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

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

The southeast corner of the room was taken by a smaller worktable with a vise at one end and a multipurpose table saw at the other. Placed next to the table was a large, faded green, chest fridge. But what made the hairs on the back of everyone’s neck stand on end was what was at the opposite end of the room, against the west wall – something that all four of them had stared at and tried to analyze for hours on end on their computer screens.

Mounted near the left corner was the glass enclosure the killer had used to soak Kevin Lee Parker into his deadly alkaline bath. The heavy metal chair he’d been tied to was still there, right at the center of the enclosure, bolted to the crude concrete floor. A large gas canister had been placed on either side of the glass cage. They were connected to the two metal pipes sprinkled with holes on the inside of the enclosure via two thick, fire-resistant tubes.

‘Fire or water,’the killer had said. ‘Burned alive or drowned.’

The images came back to Hunter in a hurricane of memories.

The metal pipes could either fill the enclosure with water or fire. The house’s water system was connected to them at the top.

Hunter knew he had been tricked into choosing water that day; nevertheless, Graham Fisher had been prepared to burn his victim alive in case he had misjudged Hunter.

Next to the gas canisters were two fifteen-liter barrels of industrial-grade NaOH – sodium hydroxide. They were also connected to the metal pipes via thick, chemical-resistant tubes.

By the other corner of the west wall, mounted onto a surgical-looking metal table, was the glass coffin the killer had used for Christina Stevenson. As Garcia’s eyes settled on it, he shivered and took two steps back, feeling an awkward panic start to gain momentum at the bottom of his stomach. Inside the glass coffin were hundreds of dead tarantula hawks.

Hunter sensed his partner’s hesitation and gave him a subtle headshake before whispering, ‘They’re all dead.’

Still, the sight of it was enough for Garcia’s memory to send him back to the day he was stung by four tarantula hawks. The day he almost died.

He took a series of steady deep breaths, fought the shiver that threatened to run down his spine and felt his heartbeat slowly return to normal. But he wasn’t the only one feeling uneasy down in that basement.

Two people had been sadistically tortured and murdered in that dark and damp room. The instruments used for all their suffering were still there, stained with their blood, filled with their pain. To everyone, it felt as if the victims’ terrified screams and pleas were still echoing around those brick walls. Graham Fisher had created a true torture chamber in his basement.

Just a few feet away from the glass coffin were an old wheelchair and two hospital-standard IV stands. Still hanging from one of their hooks, an old and empty plastic methyl B12 nutrient IV bag. No doubt one of the many different nutrient cocktails Graham had to intravenously feed his wife during her last few months alive.

‘The rack isn’t here,’ Captain Blake said. ‘That grotesque thing he used to dismember his third victim. It’s not here.’

‘He used a different location,’ Hunter said. ‘This place doesn’t have the physical structure for it.’ His eyes instinctively circled the room.

‘It’s certainly big enough,’ the SWAT captain offered.

‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But the killer had a large and heavy slab of concrete hanging high above his victim, suspended by thick metal chains. He even said that he could control it. He said that he could slowly lower the rock onto his victim’s body, adjusting the amount of pressure he was able to deliver, like a vise. He would’ve needed some very strong and probably large piece of machinery to do that.’

‘Some sort of electronically controlled crane or something,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘No way he would’ve been able to get something like that down here.’

‘So where, then?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Hunter said. ‘We need to check land and property registries to see if Graham Fisher owns any other properties or pieces of land. The problem is, even if he doesn’t, he could be renting a large garage or a small warehouse or any other type of building big enough for what he had in mind. If he is, I’m sure he would’ve paid cash for a short-term lease. Finding him that way can take a long time.’

Captain Blake didn’t look impressed.

‘But it’s now just a matter of time, Captain,’ Hunter added. ‘The house is lived in. There are freshly washed dishes on the dish rack in the kitchen, and the sponge is still a little damp. He wasn’t expecting us here today, so chances are he hasn’t taken all the necessary precautions. We now have a whole house to search here, including an office with a computer upstairs. There’s got to be something that will give us a clue to where he might be. Meanwhile we need a citywide APB for Graham and his car, a black Chevrolet Silverado. We need to get his picture to the press and the media ASAP. We need his face everywhere.Let’s close the circle on him. We also need a team of officers to knock on every door on this street and see if anyone knows anything.’

Captain Blake lifted both hands in the air in a surrender gesture. ‘You’ve got a green light on whatever you need.’ Her gaze moved from the glass coffin to the glass cage and then back to Hunter. ‘Just bring this psycho in.’

She walked back toward the staircase again. The basement was starting to give her the creeps. She needed to get out of there.

Michelle had also moved, but not in the direction of the staircase. She was now at the worktable by the east wall, looking through all the electronic components and blueprints she found. The blueprints were detailed schematics of how both torture devices in that basement had been put together, and how they’d work. The blueprints for the rack used to torture and murder the third victim weren’t there, but she found something else.

Something that made her blood run cold.

One Hundred and Seven

‘Shit!’ Michelle whispered, but down in the basement her whisper reverberated off the walls like a handclap. Everyone turned to face her.

‘What have you got?’ Hunter asked.

Captain Blake paused just before taking the first step up the stairs.

‘Surveillance photographs of the victims,’ Michelle replied, showing everyone the first of several photographs from the pile she had discovered. ‘Kevin Lee Parker, the first victim,’ she said.

The photo showed Kevin coming out of the videogames store he worked at. The killer had used a red marker pen to draw a circle around his face. Michelle put the photo down and reached for another one before announcing, ‘Christina Stevenson, the second victim.’

This one showed Christina as she stepped out of her house. A red circle had been also drawn around her face.

‘Ethan Walsh, the third victim,’ Michelle said, displaying a new photograph to everyone. It showed Ethan having a cigarette outside the restaurant where he worked. Another red circle.

Michelle returned the photograph to the worktable and grabbed the next one from the pile. ‘And this, I can only assume, is the next victim on his list.’

The photograph was of an attractive young woman, probably in her late twenties, sitting outside a coffee shop. She had a petite diamond-shaped face, framed by long straight blonde hair. Her bright blue eyes were a little catlike, and complemented her delicate nose, her small mouth and her shapely cheekbones very nicely. The picture was also marked with a red circle around her face. That new photograph seemed to electrify the air inside the room.

‘Is there a name?’ Hunter asked, quickly moving toward Michelle. Garcia and Captain Blake followed him.

Michelle checked the reverse side of the picture. ‘No, nothing.’ She handed it to Hunter.

Hunter checked it again before allowing his gaze to move to the worktable. ‘Are there any more photographs of her?’ he asked Michelle.

‘Not of her.’

Something in Michelle’s tone of voice made everyone pause for an instant and look at the FBI agent.

‘This is the only other photograph I found.’ She showed them the last picture she had with her, the one that had made her blood run cold.

Everyone tensed. Time appeared to slow down inside that basement.

The photograph was taken as the subject was crossing a busy road, but this time they didn’t need to search for a name. They didn’t even need to track the subject down. They were all looking at a photograph of Robert Hunter, with a red circle drawn around his face.

One Hundred and Eight

Garcia and Captain Blake paused mid-breath, their gazes drawn to the picture in Michelle’s hands like insects to a blue light. Everyone inside that room seemed to be filled with an odd, disquieting fear, except for Hunter. He simply shook his head, unfazed, taking the picture from Michelle’s hands.

‘This is not a concern,’ he said. ‘In fact, it’s not even surprising.’

‘What do you mean, it’s not a concern?’ Michelle said.

‘Because whatever Graham Fisher had planned for me, he’ll now have to reconsider, readjust, readapt, because as soon as his picture hits the news, he’ll know that he’s not a cyber ghost anymore. We now know who he is. He’ll know that we’ve been to his house, to his basement, and that we’ve found all of this.’ He indicated the room and the pictures. ‘Which means that he’ll also know that now I’m the one doing the hunting.’

‘Yeah, but we’re talking about a highly intelligent and skillful killer here,’ Michelle came back. ‘You still need to be careful.’

‘I always am. But I’m not the priority here.’ Hunter showed everyone the photograph of the young blonde woman again. ‘She is. She would’ve been the next victim on his list whether we had his identity or not, not me.’

‘How do you know that?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘Because he would’ve wanted me to be last,’ Hunter explained. ‘It’s part of his revenge exercise. He wants me to watch all the victims die in real time, without being able to help them. Just like I watched his son die, without being able to save him.’

‘But that wasn’t your fault,’ Captain Blake said.

‘To Graham Fisher, it was. In his mind, I could’ve saved his son. I could’ve done more. But all that doesn’t matter. What matters is finding who this woman is.’ Hunter indicated the photograph once again. ‘She’s no doubt somehow linked to Graham’s son’s suicide, or the aftermath of it, like all the previous victims.’

‘Another reporter?’ Garcia suggested. ‘Or maybe the webmaster of that shock-video website where the video of Brandon Fisher’s suicide appeared?’

‘Maybe,’ Hunter agreed with a firm head nod. ‘Let’s get some people looking into that.’

Garcia nodded. ‘I’ll get a team on it.’

Hunter addressed Captain Blake. ‘We’ve got to get this picture over to the press together with Graham’s ASAP. We need to find out who she is, where she lives, where she works, everything. For all we know, he might already have her.’

One Hundred and Nine

Captain Blake called Hunter an hour and a half later. She had returned to the PAB with the woman’s photograph while Hunter, Garcia and Michelle stayed behind. They wanted to slowly go through every inch of Graham Fisher’s house. Five experienced police officers and two forensics agents had also joined them.

The captain told Hunter that she had handed the woman’s photograph to the LAPD Media Relations Office, with specific instructions. They had immediately flexed their muscles, contacting the city’s press and media. The woman’s photo, together with Graham’s, were to appear on all major TV channels in a special bulletin during the lunchtime news, and then again during the afternoon and evening news. The photographs would also be published in the next edition of all city newspapers, but that wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning. Radio stations had also been contacted. They were urging listeners to log onto a special web page that the LAPD IT Department had set up with both photographs. Special call-in lines were already in place. They were now just waiting for developments.

Back in Graham Fisher’s house, Hunter and Garcia started with the basement, bringing in two powerful forensics lights to do away with all the shadows. Garcia worked his way through everything found at the east end of the room, while Hunter meticulously examined the glass cage and the glass coffin found by the west wall.

Neither of the two torture and murder devices could tell Hunter something he didn’t already know. The craftsmanship had been exceptional, but he expected nothing less from someone like Graham Fisher. The glass sheets used to create both devices were a combination of polycarbonate, thermoplastic and layers of laminated glass, making them bulletproof and totally unbreakable by human fists. But Graham had told him that over the phone. Hunter didn’t expect him to be lying. The smell inside both glass containers was a sickening mixture of vomit, urine, feces, fear and very strong disinfectant. In the glass coffin, the dead tarantula hawks added a new, distinct, sour layer to the overall odor. Despite wearing a nose and mouth mask, Hunter felt the urge to throw up a few times, forcing him to take several breaks.

‘Do you think he already has the woman on the photo?’ Garcia asked, as Hunter joined him at the west end of the room.

Hunter took a deep breath, allowing his gaze to settle on the large tools cabinet. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally replied. He didn’t want to say it, but the truth was that Hunter had a terrible gut feeling about all this.

‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Garcia said, stirring Hunter’s attention to a specific spot on the wooden worktable. ‘Have a look at this.’

Hunter looked at the spot Garcia was pointing to, frowned, then crouched down to look at it from even closer.

‘Can you see it?’

Hunter nodded. Regular house dust had settled on the worktable, probably two days’ worth of it. At that particular spot, it had settled in an uneven pattern. Something that used to be on that table had been removed – a rectangular object of about fourteen inches by ten. Hunter moved closer still, examining a second uneven dust pattern, this one thin and long, dragging all the way to the edge of the worktable. He checked the brick wall on that side and saw that about a foot from the floor a power socket had been fitted to it.

‘A laptop computer,’ Hunter ultimately said.

Garcia nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking. And if we’re right, you know what that means, right? Graham probably kept all his plans, drawings, names, timetables, sketches . . . whatever in the laptop that used to be here, not in the desktop computer upstairs.’

Michelle Kelly had taken charge of searching through the desktop computer inside Graham’s office upstairs. Not surprisingly, the computer was password protected, but not by the simple, relatively easy-to-break, original operating system password application, but by a custom-made one, no doubt developed by Graham himself. Trying to breach that protection right there and then, without some of the tools and gadgets she had back at the FBI Cybercrime Division, was an impossible task. Hunter gave her the go-ahead to take the computer back to the FBI headquarters and proceed from there. She would contact them with news as soon as she had any. So far, nothing.

Hunter nodded his agreement to Garcia’s suggestion. ‘Let’s hope we’re wrong. If there’s anything in that desktop computer, even if it’s only a residue of something, I’m sure Michelle will find it.’

They finally moved from the basement, and both detectives unashamedly breathed a sigh of relief.

The officers who were tasked with the door-to-door around Graham’s street, and some of the neighboring ones, came back with no news. Not every neighbor was home, but the few who were could shine no light on the identity of the woman in the photograph they found inside Graham’s basement, or on where Graham might’ve gone. One thing was consistent, though. They had all said that since his son’s death, Graham had become a different man – withdrawn, isolated, uncommunicative. Since his wife passed away, he had become a ghost, barely seen by anyone.

Hunter and Garcia spent almost two hours going through every scrap of paper, every book, every magazine, every note they found inside Graham’s office upstairs. None of it gave them anything to work with.

By mid-afternoon Hunter received a call from Detective Perez. He explained that after the lunchtime news the call-in lines had already received several tips about the woman’s identity. Detectives and officers were checking the veracity of those tips, and he would get back to Hunter as soon as they had something more solid.

Another hour and a half came and went without a single new piece of development. Garcia had gone back to the PAB to help Detective Perez with the call-in lines.

Hunter was sitting alone inside Graham’s son’s bedroom when his cellphone beeped, announcing a new text message. He checked the display window – unknown number.

Hunter opened the text message and was immediately filled with a disquieting anxiety.

Well done, Detective Hunter, you finally managed to put all the clues together. Unfortunately for you, that has only led you to my house – my empty house. I hope you are having fun. Found anything interesting yet? I have.

As Hunter finished reading the message, his phone beeped again. Part two of the text message had arrived.

I took the liberty to track your phone’s location. I can see you’re still in my house, so here’s where this game gets really fun. You, and you ALONE, have 7 mins to make it to St Mary’s Church on the intersection of E. 4th St and S. Chicago St. That’s seven blocks away. Don’t drive – run. I’m sending you something to persuade you.

Another beep.

Another message.

This one started with an image.

An image that sent the room spinning around Hunter, making him feel as if all of a sudden all the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs.

He was looking at a photograph of a woman gagged and strapped onto a metal chair. The same woman he saw on the photograph they’d found down in the basement. The message read:

‘ 7 mins, or she dies. You tell anyone, including your partner, and I will kill her so slowly it will take her a month to die. The clock is ticking, Detective Hunter – 6:59, 6:58, 6:57 – LOL.

One Hundred and Ten

Hunter came charging down the stairs like a bullet train, clearing the hall, the living room, and exiting the house in three seconds flat.

The two police officers who were standing by the house’s front porch were taken by complete surprise. It took them about 1.5 seconds to get over the initial shock and react, instinctively reaching for their guns before quickly turning on the balls of their feet and anxiously aiming at the open door and the empty living room beyond it.

‘Wha . . . What’s going on?’ one of them called out in a nervous voice.

‘Fuck if I know,’ the second officer replied, resisting the urge to check the street behind him to see where Hunter had gone. If they were about to face any sort of threat, it was coming from inside the house, not from the street.

Five seconds passed and nothing.

Both officers began craning their necks to one side, in a quick jab motion, peeking into the house like chickens on drugs.

‘See anything?’ the first officer asked.

‘Not a damn thing.’

After another couple of seconds the first officer stepped up to the door and looked inside. The second officer assumed cover position.

‘There’s nothing here.’

‘What the hell?’ The second officer holstered his weapon and swung around looking for Hunter. He was nowhere to be seen. ‘What the fuck was that all about? That homicide detective just hauled ass down the street as if he were on fire.’

The first officer shrugged and holstered his weapon. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone, man, didn’t you see? He was going faster than Usain Bolt.’

‘Maybe he finally lost it. It’s a common thing with Homicide Special detectives. You already need to be nuts to join that group.’

Hunter had used a back alleyway to cut through to South Chicago Street. As he reached the main road, he turned left and ran as fast as he could. A million questions were tumbling over inside his head, but he just didn’t have the time to think about any of them.

He was about three city blocks from St Mary’s Church, when he peeked at his watch. He had less than three minutes to make it.

As he reached the next intersection along – East 6th Street – Hunter paid no attention to the traffic or the red pedestrian crossing light.

A white van, driving east on that road, saw him way too late as he suddenly appeared out of nowhere, stepping directly in front of the van. The driver slammed on the brakes hard, killing the van’s speed almost immediately, but not fast enough. Hunter collided with the front of the van and was thrown sideways to the ground, smashing his left arm and shoulder against the asphalt.

‘What the fuck?’ the van driver yelled, wide-eyed, jumping out of his vehicle. ‘Are you trying to fucking kill yourself, crazy man?’

Hunter rolled over twice and quickly scrambled on his hands and toes, trying to get back up. His legs finally found the traction he needed, and just like that he was back on his feet.

‘Didn’t you see the red light, you crazy fuc—’ the driver began, but as Hunter moved he saw Hunter’s gun tucked away in his shoulder holster. ‘Yo, it’s all cool, dawg,’ the driver said in a much less aggressive tone, taking a step back and showing Hunter his palms. ‘My bad all the way. I should’ve been paying more attention. You good?’

Hunter didn’t even look at him. He cut through the small, intrigued crowd that had already gathered on the sidewalk and moved on.

Hunter had handled the fall pretty well, but the collision with the van had hurt his right knee. He could feel it stabbing at him with every new step, forcing him to reduce his speed and limp awkwardly. But he wasn’t far now. He could see the bell tower of St. Mary’s Church just at the top of the road.

Out of breath and with his knee starting to scream at him, Hunter made it to the intersection in 6 minutes 53 seconds. There was no one there.

‘What the hell?’ he puffed the words out, while reaching for his phone.

No new messages, no new calls.

Out of the blue, a yellow cab pulled up right in front of him and rolled down its window.

‘You Robert Hunter?’ the driver asked.

Hunter nodded with a quizzical look on his face.

‘Here’s your phone, dude,’ the driver said, offering Hunter an old, brick-like cellphone with a hands-free earpiece already plugged into it.

‘What?’

The driver shrugged. ‘Look, man, a guy paid me two hundred bucks to bring this phone to this exact location, at this exact time, and give it to some dude called Robert Hunter. That’s you, right? So here’s your phone.’

The phone the driver had offered Hunter started ringing, startling the driver.

‘Shit, man.’ The driver jumped in his seat before extending his arm again. ‘It ain’t gonna be for me.’

Hunter quickly took the phone and answered it, placing the earpiece in his ear.

‘Great,’ the caller said. ‘You made it. Now hand your phone over to the cab driver.’ The caller’s voice sounded a little different from all the previous calls. Hunter knew that was because he wasn’t using any electronic device to disguise it anymore. There was no longer a need for it.

‘What?’ Hunter replied.

‘You heard me. Take this phone and hand your phone over to the cab driver. You won’t need it anymore. Do it now or she dies.’

Hunter knew exactly what Graham was doing – getting rid of Hunter’s police phone GPS, and any other tricks and warning signals Hunter might’ve had set up at the touch of a button.

He did as he was told.

The cab driver rolled his window back up and quickly drove away.

‘Now, you have exactly sixty minutes to get to the address I’m going to give you. Don’t use your car. Don’t use a police car. Don’t take a taxi. Improvise. If you don’t, the killing begins. If you don’t get here in sixty minutes, the killing begins. If you disconnect from this call during the next sixty minutes, the killing begins. Am I clear?’

‘Yes.’

The caller gave Hunter the address.

‘Go. The clock starts . . . now.’

One Hundred and Eleven

Hunter looked around himself, quickly evaluating what his next move should be. Directly across the road from him was a convenience store with its own small private parking lot at the back. At that exact moment, an overweight man exited the store, carrying a large bag under his arm and happily chewing on a Twinkie. Hunter got to him as he unlocked the door to his Chevrolet Malibu.

‘Sorry, sir, I need to take your car,’ Hunter said in a hurried voice, displaying his badge and police credentials.

‘What?’ the man said with a mouthful of Twinkie, eyeing Hunter’s documents and badge, before looking straight into his eyes.

‘This is a police emergency and I need to take your car, sir.’

The man swallowed down whatever was left inside his mouth with a gulping noise. ‘Are you fucking with me right now? You’re commandeering my car? That kind of shit only happens in the movies.’

‘Well, that kind of shit just got real, sir.’

‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.’ The man looked around, as if expecting to see a camera crew hiding somewhere. ‘Am I being punked right now?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did my ex-bitch-of-a-wife put you up to this?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know your ex-bitch-of-a-wife, sir, and I don’t have time to argue. I really need to take your car.’

‘No freaking way. Are you for real? Is that badge real? Let me see that again.’

‘It’s real, sir. I assure you. And so is this.’ Hunter opened his jacket, allowing the man to see his gun.

‘Yup,’ the man said, taking a step back. ‘That looks pretty damn real.’

‘Can I please have the keys now, sir,’ Hunter said.

‘Goddammit,’ the man said, before handing the keys to Hunter. ‘How the hell am I supposed get home now?’

Hunter wasn’t listening anymore. He jumped into the car, started the engine and took off with the tires screeching.

Out of the parking lot, he immediately veered left onto East 4th Street, heading toward the Golden State Freeway.

‘Great improvisation, Detective,’ Hunter heard the caller say through his earpiece.

‘Graham,’ Hunter said. ‘Listen to me. You don’t have to do this anymore.’

‘Is that so, Detective Hunter?’

‘Yes,’ Hunter replied with conviction. ‘We all understand you’re angry and hurt. We understand that all the people you sought – Kevin Lee Parker, Christina Stevenson and Ethan Walsh . . .’ Hunter used their names in a futile effort to humanize the victims in Graham Fisher’s eyes. ‘They have all, in one way or another, made the already terrible pain of dealing with your son’s death even harder, but revenge will not make the pain go away.’

‘Harder . . .?’ Graham cut Hunter short with a sneer. ‘They bastardized it. They gave every freak out there a chance to turn my son’s life struggle, and his death, into a joke. A chance for them to make fun of him, even after he was gone. Society has turned into something unrecognizable, Detective. A monster without respect or care for anyone’s life. A monster whose values have been turned upside down. Haven’t I proven it to you, Detective? Didn’t you witness people voting on how to kill another human being, a complete stranger who they knew nothing of, as if it were a game? We’re talking real peoplewanting to watch real peopledie live on their screens for pure entertainment. How messed up is that, Detective Hunter?’

‘Graham, I understand.’

‘No, no, no,’ Graham interrupted Hunter again, his voice now lifting with anger. ‘Don’t tell me you understand, because you don’t. And do not insult me by trying to psychobullshit your way through this. It will notwork. I assure you. My mind is much stronger than yours, Detective Hunter.’ There was a short pause, but before Hunter could say anything Graham spoke again, his tone back to being calm and serene. ‘But look at the bright side of all this. Once you get here, this will all end . . . For both of us. You’ve got fifty-three minutes, Detective. And in the next fifty-three minutes I do not want to hear a word from you. If I do, every word I hear means she loses a finger. If I run out of fingers . . . well . . . I’ll have to start cutting something else. Is that understood?’

Silence.

‘Is that understood, Detective Hunter?’

‘Yes.’

The next silent fifty-three minutes felt like forever. Hunter’s mind kept churning possibility after possibility of what would happen once he got to his destination. None of them ended well.

Graham had calculated the trip, taking into account the obstacle that LA traffic posed at that time of day, with the precision of a rocket scientist, because Hunter reached the secluded destination in Sylmar, the northernmost neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, in exactly fifty-two minutes. Hunter wasn’t surprised by Graham’s precision. No matter how tough he sounded, Graham didn’t want Hunter to fail, because his revenge plan would never be completed without the last name on his victims’ list – Robert Hunter.

By the time Hunter got to Sylmar, the day was disappearing over the Hollywood hills, with the sky taking an almost crippled brownish hue.

The address Graham gave him took Hunter to an isolated road near the Equestrian Arena in Sylmar, by the foot of the Angeles National Forest hills. There wasn’t much there, except two small warehouses and an old, disused stable. Graham had told Hunter to drive to the back of the main stable building, where he would find a second, high-roofed construction.

‘I see you have arrived.’ Graham broke the oppressing phone silence, just as Hunter parked the car. ‘The door is unlocked. Come right in, Detective Hunter. We have all been waiting for you. But unfortunately we couldn’t wait. The show has already started. The clock is already ticking. And you don’t have much time left.’

One Hundred and Twelve

Exactly five minutes before Hunter was due to arrive, Graham set the phone he was on to Hunter to mute and placed a new call to a different number, using a different phone.