Shadowing

Chapter 1: An Unusual Act

"I was in a coffee shop, seated near a table by a window. I was looking out at the people walking past; people and their reflections following them. I finished my coffee and headed out for another day, another struggle."

Erik Shaw was a young man, tall and slim in his mid to late twenties. His hair was dark and long. The stubble on his face gave away the number of days he had gone without shaving. You could tell from his body language that here was a man who was starting out his life from the bottom of the proverbial barrel.

Seated in front of him across the table was an older man. His face wrinkled from all the years that he had lived. But his voice was sharp and his ears attentive to every tiny detail in Erik Shaw’s statements.

“I walked on the streets as if I am searching for my long lost friend. I peered across the sea of people going on with their lives, rushing to reach somewhere all the time,” continued Shaw, “I’d been on my own for quite a while by then and I’d become...uh…lonely and bored…nothing to do all day you see,” the young man added, “That’s when I began shadowing.”

“Shadowing?” asked the older man.

“Yeah, shadowing, following. I started to follow people,” he replied. 

Erik Shaw was a man with an unusual hobby indeed. Struggling as a screen writer with few projects coming far between each and just twenty three dollars under his name in his bank account, he would venture out on the streets looking for any kind of work just to keep a roof over his head.

“Who did you follow?” enquired the old man.

“Anyone, a complete stranger, I mean that was the whole point; following someone completely at random. Anyone who wouldn’t know who you were,” replied Shaw.

“And then?”

“And then nothing.”

“Nothing?” said the old man expecting to receive more explanation.

“Nothing I’d follow somebody for a while. Then I’d pick someone else and follow them or go home or whatever.”

“Why did you do it?”

Shaw responded, “How can I explain? Your eyes pass over the crowd and if you let them settle on a person then that person becomes an individual. Just like…that,” snapping his fingers at that moment. He added, “It just became irresistible.”

The old man let a thought rum across his mind before asking again. “So you followed women?”

Shaw protested against this assumption, “It wasn’t some kind of sex thing. I followed anyone just for the sake of it, just to see where they went, what they were doing.”

“So you were playing secret agent?” asked the old man in a mocking tone.

Shaw knew some part of this deduction was correct, but he didn’t like it anyway.

He protested again, “No…I am a writer. I…uh want to be a writer. I wanted to gather material for characters, you know, to write about them. All I did was follow people to begin with.”

“And you had no other motivation for this little hobby of yours?”

“Look, I spotted the dangers soon enough. I could tell I was hooked, so I made up rules… I wouldn’t let myself follow anyone for too long. I wouldn’t follow women after dark, stuff like that, simple things just to keep it all under control.”

“But it still went wrong, didn’t it? Tell me how did it go wrong when you had all the rules in place?” asked the old man seeking some insights into how this man approached this indulgence of his.

“When it stopped being random, that's when it started to go wrong. When I started... to follow people-- specific people, when I selected a person to follow, that's when the trouble started,” continued Shaw, “Other people are interesting to me. Have you never...listened to other people's conversations on the bus or on the tube?”

“No, I am not much in the way of getting into other people’s business,” replied the other man.

“Then you must have seen somebody on the street that looks interesting or is behaving...slightly-- oddly or something like that? Wondered what their lives involved, what they do, where they come from, where they go to? You watch somebody's behavior, and it raises a hundred thousand questions, and... I wanted to ask those questions, and I wanted to know what the answers were. And so I followed people to try to find out what the answers were.”

“Anytime you broke one of your simple rules?” questioned the old man as he lit up his cigarette. The way he saw it this was going to be one long interrogation he figured.

“The most important rule was that even if I found out where a person lived or worked I would never follow that person twice. This would remove any kind of temptation.”

“Your last shadow? It didn’t go quite as expected now did it?” he asked.

“That’s why I am sitting here in front of you detective,” replied Shaw.

Detective Julian Irving was assigned the case of Erik Shaw. Shaw had been accused of murder in the first degree. He was also accused of identity theft and faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if his charges were proven. His unemployment status and his all too peculiar hobby of following people around did nothing to add to his credibility. 

According to Irving this was an open and shut case. The jury would have the verdict ready before lunchtime.

“Listen kid, this is not going anywhere. If you really want to help yourself here you better start making some sense. Now tell me everything from the beginning,” said Irving, “When did you first meet this  guy called Mills?”

***