man, this dude was crazy. We be walking off the elevator minding our own bizness and he be all up in our face and asking us what our problem is. My cuz and I don’t understand white dudes coming up on our turf and saying sh—(
beep)
like that.”

“There you have it. Police are getting close to identifying this man.”

Drake’s picture was back on the screen.

“
This man is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If you see this man do not approach him. Call the Toronto Police at…”

He turned the T.V. off. Lies, all lies. Those guys called
him
on. The woman with the kids was rude to
him
. He didn’t kill anyone and yet the police were looking for him for murder.

This wasn’t a dream as much as a nightmare. No way all this was happening.

Could his dad have set this up? If so, why?

He reached to the end of the couch and grabbed the phone. After pressing the number four and holding it down, the phone speed dialed his parent’s place.

Six rings and the machine picked up.

Damn, where were they
?

He knew his parents would be asleep by this hour but he still wanted to talk to his dad. He needed answers and he needed them now.

There was no where to turn, no where to run.

Who was the bald guy and what did he want?

A light flashed across the ceiling of his apartment. Drake dropped lower into the couch as if he could disappear through the cushion. He studied the stucco roof, waiting to see it again.

Nothing.

The only window was the living room window. He was on the second floor of Applewood Towers. It was conceivable that a car’s headlights could have crossed the window and bounced off his ceiling.