As soon as I left the police station, I began to feel that I was being watched or followed. I considered returning to the newspaper office, but I wasn’t in the mood to field what would be at least another hour of questions from my editor. He’d want to turn the whole ordeal into a story for the next edition, and I didn’t like the thought of that one bit.
My house was within walking distance, less than a half mile away, so I struck off in that direction. It was a few minutes after six in the morning. The sun was rising, and the city was starting to wake up. I watched one of The Herald’s delivery trucks round a corner and rumble to a stop alongside a bread truck that was stopped at the red light. Just beyond that, a man in a white apron was setting up chairs at a few restaurant tables on the sidewalk. On the other side of the street, a pretty young jogger headed toward the park.
I saw no one else around, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me or tailing me to see where I would go or who I might talk to. Had Detective Jones placed a tail on me that fast? If so, where were they? Or was it Bagley’s attacker? Did he know that I’d been given a copy of the photo? Was I being watched by the mysterious subject in the photo?
I stopped and looked the streets over again. All the parked cars that I could see appeared empty, and no one was seated on any of the sidewalk benches within my field of view. Next, I scanned the roofline, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. If anyone was there, they were doing a good job of blending in.
I picked up the pace and took solace in the fact that home was on a few minutes away. On the way there, I checked the plate glass windows that I passed in hope of seeing the reflection of my follower. I passed by an assortment of lawyers offices, antique stores, check-into-cash places and clothing stores, but never saw anything out of the ordinary in the windows set in their storefronts. Was it just nerves? Paranoia? Maybe, maybe not.
I finally found myself at the head of the divided residential street that I lived on, Seminary Boulevard. My house was second on the right as you approach Claiborne Junior High School. I jogged up the street, stopped at the curb and opened my mailbox. I grabbed the handful of envelopes and magazines inside, then crossed my front yard and mounted my porch.
I fished out my keys and turned. From the porch, I had a commanding view of the neighborhood. There was no one in sight, but I was almost overwhelmed by the feeling that I’d been followed. All of my internal bells and whistles were going off, but for the life of me, nothing seemed out of place.
I eventually unlocked the door and stepped inside the house. I closed the door behind me and strained my ears, listening. All was quiet, but I still went through every room. Sure that the house was secure, I jumped into the shower. The hot water made me feel better, but it also made me sleepy. I’d been up all night and although the sun was up, my internal clock told me that it was past time to go to bed.
Before hitting the sack, I plopped into down at my desk and looked through the day’s mail. There’d been six envelopes in the mailbox, and the last one made me sit straight up in my chair. It was a plain, white envelope with no stamp, postmark or address on the outside. It was obvious that someone had made a special trip to put it in my mailbox.
I jammed my finger under the sealed flap and tore the envelope open. It contained a note from Bagley and read as follows.
McMorn,
If you still have the photo that I gave you at Burton Park, burn it at once and forget that I ever showed it to you. It’s for your own good. I’ll explain everything later.
Fraternally,
Bagley
What did this mean, I wondered. Bagley had written it and placed in my mailbox sometime between our meeting at Burton Park and my arrival at home. If that’s the case, whose blood-covered clothes had been found by the police? Why did they contain Bagley’s wallet? What was the big deal about the photo and if it was so important, why had he given it to me in the first place?
The good news was that Bagley wasn’t dead. This is something that Detective Jones would like to know. I reached over and lifted the cordless phone from its charger. I didn’t want to dial 911, so I had to fish around in my middle desk drawer for the Claiborne phone book. I lifted the unwieldy volume onto my desk and paused to think.
If I called Jones, what good would come of it? He was probably at home in bed by now, and I’d been up for over 24 hours myself. More than likely, I’d get his fresh and lively dayshift counterpart on the phone, and the end result would be more sleep deprivation for myself. More than likely, they’d send a black and white by the house to escort me back to Metro. Then they’d grill me about the letter, and I’d probably still be sitting in the interrogation room when Jones came back on shift.
Thanks, but no thanks. Bagley was a big boy and despite what people thought about him, he’s smarter than most. He could take care of himself for at least another eight hours. Hell, knowing him, he was asleep somewhere as well.
I took another long look at Bagley’s note before crumpling it in my fist. I gathered up the blank envelope it came in, grabbed the cigarette lighter from my desk drawer and walked to the fireplace. Once done, it was the kind of thing you can’t take back. With that thought in mind, I struck the lighter, ignited the bundle of papers and cast it all into the fireplace.
I stood there for many long moments and watched the paper whither in the flames. In half a minute it was gone, and I was well aware that I may have destroyed something important. Bagley may or may not be out there in the world somewhere, and whatever link that letter may have held to him had died in that small flame.
I yawned and stretched. I knew that as soon as I hit the bed I’d be out like a light. I walked out of my study and flipped off the light as I closed the door. I entered my bedroom and got into bed. Something didn’t feel right, but I was too tired to think much about it. I felt certain that I was alone in the house and safe despite the fact that I didn’t have a security system.
It was a few minutes after eight o’clock, so I set the alarm on my wristwatch for four in the afternoon. After a good day’s sleep, I’d be in the right frame of mind to deal with the Bagley situation. What that thought, I drifted off to sleep.
I have to admit that my sleep was not peaceful. It was filled with dreams, but I can only remember one of them. It was night, the house was dark and I wasn’t a grown up anymore, but a child of about nine. I even had on my old pajamas, the pair that my subconscious mind remembered had been made from a pattern of footballs and baseballs.
I was alone in the house and barefooted. The hardwood floors were cold on my feet. I stepped out of my little boy bedroom and into the hall. The corridor was dark, but was dimly illuminated by a shaft of pale moonlight that shown through the window of our front door, which was just out of sight around the corner.
Just then something stepped around the corner, and I froze in terror. It was a man-thing, dressed in a long overcoat and wearing a hat, like a fedora, which cast a long shadow down over his face. His appearance was such a shock to me that I awoke in my present day bed in Claiborne, a full-grown man again, drenched in bed sweat, my heart pounding in my chest.
I was certain that a noise had awoken me, and I lay there motionless for what seemed like a long time. It was then that I heard it, a sound that someone who hadn’t lived in the house for years wouldn’t have even noticed, the sound of a foot shifting its weight on a panel of the hardwood floor just outside my bedroom door.
(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)
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