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

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

‘Well, that’s the smell of power and politics, and you as well as I know that this department is drowning in it, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. So investigate the hell out of him if you like, but play it by the book.If you get anything else on him other than the article Christina Stevenson wrote about him, come to me with it first. That’s all I’m asking.’

The captain dropped the subject and moved toward the pictures board. ‘OK, let’s move on. The third Internet victim: I was told his body has been found.’ Her eyes searched the board, but found no new photographs.

‘It has, yesterday,’ Garcia confirmed. He then proceeded to explain how the victim’s body had been left inside a construction dumpster at the back of a private property in Maywood. ‘The body was already on its way to the coroner’s when we got there. We should be getting the autopsy results and photographs anytime soon.’ He double clicked something on his computer. ‘Forensics sent us an email last night with all the shots they took of the body in situ at the “dump scene”. I just haven’t had time to print them out and pin them up yet.’ He double clicked something again, and the printer at the edge of his desk came to life.

‘Officially confirmed ID?’ the captain asked.

Garcia nodded. ‘The victim’s wife and daughter live in Seattle. They were recently divorced. His parents live in Iowa, but we got access to his apartment in Bellflower through his landlord. Fingerprint analysis between items in his apartment and the body found in Maywood is a one hundred percent match.’

‘So who is he?’

‘His name is Ethan Walsh,’ Hunter replied, handing her a copy of the photograph the pizzeria owner had sent Detective Perez.

Captain Blake’s eyes moved to the picture and recognition was instant. She too hadn’t been able to forget his face. Seeing him branding a timid smile like the one he had on the picture seemed too alien to her memory of his terrified face contorting in agony.

‘What’s the story on him?’ Her voice almost faltered.

Hunter gave her a quick summary on everything they had found so far on Ethan Walsh.

Captain Blake listened to everything in silence, interjecting only when Hunter was done. ‘Do we have anything on this ex-partner of his, Mr. Nelson is it? He’s also an expert computer programmer, right?’ She handed the picture back to Hunter.

‘That’s right,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Brad Nelson. We’re still gathering information on him, but chances are he’ll be clean. He moved back to Canada ten months ago.’

Garcia retrieved the printouts from his printer and carefully pinned them onto the pictures board.

The captain stepped closer to have a better look. The close-up photos of the victim’s face sticking out of the heavy-duty plastic bags made a sick acid taste travel up from her stomach, through her throat and into her mouth. She quickly reached into her pocket for a mint.

‘You said that you’ve been to the victim’s apartment,’ Captain Blake said, finally turning to face her detectives. ‘Anything?’

‘We found his laptop,’ Garcia informed her. ‘But it’s password protected. We left it with Dennis Baxter at the Computer Crimes Unit. They’re trying to break it.’

Captain Blake nodded, unenthusiastically.

‘But we also got this,’ Garcia said, producing the notebook he found in Ethan Walsh’s apartment.

‘And what is that?’

‘An old-fashioned address and telephone book,’ Garcia explained. ‘Apparently, the more into technology you are, the more you know that it can all go disastrously wrong. It looks like Ethan Walsh kept a hard copy of what I’m guessing are all the numbers in his cellphone’s address book.’

Captain Blake nodded. She had one herself. ‘OK, and . . .?’

Garcia handed her the book, already opened onto a specific page. ‘Fifth name from the top,’ he said.

The captain’s eyes scrolled down the list, paused, widened a fraction. ‘Christina Stevenson?’ She read the name out loud before her gaze shot up in the direction of both detectives. ‘Is this the same Christina Stevenson?’ She pointed to the pictures board. ‘The killer’s second victim?’

‘The one and the same,’ Hunter agreed. ‘That’s her cellphone number.’

‘You do remember that we retrieved Christina Stevenson’s cellphone from her house, right?’ Garcia asked.

‘His number is in her address book as well.’ The captain phrased it half as a question, half as a statement.

‘It is,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘We checked her phone’s call log, but it goes back only three weeks. She hadn’t made or received a call to or from Ethan Walsh’s number during that period.’

‘Do you have his cellphone?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Garcia replied. ‘It wasn’t in his apartment. We’ve checked with the provider, and the phone has been switched off. We’ve already requested phone records for the past three months for both of them. We should hopefully have them by the end of today, or maybe tomorrow. At the moment we’re not sure if they were friends, acquaintances, or if Ethan Walsh had, in any level, been part of any of Ms. Stevenson’s reports.’

Captain Blake returned her attention to the phone book.

‘I spent most of the night reading through every article Christina Stevenson wrote for the LA Timesin the past two years,’ Hunter announced. ‘Six hundred and sixty-nine in total. Ethan Walsh’s name isn’t mentioned in any of them. I’ve already contacted Ms. Stevenson’s ex-editor with the entertainment desk again. She’s never heard the name Ethan Walsh.’

‘You’re thinking he might’ve been an informant?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘Like a source, I mean?’

Hunter shrugged gently. ‘It’s possible. I’ve also asked her for a copy of all the articles Ms. Stevenson wrote while she was with the crime desk.’

‘Crime desk?’ the captain asked.

‘Before she became an entertainment reporter, Christina Stevenson spent nine months with the crime desk. I know it was a long time ago, but I’d still like to go through all those articles as well. I should be getting those sometime today.’

The captain started flipping through the pages in Ethan Walsh’s phone book.

‘If you’re looking for the first victim’s name,’ Garcia said, ‘Kevin Lee Parker, it’s not there. We’ve looked.’

She paused, considering her thoughts for a little while. ‘Yeah, but this shows that at least two of the victims knew each other. In a city where the population stands at around twelve and a half million people, this cannot be a coincidence. This killer isn’t selecting his victims at random.’

Ninety-Three

Her first thought as she finally reawakened was that death felt nothing like what she had expected.

Next, as her senses slowly came back to her, she realized that death hadn’t taken her yet, then came the pain – rushing through her like a drug overdose. It felt as if every bone and muscle in her body had been beaten up and then twisted out of shape. Her head throbbed so ferociously it was hard even to breathe. She could feel the blood thundering through her ears with such force she believed her eardrums would explode. She moaned slowly, while trying to find the strength to open her eyes against the pain.

That was when she heard his voice again, and the sheer sound of it sent a shocking wave of fear through every atom in her body.

‘Don’t fight it. Don’t try to move. Just try to relax.’ His tone was calm, emotionless, disembodied.

She was unable to hold back the fearful cry that escaped her lips.

The man waited.

She tried blinking her eyes open, thinking that she must not panic, but fear had already covered her like a shroud. She gasped in air, hyperventilating.

He spoke again.

‘Take a deep breath, and try to remain calm.’

Another gasp of air.

‘I know you’re scared. I understand it seems difficult right now, but just breathe, and soon the panic will go away.’

She tried to do as she was told.

She finally managed to open her eyes, allowing them to drink in her surroundings, but the room was mostly dark. The only light came from a terribly weak corner light far away. The air was stale, heavy with the smell of old hay, disinfectant and something else she didn’t recognize. Something sweet and sickly. She couldn’t see the man, but she could hear his breathing, and she could sense his oppressing presence.

She slowly became aware that she couldn’t move. She was sitting down in some sort of heavy, hard and uncomfortable high-backed chair. Her wrists were roped to the chair’s arms – her ankles securely fastened to the chair’s legs. Her torso and head weren’t restrained, which allowed her to slightly twist her body from side to side. She did so slowly. First left, then right, trying to better understand the room. Only then she realized that she was naked.

Suddenly she was overcome by an abrupt despair at how vulnerable, exposed and fragile she really was. She wanted to stay in control. She wanted to show strength and determination, but at that precise moment fear was winning that battle, and involuntarily she began sobbing.

‘You’re not doing what I told you to do.’ The man’s cold voice came again.

The woman could not stifle her sobs. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and squeezed them tight, wishing the tears away.

‘Stay strong,’the voice in her head said.

She had read somewhere that rape attackers thrived on fear, on the submission of their prey, but that thought only served to scare her more, and the uncertainty of what would happen to her next petrified her. When she spoke, the words left her lips as if spoken by a little lost child.

‘Please, don’t hurt me.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Please, let me go.’

Silence.

Her next words came out without any thought.

‘I’ll do whatever you want. Please, just let me go.’

No reply.

‘Please . . .’ In a moment of sobriety from her fear, she realized how useless that word sounded.

‘Tell me what you want from me?’ Her mind raced over the possible answers to her own question, but she forced herself to banish the gruesome visions.

The man breathed out slowly, and she sensed his movement.

For an instant she felt as if her heart had stopped.

The man stepped out of the shadows, for the first time hovering into the periphery of her vision. She craned her neck in his direction. Despite the different clothes, she immediately recognized him. It was the same man she had talked to in the supermarket, and then later helped at the parking lot. But gone were the easy approachable grin, the shy persona and the kind eyes. He looked taller, stronger, menacing. His face now seemed to be all edges and angles.

‘Hello again,’ he said.

His gaze grabbed hers like a giant claw, and she had the sensation that she was being helplessly sucked into a dark place. More tears came to her eyes.

‘Crying won’t help you.’

‘Please, don’t hurt me,’ she said again. The words simply dripped out of her lips, unrequested, sorrowful, powerless. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘ WhateverI want?’ He did not take his eyes from her naked body. The insinuation in his words and the rigidity of his gaze struck her like a blow to the temple.

She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, and heard the lost girl inside her reply, ‘Yes. Whatever you want.’

He stepped closer.

She held her breath. ‘Oh, please, God.’

‘Stop praying.’

‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Whatever you say. Please.’

‘Stop begging.’

She began crying again.

‘Stop crying.’

She breathed in through her nose and held the breath in her lungs until she was able to control her sobs.

‘So, will you do whateverI want you to do?’ he asked her one more time.

She breathed in again, courage coming to her out of thin air.

‘Yes.’ There was now distinct determination in her tone. ‘You can do this.’The voice in her head spoke again.

He stepped closer still, and she finally saw the glint of the knife in his hand.

‘Oh my God . . . no.’ The determination was all gone. Her mind became a single black sheet of panic, paralyzing her every move.

The man smiled in a way that told her that her fear pleased him. His eyes held hers as if they were connected. She felt the coldness of the steel blade on her skin, but was unable to break away from his hypnotizing stare. The blade pulled away fast, in a quick slicing movement.

The woman held her breath for a moment.

No pain.

She knew that a sharp enough blade could cut through human skin and flesh so subtly that sometimes no pain would come with it. She also knew that the tremendous amount of adrenaline rushing through her veins at that precise moment could hide even the most excruciating pain.

She waited.

Still no pain.

The man stepped back, breaking eye contact at last.

As if finally let go from a spell, her eyes moved down to her body, searching for blood, looking for cuts.

There were none.

Instead she saw that the man had sliced through the ropes that bonded her right wrist.

She was confused. Was he about to let her go? She didn’t dwell on that idea for very long, because her ankles and her left wrist were still tied to the heavy chair. She brought her right arm toward her chest, and the sensation of being able to move it again was exhilarating. Blowing onto her wrist, she opened and closed her fingers into a fist several times to get the blood circulating again. It felt nice.

The man reappeared suddenly, moving from behind her, and placed something heavy and cold on her lap. Her eyes moved to it.

A pair of gardening scissors.

‘Pick them up,’ he said.

She obeyed.

He paused. Time seemed to hesitate with him. ‘OK. I want you to cut off all the fingers on your left hand. Start with your pinky, and work your way to your thumb.’

She looked up, but he had returned to the shadows.

‘What?’ Her voice wavered.

‘You said that you would do anything I wanted you to.’ The voice came from behind her, now speaking very slowly. ‘That’s what I want you to do. I want you to cut off all the fingers on your left hand.’

The woman could not hide the terror she felt. The gardening scissors started shaking in her hand, and her lip quivered.

‘I suggest that you put a finger between the blades, close your eyes and just clip it fast and hard, before the courage escapes you.’

She couldn’t even form words.

‘It will hurt. No doubt about that. There will be a lot of blood. No doubt about that either. You will certainly feel like passing out. But if you show me that you are psychologically strong enough to completely mutilate your left hand, I’ll let you go, that’s a promise. I’ll even drive you to the police station myself.’

The woman fought the wave of nausea that came over her and looked down at the scissors.

‘I am giving you a choice.Do this and you are free. Don’t do it and . . .’ He left the mystery of the consequences at the mercy of her already terrified imagination.

She took a mouth full of air, but this time courage did not come with it.

‘Do it,’ he said firmly.

Her gaze moved to her left hand, still firmly tied to the chair.

‘Do it. That’s the price of your freedom.’

Hesitantly she spread the fingers on her left hand wide.

‘That’s it. Do it. Show me you are strong.’

She placed the scissors’ blades around her trembling left pinky finger.

‘That’s it. They are laser-sharp. Just squeeze the handles hard and fast and the blades will do the rest.’

She couldn’t move.

‘CUT YOUR FINGERS OFF.’ His yell was so loud and surprising, she wet herself. The sound of his voice reverberated against the walls and ceiling for what seemed like an eternity.

Tears started coming down the woman’s cheeks. The blades were so sharp that only brushing against them was enough to produce a cut. She saw a small drop of blood color the skin around her finger.

‘DO IT.’ Another loud and angry yell.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

The man smiled.

The woman threw the scissors on the floor.

‘I can’t, I just can’t.’ She brought her shaking right hand to her face, sobbing. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t.’

The man laughed. ‘You thought that I wanted to rape you, didn’t you?’ he asked. He didn’t require a reply. ‘And that’s why you said that you would do anything I wanted you to. You figured that all you had to do was lay back and spread your legs. Put up with this monster entering you for a few minutes.’ He faintly came into view again. ‘If I wanted to rape you, what makes you think I needed your permission or cooperation for it?’

The woman didn’t answer. Her sobs became more intense.

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I have no intention of raping you.’

In her mind she was filled with agony and embarrassment, exposed and lost.

‘Wha . . . What are you going to do to me?’ The little girl inside her spoke again.

The man disappeared back into the shadows. His reply came in a whisper to her right ear. ‘I’m going to kill you.’

She gasped for air. Her body now convulsing with fear.

The man laughed. ‘If that scares you,’ he paused for effect, ‘wait until you find out how I’m going to do it.’

Ninety-Four

The rain came in spurts as the evening began, falling heavily, with thunder blows and lightning strikes out over the ocean, before tapering off into a steady, irritating drizzle. As the storm passed, the temperature dropped a few degrees, giving the night an uncomfortable chill that seemed totally out of place in a city like Los Angeles.

By the end of the afternoon, Hunter and Garcia had received the phone records they had requested for Christina Stevenson and Ethan Walsh. The records went back only three months, and neither of the two victims had called the other during that period. At least not via their cellphones. Hunter was forced to request a new batch of phone records, this time going back a whole year, but it would be at least another day before they had those.

Instead of driving home at the end of the day and spend another night struggling with his thoughts and fighting insomnia, Hunter decided to revisit Christina Stevenson’s house. He knew for sure that Christina had been abducted from inside her bedroom, and abduction locations, just like crime scenes, always had more to offer than simple physical evidence. Hunter had a gift when it came to understanding them, and maybe, being there alone, away from any distractions, would help him see something he’d missed.

He spent almost two hours in her house, most of it inside her bedroom. He tried to imagine what had happened that night, and role-played along with the images that came to him.

He positioned himself behind the flowery curtain in Christina’s bedroom, exactly where he figured the killer had hid. Hunter knew that the killer hadn’t attacked Christina immediately as she entered the room; her clothes scattered around the floor, together with the champagne flute and bottle, told him that. She was drinking alone. Judging by how expensive a bottle of Dom Ruinart was, Christina must’ve been celebrating something special. Probably her article making the front cover of the entertainment supplement that Sunday.

The killer took his time watching her, either waiting for the perfect moment to strike or enjoying the show as she undressed. Either way, the moment came when she squeezed herself under her bed to retrieve her watch, Hunter guessed. He had a feeling that while Christina was under the bed, she had spotted the killer’s shoes as he hid behind the curtain. Then everything happened in a flash. Within a minute she had been dragged out from under the bed and subdued. The killer most certainly had a syringe with the appropriate dosage of phenoperidine ready. Christina had fought as hard as she could, kicking and screaming. Signs of her struggle were all over the room, but her attacker was strong, and the drug stronger.

Despite reliving the entire scene in his mind, and meticulously moving about the house, Hunter picked up no new clues, nothing that answered any of the many questions screaming at him from inside his head.

After leaving Christina’s place, he sat in his car for a long while, wondering what to do next, wondering if they would be able to move even an inch closer to this killer before he killed again. And Hunter was certain he would kill again.

He checked his watch and decided that he still wasn’t ready to go home yet. Instead, he drove around the city aimlessly, looking for nothing, heading nowhere. In West Hollywood the bright neon lights and the busy streets made him feel a little more alive. It was always good to see people smiling, laughing and enjoying life.

From there he drove east for a while, past Echo Lake and the concrete bulk that was the Dodgers’ stadium, before heading south through central Los Angeles. All of a sudden, Hunter had an urge to go to the beach, see the ocean, maybe walk barefoot on the sand. He loved the sea breeze at night. It reminded him of his parents and of when he was a little kid. A happier time, perhaps. He turned west and headed toward Santa Monica Beach, deciding to avoid the freeways. For once, he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere.

He passed the turn for the 4th Street Bridge and carried on down South Mission Road. Those streets were as familiar to him as the inside of his apartment, and he took no notice of any street signs, specially the large one overhead.

Then it happened, similar to a wayward domino that has suddenly lost its balance, tumbling against all the other pieces and triggering a great linked chain reaction. First, his subconscious registered it. Then, about a second later, as his subconscious mind communicated with his conscious one, a warning bell sounded inside Hunter’s head. It took just another millisecond for his brain to send a signal down to the muscles in his body via his nervous system. Adrenaline rushed through him like a tidal wave, and Hunter finally slammed on the brakes, hard. His old Buick LeSabre swerved left before coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road. He was lucky that there wasn’t another vehicle right behind him.

Hunter shot out of the car like a bullet. His breath catching on his throat as his eyes focused on the large green road sign he’d just driven under. His mind was working at a thousand miles per hour, searching for memories, trying to slot them into place. As he started recalling, his mind segmented the memory into pictures, and he felt a shiver gradually climb up his spine.

‘It can’t be this,’ he said to no one, but his words had little meaning, because the more he remembered, the more certain he was.

All the clues the killer had thrown at them had been real.

Ninety-Five

Hunter drove straight back to his office in the PAB and immediately fired up his computer. The first thing he noticed after it booted up was that he had received an email from Pamela Hays, Christina Stevenson’s editor at the LA Timesentertainment desk. Attached was a zip file – Christina’s crime articles he had requested earlier.

‘Great!’ Hunter whispered before setting those aside for the time being, knowing that he would soon be coming back to them.

His priority at that moment was to find an old incident file. He couldn’t remember the victim’s name, or the exact date, but he was certain of the year – that would be good enough. He called up the internal search engine for the LAPD Incidents Database, entered the year he could remember, the incident type and the officer’s name. The single result came back in about 0.23 seconds.

‘Bingo!’ Hunter smiled.

He clicked on the link and read through the incident report. Adrenaline and excitement pumped through his veins.

Hunter went back to Pamela Hays’ email and uncompressed the attached archive. There were two hundred and fifty-nine files in total, but just like the first articles archive he had received a few days ago, these also weren’t searchable text files. They were scanned images of the newspaper pages with the published articles. No file titles, just published dates, but this time Hunter didn’t have to read them all. He now knew the exact date he was looking for. The incident file gave him that. He quickly found the specific article and double clicked the image.

It wasn’t a very long piece, only around five hundred words or so. The article also contained four photographs. Three of them were of poor quality; the fourth was a good-quality portrait, and absolutely shocking. The article had featured on the second page of the LA Timescrime supplement on a Thursday morning, almost two and a half years ago.

The title of the article alone made Hunter pause for breath, forcing him to reread it a couple of times. Things were starting to make a dreadful kind of sense.

A side note at the end of the article revealed how the newspaper had acquired the three poor-quality photographs that accompanied the piece, and Hunter choked for the second time.

‘No way,’ he said out loud in the quiet of the room. The room echoed around him. Hunter felt almost dizzy at how quickly the pieces were now slotting into place.

He made a printout of the scanned image and placed it on his desk, taking another moment to think about what to search for next. Then he remembered the camcorder the killer had left inside the trashcan out in City Hall Park, and just like that his mind made the connection.

‘Sonofabitch.’

He brought up his web browser and took a moment to think about what words to type into the search engine. He quickly decided on a four-word sentence. The result came back almost instantly – about 6 million results in 0.36 seconds.

Because he had used a four-word sentence as his search criterion, the search engine would first look for all the words together, and in the order Hunter had typed them in. Those results would be placed at the top of the results list. Once the search engine had run out of matches for all the words in that specific order, it would then automatically start searching for any of the four individual words, or combination of them, in or out of order. That’s why it had returned so many results.

Hunter clicked on the topmost result, which took him to a specialized website. He spent some time there, browsing through its pages and searching its archives, but didn’t find what he was looking for.

He returned to the results page and tried the second link from the top. Again, after spending several minutes searching the site’s archives, he got nowhere.

He repeated the unfruitful process eighteen more times, until he finally came across an obscure website. The strange thing was that as soon as the website’s front page loaded onto his screen, Hunter felt an odd tingle scratch at the back of his neck. He shook the sensation away and used the site’s internal search engine, typing in a combination of key words and a date. It returned fifteen files. The site’s search engine wasn’t very good, and entering a date made no difference whatsoever. He decided that the easiest thing to do was to check all fifteen results.

He didn’t have to. The one he was looking for was the fourth one.

He sat back and rubbed his face with both hands. The images on his screen collided with the memories inside his head with absurd force.

The file had been uploaded by someone who called him/herself DarkXX1000. Hunter tried all he could to find out the real identity for the person behind that Internet handle, but didn’t get very far. He decided to go back to it later.

He spent the next hour and a half doing a combination search between the Internet and general-public-restricted files, which, as an LAPD officer, he was able to access. They didn’t reveal much either.

His eyes were itching and watering from squinting at the screen for so long. He took a bathroom break before pouring himself another cup of strong black coffee. Pacing the room, Hunter allowed his mind to go through everything he had uncovered up to that point – a lot, but many details were still missing. What he needed was help. Disregarding the late hour, he reached for his cellphone and dialed Michelle’s number. She answered after the third ring.

‘Michelle,’ Hunter said. ‘My turn to apologize for calling you so late and out of office hours.’

Michelle chuckled. ‘Well, the term “office hours” does not apply to the FBI. My shift started the day I was hired, and it’s only due to finish in about—’ she paused, as if calculating how long ‘—forty-five years.’

‘That’s a long shift.’

‘You’re telling me?’ Another chuckle. ‘OK, so what’s up?’

Hunter told her about everything he’d found so far, and what he was still after. When he was done, Michelle was speechless.

‘Michelle, are you still there?’

‘Um . . . yeah. Are you sure about this?’

‘As sure as I will ever be.’

‘OK. I’ll see what I can find out and I’ll call you back. It might be late . . . or early, depending on how you look at it.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Ninety-Six

Michelle called back just before six in the morning. She had finally managed to find out all the information Hunter had requested, including the name of the person behind the handle DarkXX1000. By 8:00 a.m., Hunter was heading an urgent meeting inside the windowless briefing room down in the basement of the PAB.

The room was a rectangular concrete box that resembled an old-fashioned high school classroom. Sixteen desks were arranged in four rows of four, the first starting about three feet from the wooden podium at the front of the room, behind which Hunter was standing. To his left, a large, white projection screen; to his right, a large flip chart mounted onto a tripod.

Garcia and Captain Blake were sitting at both ends of the first row, two desks apart. Behind and in between them was Michelle Kelly, who had told Hunter that she wanted in. The two last rows were taken by a SWAT team, eight strong, all wearing bulletproof vests over black fatigues. The tense and uncomfortable murmur that spiked the air inside the room came to a complete stop as soon as Hunter coughed to clear his throat.

All eyes went to him.

‘OK, I’ll give you the entire story from the beginning,’ he said, nodding at Jack Fallon, the SWAT team captain standing at the back of the room, just behind the last row of SWAT agents.

Fallon dimmed the lights.

Hunter pressed the button on the clicker he had on his right hand, and the portrait photograph of a teenage boy was projected onto the white screen. The boy looked to be no older than sixteen, with a prominent brow, distinct cheekbones and a delicate nose covered in freckles. His eyes, clear and pale blue, perfectly complemented his wavy, dark blond hair. He was a good-looking kid.