The Night Stalker

Ten

On any given night Hunter’s insomnia would rob him of at least four hours of sleep. Last night, it had kept him awake for almost six.

It was after cancer took his mother from him when he was just seven years old that his sleeping problems started. Alone in his room, missing her, he would lie awake at night, too sad to fall asleep, too scared to close his eyes, too proud to cry. Hunter grew up as an only child in an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His father made the decision never to remarry, and even with two jobs, he struggled to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.

To banish the bad dreams, Hunter kept his mind occupied in a different way — he read ferociously, devouring books as if they empowered him.

Hunter had always been different. Even as a child, his brain seemed to work through problems faster than anyone else’s. At the age of twelve, after a battery of exams and tests suggested by the principal of his school in Compton, he was accepted into the Mirman School for the Gifted on Mulholland Drive as an eighth-grader.

But even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress down.

By the age of fifteen, Hunter had glided through Mirman, condensing four years of high school into two, and amazing all of his teachers. With recommendations from everyone, he was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford on its Psychology School Program.

In college, his advancement was just as impressive, and Hunter received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology at the age of twenty-three. And that was when his world was shattered for a second time. His father, who at the time was working as a security guard for a branch of the Bank of America in downtown Los Angeles, was shot dead during a robbery gone wrong. Hunter’s nightmares and insomnia came back then — even more forcefully, and they hadn’t left him since.

Hunter stood by the window in his living room, staring at a distant nothing. His eyes felt gritty and the headache that had started at the rear of his skull was quickly spreading. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t shake the images of the woman’s face from his mind. Her eyes open in horror, her lips swollen and sealed together. Did she wake up alone in that butcher’s shop and try to scream? Was that why the thread had dug so deep into the flesh around her lips? Did she claw at her mouth in desperate panic? Was she awake when the killer placed a bomb inside her before sewing her shut? The questions were coming at him like tidal waves.

Hunter blinked and the woman’s face was substituted by Doctor Winston’s and the video images they’d retrieved from the morgue — his eyes wide in shock as he finally understood what he was holding in his hand, as he finally realized that death had caught up with him, and there was nothing he could do. Hunter closed his eyes. His friend was gone, and he had no clue why.

A distant police siren brought Hunter out of his daze and he shivered with anger. What he saw on the ceiling of the butcher’s shop last night changed everything. The bomb was meant for no one else but the woman who was left there. Doctor Winston, his friend, someone he considered family, had died for no reason — a tragic mistake.

Hunter felt a pain start in his right forearm. Only then did he realize he’d been clutching his fist so tight blood couldn’t find its way to his arm. He swore to himself that whatever happened, he’d make this killer pay for what he’d done.