Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Bounty Hunter Alan Todd’s Work Log
October 9, 2016
—I’m planning to go to Westland.
This was a bit rushed, actually. The phone call had jolted me awake from a dream. I bet I’d slept less than two hours, exhausted and with a splitting headache. I didn’t recognize the number on my phone screen, and I swore to myself that if the caller had nothing important to say, I would give him a piece of my mind.
But it wasn’t.
“Mr. Todd,” the person on the phone said. “I’m a commercial guarantor in Westland, by the name of William Smith.”
I have to admit, I didn’t like the tone of his voice—his accent and the subtle pauses between his words made him sound like an arrogant bastard. Judging someone based on their tone of voice might be irrational, but that was my first impression of him.
I’d never heard that name before, and I was too tired and headache-ridden to care—this kind of high-strung work always ended up taking its toll. My voice hoarse, I answered him, “Hello, Mr. Smith.”
“A colleague of mine recommended you,” the man said, cold even when delivering a compliment. “He said you’re outstanding among the bail enforcement agents he’s worked with. I’m hoping you’ll take on a job…”
“Let’s hear it,” I said. “If your colleague recommended you, then you should know I don’t much like going to Westland.”
Westland was the only place in the whole state where a resident could actually get swallowed by a psychopath and not even bone fragments left behind. They had lunatics who really did stick flowers into corpses, and a serial killer who strangled mob bosses with piano wire.
That godforsaken place has terrible public security. Except for a very few areas, no one walks the streets after nine at night. My hatred for Westland is purely a self-preservation instinct. I really don’t want to spend my days chasing criminals day and night while also possibly getting shot in the back by a robber.
The man paused briefly, then continued in an even tone: “I posted bail for a gentleman named Bob Landon. His trial is scheduled for the end of this month: he’s charged with one count of attempted second-degree murder.”
My ears perked up: attempted second-degree murder is a very serious charge, and as everyone knows, the more serious the charge, the higher the bail. This Landon’s bail amount must be very high. No wonder this professional bail bondsman called me in the middle of the night.
These bondsmen don’t have to pay the court upfront when they bail out criminals. He probably mortgaged his house and car when he bailed Landon out. Poor bastard. If Landon flees, he’ll have to pay the entire sum himself. When that happens, he certainly won’t be able to maintain that calm tone of his.
“And since Mr. Landon has some unfortunate prior offenses,” Smith’s voice was as level as a man who had no idea of his own miserable future, “his bail has accumulated to an astonishing… one hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
I swallowed dryly.
He continued, “If you can bring him back, I’ll pay you fifteen percent of the bail.”
—That was over twenty-two thousand dollars. Of course, it wasn’t as if I’d never taken bigger jobs before, but that last one had nearly cost me one of my hands permanently, so I didn’t exactly look back on that time with fondness.
When he spat out those words, I suddenly felt a real thirst. I shifted uneasily on the bed and said, “You—”
“In this line of work, reputation is everything,” Smith replied, his voice stern. “I had no choice. If you can manage it, I hope you’ll act quickly as well.”
There was something in his voice that made me wonder if, once Landon was caught and brought back, he’d be willing to personally put a bullet in the man’s leg—though it wasn’t as if that wasn’t within the authority granted to him by the bail bond agreement he’d signed with the court. With that agreement, he could kick down any door and drag Landon out from inside.
He had that authority, but these office types had neither the perseverance nor the courage—and besides, they weren’t good at tracking. That’s why they handed the job of catching bail-jumping fugitives like this to us bounty hunters.
“Alright,” I said, now fully awake. I hated Westland, true; a guy charged with attempted second-degree murder was probably dangerous, really—but that was twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars! Who wouldn’t jump to a conclusion fast under that premise? “I understand, sir. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The other party was probably satisfied, but I couldn’t hear any satisfaction in his voice: “Very good. I’ve already sent a scan of the bail bond and the information you need to know to your work email.” A pause. “His trial begins on the 23rd of this month. I hope we can both make it.”
He hung up, and I scrambled out of bed, one hand grabbing clothes while the other reached for my laptop.
—Smith was right. Time was tight.
I need to go to Westland.
October 10, 2016
Westland is as terrible as I remember it.
If there’s any season when you should avoid coming to Westland, it’s definitely autumn and winter: these are probably the two longest seasons in this city. By October alone, the leaves in the city are almost completely gone, and everywhere you look it’s a dreary gray, mixed with the bare yellow earth exposed after the lawns have withered. It rains endlessly this season, and the air is both damp and cold.
I’m staying in a terrible motel, where the walls and bedsheets all carry a damp, musty smell, but according to Smith’s files, this motel is the closest to Landon’s residence during his bail period.
I plan to start with his movements, at least to first figure out when he left. Smith’s files said that as of yesterday, he couldn’t reach Landon, and when he went to his home, he found the guy had already fled.
I read those files very carefully, so I wasn’t surprised that he would run: Landon was a scumbag who hit women, broad-shouldered and burly, with a red face from excessive drinking. A guy like that should easily leave an impression on people, and I hope this can bring me some luck.
When I left the motel, the TV at the front desk was still broadcasting the latest murder news: two women had been brutally murdered (I looked carefully, and one of the death locations was quite close to the motel I was staying at), and the suspect the police were now considering was actually the chief forensic examiner of the Westland Forensics Bureau.
Seeing this kind of deduction, I don’t even know if I should be surprised anymore—I have to remind myself that the city I’m currently in is not only overrun with gangs and plagued by frequent shootings, but also ranks first in the nation for the proportion of citizens who die from homicide each year. If that’s the case, then I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if their chief forensic examiner turned out to be a serial killer.
Ha, Westland.
October 11, 2016
At least today’s work yielded some results: Landon was definitely preparing to leave the city on the 9th, though I’m not sure whether he actually made it out or how he left, because when I was driving here I saw police on the highway checking people leaving the city, like they were investigating some case. But then again, Westland has all kinds of horrific death incidents and investigations going on every day—they still have two serial killers they haven’t caught.
Today was an exhausting day at work. Landon had a car, but he clearly hadn’t left in his own vehicle—his license plate was on record. Anyone with a brain wouldn’t do that. I checked every rental car agency and used car lot I could find nearby—the cheap ones. He had no job, and after divorcing his ex-wife, he surely didn’t have much money.
In the end, I finally found him: mainly because the rental agency owner was furious himself. Landon had apparently rented a beat-up Ford sedan under a fake name, paying only the deposit and one day’s fee.
But he never came back. I figured the rental agency owner would never see that car again.
I suspected he had already left the city, which was not a good sign. Regardless, I had to start hunting him down.
October 12, 2016
Nothing was going right.
I wasn’t particularly familiar with Westland. As I’d said before, none of my previous experiences here chasing bail jumpers had left me with a good impression—God, there were just too many bail jumpers in this city. I seriously doubted how Smith managed to stay in this line of work here without going bankrupt—this place was far too much of a mixed bag. Every person who brushed past you could be some Latin gang’s second-in-command, with connections that could smuggle you illegally across the border into Mexico or something.
Still, at least Landon didn’t seem to have any connections. He had a history of multiple violent offenses, but he was just hot-tempered—he’d never gotten himself tangled up in any gang business.
This is the best outcome. He’s just a big, irritable, slow-witted guy, not some gang lackey; if he’d joined any gang, those people would have the means to make sure I never find him again.
I avoid gang affairs as much as possible—they’re too complicated and involve too many old grudges and debts. After all, I once had a friend who, for helping track down a mobster, was later beaten half to death by other members of that gang.
The person I’m going to see today is that very friend: Old Hunter—I’m hoping he can give me some ideas on how to slip past the checkpoints and leave this city. Although the Westland City Police Department is nationally infamous for bribery and dirty cops, the officers handling violent crimes are surprisingly competent.
There’s a saying that goes: thanks to certain serial killers, some people who’ve made solving bizarre murder cases their life’s dream ended up voluntarily joining the force because of those killers. A bunch of lunatics.
We met in a restaurant with mediocre food. Old Hunter was still leaning on his cane; the few nails driven into his leg bones would probably never come out for the rest of his life. He had been in this line of work for nearly thirty years, and there was always something calm yet mad burning in his eyes.
We talked a bit about how we had each been doing, and then he suddenly said to me, “Allen, have you ever thought about doing something more exciting, something with more of a sense of accomplishment?”
I said no. My life was already exciting enough as it was.
He gave me that look of contempt, as if he scorned the job I was doing now. I knew that because I insisted on not getting involved in gang affairs, he thought I was a coward—but look, look at what had become of his leg.
“The Landon you’re looking for is just a coward who runs away after hitting a woman,” he sneered. “Westland is a city full of opportunities: there are two genuine serial killers here.”
I don’t know what kind of expression I made at him, but he laughed heartily anyway, dropped the subject, and began telling me about the secret route out of the city.
October 13, 2016
Tonight’s dinner was convenience store food from next to the gas station. I ate the worst sandwich I’ve ever had in my life, and even now that weird peanut butter taste seems stuck fast in my throat.
Yesterday, Old Hunter told me about a few routes out of the city that I had never heard of before. If I had been poring over a map by myself trying to figure that stuff out, I probably wouldn’t have made heads or tails of it in a lifetime. He gave me that dry, smug smile of his again.
“These are the routes a local might take, to avoid the police checkpoints on the main roads—there are cops all over the outskirts of Westland, you know, because of gun smuggling and drugs and that sort of thing,” he said. “I also know some routes that only the gangs know about, but there’s no point telling you—I don’t figure that Landon of yours would know that kind of inside information.”
When he spoke, he always seemed especially proud of his choices (including that misshapen leg of his), as if I were really doing some dead-end, mind-numbingly boring job. No matter how cautious I am about my career choices, I believe the life I live is still far more exciting than that of people like Smith, who sit in an office and order us around.
I checked each of these routes one by one according to what Hunter had said, but so far there’s been no progress. I believe Landon has already left the city, so I’ve stopped trying to look for traces of him in town: I know his kind—he flees a place like a frightened rabbit before disaster strikes.
Especially when he looked at the court date—there wasn’t much time left for him.
But despite all that, I still came up empty-handed today.
Before writing this log entry, I thought of old Hunter again: though his self-confidence was always inflated beyond reason, at this point even he had to admit that he was gradually growing old, and a man couldn’t keep doing this kind of work forever. Before I left yesterday, he asked if I wanted to stay and work with him. In his words, “Westland is a gold mine.”
Westland is a paradise for criminals. There are far more job opportunities for bounty hunters here—that’s true—but my life is already chaotic enough. I don’t want to sink into utter madness just yet.
And old Hunter even showed me his notes—he was actually deliberately collecting news about those serial killers. “As long as you catch one of them, you can immediately lie on a Malibu beach drinking cocktails,” he said.
It sounded like a beautiful dream. I immediately expressed my polite refusal.
So he just clicked his tongue at me, looking thoroughly vexed. And I just wanted to finish this job quickly and get out of this place. I really hated Westland’s rainy days.
I’m staying in a motel now. The couple next door is fucking like their lives depend on it. If this keeps up, I’m about to go bang on the wall.
In short, get some good rest. There’s still a lot of work to do tomorrow.
October 14, 2016
I think I’ve found Landon’s trail.
This came from another gas station. They said that three days ago, someone matching my description had stopped there to refuel, then continued driving north—this gas station wasn’t just inconspicuous, it was also miles away from the main road. The fact that Landon could find this place made me feel sorry for having looked down on him so much before.
I hope he isn’t planning to smuggle himself into Mexico or somewhere right now. If he gets on the interstate, I might never find him for the rest of my life. But police cars are easy to run into on those roads, so I figure he probably wouldn’t dare take that risk.
I’m currently searching through the town. He has to stop and rest sometime. There are quite a few inconspicuous small towns around here, and not that many people would notice his movements.
Today’s log is very short. I’ve either been on the road or searching motels. This kind of work is killing me. I need to rest.
October 15, 2016
I know I’m getting close to him. Landon has been to this town. A waitress at a fast-food restaurant remembers him: because he was always “shifty and neurotically watching TV.”
The poor bastard was probably afraid his wanted notice would pop up on the TV. I don’t know if he’s aware that the police don’t have nothing better to do than broadcast wanted notices for suspects who skipped bail on television.
But he’s not in this town. According to the waitress, he probably continued driving on after lunch. Maybe he stopped in the next town, or the one after that, but I had no choice but to stay: the rain today was too heavy, and the temperature was shockingly low. It was already very late by the time I found that waitress, and judging by how muddy it was outside, I probably should stay the night before leaving.
After checking into the motel, Mr. Smith called to ask how I was doing. I don’t know if he’s satisfied with the current progress—after all, his tone sounded like he wasn’t too satisfied with me, his life, or the entire world.
But I understand him—after all, he’s the one who has to pay the 150,000 bail.
“Regardless, thank you very much for your efforts,” he said dryly and politely. “You are doing what I cannot do and have no time to do.”
Of course. He was risking his neck to bail a suspect out of prison, while I was risking mine to put a suspect back in. Not that I thought I was any nobler than him, but someone has to do some good in this world, right?
I know that a man like Landon being at large benefits no one at all. Even now, as I lie in bed, his detestable red face still surfaces in my mind.
October 16, 2016
I’m writing this log while getting bandaged up in the hospital emergency room—that son of a bitch Landon really loves sticking knives into people; just look at what he did to his ex-wife. The bastard put a hole in my shoulder. Fuck.
—Alright, I should start from the beginning: I found him. Two more small towns after setting out this morning, and I dragged him out of the shittiest motel I could possibly imagine. And this guy had obviously been drinking while on the run—the stench on him was beyond anything you could picture.
Even so, the bastard still found a moment to stab me in the shoulder. You really can’t tell from the photos—he was unbelievably strong. We ended up fighting in the motel room, smashing the mirror and the glass sliding door, and it was only then that I knocked him down with the butt of my gun.
Right now I’m in the emergency room waiting in line to get stitches, and Landon is tied up in the car. It’s the middle of the night, which is exactly when the ER is at its busiest. I figure I could bleed out completely and not a single nurse would come over to take a look at me.
I’m in a transitional phase somewhere between grimacing in pain and dying of boredom, so I can only flip through the copy of the *Westland Daily News* that the ER provides to distract myself—who even reads a newspaper in the emergency room?—fine, me.
It turns out this is a paper from several days ago. It’s still reporting on the Westland Pianist killing a mob boss—he’d impaled the guy on a wooden stake and set him up in an apple orchard. When it happened, photos were all over the internet, and it looked like something straight out of a cult ritual.
The paper had an interview with that profiler from the WLPD. I read for a while. Before the nurse finally came to find me, I inevitably got blood smeared all over that page:
“The Westland Pianist is dangerous,” Professor Olga Molozer of Westland State University’s Department of Criminal Psychology, who was present after our reporter finished interviewing Officer Hardy, told us. “Many people, because the victims he chooses often have criminal records, tend to think he’s a vigilante—or at least believe that he himself thinks he represents a kind of justice that transcends the law. But you must understand, he is not that kind of person.
“He doesn’t slaughter them from the standpoint of justice—he slaughters them for his own twisted pleasure. So don’t assume that just because you have no criminal record, the Pianist is safe for you. As long as he needs to, he will kill anyone.”
Of course he couldn’t possibly be a vigilante—obviously, no vigilante would cut open a person’s internal organs, smash their bones, no vigilante would cut a person into pieces and stack them into a pile, then place his head on top of that pile of body parts, and then put a crown on the corpse’s dripping wet skull: the first time I ever heard of the Westland Pianist was when I saw the crime scene photos from that case—the censored version, of course, but even that couldn’t conceal how horrifying it was.
God, just think about it—how could there be someone like that in this world.
Obviously, I will never be able to calmly accept this fact, but perhaps to the locals of Westland, all of this seems quite ordinary—after all, the Westland Pianist has been on a killing spree in their territory for nearly ten years now.
I really don’t know how these citizens manage to keep living in this city under such circumstances. Regardless, tomorrow I will hand Landon over to Mr. Smith, and then I can leave Westland.
October 17, 2016
When Mr. Smith heard that I had caught Landon so quickly, he even seemed a bit surprised.
Even so, he did not say anything more. Instead, he had me take Landon to a small apartment on the edge of the Lower District, one that showed no signs of anyone ever having lived in it, with barely any furniture at all, and told me that all I had to do was lock him inside and leave.
“Please put the key under the doormat at the entrance,” Mr. Smith said calmly over the phone. “I’ll go see him later. Before the hearing, I can’t risk letting him leave that room again.”
I was used to handing people over face to face, so doing it this way left me somewhat at a loss. I said, “But—”
“You did well, Mr. Todd. That will be all. Once Landon’s condition is confirmed, I’ll transfer the money into your account.” He cut in crisply, clearly unwilling to dwell on the matter any further. “Without you, I could never have guaranteed his timely appearance in the courtroom.”
And Landon—screaming and shouting, cursing me with the filthiest words he could think of. I’d long wanted to be rid of this trouble; in any case, it was better than foolishly staying here waiting for Mr. Smith to come meet me. Listening to Smith’s cold, icy tone, I couldn’t help but picture an overbearing figure before my eyes. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to deal with him face to face.
So I did as I was told.
Anyway, that’s the whole of it. I locked Landon in that room, ignored the sound of him violently smashing the furniture inside, and put the key under the doormat.
Then, I quickly drove onto the highway. The music in the car would soon help me relax. I thought I would not come to this city again anytime soon, nor would I see Bob Landon again.
October 18, 2016
Fuck, Mr. Smith is the Westland Pianist.
—After I wrote this line, I stared at it for half an hour. I thought I had gone mad, or perhaps Westland itself carried a contagious madness, and the moment I set foot on its soil, I was inevitably infected by it and became one of those madmen.
Alright, alright, no matter what, I have to record this… Here’s what happened:
Today was a beautiful day, or at least it was supposed to be. Another job of mine had come to an end, and I could finally sit at the dining table like a civilized human being and toast some bread for myself. No one would miss gas station fast food. And better yet, Mr. Smith had wired me my payment last night—twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars. Under normal circumstances, it would arrive by tomorrow.
Perhaps my mistake was that I shouldn’t have turned on the TV. But a person would never expect—no matter what, I turned it on.
The morning news was playing. When I first heard the opening, I didn’t pay much attention. It said the Westland Pianist had struck again. Last night, he had mailed a letter to the WLPD, and under the letter’s guidance, the police had found a corpse. I kept my head down and drank my coffee, and then, when I looked up, I spilled all of it onto the damned front of my shirt.
Even through the mosaic blur on the screen, I could still recognize that the dead man was Bob Landon—I’d looked at his photo so many times while tracking him that I could recall that face with my eyes closed. I definitely wouldn’t mistake it.
And Bob Landon, apparently hung on the wall by piano wire, sliced open by a blade, his chest stabbed into a complete mess, blood pooling into a river at his feet. The TV said the Pianist had removed his heart—with bare hands, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I stared at my toast, and suddenly felt a little like throwing up.
Then I realized, if the deceased was Bob Landon…
“You are doing what I cannot do and have no time to do.”
That professional agent, whom I had never met and who had no intention of meeting me—the very night I handed Landon over to him, Landon died. My mind was a mess. I didn’t know what to do. I should call the WLPD. I should tell Hunter about this. That old lunatic living in Westland might have more experience handling this kind of thing than I do. Or I should drink a lot, a lot, a lot of alcohol, then completely forget about this, and never go to Westland again for the rest of my life.
There was more on the TV, about Bob Landon… That “Smith” must have lied to me: the TV said that after Bob Landon’s attempted murder of his ex-wife, he killed four more women—the very case I had seen a few days ago at the motel front desk. The TV said that Westland’s chief forensic examiner had been wrongly accused and had been released the day before. The TV said that in order to lower the killer’s guard, the police had not publicly wanted Landon, but had only issued a search-and-arrest order to police departments across the state—yet the Westland Pianist still found him and killed him one step ahead of the police.
The Westland Pianist still killed him one step ahead of the police—by using me.
“Without you, I absolutely could not have guaranteed his timely appearance in the defendant’s seat at trial.”
Of course, that man’s voice still echoed in my ears—that faint, almost imperceptible note of sarcasm in his cold tone when he said those words. I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but now I remember.
I didn’t know what I was doing, nor what I should do. By the time I came to my senses, I had already called that number back—the number of the so-called “professional agent”—my hands trembling as I held the phone to my ear.
The phone buzzed with a busy tone, yet all I could hear was the frantic pounding of my own heartbeat: there was no way he’d pick up, right? He must be using a disposable phone. There was no way he’d expose himself like—
“Hello?” the man on the other end of the line said.
I trembled all over in front of the desk. When I opened my mouth, I stumbled over my words, squeezing a few dry syllables out of my throat. Even as I said them, I felt like an idiot: “I… I didn’t think you’d pick up.”
“I anticipated you might have some questions for me.” He answered calmly, his voice sounding no different from when I had called him before. But now I knew he had tortured and killed someone yesterday—he had hung that person on the wall, opened up his chest, snapped his ribs, and then removed his heart.
That blood must have flowed over his hands—warm and sticky—the hands I had assumed belonged to some bastard sitting in an office. God.
“Didn’t you think I might call the police?” I asked, trying my best to keep my voice from shaking.
“Would you?” he retorted, seemingly amused, his voice cold and sharp, making one flinch. “You are a hunter. You should have that instinct—to know better than to pit yourself against the unknown.”
—He was right, I knew it, which was why my hands were trembling uncontrollably. But then I thought of Old Hunter’s feverish eyes, and those words the female profiler had said in the newspaper.
“But you’ll still be caught in the end,” I said, unsure whether I truly had the confidence to back it up.
“Perhaps,” the Westland Pianist answered ambiguously. “But even so, once the payment I owe you arrives in your account, I imagine this will be the last time we ever meet.”
Actually, we had never “met.” I had an absurd thought in my mind that made me want to refute him, but in the end, I didn’t say it out loud.
Something did happen on the Pianist’s end, though. I heard a vague male voice—I couldn’t make out what was being said at all—but the Pianist paused for a moment, and after a brief silence, answered with a “okay.” His tone was still stiff; sarcasm and disdain seemed to be naturally part of his voice, yet he didn’t truly seem disgusted or contemptuous.
I nearly laughed out loud at the fantasy in my head: could the Westland Pianist actually have a live-in partner?
Or to put it another way: were these demons really human? Could they live like normal people, allowing themselves to open up at least part of their hearts to others?
In the end—did they really have a heart?
“Goodbye, Mr. Todd,” the Pianist said, ending the conversation in a tone that brooked no argument. “It seems it’s time for my breakfast.”
With a click, the call was disconnected.
I sat there for a while, then had to admit he was right: we probably wouldn’t have another chance to meet.
Note:
[1] The profession of bounty hunter really exists, and it is legal in most states in the United States.
As mentioned in the previous note, a suspect who cannot pay bail can pay ten percent of the bail to a professional agent, and then the professional agent will be responsible for bailing the suspect out (usually using their own property as collateral). But if the suspect flees before the court hearing, the court will withhold the entire bail amount.
To avoid such losses, the professional agent will hire a bounty hunter to bring the suspect back and pay a reward equal to a certain proportion of the bail.
Bounty hunters do not need an arrest warrant to apprehend a fugitive; they only need to carry a copy of the bail bond agreement signed between the fugitive and a professional agent. They do not even need to read the fugitive their Miranda rights before making the arrest.