Fugitive

Chapter 5

The last camera is on an angel outside that shows down the side of the house and the majority of the front yard and the steps leading up to the front door. The killer would have had to pass half of these cameras. One of them had to get a good shot. I zoomed back the footage, trying to remember the time I was gone. I found the footage of Toby having a tantrum about the animal crackers, well, lack of animal crackers. I let it run from there. Watching me calm him down and get him to be quite was a heartbreaking experience. Knowing that in a matter of minutes he would be gone. 

I watched my back disappear as I walked down the steps. Toby was sitting on the couch watching a children's channel I had put on for him. The shows on there will forever skip my mind. All of them seem to involve some kind of singing and dancing act with songs about learning the alphabet or how to count. Not really my thing, but I put up with the wiggles for a good week before I told Toby the show had been 'cancelled'. We never saw it again. It may have been mean but he got over it pretty quickly, and I didn't have to put up with it anymore. Cat didn't mind. She laughed at how much I hated it. 

Toby seemed pretty happy. I kept watching. And watching. That's all that happened. For exactly eight minutes I watched Toby sit on the couch. It wasn't right. The footage had been looped. Exactly eight minutes of footage were missing. Explains another reason they would have thought I killed Cat and Toby and a reason they weren't looking for anyone else. They would have assumed I'd have the security system passwords, if they'd actually noticed the loop. It wasn't extremely obvious. No doubt they've scanned this footage. With the password, I would have had access to the account and technically would have been table to loop the feed if I was a good enough hacker. Which I'm not, but they can only assume I am. 

Suddenly it continued. Toby was no longer on the couch. At this point I was already inside. In Cat's bedroom with the two bodies. The footage didn't show my coming back in moments after they were murdered. For all they knew I went out into the street, went to the store to get a witness that places my away from the house. On the way back I could have logged into the system from my phone, looped the footage went inside, and killed them both. Whoever killed them thought about this. It only mad me angry. I wanted to kill that son of a bitch. 

Abruptly I shut the laptop unable to watch any more. Unable to distract my mind I started working out. Something I've come to enjoy more in the past few years. I removed my shirt and started press ups. I must have spent over an hour doing rotations. Sit ups, spiderman push ups, pull ups on the door frame, squats, the whole lot. 

Cat and I used to go to the gym together. While she has a healthy frame, she's incredibly unfit. She pretty much died every time we went which actually made it a lot more enjoyable. Seeing her puffing heavily, red faced and sweating was amusing. Especially the next day when she wouldn't stop complaining about how stiff and sore her muscles were. She didn't come with me often, for that very reason. It was all in good fun. She wasn't dangerously unfit of course. She just liked to complain about exercise a lot. 

I had a very quick shower after that. I didn't even turn the water to hot. It was getting very warm in the apartment but I didn't want to open any windows or doors. I couldn't turn on the ceiling fan, it would use up the power. So, I just let the heat drown me until I cooled down. One of the only interesting things I learnt in science was thermoregulation and gas exchange. It fascinated me in a way I didn't think science could. I don't know if that was because I had a good teacher that year or if it was just interesting to me. Either way I totally nailed science that year. And I did love my teacher. Even his sometimes cheesy jokes. He was my favorite teacher that year. The kind of teacher you remember for the rest of your life because it sparked something inside. Changed you somehow. Even something so incredibly tiny I shouldn't have made a difference. But somehow it did. Teachers have the capability for amazing things. Too bad most of them suck.

The thermoregulation and gas exchange thing was never a big deal, but I researched a little more than what was required in class, that's all. Now it's all I can think about when I get too hot or too cold, or when I exercise. It just pops into my brain unwillingly. About the concentration gradient increases to increase gas exchange. All about the parts of your skin, the hairs, sweat pores and blood capillaries that get your temperature to the correct value. Even negative feedback. I won't bore you with the details but it's something that I find interesting, or did at the time. Now I can't get it out of my head. It's stuck. Which realistically, doesn't bother me.

 The rest of the afternoon I spent moping. Mostly letting my thoughts roam free, eating or attempting to do more push ups. I couldn't sleep that night. Whether it was the reopened wounds watching the video caused or the fact that I was being hunted as a fugitive of the law. The evening news suggested they had no idea where I was. Of course, they covered up the fact with a bunch of shit about having solid leads and not being able to discuss the situation with the public. Nothing we haven't all heard a thousand times before. No doubt they already tried to trace my cell. Wouldn't be long before they check credit card details. 

I was lying in bed the next morning when the sun came up through the drapes. I couldn't remember waking up which made me think that I hadn't fallen asleep at all. As a sniper, I often had to stay awake on high alert for long periods of time. One time in Afghanistan me and this other guy, who I didn't really like, but it was besides the point, were sitting in the heat for three days. I was awake for 52 hours. Which means I'm used to the whole no sleep thing. The majority of the time nothing even happened. I'm a patient person. That doesn't mean I don't get tired. I was exhausted. Mostly emotionally, I think. My body should be used to lack of sleep, but my mind isn't used to the emotional turmoil. 

A car sounded outside. Tires on gravel. The only noise I'd heard for a while. Apparently, no one really lived around here. Maybe it was more of a holiday thing? Though I doubted anyone would stay there on holiday. There's nothing there. It disrupted the silence. Only when I looked outside it wasn't just a car, it was three. All of them black. All of them SUV's. All of them unmarked.