Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (3 page)

“Quick,” the bald guy replies.

They both lock eyes on Flint for half a second, smirk, and turn away.

The blond guy disappears inside, the bald one ambles away, and Flint leans against the wall, unhappy about this moment of scrutiny. He would have preferred to remain unobserved at this particular juncture, but his thick mane and wild whiskers make him conspicuous.

He waits. He fidgets. He starts to pace. When a guard walks by and looks toward him, Flint pretends he’s simply walking past the door, as though returning from the lavatory. This would draw less notice, he reasons, so he begins pacing the entire length of the corridor, purposefully heading in one direction and then the other. Out of habit, he does this three times.

Still, no one opens the door.

Flint considers another set of three but, disconcerted by the prospect of an interrupted sequence, stops to wait beside the door. He taps his toes in sets of three. At last the door creaks open and the blond comes out with his curls shortened to a row of waves.

“You’re up,” the blond says, jerking a thumb at the door.

Flint slips inside, where the barber, still wearing his beret, is tipping a dustpan full of hair into the trash.

“Are you my last—” The barber glances back, sees Flint, and straightens. His eyebrows shoot up as he breathes out, “Oh.”

Flint’s hands go up to his long locks. “Guess I’m a little overdue.”

The barber places the dustpan on the floor with an audible sigh. “Okay, well, have a seat and let’s take a look.”

Sitting in an orange plastic chair, Flint looks around. He’s never been in this room, this makeshift barber shop, which seems to be nothing more than a small office with an attached bath. The chair faces a mirror mounted on the wall. The day’s used towels are heaped in a corner. The barber’s tools are arranged on a small table beside a stack of fresh towels the color of undercooked pancakes.

The barber tents his last customer in a drape and begins circling—tugging at his hair and humming thoughtfully—while Flint studies the barber in the mirror: midthirties, with short brown hair and a neatly groomed goatee. A bit too young, a bit on the pudgy side, but the right height and roughly Flint’s size.

“So,” the barber says, “what did you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure.” Flint meets the man’s eye in the mirror. “Short, I guess.”

“How short?”

“Short.” Flint cocks his head and grins. “Like yours.”

L
ater, when the floor is covered with hair, Flint gazes at his reflection with something close to awe. “Damn, don’t I look handsome?”

“You sure look a lot better, but . . .” The barber puts a hand on his hip. “With that nasty beard? Seriously?”

Flint lifts a hand from beneath the drape and strokes his beard once, then gathers it in a fist. “I’ve had this for a long time, you know.”

The barber rolls his eyes. “Clearly.”

“You think it’s time to get rid of it?”

“Past time, dude. Way past time.”

“Okay, uh, what did you say your name is?”

“Ricky.”

“Okay, Ricky, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I decided to let you trim it a little. What would you suggest?”

The barber scoffs. “Trim it? Are you kidding? Chop off six inches, just for starters.”

“Oh, man. . . .” Flint groans, pretending reluctance, enjoying this little game. “I guess . . . yeah, it needs to go. But are you going to use those scissors?”

The barber makes a face. “How about I use a chainsaw?”

Flint considers the scissors and then rejects the idea. Too much blood. He sighs dramatically. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Good.” The barber beams at him. “You won’t regret it. How short do you want it?”

“I don’t know, what do you think?”

“The shorter the better.” The barber stands behind Flint, grasping the beard with both hands, feeling its thickness. “I mean, this is out of control.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Flint says, grinning into the mirror. “How about a goatee? Like yours.”

The barber hums a note and sets to work. “When I’m done, your own mother won’t recognize you.” He smiles at Flint’s reflection. “And I mean that in a good way.”

“Understood. And my little cricket will be impressed, too,” Flint says, rubbing his palm across his groin beneath the drape.

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“My dearest one.” Flint considers explaining, but why bother? People who remembered his trial always said stupid shit about pedophiles. So instead he closes his eyes, pictures the designs on her back, and inhales deeply, as though savoring her aroma.

“Well, your girlfriend is definitely going to be impressed,” says the barber. “Why on earth didn’t you get this beard taken care of before? You didn’t like my predecessor?”

“Never met him.”

“But he had this gig for awhile, right? Came every month, didn’t he?”

“Timing is important with these things,” Flint says, studying the pile of dirty towels heaped in a corner.

The barber frowns at this non sequitur but says nothing, as though suddenly recalling that this is, after all, a mental institution. He falls silent, hands busy while whiskers drift to the floor.

Flint watches the electric shears buzzing away the whiskers from his neck, his cheeks, beside his ears. The planes of his face emerge, familiar yet strange, like the long-forgotten neighborhoods of his youth. As the heavy beard goes, his lips seem naked and pink as areolas.

“Today’s your first day, right? So, how do you like this new job?” Flint asks.

“It’s not a bad gig. Kind of a long drive, but it pays pretty well. No complaints so far.” Facing him, the barber takes a wet towel and wipes Flint’s forehead, cheeks, neck, then cups Flint’s chin, tilting his face back and forth, inspecting his work. Then the barber steps away and asks, “What do you think?”

Flint grins. His trimmed whiskers appear to bracket his mouth in clever parentheses. “Better than ever.”

“Absolutely,” the barber says with satisfaction.

Flint notes the barber’s jacket hanging on the knob of the bathroom door. Car keys in the right pocket, he figures. Beneath the drape, he slides his hand down his stomach and pinches the plastic bag hidden in his underwear. He extracts it and clutches it in his fist just as the barber unties the strings of the drape, lifts it off.

“Man, I’m hungry,” the barber says, shaking the trimmings to the floor. “I’m glad you’re my last customer.”

Flint rises to his feet and moves in close. He nods toward the floor. “I’m afraid you have quite a lot of sweeping up to do.”

The barber looks down, and in the split second before he can take in a breath to speak whatever comment he has in mind, Flint punches him hard and square in the stomach.

The barber doubles over with a cry as Flint slips the plastic bag over the man’s head, then wrenches back in confusion, but Flint is already behind him, locking an arm tight around his neck, shoving him off his feet. The man struggles, making horrible sounds as he fights for air. The plastic clings to his face as he bucks and thrashes, knocking things to the floor. He wrenches right to left, but Flint crushes him beneath his weight, and as the barber weakens, Flint presses harder, feeling the man shudder and finally go still.

He waits, counting to one hundred to make sure the barber is dead before releasing his iron grip and rising to his feet. Breathing hard, he surveys his work. Not an ounce of blood spilled.

He begins stripping off the man’s clothes. The shirt comes off easily, but when he removes the barber’s trousers, he winces at the freshly soiled underwear. He lifts the khakis, sniffs, and shrugs.

The barber’s clothes fit a bit too loosely, so Flint folds two towels across his belly, then cinches the belt. The leather shoes pinch his toes, but Flint manages to get them on. Then, with no time to waste, he drags the body across the floor into the bathroom and hides it beneath the dirty towels.

He snags the jacket from where it hangs on the doorknob. Lastly, he puts on the beret. A nice touch. “Hey now! Don’t we look jaunty?” he says to himself in the mirror, mimicking the dead man’s high-pitched tone.

Noticing that his neck looks white as gooseflesh, he buttons the shirt all the way up and pulls in his chin. Better. Next, he pulls the man’s wallet from his back pocket, flips it open, and studies the ID. Richard Baker. Baker the barber. He smirks.

Quickly, he gathers up the barber’s gear and stashes it in the large case—a two-tiered piece of luggage resembling a tackle box on wheels—takes a deep breath and shakes the tension out of his shoulders. As he rolls the case into the hallway, a gray-haired guard whom everyone calls Snake is coming toward him. Flint knows him too well. He puffs air into his cheeks to make himself look plumper.

“It’s after five, kid. I’m supposed to take you through the gate,” Snake says. “You ready to get out of here?”

Flint shuts the door behind him. “Am I ever,” he replies in a mild falsetto. “What a day!”

The guard stops a few feet away, eyeing him. “Yeah, you’re looking kinda beat, kid.”

Flint adjusts the beret, partly blocking his face, and tightens his grip on the rolling case.

“Let’s go,” the guard says, turning on his heel and starting down the corridor.

Flint puffs out his cheeks and follows in the tight leather shoes, careful not to wince at every step.

F
lint pauses at each intersection, craning his neck to look up and down the street, hoping for something that makes sense. He might have only seconds before the barber’s body is found. Then what? An alarm? Dogs? An APB will go out on this white Honda, for sure, but he can’t afford to stash it. Not yet.

“About three miles away,” he grumbles. “April fifth, 1968. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He peers into the rain-smeared dusk, hoping for numbered streets. Instead, he’s in an area named after women: Dana Lane . . . Cassidy Lane . . . Barbara Lane . . .
April!
He brakes hard in the middle of the intersection, wrenches the wheel to the left, and speeds down the block, searching madly.

He sees nothing but ramshackle houses and defunct businesses before reaching a dead end. He makes a sharp U-turn, races back to the intersection where he started, then speeds in the opposite direction, nearly zooming past the storage facility at the corner of Church and April streets.

Church Street Storage. That’s gotta be it!

He slams on the brakes, slaps the car into reverse, cranks the wheel to the left, and wheels up to the gate. Above a keypad is a posted sign:
Please enter your security code.

He studies the instructions, then looks around cautiously. Seeing no one, he turns back to the keypad, considers the numbers in April 5, 1968, and decides that a standard code would be a sequence of four. He tries entering one, nine, six, eight. Nothing happens.

An alarm sounds in the distance—a strange, deep-throated drone.

He spits out a curse and punches in zero, four, zero, five. Again, nothing. He groans in frustration, trying to recall what his mother had said.

He hears her laugh. “The fourth month, the fifth day. The fourth month, the fifth day.”

He punches in four, five, four, five.

The gate slowly rolls open as the siren scream of a police car starts nearby, then turns away, heading in the direction of the hospital.

Flint drives through the gate and realizes there are dozens of storage units here, and he hasn’t got a clue which way to turn. The gate slides shut behind him, and he has a sudden uneasiness at being locked inside, but shakes this off and drives forward.

The facility is laid out with one long building on the left and perpendicular buildings jutting out to the right. Which one? He cruises along slowly and tries to sift through all his mother’s nonsense for some clue. She’d been prattling about that wedding for months, becoming increasingly elaborate in her details. What else had she said?

He notices that the buildings are numbered in sequence: One, two, three . . . yes
three!
And now he recalls that she’d said, “I insisted on an afternoon wedding. Not morning, not evening, it had to be 3:15. The perfect time, don’t you think?”

He’d thought she was humoring him, but he turns and follows along building three, studying the numbered doors, starting at ten, eleven . . . He stops in front of unit fifteen and gets out of the car.

Another siren sounds in the distance while he steps close enough to notice two initials scratched in the paint: “D.W.” This has to be it.

A black combination lock hangs from the door. Thinking April 4, 1968, he tries various combinations before spinning the dial right to nineteen, left around twice to six, and right to eight. The lock pops open in his palm.

He barks a laugh, but then hears an engine rumbling toward him. He glances over his shoulder at a pickup truck, waits until it passes, then lifts the rolling door and hustles inside.

Smack in the middle is parked a motorbike with a helmet resting atop the seat. His fingers stroke the bike’s shiny fender. At his feet, a backpack sits atop a cardboard box. He moves these tight against the wall, then eases the motorbike off its kickstand and rolls it out of the storage unit, parking it beside the building.

There’s now enough room for the Honda. He noses it forward until the front bumper kisses the wall. The car door opens just wide enough for him to slide out.

Finding clothes inside the backpack, he quickly strips off the barber’s clothes and tosses them into a corner. He pulls on a black T-shirt, a black sweater, and black jeans, which are a tad too big.

Next, he opens the box and lifts out a black leather jacket and a pair of boots, which fit perfectly. Inside one jacket pocket is a Swiss Army knife; the other holds a wallet containing cash, which he doesn’t stop to count. Quickly, he plucks cash and credit cards from the barber’s wallet and adds these to the new one. He’s cramming the wallet into a pocket when—what’s this?—he feels something there and pulls out an envelope.

It smells faintly of perfume. Not his mother’s, surely, so it must be that blonde’s. He smiles at a memory of the short skirts she used to wear to the courthouse.