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

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Anna took a deep breath. ‘OK. Look, I already know where we’re going to go. We’ll be inside Aroma Café. It’s halfway up Tujunga Village. We’re just coming up to it now.’

‘Great, baby. Get in there, grab a coffee and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’

Garcia disconnected.

Sixty-Four

Garcia saw Anna even before Hunter finished parking right in front of the Aroma Café. She and Patricia were sitting at a small table toward the front of the glass-fronted store.

Anna had sat there deliberately, her nervous eyes wandering up and down Tujunga Avenue, as if following a tense, invisible tennis match. As she saw Garcia and Hunter step out of the car, she got up and dashed outside. Patricia followed her.

Garcia met her by the door, and instinctively threw his arms around her as if he hadn’t seen her for years, kissing her hair as she buried her face into his chest.

‘You OK?’ he asked, relief taking over him.

Anna looked up at her husband, and the tension of the moment filled her eyes with tears. ‘I’m OK. What’s going on, Carlos?’

‘I’ll explain in a moment. Did you drive here?’

Anna shook her head.

‘We took the bus,’ Patricia said. She was standing next to Hunter, wide-eyed and confused, watching the scene between Anna and Garcia.

Hunter’s eyes were scanning the street, searching for anyone who looked to have taken any sort of interest in their group. No one seemed to care. People on both sides of Tujunga Avenue were just getting on with their lives. Some window-shopping, some entering or exiting one of the many cafés or restaurants on the busy road, and others just enjoying a leisurely walk at the end of a nice Californian autumn day. No one inside the café seemed interested in them either.

Hunter had also already surveyed the street for CCTV cameras. There weren’t any. Unlike many cities in Europe, some with as many as one camera for every fourteen people, Los Angeles wasn’t a surveillance-crazy city. There wasn’t a single government or law-enforcement CCTV camera in the entire Tujunga Village stretch.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘Robert, this is my friend Patricia.’

Hunter shook her hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’

Patricia was a little over five foot five, though black high-heeled boots added a couple of inches to her height.

‘The pleasure is mine,’ she replied, sending him a sincere smile.

Hunter handed the car keys back to Garcia. ‘Carlos, you take the car and take Anna and Patricia home,’ he said. ‘I can make my way back to the PAB from here. Though I might stay and look around for a little while.’

‘Look around for what?’ Anna asked. Her eyes settled on Hunter, as she knew her husband wouldn’t offer an explanation.

Hunter’s gaze rested on his partner for only a split second before moving to his wife. ‘Nothing in particular, Anna.’

Anna’s stare remained hard. ‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Look,’ Hunter said. ‘Trust us on this. Carlos will explain everything to you later.’

‘I promise I will,’ Garcia said, squeezing her hand. ‘But right now, we need to go.’

Sixty-Five

As soon as Garcia dropped Patricia off in front of her apartment block in Monterey Park, Anna turned and faced him.

‘OK, I’m not waiting until we get home so we can talk about this, Carlos. What the hell is going on?’ Anna still sounded rattled. ‘I could see there was nothing happening in Tujunga Village – no squad cars, no one being arrested, no emergency, nothing out of the ordinary to speak of.’

Garcia shifted a gear and joined North Mednick Avenue, going south.

‘This has got something to do with whatever you’re investigating at the moment, hasn’t it?’ Anna asked rhetorically. ‘I know because Robert was surveying the street like a man on a mission. Who are you guys looking for? How did you know that I was out shopping with a friend? Why are you scaring me like this?’ Tears welled up in her eyes.

Garcia took a deep breath.

‘Talk to me, Carlos, please.’

‘I have to ask you for something,’ Garcia finally said, his voice steady.

Anna leaned back against the passenger’s door, wiped the tears from her eyes and stared at her husband.

‘I need you to stay at your parents’ for a few hours. I’ll come and pick you up later.’

Anna took two whole seconds to digest the request before her nerves took over again. ‘What? You said that nothing had happened to my parents. Are they OK?’

‘Yes, yes, they’re fine, baby. Nothing happened to them. I just need you to stay there for a few hours. I need to go back to the PAB and sort a few things out. I’ll come and get you in a short while.’

Anna waited.

Garcia said nothing else.

‘And that’s all you’re going to say?’ she challenged.

One of the reasons why Garcia and Anna’s relationship worked so well was because they both knew they could always talk to each other, no matter what. And they always did. There was never any recrimination, jealousy or judgment. They were both great listeners, and they supported and understood each other better than they understood themselves.

Anna could see Garcia was struggling with it.

‘Carlos,’ she said, placing a hand on his knee. ‘You know I trust you. I always have, and I always will. If you want me to go stay with my parents for a few hours, I can do that, it’s not a problem, but I have the right to know the reason why. Why don’t you want me to go home? What is going on?’

Garcia knew Anna was right. He also knew that there was no way he could give her the real reason without frightening her, but he had no other alternative. If he lied, she would see right through him. She always did.

He took another deep breath and told her what had happened earlier in the day.

Anna listened without interrupting. When he was done, tears had returned to her eyes, and Garcia felt his heart tighten inside his chest.

‘He was right behind us?’ Anna asked. ‘Filming us?’

Garcia nodded.

‘And he was broadcasting it live over the Internet?’

‘Over the Internet, yes,’ Garcia said. ‘But not open to everyone, just to Robert and me. No one else could see it.’

Anna didn’t want or need to know the technical details.

‘Please, Anna, just stay with your parents for a few hours. I need to get a few things in motion, and I want to check our apartment.’

Anna coughed. ‘You think he’s been in our home?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Garcia said with conviction. ‘But I have to be absolutely sure, because the paranoid cop in me won’t rest until I am. You know that.’

At that moment Anna couldn’t be sure if the emotion in Garcia’s voice was anger or fear.

‘So this is the same person who abducted and killed that LA Timesreporter who was on the paper this morning,’ she finally said. ‘He broadcast it over the Internet, didn’t he? Just like he did with Pat and me.’

Garcia didn’t need to reply. Anna knew she was right.

He kept his eyes on the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel, bottling all he could inside. What he really wanted to ask Anna was for her to leave Los Angeles until they had this psycho behind bars. But she would never agree to it, even if her life werein danger. Anna was a determined, very stubborn and totally committed woman. She worked with deprived elderly people, people who needed and depended on her on a daily basis. Even if she could, she wouldn’t just get up and leave them overnight. And Garcia had no way of knowing how long this hunt would take.

Garcia had agreed with Hunter that today, this killer had no real intention of harming Anna. But he took it as a warning, an eye-opener. The killer could very well change his mind tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that . . . and Garcia knew there was very little he could do about it. What the killer had broadcast this afternoon had filled him with real fear, and highlighted a frightening truth. The truth that despite who he was, despite how much he wanted to, he couldn’t truly protect Anna twenty-four hours a day. The killer knew that. And today he made sure Garcia and Hunter knew it too.

Sixty-Six

With the old-fashioned, closet-sized elevator stuck somewhere at the top of the building, Ethan Walsh took the steps up to his fourth-floor apartment in a hurry, and two at a time. The problem was that physical exercise wasn’t even part of his vocabulary, never mind his daily routine. By the time he hit the second floor, he was out of breath, red-faced and sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna about to have a heart attack. Though Ethan had gained a little extra weight in the past few months, he wasn’t exactly fat, but he sure was unfit.

Usually he would’ve taken his time conquering the eight flights of stairs that led up to his flat, cursing as he reached the top of each one, but tonight he was already ten minutes late for his half-hour, face-to-face call with his four-year-old daughter, Alicia.

When Alicia was born, Ethan’s life seemed to be on a plain-sailing course to success. Ethan was an independent videogames programmer, and a very good one at that. He had developed several online games by himself, and for three consecutive years he’d won the prestigious Mochis Flash Games Award for Best Strategy and Puzzle Game of the Year. But with the advent of direct online stores for major platforms like Microsoft’s X-Box 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3, a whole new world had been presented to independent videogames developers. And there was a hell of a lot of money to be made.

Ethan had discussed the idea of creating a game for the X-Box 360 with Brad Nelson, a brilliant Canadian games programmer he had met several years back. Brad said that he had also been playing around with the same idea, but doing it alone was a mountainous task. After a few more talks, they decided to do it together, and that was how Ethan and Brad created AssKicker Games just six months before Ethan’s baby girl was born.

Brad was very well connected, and on the strength of Ethan’s games awards he managed to secure a couple of very healthy investments, which enabled both of them to quit their day jobs and concentrate solely on developing their first major console game.

Within seven months they had a short playable demo that went viral on the X-Box 360 store. An incredible buzz started about the game and their company, but Ethan was a perfectionist, and he kept on stripping and redoing enormous chunks of the game, which severely hindered its progress. Arguments started breaking out between Ethan and Brad on a daily basis. The completion date for the game just kept on being put back further and further, and two years later it was still under development. No one knew for sure when it would be finished. The buzz about the game and their company had died down. The investments dried up. Ethan ended up remortgaging his house and putting everything he had into the company.

The pressure and frustration Ethan was under at work started seeping through into his relationship with his wife, Stephanie, and they started rowing practically every night. Their daughter was almost three then. Ethan was obsessed, depressed and becoming a nervous wreck. That was when Brad Nelson decided to pull the plug on the company. He’d had enough. The arguments had gotten out of hand. He was out of patience and out of money, but not as in debt as Ethan.

The partnership ended badly. Brad refused to sign the papers that would transfer his share of the company to Ethan, and that meant that Ethan could not carry on developing the game on his own. Fifty percent of the game’s intellectual property belonged to Brad, and he declined to let it go. Ethan had no money to hire a lawyer and try to fight Brad in a court of law. If he were to develop a game for the X-Box 360, he would have to forget everything he’d done so far and start a new one from scratch. He didn’t have the means or the mental stamina for that.

Ethan was left completely broke, including his spirit. He didn’t know what to do, but the experience had left him bitter, and he didn’t want to program anymore. He was in so much debt that his only way out was to declare bankruptcy. He lost his house to the bank, and with that the arguments at home intensified. Stephanie moved out and filed for divorce six months ago. She’d taken their daughter with her, and was now living in Seattle with someone she’d met while still married to Ethan.

Ethan missed his daughter like crazy. In the past six months he had seen her only once. His only comfort at the moment was that twice a week he would speak to her on a thirty-minute Internet, face-to-face call, as stipulated by a family court judge.

When Ethan got to the door of his apartment, his breathing was so heavy he sounded like a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. He fumbled for his keys, opened the door and stepped inside the small, dark and claustrophobic flat.

‘Shit!’ he murmured, checking his watch. It had taken him three minutes to climb up to the fourth floor. His hand found the light switch on the wall, and the old yellow bulb in the center of the ceiling flickered twice before bathing the room in such a weak light it made almost no difference at all. He rushed over to the laptop on the Formica table pushed up against one of the walls, and quickly turned it on.

‘C’mon, c’mon, boot up, you prehistoric brick,’ he urged it, waving both hands at the old computer. When it finally did, he brought up his face-to-face call application and clicked the “call” button. His daughter’s account was already programmed in.

His ex-wife answered it at the other end.

‘You are unbelievable,’ she said, her tone angry. ‘Fifteen minutes late . . .?’

‘Don’t even start, Steph,’ Ethan cut her short. ‘I left work on time, but the bus had a flat. We all had to get out and cram into the next one . . . Anyway, who cares? Why am I wasting my time talking to you? Where’s Alicia?’

‘You’re a jerk,’ Stephanie said. ‘And you look like shit. You could’ve at least combed your hair.’

‘Thank you for the kind words.’ Ethan ran a hand through his fair hair to try to smooth it into place, before using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead. A second later Alicia’s smiley face appeared on his screen.

Alicia was a stunning little girl. Her rosy cheeks and curly blond hair made her look like a cartoon character. Her eyes were deep blue, and their shape gave the impression that she was always smiling, which incidentally she usually was. And it was a smile that could disarm any grown-up.

‘Hi, Daddy,’ Alicia said, waving her hand vigorously at the camera.

‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you?’

‘I’m very well, Daddy.’ She brought her little hand to her mouth and started giggling. ‘You look funny.’

‘Do I? How funny?’

More giggles. ‘Your face looks all red like a big strawberry, and your hair is sticking up like a pineapple.’

‘Well,’ Ethan said. ‘You can call me “fruit salad Daddy” today, then.’

Alicia laughed one of those contagious laughs that people couldn’t help but join in.

Ethan laughed with her.

They talked for another twelve minutes. Ethan felt a knot grow tight in his throat, as he knew he would soon have to say goodbye to Alicia. It would be four days before their next Internet chat.

‘Daddy . . .?’ Alicia said, frowning, her eyes displaying a little confusion.

‘Yes, honey. What is it?’

‘Who is . . .?’

Ethan’s cellphone rang inside his shirt pocket. He always switched it off when he talked to Alicia, but because today he was in a hurry, he’d forgot ten.

‘Just a second, honey,’ he said, reaching for the phone. He didn’t even check the caller display. He simply turned it off and placed it back in his pocket. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Who is what?’

For some reason Alicia looked scared.

‘Darling, what is it?’

She lifted her little arm and pointed at the camera. ‘Who is that man standing behind you, Daddy?’

Sixty-Seven

Garcia dropped Anna off at her parents’ house in Manhattan Beach and headed straight back to his apartment. As he told Anna, the paranoid cop inside of him was screaming ‘check and recheck’, but logic told him that the killer hadn’t been inside their home.

Garcia and Anna lived on the top floor of a six-story building in Montebello, southwest Los Angeles. They had no balcony or back alley fire escape. The only way in was through the front door. Garcia had worked too many house burglaries as a uniformed cop to know better. He had installed an anti-snap, high-security, ten-lever lock on his door. The lock was extremely resistant against picking and drilling attacks, even from someone with special tools. If somebody had breached that lock, there would be signs everywhere. There were none.

Satisfied, he called Hunter and found out that he was on his way to the FBI headquarters to talk with Michelle. Garcia told him he would meet him there.

Hunter had been waiting for less than five minutes when Garcia pulled into the parking lot behind the FBI building in Wilshire Boulevard.

‘How’s Anna?’ Hunter asked as his partner stepped out of his car. He knew Garcia would have told her the truth.

‘She’s rattled, but you know Anna, she’s putting on a brave face. I left her with her parents until I get back. How did you get on?’

Garcia didn’t have to tell Hunter that no matter what he’d told Anna, she wouldn’t simply pack up and leave Los Angeles. Hunter also knew how determined and committed to her job she was, and though he believed that the killer had targeted Anna solely to prove a point, neither he nor Garcia was prepared to take any chances. They had agreed earlier that since they couldn’t keep an eye on her twenty-four hours a day, somebody would.

‘The paperwork is all done,’ Hunter said. ‘And it’s already been approved by the captain. Anna will have a police escort with her 24/7, until we call it off. A squad car has just been dispatched to your place.’

Garcia nodded but made no comment. The look in his eyes was distant and pensive.

‘Why don’t you go home, Carlos?’ Hunter said. ‘Go pick Anna up and stay with her. She needs you by her side . . . and you need her.’

‘I know I do. And that’s why I’m here. Me being with Anna . . . The best surveillance in the world . . . None of it will make any difference while this psycho is still out there. He proved that today.’ Garcia paused and looked at Hunter. ‘Even the tiniest glimpse into how the mind of a perpetrator works can turn out to be a huge step toward capturing him . . . You taught me that, remember?’

Hunter accepted it with a head gesture.

‘So one way to get closer to him is to know all we can about how he does what he does, and Michelle and Harry are the only people who can help us understand how he does it.’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘I’ll pick Anna up straight after I leave here, but right now this is me doing the best I can do to protect her.’ Garcia started walking toward the building.

Sixty-Eight

Harry Mills had come up from the Cybercrime Division’s underground floor to greet Hunter and Garcia at the entrance lobby of the FBI building. He guided them past the reception desk, through the security doors, down the hallway and finally into the elevator, but this time he pressed the button to sublevel three instead of sublevel one.

‘Michelle is at the underground shooting range on the third sublevel,’ Harry explained. ‘It’s how she lets off steam – Metal music and shooting the hell out of a paper target.’ The elevator doors seemed to take forever to close, and Harry repeatedly stabbed his finger at the button.

‘Everything OK?’ Hunter asked.

Harry shrugged. ‘We just got some bad news. A victim in one of the pedophile cases we’re investigating committed suicide about an hour ago. She was twelve.’

The silence that followed was only broken by the mechanical female voice announcing they’d arrived at underground level three.

The elevator doors slid open, and Harry escorted them down another concrete corridor. Light came from fluorescent tubes that ran down the center of the ceiling. They turned left, then right, and arrived at a set of thick, dark glass double doors. Harry swiped his FBI ID card through the electronic keypad on the wall, typed in a six-digit code and the doors buzzed open.

As they stepped inside a small anteroom, the very familiar sound of target practicing filled their ears. A weapons master sat alone inside a separate room, visible through a large security glass window on the east wall. Harry signed both detectives in.

‘She’s in the usual booth,’ the weapons master said, jerking his head to one side.

Another short hallway finally led them into the target practice range, where the noise level shot up five-fold. Twelve individual shooting booths were lined side by side facing a large westward target forum. The first four booths were taken by FBI agents in crisp black suits, yellow-tinted shooting glasses and clunky earmuffs. None of them acknowledged the new arrivals.

The next seven booths were empty. Michelle Kelly was occupying the very last one. She was wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans and black boots. Her long hair had been twisted around and thrown forward over her right shoulder in a casual manner. Instead of the usual large earmuffs, she had white earphones stuck deep into her ears. As they approached her booth, they all saw her fire six quick shots with a semiautomatic handgun at a male torso painted onto a paper target twenty-two yards away.

Michelle removed her earphones and thumbed the safety on before placing the gun on the booth ledge in front of her. She pressed the button that controlled the target slide, and the male torso came flying toward her like Superman.

Six body shots – four around the heart area, one to the left shoulder and one at the stomach/chest borderline.

‘Great shooting,’ Hunter said.

She looked at him with fire in her eyes. ‘If you think you can do better, grab a gun, hotshot.’

Garcia and Hunter cocked their heads back in surprise.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Hunter said. ‘And I wasn’t being sarcastic. That was actually very good shooting.’

‘For a woman, you mean?’

Hunter looked at Garcia, then Harry, then back at Michelle. ‘I didn’t say or imply that either.’

Garcia sleekly took a step back, sensing trouble. He didn’t want to get caught in whatever it was that was happening.

‘Why don’t you grab a gun?’ Michelle forced the issue. ‘Let’s do this. FBI against LAPD. Guy against girl. Whatever you want to call it. Let’s see how well you can shoot.’

Hunter held her burning stare for a second. She definitely hadn’t let off enough steam yet.

‘I can save you the hassle,’ he said. ‘I’m not that accurate.’ He nodded at the paper target as she unclipped it from the slide and put a brand-new one in place. ‘And we don’t have a lot of time to spare, Michelle.’

‘That’s a bullshit excuse. And this won’t take more than a few seconds,’ she replied, slotting a new ammo clip into her gun. ‘9mm pistol OK for you?’ she asked, but answered it herself. ‘But of course it is. Harry, could you, please?’ She nodded toward the weapons room.

Hunter and Garcia knew full well that arguing with a woman when she was in that frame of mind was a futile exercise. Especially one with a gun.

A minute later Harry was back with a pair of protective earmuffs, a pair of yellow-tinted anti-haze glasses and a 9mm Glock 19 compact pistol – the same type Michelle was using.

Hunter said no to the glasses.

‘Standard six shots practice,’ Michelle said, even though the Glock 19 ammo clip holds fifteen bullets. She indicated the empty booth to her left. ‘Kill shots only, and don’t hold back. I’ll know if you do.’

Garcia peeked at Hunter but said nothing.

Hunter took booth number ten, leaving an empty one sandwiched between him and Michelle. She returned her earphones to her ear, cranked up the volume on her MP3 player and gave Hunter a head signal. Still, he waited for Michelle to fire first.

The shots came out fast and furious. Twelve shots in eight seconds.

When the noise died down, they both removed their ear protection and reached for the target slide buttons.

Michelle’s target showed three heart-shots, two head-shots – left cheek and forehead – and one throat-shot. She smiled as she unclipped the paper target.

Hunter had placed one shot on the target’s left shoulder; the other five were spread around its chest area. Only two could be considered lethal shots to the heart.

Michelle looked at Hunter’s targets. ‘That’s not very reassuring, taking into account that you’re trained to protect and serve.’

‘What do you mean?’ Garcia said, checking Hunter’s target. ‘Any of those shots would’ve halted any perpetrator.’

‘That’s true,’ Michelle accepted. ‘But I did say kill shots only, didn’t I?’ She glared at Hunter. ‘Want to go again?’

Hunter thumbed the safety on and returned the pistol to Harry. ‘There’s no point. I wasgoing for kill shots,’ he admitted, locking eyes with his partner.

Garcia avoided Michelle’s gaze, afraid she would’ve read him like a book. Time and time again, down at the LAPD’s practice range, he’d seen Hunter empty entire clips on a movingtarget’s forehead, thirtyyards away. Fifteen shots, clustered together in an area never larger than the diameter of a tennis ball. Garcia was a good shot himself, but he’d never seen anyone as accurate as Hunter with a handgun. On a standing target twenty-two yards away, he was sure Hunter could’ve drawn eyes and a smile on the target’s face.

Hunter looked at Michelle. ‘I did mean it when I said that was great shooting earlier.’

Awkward feet shuffling.

‘I’m sorry for taking a stab at you, and for forcing you to shoot,’ Michelle finally said, ejecting the ammo clip from her gun. ‘It hasn’t been the best of days.’

‘You can say that again,’ Garcia agreed.

Hunter simply nodded.

Both detectives understood that refusing to shoot, or achieving a better score with the target, had the potential to unconsciously aggravate Michelle’s already upset state of mind. Playing along, and coming second best without being too obvious, had had a comforting and soothing psychological effect for Michelle. The effect was immediate. Though she was still visibly upset, the hostility she showed just moments ago was now under control.

‘Can you explain how come we could see the Internet broadcast earlier today, but you couldn’t?’ Garcia asked, not wanting to waste any more time.

‘Sure,’ Michelle said. ‘But let’s get away from this noise first.’

Sixty-Nine

‘There are several ways to block a viewer from watching a live online broadcast,’ Michelle said as they boarded the elevator back up to the Cybercrime Division’s floor. ‘The easiest one is by identifying the viewer’s computer IP address.’

Garcia looked at Michelle blankly.

The elevator doors opened and they made their way down the corridor.

‘Remember when I said that a computer’s IP address is like a license plate or a telephone number?’ Michelle asked. ‘Every computer has a unique identifying one.’

‘Um-huh.’

Harry swiped the security door before typing in the code and allowing everyone back into the cold, starship Enterprise-lookingoffice.

‘OK,’ Michelle continued. ‘So just like a cellphone, if a person calls out, but doesn’t activate caller ID secrecy, the cellphone receiving the call can easily see the number that’s calling in, right? It appears on the caller display.’

‘Yes.’

‘Same with computers. The difference is, unless you’re an expert with some clever gadgets, you can’t hide your computer’s IP address. There’s no caller ID secrecyfeature for people to activate on their computers.’

‘In fact,’ Harry jumped in, ‘every time you connect to any website on the World Wide Web, the host computer records your IP address. It’s their first line of defense against fraud. With an IP address, it makes identifying where the connection came from a lot easier.’

Garcia thought about it for a second. ‘So if you’re a computer programmer, and you know the computer’s IP address in question, you could write some code to block it, whenever it tries to connect to the site.’

‘Or in our case, the opposite,’ Hunter said. ‘The killer could’ve written some code that allowed only one IP address to connect – ours – blocking everyone else’s. That’s why we could see the broadcast but no one else could.’

‘Exactly,’ Michelle and Harry said in unison.

‘But that means he has to know the specific IP address to the computers in our office,’ Garcia said. ‘How easy is it to obtain them?’

‘Depends on how clever you are,’ Harry replied. ‘And this guy is very.’

‘When we couldn’t connect to the broadcast after you called us,’ Michelle explained. ‘We started trying to figure out how he managed to block us out. We came to that same conclusion. In order for him to do so, he needed to know the specific IP addresses for the computers in your office.’ She shrugged. ‘But how did he get them?’

‘The first-ever broadcast,’ Hunter said, thinking back.

‘Bingo.’ Michelle smiled.

Garcia looked at Hunter. ‘The first-ever broadcast?’

‘It wasn’t open to the public,’ Hunter said. ‘Only to us, remember? He called us, gave us an IP address and asked us to type it into the address bar. We were the only ones watching that broadcast. No one else.’

‘So if you were the only ones,’ Michelle said, ‘and the killer knew you were the only ones connecting to his server, the IP address, or addresses, the host computer recorded that day must belong to you.’

‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia whispered.

‘Dead simple,’ Harry said. ‘And dead clever. Without you guys suspecting a thing, he singled your IP addresses out right then. It seems he’s been playing you from the start.’

Seventy

When Hunter got to the Police Administration Building the next morning, Garcia was already at his desk, reading over the last of Christina Stevenson’s emails. Despite the freshly ironed shirt, the clean-shaven face and the hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail, he looked tired. Hunter doubted he’d had more than a couple of hours’ sleep.

‘How’s Anna?’ Hunter asked.

‘She barely slept last night,’ Garcia said, pushing himself away from his desk for a moment. ‘And the few hours she did were punctured by nightmares.’

Despite sensing the hidden anger in Garcia’s words, Hunter knew there was nothing he could say that would make any sort of difference. He stayed silent.

‘I can see you didn’t sleep much either,’ Garcia said, moving the subject along.