The Hunter Inside (23 page)

He hadn’t recognized her
even when she had lifted her head, and he took a compliment from her greeting
that soothed his faltering ego somewhat. He stood smiling for a second before
saying, ‘Good afternoon. Can you direct me to my fellow officer, Hoskins?’

‘Sure, of course. You need
to go through these doors and follow the corridor until you see an archway. Go
through the archway and turn left. It’s Doctor Jules’ room.’

‘Thanks,’ O’Neill replied,
before pushing his way through the doors and walking down a wide corridor that
stretched away in front of him until it reached an archway that as yet he could
not fully make out. As he continued, he ignored the view from the windows on
either side of him in favor of the archway that he now approached. It was
amazingly ornate, with stone children surrounded by flowers that were also
carved from stone that intertwined around them, covering their nudity and
maintaining their innocence as they played on despite their obviously old age.
The building itself was more modern, which explained its drabness, and O’Neill
realized that the new building must have been built around this, very old
archway. He passed through the archway and turned into another corridor. This,
he thought, was very much a part of the new building.

To his left, windows were
blocked by notice boards containing prevalent articles from different medical
journals that O’Neill did not pay much attention to. To his right, across the
length of the corridor, were three doors. The first door contained a plastic
sign that read ‘Dr. Heinze’. O’Neill continued on to the second door and saw
that its sign read ‘Dr. Jules’. He rapped on the door with the knuckles of his
left hand and waited a moment before entering the room. It was a laboratory,
with shelves on one wall that were lined with large textbooks. On the other
side of the room was a desk piled high with paperwork, and O’Neill thought this
a very similar filing technique to his own as he walked towards the two men
standing with their backs to him in the center of the room, looking at a second
computer screen that seemed to be either scanning something or checking
directories. As he approached, Hoskins whirled around and said, ‘Jesus, Chief.
I nearly died.’

‘You didn’t hear me knock,
O’Neill replied as he shook hands with Doctor Jules.

The doctor smiled in
amusement at the words spoken to the shaken Hoskins. ‘Hello, Special Agent
O’Neill. How are you?’ O’Neill let go of his hand and turned back to Hoskins.
‘Okay, Hoskins. I want you to do something very important for me.’

Hoskins’ face became a
picture of concentration, as he waited for his instructions. ‘I want you to go
outside and keep an eye on my car. Make sure it doesn’t get towed away. We all
know how tight police budgets are nowadays.’

Hoskins shook his head in
disgust at O’Neill. It was obvious that he didn’t want to let him in on the
details of the case, and Hoskins did not try to hide the fact that he did not
want to be O’Neill’s personal assistant. O’Neill didn’t care about his
feelings. He turned away without reacting to Hoskins’ look. A dejected Hoskins
turned and left the room, before O’Neill continued, ‘Okay Doctor, what’s the
news?’

‘Well, Special Agent
O’Neill. As you know, officers at the crime scene found two spots in the garden
of the house from where they think the victim was observed.’

‘Yes.’

‘They did an excellent job
of collecting anything that might have contained DNA from the killer, or
killers, of Paul Wayans.’ The doctor managed to raise another smile.

‘What did they find?’
O’Neill was eager to hear what the doctor had to say and tried to prompt him
onwards.

‘Well, from the first spot
nearest the house they didn’t find anything that could give us any clues. But
from the second spot they retrieved a hair. They also found a hair on the
stairs of house, and that hair belonged to the same person. I’m waiting on a
result from the FBI files to see if they have a match; and you know yourself
Special Agent, that anyone who has touched a dollar bill in the United States
of America has a record on this system.’

Both men watched the screen
tentatively in silence. A window in the middle of the screen almost buzzed,
such was the speed of the names and other information that passed through the
system, before the speakers that were placed on either side of the monitor
attempted to initiate another conversation.

‘Search complete. One
match,’ the computer piped up in its monosyllabic tone, before beginning to
produce an image of the person whose hair had been found at the Wayans crime
scene.

Doctor Jules and Special
Agent Sam O’Neill looked expectantly at one another, before both looked back at
the monitor. O’Neill always felt a sense of excitement welling up inside of him
as he got nearer to identifying a killer. As the hair and forehead of a woman
appeared on the screen, he wondered if a woman could be responsible for such
crimes. The force exercised in the murder of Riley and Wayans was equivalent to
no other murder scene he had witnessed, and he expected that if a woman were
involved then she surely must have a male accomplice. That would explain the
second spot in the garden, but he had obviously been more careful than the
woman whose eyes were now visible.

‘Can it go any faster than
this?’ O’Neill asked Doctor Jules, impatient to find out who he was dealing
with and get moving.

‘Yes. Hang on,’ Jules
replied and used the mouse to logoff from the main frame. As the window closed
the full picture became visible straight away.

Surely not
, O’Neill thought to
himself.
This can’t be the killer
.

The face that stared back
at him from the screen was the face of one Sandy Carson. Older now and with
longer hair, but unmistakably Sandy Carson. Her name had changed too; she was
now Sandy Myers, and a second theory came into the head of O’Neill. He thought
about the death of her parents, and remembered how they had been unable to
bring the case to a conclusion. It had been a case that he had badly wanted to solve;
the young Sandy Carson had been a teenager and the brutality of the murder
coupled with the loss of both of her parents had angered him.

Mayhew would say that the
first spot in the garden was where Shimasou had been watching Wayans, and that
there was no forensic evidence to be found because it was not made up of its
victims DNA, despite feeding from their strength and experience.

Maybe he was right. It
would certainly make a link. The murder of Sandy’s parents had been similar,
with the huge force that had been used to kill Riley and Wayans, and he had to
take the possibility of Sandy Carson being a victim seriously.

On the other hand, his
training and years of experience suggested another scenario that could explain
the presence of Sandy Carson’s hairs at the crime scene. It seemed to be on the
television regularly; a story about somebody who was so badly affected by the
murder of a loved one that they became murderers themselves, intent on gaining
revenge or realizing the killer’s objectives to ensure the death of their loved
one was not totally in vain.

‘Can you give me a
printout of this document?’ O’Neill asked Doctor Jules, breaking the silence
in the room that had existed for almost two minutes.

‘Of course,’ the doctor
replied, before continuing, ‘do you know this person? You seem to have gone a
little pale.’

‘Err…no,’ O’Neill replied.
He had not expected this question from the doctor and groped for an answer. ‘I
just haven’t had the time to eat yet today, that’s all.’

‘Sometimes you’ve got to make
the time, Special Agent.’ He handed the printout to O’Neill.

‘Thanks, Doctor. Listen,
I’ve got to go. There are a few things I need to check out back at base. But
once again, thanks for your time.’

‘Don’t mention it, Special
Agent. Just doing my job.’

O’Neill wondered whether it
was just a job, or whether Doctor Jules and he were unwittingly involved in
something much larger. ‘If you need any more help, please don’t hesitate to
call me,’ Doctor Jules said as O’Neill walked towards the door of the office.

‘I might take you up on
that,’ he said, and exited the room, closing the door gently behind him.

He walked quickly down the corridor
and away from the office of Doctor Jules. While considering what would be the
best course of action, he walked through the archway that had captivated him
minutes before without even glancing upwards.

Certainly, the first thing he’d do
would be to get something to eat; he hadn’t lied to the doctor when he’d told
him he hadn’t had the time to eat today. He would find a quiet place where he
could look at the file Todd Mayhew had given him and see if anything stood out.
At the very least he would be covering all possibilities; and police officers
were always apt to learn something new on a case – no matter what their age or
experience.

He thought about another
positive point of waiting before he went into the office to see what the
computer could turn up that might support Todd Mayhew’s story. The later he
went, the less people would be there to question him about what he was searching
for. He certainly didn’t want to bump into his boss while he was there; Lineker
would want answers, not theories; and as yet he had no answers to give. He
wasn’t even sure if he was asking the right questions, and he was desperate to
put some kind of order and plausible theory onto the recent events.

Hoskins stood, gloomily
staring down the road at something. He felt like the spare part of a toy that
was never allowed out of its box. Always on the sidelines looking in, and never
part of the action, he now looked at the face of his boss to see that he was
giving nothing away and, despite the pre-knowledge that he would probably not
receive an answer to his question, he asked, ‘What did DNA turn up?’

O’Neill cast him an
irritated look and snapped, ‘Nothing. No match.’

‘But that’s impossible,’
Hoskins exclaimed forcefully, ‘everybody who’s ever handled a…’

O’Neill interrupted,
raising his voice to drown out that of Hoskins. ‘Listen Hoskins. I know all the
theories. I also know of things called long shots. Have you ever heard of
those?’

‘Yes.’ Hoskins offered no
argument. He knew he’d have more chance of finding things out and maybe even
making progress on the case if he was not with O’Neill, a man who seemed to
forget that they were on the same team.

‘You go back to the
office,’ O’Neill said in a slightly less threatening tone. ‘If there’s any news
send me a message on my cell phone. Okay?’

‘Sure Chief, but where are
you going?’ Hoskins was a little worried about O’Neill. He was flitting from an
angry tone to a conciliatory one, and he felt that people dealing with cases
such as the ones that they were wrapped up in should be detached from their
work and in control of their emotions.

‘I’m going somewhere to
think. I need to try and get my head around this case,’ O’Neill told him,
dropping his guard enough to seem almost human to Hoskins, before turning and
walking towards his car.

‘Okay then Chief,’ Hoskins
said as he watched O’Neill unlock the car and open the door. ‘But listen; will
you call me if you have any news?’

The question went unheeded,
and O’Neill slammed the car door and started the engine, pulling away from the
curb and driving past Hoskins with no more than a glance.

There’s that guard again
, Hoskins thought, and
watched O’Neill’s car as it got smaller before eventually disappearing out of
sight.

*

O’Neill drove two blocks,
his stomach grumbling as he drove. After resolving to get food from the first
available place he saw, he pulled into the small lot of a fast-food joint and
purchased french fries and a hamburger. It was hardly gourmet food, but he was
neither a gourmet nor a gourmand person. Food was food, and he ate what he had
to eat to survive. At that moment it was food that would probably contrive
against his survival, but he regularly flouted doctors who told him he needed
to eat more healthily. His cholesterol was a problem, but at that moment
starvation also felt like it could be a problem. He ripped the paper off one of
the burgers and crammed the meat greedily into his mouth. He was so ravenous
that he crammed in more than he could chew, and was forced to swallow chunks
that came close to making him gag before continuing on their way to his stomach
where they would be used for their energy and strength-giving qualities. After
eating the entire hamburger in less than a minute and licking his fingers clean
of the grease that had been deposited on them by the oily compound, he began to
stuff the French fries into his mouth, pausing only for momentary mastication
before swallowing and refilling his mouth in a process that saw him eat the
fries almost as quickly as he had eaten the hamburger.

The food made him feel better
immediately, and he used a paper napkin to wipe his hands clean of the salt
that had been liberally applied to the fries. He gathered up the remnants and
refuse and placed them into the carrier he had been given when he’d purchased
the meal, before getting out of the car and pushing the bag through the
brightly colored swing-top lid of the establishment’s refuse collection point
and returning to his vehicle.