Текст книги "One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке)"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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About the author

Born in Brazil of Italian origin, Chris Carter studied psychology and criminal behaviour at the University of Michigan. As a member of the Michigan State District Attorney’s Criminal Psychology team, he interviewed and studied many criminals, including serial and multiple homicide offenders with life-imprisonment convictions.

Having departed for Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Chris spent ten years as a guitarist for numerous rock bands before leaving the music business to write full-time. He now lives in London and is a Top Ten Sunday Timesbestselling author.

Visit www.chriscarterbooks.com or find him on Facebook.

Also by Chris Carter

The Crucifix Killer

The Executioner

The Night Stalker

The Death Sculptor

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013

A CBS Company

Copyright © Chris Carter, 2013

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction without permission.

® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Chris Carter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

1st Floor

222 Gray’s Inn Road

London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN 978-0-85720-305-2

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-85720-306-9

Ebook ISBN 978-0-85720-309-0

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

Sixty-Four

Sixty-Five

Sixty-Six

Sixty-Seven

Sixty-Eight

Sixty-Nine

Seventy

Seventy-One

Seventy-Two

Seventy-Three

Seventy-Four

Seventy-Five

Seventy-Six

Seventy-Seven

Seventy-Eight

Seventy-Nine

Eighty

Eighty-One

Eighty-Two

Eighty-Three

Eighty-Four

Eighty-Five

Eighty-Six

Eighty-Seven

Eighty-Eight

Eighty-Nine

Ninety

Ninety-One

Ninety-Two

Ninety-Three

Ninety-Four

Ninety-Five

Ninety-Six

Ninety-Seven

Ninety-Eight

Ninety-Nine

One Hundred

One Hundred and One

One Hundred and Two

One Hundred and Three

One Hundred and Four

One Hundred and Five

One Hundred and Six

One Hundred and Seven

One Hundred and Eight

One Hundred and Nine

One Hundred and Ten

One Hundred and Eleven

One Hundred and Twelve

One Hundred and Thirteen

One Hundred and Fourteen

One Hundred and Fifteen

One Hundred and Sixteen

One Hundred and Seventeen

One Hundred and Eighteen

One

A single shot to the back of the head, execution style. Many people consider it a very violent way to die. But the truth is – it isn’t. At least not for the victim.

A 9mm bullet will enter someone’s skull and exit at the other side in three ten-thousandths of a second. It will shatter the cranium and rupture through the subject’s brain matter so fast the nervous system has no time to register any pain. If the angle in which the bullet enters the head is correct, the bullet should splice the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, even the thalamus in such a way that the brain will cease functioning, resulting in instant death. If the angle of the shot is wrong, the victim might survive, but not without extensive brain damage. The entry wound should be no larger than a small grape, but the exit wound could be as large as a tennis ball, depending on the type of bullet used.

The male victim on the photograph Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division was looking at had died instantly. The bullet had transversed his entire skull, rupturing the cerebellum together with the temporal and the frontal lobes, causing fatal brain damage in three ten-thousandths of a second. Less than a full second later he was dead on the ground.

The case wasn’t Hunter’s; it belonged to Detective Terry Radley in the main detectives’ floor, but the investigation photos had ended up on Hunter’s desk by mistake. As he returned the photograph to the case file, the phone on his desk rang.

‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special,’ he answered, half expecting it to be Detective Radley after the photo file.

Silence.

‘Hello?’

‘Is this Detective RobertHunter?’ The raspy voice on the other end was male, the tone calm.

‘Yes, this is Detective Robert Hunter. Can I help you?’

Hunter heard the caller breathe out.

‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Detective.’

Hunter frowned.

‘I’m going to need your full attention for the next few minutes.’

Hunter cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your na—’

‘Shut the fuck up and listen, Detective,’ the caller interrupted him. His voice was still calm. ‘This is not a conversation.’

Hunter went silent. The LAPD received tens, sometimes hundreds, of crazy calls a day – drunks, drug users on a high, gang members trying to look ‘badass’, psychics, people wanting to report a government conspiracy or an alien invasion, even people who claim to have seen Elvis down at the local diner. But there was something in the caller’s tone of voice, something in the way he spoke that told Hunter that dismissing the call as a prank would be a mistake. He decided to play along for the time being.

Hunter’s partner, Detective Carlos Garcia, was sitting at his desk, which faced Hunter’s, inside their small office on the fifth floor of the Police Administration Building in downtown Los Angeles. His longish dark brown hair was tied back in a slick ponytail. Garcia was reading something on his computer screen, unaware of his partner’s conversation. He had pushed himself away from his desk and leisurely interlaced his fingers behind his head.

Hunter snapped his fingers to catch Garcia’s attention, pointed to the receiver at his ear and made a circular motion with his index finger, indicating he needed that call recorded and traced.

Garcia instantly reached for the phone on his desk, punched the internal code that connected him to Operations and got everything rolling in less than five seconds. He signaled Hunter, who signaled back telling him to listen in. Garcia tapped into the line.

‘I’m assuming you have a computer on your desk, Detective,’ the caller said. ‘And that that computer is connected to the Internet?’

‘That’s correct.’

An uneasy pause.

‘OK. I want you to type the address I’m about to give you into your address bar . . . Are you ready?’

Hunter hesitated.

‘Trust me, Detective, you will want to see this.’

Hunter leaned forward over his keyboard and brought up his Internet browser. Garcia did the same.

‘OK, I’m ready,’ Hunter replied in a calm tone.

The caller gave Hunter an internet address made up only of numbers and dots, no letters.

Hunter and Garcia both typed the sequence into their address bars and pressed ‘enter’. Their computer screens flickered a couple of times before the web page loaded.

Both detectives went still, as a morbid silence took hold of the room.

The caller chuckled. ‘I guess I have your full attention now.’

Two

The FBI headquarters is located at number 935 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, just a few blocks away from the White House and directly across the road from the US Attorney General. Aside from the headquarters, the FBI has fifty-six field offices scattered around the fifty American states. Most of those offices also control a number of satellite cells known as ‘resident agencies’.

The Los Angeles office in Wilshire Boulevard is one of the largest FBI field offices in the whole American territory. It controls ten resident agencies. It is also one of the few with a specific Cybercrime Division.

The FBI Cybercrime Division’s priority is to investigate high-tech crimes, including cyber-based terrorism, computer intrusions, online sexual exploitation and major cyber frauds. In the United States, in the past five years alone, cybercrime has increased ten-fold. The US government and its networks receive over a billion attacks each and every day, coming from multiple sources all around the world.

In 2011 a report was submitted to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, estimating that internal cybercrime was bringing in illicit revenues of approximately US$800 million a year, making it the most lucrative illegal business in the USA, exceeding drug trafficking.

Thousands of the FBI’s ‘web crawlers’, also known as ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’, search the net endlessly, looking for anything suspicious concerning any type of high-tech crime, inside and outside the United States. It’s a mammoth job, and the FBI understands that what the crawlers find is merely a drop of water in a cybercrime ocean. For every threat they find, thousands go unnoticed. And that was why on that autumn morning at the end of September, no FBI web crawler came across the web page Detective Hunter and his partner were looking at back at the Police Administration Building.

Three

Hunter and Garcia’s eyes were glued to their computer screens, trying to take in the surreal images. They showed a large, see-through, square container. It looked like it was made of glass, but it could’ve been Perspex or other similar material. Hunter guessed each side to be approximately 1.5 meters wide, and at least 1.8 meters tall. The container was open-top – no lid – and it seemed to have been handmade. Metal frames and thick white sealant connected the four walls. The whole thing looked just like a reinforced shower enclosure. Inside the enclosure, two metal pipes of about three inches in diameter, one on the left and one on the right, ran from the floor all the way up and out the top. The pipes were sprinkled with holes, none wider than the diameter of a regular pencil. But two things worried Hunter. One was the fact that the images seemed to be streaming live. Two was what was at the center of the container, directly between the two metal pipes.

Sitting there, tied to a heavy metal chair, was a white male who looked to be in his mid to late twenties. His hair was light brown and cut short. The only piece of clothing he had on was a striped pair of boxers. He was a chubby man, with a round face, plump cheeks and chunky arms. He was sweating profusely, and though he didn’t look hurt there was no doubt about the expression on his face – pure fear. His eyes were wide open, and he was taking in quick gulps of air through the cloth gag in his mouth. Hunter could tell by the fast ‘up-and-down’ movement of his belly that he was almost hyperventilating. The man was shivering and looking around himself like a confused and frightened mouse.

The entire image had a green tint to it, indicating that the camera was using night-vision mode and lenses. Whoever that man was, he was sitting in a dark room.

‘Is this for real?’ Garcia whispered to Hunter, covering his mouthpiece.

Hunter shrugged without taking his eyes off the screen.

As if on cue, the caller broke his silence. ‘If you are wondering if this is live, Detective, let me show you.’

The camera panned right to a nondescript brick wall where a regular, round wall clock was mounted. It read 2:57 p.m. Hunter and Garcia checked their watches – 2:57 p.m. The camera then panned down and focused on the newspaper that had been placed at the foot of the wall, before zooming in on its front page and the date. It was a copy of this morning’s LA Times.

‘Satisfied?’ The caller chuckled.

The camera refocused on the man inside the box. His nose had started running and tears were streaming down his face.

‘The container you’re looking at is made of reinforced glass, strong enough to withstand a bullet,’ the caller explained in a chilling voice. ‘The door has a very secure locking mechanism, with an airtight seal. It only opens from the outside. In short, the man you can see on your screen is trapped inside. There’s no way out of there.’

The frightened man on the screen looked straight at the camera. Hunter quickly pressed the ‘print screen’ key on his keyboard, saving a snapshot of his entire desktop to the computer’s clipboard. He now had what he hoped would be an identifiable shot of the man’s face.

‘Now, the reason why I’m calling you, Detective, is because I need your help.’

On the screen, the man started panting heavily. Fearful sweat covered his entire body. He was on the brink of a panic attack.

‘OK, let’s take it easy,’ Hunter replied, being certain to keep his voice calm but authoritative. ‘Tell me how I can help you?’

Silence.

Hunter knew the caller was still on the line. ‘I’ll do everything I can to help you. Just tell me how.’

‘Well . . .’ the caller responded. ‘You can decide how he’s going to die.’

Four

Hunter and Garcia exchanged uneasy glances. Garcia immediately clicked off the call and quickly punched the internal code to be connected to Operations again.

‘Please tell me you’ve got a location for this creep,’ Garcia said as the phone was answered at the other end.

‘Not yet, Detective,’ the woman replied. ‘We need another minute or so. Keep him talking.’

‘He doesn’t want to talk anymore.’

‘We’re getting there, but we need a little more time.’

‘Shit!’ He shook his head at Hunter and signaled him to keep the caller talking. ‘Let me know the second you get something.’ He disconnected and tapped back into Hunter’s call.

‘Fire or water, Detective?’ the caller said.

Hunter frowned. ‘What?’

‘Fire or water?’ the caller repeated in an amused tone. ‘The pipes inside the glass enclosure you can see on your screen are capable of spitting out fire or filling the enclosure with water.’

Hunter’s heart stuttered.

‘So pick, Detective Hunter. Would you like to watch him die by fire or water? Shall we drown him or burn him alive?’ It didn’t sound like a joke.

Garcia shifted in his chair.

‘Wait a moment,’ Hunter said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘I know I don’t, but I want to. It should be fun, don’t you think?’ The indifference in the caller’s voice was mesmerizing.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ Garcia urged between clenched teeth, staring at the line lights on his phone. Still nothing from Operations.

‘Choose, Detective,’ the caller ordered. ‘I want youto decide how he’s going to die.’

Hunter kept silent.

‘I suggest you pick one, Detective, because I promise you that the alternative is much worse.’

‘You know I can’t make that decision . . .’

‘CHOOSE,’ the caller shouted down the line.

‘OK,’ Hunter’s voice remained calm. ‘I choose neither of the two.’

‘That’s not an option.’

‘Yes, it is. Let’s talk about this for a minute.’

The caller laughed angrily. ‘Let’s not. Talking time is over. It’s decision time now, Detective. If you don’t pick . . . I will. Either way, he dies.’

A red light started flashing on Garcia’s phone. He quickly swapped calls. ‘Tell me you’ve got him.’

‘We’ve got him, Detective.’ Excitement colored the woman’s voice. ‘He’s in . . .’ She paused for a moment. ‘What the hell?’

‘What?’ Garcia pushed. ‘Where is he?’

‘What the hell is going on?’ Garcia heard the woman say, but he knew she wasn’t talking to him. He heard some more undecipherable whispers coming from the other end of the line. Something was wrong.

‘Somebody better talk to me.’ Garcia’s voice raised about half an octave.

‘It’s no good, Detective,’ the woman finally answered. ‘We thought we had him in Norwalk, but suddenly the signal jumped to Temple City, then to El Monte, now it’s showing the call is coming from Long Beach. He’s rerouting the signal every five seconds. Even if we keep him on the phone for an hour, we wouldn’t be able to pinpoint him.’ She paused for a moment. ‘The signal just moved to Hollywood. Sorry, Detective. This guy knows what he’s doing.’

‘Shit!’ Garcia tapped back into Hunter’s call and shook his head. ‘He’s bouncing the signal,’ he whispered. ‘We can’t get his location.’

Hunter squeezed his eyes tight. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked the caller.

‘Because I want to,’ the caller came back. ‘You have three seconds to make your choice, Detective Hunter. Fire or water? Flip a coin if you need to. Ask your partner. I know he’s listening in.’

Garcia said nothing.

‘Wait,’ Hunter said. ‘How can I make a choice if I don’t even know who he is, or why you have him in that tank? C’mon, talk to me. Tell me what this is all about.’

The caller laughed again. ‘That’s something you will have to find out for yourself, Detective. Two seconds.’

‘Don’t do this. We can help each other.’

Garcia’s eyes had left his computer screen and were now locked on Hunter.

‘One second, Detective.’

‘C’mon, talk to me,’ Hunter said again. ‘We can figure this out. We can come up with a better solution for whatever this is.’

Garcia held his breath.

‘The solution is either fire or water, Detective. Anyway, time’s up. So what is it going to be?’

‘Look, there’s got to be another way we can . . .’

TOC, TOC, TOC.

The sound exploded through Hunter and Garcia’s phone so loudly that their heads jerked back, as if they had been slapped across the face. It sounded like the caller had slammed his receiver against a wooden surface three times to get their attention.

‘You don’t seem to be listening to me, Detective Hunter. We are through talking. The only word I want to hear from you right now is either fireor water.Nothing else.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘Suit yourself. You don’t want to pick, I will. And I pick fi—’

‘Water,’ Hunter said in a firm voice. ‘I choose water.’

The caller paused and let out an amused chuckle. ‘You know what, Detective? I knew you would choose water.’

Hunter stayed silent.

‘It was obvious, really. When you considered the options you had, death by drowning seemed less awful, more humane, less painful and quicker than being burned alive, right? But have you ever seen anyone drown, Detective?’

Silence.

‘Have you ever seen the despairing look on a person’s eyes as he holds his breath for as long as he can, knowing death is all around him and closing in fast?’

Hunter ran a hand through his short hair.

‘Have you ever seen the way a drowning man frantically looks around himself, confused, searching for a miracle that is just not there? A miracle that will never come?’

Still silence.

‘Have you seen the way the body convulses, as if it was being electrocuted, as the person finally lets go of hope and breathes his first mouthful of water? The way his eyes almost bulge out of his skull as water enters his lungs and he slowly starts to suffocate?’ The caller deliberately breathed out heavily. ‘Did you know that it’s impossible to keep your eyes shut when you’re drowning? It’s an automatic motor reaction when a person’s brain is starved of oxygen.’

Garcia’s gaze returned to his screen.

The caller laughed one more time. This time a relaxed giggle. ‘Keep on watching, Detective. This show is just about to get much better.’

The line went dead.

Five

All of a sudden and with incredible speed, water started jetting out of the holes on both pipes inside the glass enclosure. The man tied to the chair was caught by surprise, and fear made his whole body jerk violently. His eyes widened in complete desperation as he realized what was happening. Despite the gag in his mouth, he started screaming, frantically, but on the other side of the screen Hunter and Garcia couldn’t hear a sound.

‘Oh my God,’ Garcia said, bringing his closed right fist to his mouth. ‘He’s not bullshitting. He’s going to do it. He’s going to drown the guy, goddammit.’

The man kicked and wiggled ferociously inside the enclosure, but his restraints wouldn’t give an inch. He couldn’t break free no matter what he did. The chair was solidly bolted to the floor.

‘This is insane,’ Garcia said.

Hunter stood still, his eyes unblinking, staring at his computer screen. He knew that from their office there was absolutely nothing they could do – except maybe collect evidence. ‘Is there a way we can record this?’ he asked.

Garcia shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

Hunter reached for his phone again and got the LAPD switchboard.

‘Punch me through to the head of the Computer Crimes Unit, now.This is urgent.’

Two seconds later he heard a ringing tone. Four seconds after that the phone was answered by a baritone voice.

‘Dennis Baxter, LAPD Computer Crimes Unit.’

‘Dennis, this is Detective Hunter from Homicide Special.’

‘Hello, Detective, how can I assist you?’

‘Tell me, is there a way I can record a live webcam broadcast that I’m watching on my computer right now?’

Baxter laughed. ‘Wow, is she that hot?’

‘Is there a way or not, Dennis?’

Hunter’s tone knocked the play out of Baxter’s voice.

‘Not unless you have some sort of screen recording software installed on your computer,’ he answered.

‘Will I have one?’

‘On an LAPD office computer? Not as standard. You can put in a request and IT will install one for you in a day or two.’

‘No good. I need to capture what’s on my screen right now.’

A split-second pause.

‘Well, I can do it from here,’ Baxter said. ‘If you’re watching something live over the net, just give me the web address. I can log into the same website and capture it for you. How does that sound?’

‘Good enough. Let’s try it.’ Hunter gave Baxter the sequence of numbers the caller had given him minutes earlier.

‘An IP address?’ Baxter asked.

‘That’s right. Aren’t they traceable?’ Hunter asked.

‘Yes. That’s actually their main purpose. They work almost like a license number plate for every computer connected to the net. With that, I can pretty much tell you the exact location of the source computer.’

Hunter frowned. Could the caller have made such a silly mistake?

‘Do you want me to start a trace?’ Baxter asked.

‘Yes.’

‘OK. I’ll get back to you as soon as I get anything.’ He disconnected.

The water was already reaching the man’s waist. At that speed, Hunter calculated that the man would be completely submerged in another minute and a half, maybe two.

‘Operations said that there was no way they could trace the call?’ Hunter asked Garcia.

‘That’s right. He was bouncing the signal all over town.’

The water reached the man’s stomach. He was still trying to wiggle himself free, but he was steadily losing energy. He was shivering even more now. A combination of uncontrollable fear and the water temperature, Hunter guessed.

There was nothing Hunter or Garcia could say, so they both went eerily quiet, watching death rise inch by inch around the man on their computer screens.

The phone on Hunter’s desk rang again.

‘Detective, is this for real?’ Dennis Baxter asked.

‘Right now, I have no reason to believe it isn’t. Are you capturing it?’

‘Yeah, I’m recording it.’

‘Any luck with tracing it?’

‘Not yet. It can take a few minutes.’

‘Get back to me if you get anything.’

‘Sure.’

The water reached the man’s chest, and the camera slowly zoomed in on his face. He was sobbing. Hope had left his eyes. He was giving up.

‘I don’t think I can watch this,’ Garcia said, moving from behind his desk and pacing the room.

The water reached the man’s shoulders. In a minute it would be past his nose, and death would arrive with the next breath. He closed his eyes and waited. He wasn’t trying to break free anymore.

The water reached the underside of his chin, and then, without any warning, it stopped. Not a drop more came out of the pipes.

‘What the hell?’ Hunter and Garcia looked at each other for a second and then back at the screen. Surprise etched on both their faces.

‘It was a goddamn hoax,’ Garcia said, approaching Hunter. A nervous smile on his face. ‘Some nutcase pulling our chain.’

Hunter wasn’t so sure.

At that exact moment the phone on Hunter’s desk rang again.

Six

The sound of the phone ringing cut through the silence like thunder ripping through a night sky.

‘You are very clever, Detective Hunter,’ the caller said.

Hunter quickly signaled Garcia one more time, and within seconds the call was being recorded again.

‘You almost had me fooled,’ the caller carried on. ‘I thought your concern for the victim was quite touching. Once you realized there was no way you could save him, you picked what seemed to be the less sadistic, less painful and quicker death of the two choices I gave you. But that was only half of the story, wasn’t it?’

Garcia looked confused.

Hunter said nothing.

‘I figured out the hidden reason behind your choice, Detective.’

No reply.

‘You realized I was about to pick fire, and you quickly interrupted me and chose water.’ A self-assured laugh. ‘Water would’ve given you hope, right?’

‘Hope?’ Garcia mouthed the word, frowning at Hunter.

‘The hope that when, and if, you come across the body, maybe your—’ the caller put on a silly voice ‘ —super-advanced, high-tech forensics labcould uncover something. Maybe on his skin, or hair, or a trace of something under his nails or inside his mouth. Who knows what microscopic clues I might have left behind, isn’t that right, Detective Hunter? But fire would’ve destroyed it all. It would’ve carbonized his entire body and everything else with it. No clues left, microscopic or not.’

Garcia hadn’t thought of that.

‘But if he drowns, the body is intact.’ The caller moved on. ‘Death comes from suffocation . . . skin, hair, nails . . . nothing gets destroyed. It’s all there ready to be analyzed.’ The caller paused for breath. ‘There might be a million things to find. Even the water in his lungs could provide you with some sort of clue. That’s why you chose water, isn’t it, Detective? If you can’t save him, do the next best thing.’ The caller let out an animated laugh. ‘Always thinking like a detective. Oh, you’re no fun.’

Hunter gave himself a subtle headshake. ‘You were right the first time around. My concern was the victim’s suffering.’

‘Of course it was. But . . . just in case I’m right, guess what? I was already prepared for it.’

The man on the screen had reopened his eyes. He was still shivering. Despite the darkness, he looked around himself, waiting . . . listening.

Nothing. Not a sound. The water had stopped.

Behind the gag his mouth twisted into a shy smile. A glimmer of hope returned to his eyes, as if it all had been just a bad dream . . . a sick joke. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if thanking God. Tears found their way through his closed eyelids and cascaded down his face.

‘Keep on watching, Detective.’ There was a proud ring to the caller’s voice. ‘Because you’re about to get the “Cirque du Soleil” of shows.’ He disconnected.

On the screen the water level started decreasing.

‘He’s draining the container,’ Garcia said.

Hunter nodded.

The water drained fast. In a matter of seconds its level had gone back down to the man’s chest.

Then it stopped.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Garcia asked, lifting his palms up.

Hunter shook his head. His full attention never leaving the screen.

The camera zoomed out just a little, and all of a sudden the submerged portion of the pipes sprang back into life. Like a Jacuzzi bath, the underwater jets ruffled the water as they spat more liquid into the enclosure. But there was something different this time. As the colorless liquid exited the pipes and mixed with the water, it was producing an odd effect, as if the new liquid was denser than that already inside the enclosure.

Hunter leaned forward, bringing his face closer to the monitor.

‘That’s not water,’ he said.

‘What?’ Garcia asked, standing right behind him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Different density,’ Hunter replied, pointing at his screen. ‘Whatever he’s pumping into that tank, it isn’t water this time.’

‘What the hell is it, then?’

At that moment something started flashing at the top right-hand corner of the picture. Four letters inside parentheses. The first, third and fourth were in capitals.

(NaOH)

‘Is that a chemical formula?’ Garcia pointed to it.

‘Yes.’ Hunter breathed out.

‘For what?’ Garcia rushed back to his computer and opened a new tab on his web browser.

‘No need to search for it, Carlos,’ Hunter said grimly. ‘That’s the chemical formula for sodium hydroxide . . . caustic soda.’

Seven

Garcia felt a knot tighten in his throat. Years ago, when he was still just a uniformed LAPD cop, he’d responded to a domestic violence incident where a jealous boyfriend had thrown half a pint of caustic soda in his girlfriend’s face. The boyfriend fled the scene but was arrested five days later. Garcia still remembered helping the paramedics strap the girlfriend down to the gurney. Her face was just a mess of raw flesh and burned skin. Her lips looked like they had melted onto her teeth. Her right ear and nose had totally disintegrated, and the solution burned holes into one of her eyeballs.

Garcia looked at Hunter over his computer. ‘No way. Are you sure?’

Hunter nodded. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Sonofabitch.’

The phone on Hunter’s desk rang again. It was Dennis Baxter from the Computer Crimes Unit.

‘Detective,’ he said in an anxious voice. ‘NaOH is caustic soda. Sodium hydroxide.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Shit, man. That stuff is highly corrosive. Many times worse than acid. If somebody is dumping sodium hydroxide into that much water, for now, the solution will be over-diluted and not very strong, but soon . . .’ He went silent.

‘It will turn that whole thing into an alkaline bath,’ Hunter finished the sentence Baxter couldn’t.

‘That’s right. And you know what that will do?’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Holy shit, Detective. What’s going on?’

‘I’m not sure. Did you manage to trace the transmission?’

‘Yes. It’s coming from Taiwan.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly. Whoever is doing this . . . he’s good. It’s either a hijacked IP address or he stole one from a Taiwanese server pool. Bottom line . . . We can’t trace it.’