Текст книги "The Night Stalker"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

One Hundred and Four

There were no delays, and Hunter landed at LAX right on schedule. With no luggage to collect, he walked through the gates just minutes after touching down. Garcia was already there, waiting for him with a folder under his arm.

‘Are you parked on a meter?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia pulled a face. ‘Are you crazy? This is official business. We’ve got perks.’

Hunter smiled. ‘OK, let’s grab a coffee and I’ll run you through everything I got. Anything from Operations or the research team yet?’

‘Not a scrap so far. I just checked with them.’

They found an isolated table towards the back of the Starbucks in Terminal One. Hunter proceeded to tell Garcia all he found out about the Harpers. He told him about Andrew’s secret place in the attic and the peepholes. He told him about the self-harming and that he was sure that Andrew had somehow survived and witnessed everything that happened that day, twenty years ago. After that, Andrew had vanished.

‘If his father was that brutal, how did Andrew survive?’

‘I don’t know exactly what happened that day. No one does except Andrew. But he’s alive. And the pressure cooker in his head finally blew.’

‘You mean something triggered it?’

Hunter nodded.

‘And there were no pictures of him whatsoever?’

‘I couldn’t find any. It’s a small town, small school. Back then the school’s yearbook only featured high-school students. Andrew was in fifth grade when it happened.’ He rubbed the scar on his nape. ‘I think we were right about the killer using projection and transference together with a deep love for the person the victims remind him of.’

‘His mother. The person he loved the most at that age. The person he’d never hurt, no matter what.’

‘No matter what.’

‘Oedipus complex?’

‘I don’t think he was in love with his mother in a romantic way, but he was a very shy kid with few friends. His parents were everything to him. In his mind, they could do no wrong.’

‘Could his feelings have mutated into a combination of maternal and romantic love all rolled up into one?’

Hunter considered the theory. ‘It’s possible, why?’

‘OK, it’s my turn. Let me show you what I found out.’ Garcia flipped open the folder he’d brought with him and took out the music magazine he’d found in Jessica Black’s apartment. He quickly ran Hunter through what had happened with Mark Stratton, how he’d failed to control himself, and how he’d completely trashed a possible abduction scene. ‘By chance I came across this magazine when I was in their apartment. There’s an interview with Jessica Black in it. In a particular section, the interviewer asked her about love.’

‘What about it?’

‘He asked her what true love meant to her.’ Garcia pushed the magazine over to Hunter and pointed to some highlighted lines. ‘That was her answer.’

Hunter’s eyes went over the lines and he paused. His heart skipped several beats. He read them again.

‘To me true love is something uncontrollable. Like a fire that burns really bright inside you and consumes everything around it.’

‘A fire that burns bright inside you?’ Garcia said, shaking his head. ‘It didn’t sound like a coincidence to me. So I went back to the office and searched the net . . . found nothing. I then remembered you told me how good the magazine archives were at the public library, so I took a trip downtown.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘I found this.’ From the folder he retrieved a copy of the printout he had got from the library and pushed it over towards Hunter. ‘An interview with Kelly Jensen for Art Today magazine. Another question about true love and how she viewed the subject.’ He pointed to the highlighted lines. ‘Check her answer out.’

Love hurts, and true love hurts even more. I must admit that I haven’t been very lucky in that department. My last experience was very painful to me. It made me realize that love can be like a crazy knife that sits inside you, and at any moment it can simply flick open. And when it does it cuts you. It slices through everything inside you. It makes you bleed. And there’s very little you can do about it.

‘Shit,’ Hunter whispered, running a hand through his hair.

‘In the library I couldn’t find any similar articles on Laura Mitchell. Then I had this crazy idea of going back to James Smith’s apartment.’

‘Best collection of magazines and articles you’ll ever find on Laura.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia agreed. ‘It took me a few hours, but I found this.’ He handed Hunter the copy of Contemporary Painters.

Another question about love. Hunter read the highlighted lines – True love is the most incredible thing. Something you can’t control. Something that explodes inside you like a bomb when you’re least expecting it and you’re totally consumed by it.

‘He’s giving them love,’ Garcia said. ‘Not his love, but what they consider to be true love, according to what he’d read. According to their own words.’

Hunter agreed mutely. ‘His mind is in a real mess. He’s got no understanding of what love is. And I’m not surprised. To Andrew real love was what his parents had between them, but what he witnessed that night shattered that understanding into a million little pieces, and he’s been trying to put them back together ever since.’

‘OK, but why now?’ Garcia asked. ‘If the trauma occurred twenty years ago, why is he only acting now?’

‘Traumas aren’t straightforward, Carlos,’ Hunter explained, ‘no psychological wound is. Many traumas suffered by people at one stage or another in their lives will never manifest themselves into actions. A lot of the time not even the traumatized person knows what catalyzes it. It just suddenly explodes inside their heads and they have no control over themselves. In Andrew’s case, just seeing Laura, Kelly or Jessica’s picture on a magazine or newspaper could’ve done it.’

‘Because they didn’t just resemble his mother physically, but they were the same age she was when she died, and they were all artists.’

‘Exactly.’ Hunter’s cell phone started ringing – the screen said Restricted Call.

‘Detective Hunter,’ he said, bringing the phone to his ear.

‘Hello, Detective. How did you like my birth city?’

Hunter’s surprised stare shot in Garcia’s direction. ‘Andrew . . . ?’

One Hundred and Five

Garcia’s eyes widened in surprise. He thought he’d heard wrong, but the expression on Hunter’s face left little doubt.

‘Andrew Harper . . . ?’ Hunter repeated, keeping his voice steady.

A chuckle came down the phone. ‘No one has called me Andrew in twenty years.’ The sentence was delivered in a calm tone. His voice like a muffled whisper. Hunter remembered the whispering voice he’d heard on the recording Myers had retrieved from Katia Kudrov’s answering machine.

‘Do you miss being called by your real name?’ Hunter’s tone matched Andrew’s.

Silence.

‘I know you were there, Andrew. I know you saw what happened that day in your house. But why did you run? Where did you go? Why didn’t you allow people to help you?’

‘Help me?’ He laughed.

‘No one could’ve coped with what you went through alone. You needed help then. You need help now.’

‘Cope? How could anyone cope with watching his father transform into a monster right in front of his eyes? A father who only hours earlier had given me the best presents I’d ever got. A father who’d promised me that everything would be fine. That there’d be no more fights. A father who said that he loved my mother and me more than anything. What kind of love is that?’

Hunter didn’t have an answer.

‘I’ve researched you. You used to be a psychologist, didn’t you? Do you think you could’ve helped me cope?’

‘I would’ve done my best.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘No, it isn’t. Life isn’t meant for us to go through it on our own. We all need help from time to time. No matter how strong or tough we think we are. A person alone just can’t deal with certain life situations. Especially not when you’re only ten years old.’

Silence.

‘Andrew?’

‘Stop calling me Andrew. You don’t have the right to do that. No one does. Andrew died that night, twenty years ago.’

‘OK. What name would you like me to call you?’

‘You don’t need to call me anything. But since you were so kind to fuck everything up. To go digging into something you had no right to, I have a surprise for you too. I take it that your phone has video-streaming capabilities, right?’

Hunter frowned.

‘I’m sending you a short video I made earlier. I hope you enjoy it.’

The line went dead.

‘What happened?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter shook his head. ‘He’s sending me some sort of video.’

‘A video? Of what?’

Hunter’s phone beeped – Incoming video request.

‘I guess we’re just about to find out.’

One Hundred and Six

Hunter immediately pressed the yes button accepting the request. Garcia moved closer and craned his neck. Their eyes were glued to the small progress bar on Hunter’s cell phone screen as it filled itself up very slowly. Time seemed to drag.

The phone finally beeped again – Download complete. Watch it now?

Hunter pressed yes again.

The picture was grainy, the quality substandard. It had obviously been recorded using a cheap cell phone camera, but there was no doubt who they were looking at.

‘What the fuck?’ Garcia moved even closer.

Tied to a metal chair in the center of an empty room was a woman. Her head was slumped forward, her dark hair falling over her face covering her features. But neither Hunter nor Garcia needed to see her face to know who she was.

‘Am I going crazy?’ Garcia asked, wide-eyed, the color draining from his face.

No words left Hunter’s lips.

‘How the fuck did he get Captain Blake?’ Garcia’s eyes were still cemented to the screen.

Still silence from Hunter.

The video played on.

Captain Blake slowly lifted her head and Hunter felt something close tight around his heart. She was bleeding from the nose and mouth and her left eye had almost swollen shut. She didn’t look drugged, just in severe pain. The picture focused on her face for just a few more seconds before fading to black.

‘This is crazy,’ Garcia said, fidgeting like a kid.

Hunter’s phone rang again. He answered it immediately.

‘If you’re wondering,’ the whispering voice said, ‘she’s still alive. So I’d be very careful of your next move. ’Cause how long she stays that way depends on it. Back off.’

The line disconnected.

‘What did he say?’

Hunter told him.

‘Shit. This is so messed up. Why take the captain? And why send us a video? That’s completely contrary to his MO. He hasn’t done that with any of the previous victims.’

‘Because Captain Blake isn’t like any of the previous victims, Carlos. She doesn’t remind him of his mother. He didn’t take her for that reason. She’s security . . . a bargaining tool.’

‘What?’

‘On the phone he said, “Be very careful of your next move. ’Cause how long she stays alive depends on it. Back off.” He’s using her as a guarantee.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause we’re getting close, and he wasn’t expecting it. We know who he is . . . or used to be. He knows it’s just a matter of hours before we catch up with him.’

Garcia bit his bottom lip. ‘He’s panicking.’

‘Yes. That’s why the video. And when they panic and deviate from their original plan, they make mistakes.’

‘We don’t have time to wait for him to make a mistake, Robert. He’s got the captain.’

‘He’s already made the mistake.’

‘What? What mistake?’

Hunter pointed to his phone. ‘He sent us a video. We need Internet access.’

‘Internet?’ Garcia frowned. ‘Can we trace it?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s not that stupid.’

‘So why do we need the Internet?’

Hunter looked around and saw a thirty-something man sitting at a table in the corner. He was typing into his laptop.

‘Excuse me, are you online?’

The man looked up, his gaze quickly jumping from Hunter to Garcia, who was right behind his partner. The man nodded skeptically. ‘Yeah.’

‘We need to borrow your computer very quickly,’ Hunter said, having a seat and pulling the laptop towards him.

The man was about to say something when Garcia placed a hand on his shoulder, showing him his badge.

‘Los Angeles Homicide Division, this is important.’

The man lifted both hands in the air in surrender and stood up.

‘I’ll be right over there.’ He pointed to the corner. ‘Take your time.’

‘Why do you need the Internet all of a sudden?’ Garcia asked, taking a seat next to Hunter.

‘Give me a sec.’ He was busy Googling something. A web page loaded and he scanned it as fast as he could.

‘Fuck.’

Hunter grabbed his phone and watched the video again, frowning at it.

‘Damn.’

He Googled something else. A new page loaded and he scanned it again. ‘Oh shit,’ he whispered, checking his watch. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, standing up.

‘Go where?’

‘Santa Clarita.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I know where the captain is being held.’

One Hundred and Seven

Aided by Garcia’s car’s lights and siren, they were eating ground fast. They hooked onto Interstate 405 and Garcia hit the fast lane doing eighty-five miles an hour.

‘OK, how do you know where the captain is being held?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter played the video again and showed his partner. ‘Because she told me.’

‘Huh?’

‘Pay attention to her lips.’

Garcia’s attention diverted from the road for just a second, enough for him to notice the captain’s lips moving ever so slightly.

‘I’ll be damned.’

‘The captain knew there was only one reason Andrew was shooting this video. She knew we would watch it.’

‘More to the point,’ Garcia added, ‘she knew you would watch it. So what did she say?’

‘St Michael’s Hospice.’

‘What?’

‘That’s why I needed the Internet. I thought she’d said St Michael’s Hospital. But there isn’t one, there never was. So I watched the video again and realized she’d said hospice, not hospital. St Michael’s Hospice in Santa Clarita closed down nine years ago, after a fire destroyed most of the building.’ Hunter typed the address into Garcia’s GPS navigational system. ‘There it is.’

‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘Out towards the hills. Completely isolated.’

Hunter nodded.

‘So if we suspect that’s where the captain is being held, why are we going there without a SWAT team?’

‘Because Andrew said that how long the captain lived depended on our actions. He’s somehow monitoring what we do.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, Carlos. But he called me just minutes after I landed. I’d been away less than a day. How the hell did he know I’d gone to Healdsburg this morning?’

Garcia had no answer.

‘SWAT teams are great, but they aren’t exactly subtle. If Andrew gets a sniff that we might know where he is, he’ll get to Captain Blake a lot faster than we or any SWAT team can get to him. And then it’s game over.’

‘So what are we gonna do?’

‘Everything we can. We might be able to surprise him. He doesn’t know that we know. The surprise factor is on our side. If we do this right, we can end this – now.’

Garcia stepped on the gas.

Hunter started flipping through the magazines and printouts Garcia had brought with him. He started reading the interview with Jessica Black again from the start when he suddenly paused and frowned. He reached for the next magazine, the one with Laura Mitchell’s interview.

Adrenalin rushed through his veins. ‘You’re shitting me,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Garcia asked.

‘Wait up.’ He grabbed the computer printout – Kelly Jensen’s interview. ‘We’ve been fucking blind.’

‘For Chrissakes, what have you found, Robert?’

‘Did you know that these three magazines belong to the same corporation?’

‘No.’ Garcia shrugged.

‘Well, they do.’

‘OK, so . . . ?’

‘Did you check the name of the reporter who conducted the interviews?’

‘No.’ Garcia started to look worried.

‘It’s the same guy.’

‘No way.’

Hunter lifted one of the magazines and pointed to the credits, indicating the reporter’s name.

One Hundred and Eight

Hunter was already on the phone to Special Operations. He told them to send units out to the reporter’s home and work address. If he were sighted, he was to be stopped and taken in immediately. An APB was also put out on his registered car.

In Santa Clarita they drove up Sand Canyon Way in the direction of the hills and turned right into a small narrow road that ran another five hundred yards towards the entrance to the old St Michael’s Hospice.

‘We better come off-road somewhere around here and walk the rest of the way,’ Hunter said as they got within two hundred yards of the entrance. ‘I don’t wanna alert him that we’re coming.’

Garcia nodded and found a hidden place behind some tall trees to leave the car.

They quickly walked the rest of the way through the high vegetation and found a covered position about seventy-five yards from the derelict St Michael’s Hospice building.

It was a two-story rectangular structure covering around one thousand square feet. Most of the outside shell had crumbled, the majority of the roof had caved into the top floor, and there were clues everywhere that a large fire had taken place some time ago. At certain spots they could see right through the building. Debris was scattered all around the grounds.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Garcia asked. ‘There seems to be nothing here.’

Hunter pointed to the ground around what used to be the building’s main entrance – a series of fresh tire tracks.

‘Someone has been here recently.’

The tracks led away from the front of the building and disappeared around and towards the back – the only place where the walls seemed intact. Hunter and Garcia spent a few minutes observing from a distance, looking for surveillance cameras or any other signs of security or life. Nothing.

‘Let’s get closer,’ Hunter said.

The tire tracks stopped by a large staircase and wheelchair ramp that led down into the building’s underground floor. There were several footprints on the steps, going in both directions. They all seemed to belong to the same person.

‘Whatever’s happening here, it’s down there.’ Garcia nodded at the stairs.

Hunter pulled out his gun.

‘Only one way to find out. Are you ready for this?’

Garcia grabbed his weapon. ‘No, but let’s do it anyway.’

One Hundred and Nine

Surprisingly, the double swing doors at the bottom of the staircase weren’t locked. Hunter and Garcia pushed them open and stepped inside.

The first room was an old-style reception lobby. A battered semicircular counter was fixed to the wall on the left. Broken furniture was scattered around everywhere, covered in dust and old rags. Beyond the reception counter there was another set of swing doors.

‘I don’t like this one bit,’ Garcia whispered. ‘There’s something just not right about this place.’

Hunter looked around slowly. He still could see no surveillance cameras or any other type of security against intruders. He nodded at Garcia and they both carefully approached the new set of doors.

Hunter tried the handles – unlocked. They moved through.

The doors led them into a wide corridor, stretching for about thirty-five feet. One single dim light bulb kept it from plunging into total darkness. From where they were standing they could see only one door, halfway down the corridor.

‘OK, I’m not one to believe in vibes, or auras, or crap like that,’ Garcia said, ‘but there’s definitely something fucked-up about this place. I can feel it in my soul.’

They kept moving stealthily forward until they reached the lonely door on their left. Again – unlocked. They moved inside.

The room was about twenty-five feet by twenty, and was kitted out like a carpenter’s workshop. A large wooden drawing desk, a heavy-duty workstation counter, two old metal filing cabinets, wall-mounted shelves, and a paraphernalia of instruments and tools hanging from the walls and scattered around the room.

Hunter and Garcia stood still for a moment, taking everything in. When they finally approached the drawing desk, they froze.

‘Holy shit,’ Garcia whispered. His eyes settled on the building plans and the photographs on the desk. They showed one item only. An object they’d seen before. The fan-out knife that was retrieved from inside Kelly Jensen’s body.

Across the room, Hunter recognized the items inside a small box on top of the workstation – the self-activating clicking mechanism. There were three of them, ready to be used. Next to them he found another box with two aluminum tubes. Hunter and Garcia didn’t need to look at them closely to know exactly what they were – practice runs for the flare that was inserted into Jessica Black’s body. This was his creative chamber of horrors, Hunter thought. His death factory.

‘Look at this,’ Garcia said, checking some of the other drawings on the desk. ‘Plans for the bomb used on Laura Mitchell.’

An uneasy silence followed.

Garcia allowed his eyes to roam the room one more time. ‘He can build almost any sort of torture and death instrument in here.’

Hunter’s eyes were also rechecking the room – ceiling, corners, strategic places . . . Still he could see no surveillance of any kind.

‘Here we are!’ Garcia said, reaching for a sheet of paper he found stuck to the wall.

‘What have you got?’

‘Looks like the underground floor plan for this place.’

Hunter moved closer and studied the drawing. The corridor they were in led into a new, transversal hallway. That hallway went around in a large squared path. Four corridors, and according to the plans they were looking at, each corridor held two rooms. There was no other exit on the other side. The only way out was to come back to where they were and go up the stairs they’d come down from.

Garcia felt his blood run cold. ‘Eight rooms. He can keep up to eight victims here at once?’

Hunter nodded. ‘It seems that way.’

‘Fuck. This guy is sick.’

Hunter paused and turned around. He had noticed something hanging from the wall before, but he didn’t pick up on it. A large metal key ring with several skeleton keys.

‘I bet these open the rooms.’

Garcia nodded. ‘Let’s go give them a try.’

They stepped out of the drawing room and, as quickly and quietly as they could, moved onto the transversal hallway at the end of the corridor they were in. They came out exactly at the center of the hallway. In total, this corridor stretched for sixty or seventy feet. Just like the previous one, a single dim light bulb behind a metal mesh on the wall kept it from total darkness.

‘So, what would you like to do?’ Garcia asked. ‘Split up or go together?’

‘Let’s give ourselves a better chance and move together. That way we can cover each other.’

Garcia nodded. ‘Good call. Which way?’

Hunter pointed right.

Once again they moved in almost complete silence. They quickly got to the first room towards the end of the corridor. A very sturdy and thick timber door. At the bottom of it there was a food hatch. Hunter fumbled through the keys in the large key ring, trying each one. He found the correct key on his third attempt.

Hunter gave Garcia a quick nod, who responded in the same way. They were as ready as they’d ever be.

Both detectives held their breath as Hunter stood with his back against the wall to the right of the door and pushed it open in one fast movement. Immediately, Garcia stepped inside, both of his arms stretched out, his weapon held by a double-hand grip. He was followed a fraction of a second later by Hunter.

The room was in complete darkness, but the tiny amount of light that seeped through from the corridor outside allowed them to understand its setup. It was small, maybe only ten feet in depth by seven wide. There was a metal bed pushed up against one of the walls and a bucket on the floor to the right of the bed; nothing else. The walls were made of red bricks and the floor was concrete. It looked like a medieval dungeon, and if fear had a smell, that room was drenched in it. There was no one in there.

Garcia breathed out and cringed. ‘Damn, look at this place, man. Stephen King couldn’t have imagined this hellhole.’

Hunter closed the door silently and he and Garcia moved on. The corridor swung left. Hunter went through the same process, trying each key as he reached the first door in this new hallway. The room was identical to the first one and again in total darkness. There was no one in there either.

Garcia started fidgeting.

They reached the next door and the process started again. As Hunter pushed the door open and they stepped inside with their weapons at the ready, they heard a faint and frightened cry.