Slate was passive for two weeks, settling in to a routine that was comforting because he wasn’t stalking anyone, but also boring since it was like watching paint dry. Predictability becomes hypnotizing after awhile, and Dan found himself starting to daydream. It was during one of those nights when he lost his focus that Slate slipped out of the house. By the time Dan reconnected, the trackers in Slate’s clothes showed he was miles away and stationary. That meant he was watching and waiting until his victim went to bed.
Grabbing his tablet, Dan raced out of the building and started driving to the location, hoping he would be on time. Now, there would not need to be a situation where he would park and follow Slate on foot; instead, Dan hoped to make a loud entrance, honking his horn in the neighborhood and waking everybody up. He figured the attention would cause Slate to abandon his murder quest for the evening.
Pulling into the street where Slate was lurking, Dan started driving slowly, weaving his car side to side as if he were drunk, and honking his horn constantly. He turned on his radio to its loudest setting and opened the windows to let the music blast out. Lights started going on in all of the houses as Dan stopped his car in the middle of the road while he tried to scan the edges of the street, peering through the shadows to find his man. Suddenly, he saw a movement behind a tree; and an instant later Slate stepped out and began walking away staring intently at the man behind the wheel who was causing the commotion. Dan pulled forward looking at the tablet screen to make sure Slate was headed back to his own vehicle, then he revved the car and sped away from the scene in the opposite direction. Shutting off the radio and closing the windows, Dan proceeded in a roundabout way back to the office, constantly checking to see that Slate was going home. From the onboard camera, Dan could see the anger in Slate’s face; it was the picture of pure evil.
Back at the big room and the bank of monitors, Dan saw that Slate had gone to bed. There wouldn’t be any more hunting expeditions this evening, and that’s when it hit Dan for the first time. In the excitement of making a loud spectacle of himself, had Slate seen him when he stared inside the car as he walked quickly past? Since the killer didn’t know Dan from a hole in the wall, it probably wouldn’t make much difference. Dan knew that next time, and he was fairly sure that with Slate’s propensity to murder that there would be a next time, he’d have to prevent the crime before Slate even got to the scene.
CHAPTER 18
The next day was more of the same with Dan busy with clients and Slate going about his normal routine. Andrew spent a little more time on his computer than normal, but that gave Dan an idea to have Ron insert some messages there as well. It would be easy to see Slate’s reaction to certain visual commercial images by using his own built in camera to record his reactions. Amazingly, Slate continued to produce the reactions that fit the American profile, and his unconscious picks were right on the money.
The problem lay in the early evening hours when the security crew was going off duty and Dan was covering. As darkness fell, Dan could see that Slate was becoming more tense and agitated. It was as if something inside of him was eating him alive making him nervous and irritable; he didn’t seem able to sit still for more than a minute at a time. He took a few bites of take out, then threw the rest away. He paced around the house constantly looking at his watch. The commercials that Dan had ready to be substituted into Slate’s regular TV viewing couldn’t be used since Slate wasn’t putting on the set. Finally, he sat down in an easy chair and stared up at the ceiling, a desperate look in his eyes.
There was only one thing that Dan could surmise; Slate was having some sort of withdrawal because he had been unable to commit that murder last night. It was almost like a drug for him to kill; without the experience, he began to unravel.
As Dan watched, he quickly knew that his whole world hinged on Slate keeping it together. If he fell apart, then he took Dan down with him as well. But, there was no way Dan could sanction the continued killings; yet how could he satisfy Slate’s desires without letting him resume his barbaric goals? Less TV time meant fewer fulfillments of his clients’ needs; and right now Slate was too agitated to go back to his regular routine.
After an hour of sitting, Slate got up and headed to the kitchen. Dan was hoping that some how his Average American had snapped out of the crisis on his own; but that idea was shattered when Slate took the corkscrew out of the drawer. He was planning to go on the hunt once again, but this time the desperation might produce recklessness so that he would be caught. Now, the question was where was Slate headed? Was it back to the same house as the night before or was there a new victim on the horizon? In either case, Dan knew that the drunken driver technique wouldn’t work again.
As Slate backed his car out onto the street, Dan was already in his own tracking the killer on his tablet. The picture from the dashboard camera showed a crazed expression on Slate’s face as if he had to murder someone no matter what the consequences. The tablet showed that Slate was going back to the same place he had parked his car the night before, so Dan guessed he was also returning to the same house and potential victim as if this was some sort of unfinished business. By driving directly to the location, Dan could beat Slate there since Andrew would do his evasive walk which would take time.
Pulling up in front of the house, Dan was desperate for a plan to make this location totally unacceptable for Andrew. He knew he only had minutes, but he was unsure what to do, then a thought hit him. Going to his own trunk, he took out a tire iron. Running up to one of the cars parked in a driveway, he used the flat end of the tire iron to pop off the gas tank cover and quickly unscrewed the cap. He reached in his pocket and took out a handkerchief which he jammed into the opening, stuffing most of it into the gas tune but leaving a corner out. He took out his lighter and lit the end of the handkerchief and ran back to his car just as the explosion went off. He sped away through the falling pieces of burning metal thankful that the blast hadn’t gone off a few seconds sooner. In his rear view mirror, he could see the fireball shoot higher than the roofs of the houses then die down to just flames surrounding the car. He knew he had committed a felony to prevent a felony, but it was worth it. Now all he had to do was to get his car back home into the parking garage and out of sight.
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