Fred Aiken Writing

I’ve never stalked. I’m not a stalker. Despite what some of the people I’ve tailed have called me. The difference between a stalker and an investigator is that I’m paid to follow certain people around. I guess a similar distinction can be made between a prostitute and a porn star; the camera.

But like most people, I don’t enjoy my job. I sort of fell into it. I won’t bore you with the details of the circuitous career path that led to me becoming a private investigator, but I will say that it is quite a boring story.

Most of the cases I deal with are boring, as well. It’s mostly spouses wanting me to follow their significant other to see if they’re cheating or actually working late like they claim to be. Then there’s the occasional missing kid or ransom case, in which the cops came to a dead end or the ransomers threatened the parents not to go to the cops and so instead they came to me to help them find their child. 

But in the case that I’m working on at the moment, well, I don’t understand it at all. I was hired to follow this guy named Samuel. 

Samuel is a curious case. A bit morbid, if I’m being completely honest. He has a compulsive routine that he barely deviates from. He wakes up at 5am. He fixes either coffee or black tea, then reads the same book, Infinite Jest, before getting into traffic for his morning commute. I suppose Samuel’s job isn’t all that boring, if I’m being perfectly honest.

You see, Samuel does not have a traditional 9-to-5 office sort of job. One might say that Samuel works for himself. Others might say that Samuel does not work at all. Though he does sustain himself and his lifestyle off of what he does.

Samuel is a serial killer. Or at least that’s the conclusion that I’ve come to. I’ve seen Samuel kill 3 women, 2 women, and a number of different animals, from crows to cats to rats. I watched him succumb to a level of depravity that I have never witnessed before, nor did I think was possible outside of movies and videogames. I do feel ashamed for not contacting the police, I should say. I wanted to, I really did. But I was contractually obligated not to because, you see, Samuel was the one that hired me to follow him around. When he initially contacted me about the job, I thought he was off his rocker. But I figured if a guy was going to pay me to just follow him around and observe him for a couple of weeks, then so be it. Might as well collect on an easy paycheck, I thought.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, as it goes. 

After witnessing Samuel kill quite a few people and documenting all of it, I went to Samuel to hand over all the evidence I had collected of him. I asked him why. Why did he want a private investigator to follow him and take pictures of everything he did, especially since it was all incredibly illegal.

“I got tired of no one seeing my work. The thrill of killing people lost its romance a long time ago, and now it’s more of a chore. I figured if I had someone following me around and collecting evidence against me, then it might be fun again. I’m no Zodiac Killer, or anything. I didn’t want to be caught by the police. But I figured if I could find the right private investigator, like yourself, to document my exploits without turning me into the police, then I would get some of the spark that I lost in my killing some time ago.”

“And did you? Did it somehow enhance the experience?” I don’t know why I asked. It wasn’t like I cared all that much. When it was all said and done, I was repulsed by the sight of Samuel. I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. But I sometimes can’t help myself, especially when it comes to paying customers. I find myself engaged in polite conversation, no matter where it takes me.

“A little bit. I have you to thank for that. It was nowhere near the serotonin hit that it was back in my twenties. But I will say that I kinda enjoyed the idea of knowing someone was following me as I hunted.”

“Still, even though you didn’t taunt the cops or anything, it still seems risky hiring a private investigator like myself to follow you around and document your kills.”

“I agree. But I always had a failsafe built in just in case you didn’t uphold your part of the deal in keeping our business discreet.”

Samuel knocked me over the head with an unidentifiable object. I suppose the exact nature of the object doesn’t quite matter, so much so that it was thick and solid enough to leave a welt the size of a grapefruit on my forehead, along with a throbbing headache that might be indicative of a concussion. Given hindsight, I should have known. I should have known a serial killer wouldn’t hire me to document their crimes and then, what, just let me go about my business-as-usual life.

I’m not sure if this will reach anyone that will be able to do anything about this, but I’d at least like to put it out there in the universe before I die that Samuel did it. Samuel was the one that killed me.