Текст книги "I Am Death"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Fifty

As if handling some sort of dangerous and unstable substance, Garcia extracted the contents from the evidence bag carefully, before retrieving the single sheet of paper from inside the envelope.

The note had been folded in half to perfectly fit a regular business envelope.

Hunter waited while Garcia unfolded it and placed it flat on the desk in front of him. Just like the note sent to Mayor Bailey, this one had also been handwritten in red ink. Once again, the killer had used a ballpoint pen.

So you are the one who is supposed to be the best of the best. The so-called expert who’s been tasked with the burden of stopping me, huh? You are the one who is supposed to bring justice to the victims. The one who will look into my eyes and find out what I have become.

Well . . .

How’s that going for you so far, Detective Hunter?

Are we having fun yet, or am I moving too fast for you?

Are you still keeping count, or are the bodies piling up too quickly?

One thing I can tell you is that I am looking forward to the challenge. The question is, will you see only what you want to see, or will you prove me wrong, Detective Hunter? Because you haven’t seen anything yet. I am just getting started.

If you are wondering why I am doing what I’m doing, the answer is simple. I am creating history. Or, if you prefer, rewriting it.

Do you want to know who I am, Detective Hunter?

Do you really want to know?

Well, the clues are in the name.

FOR I AM DEATH.

Garcia read the note several times over before finally lifting his eyes to look at Hunter again, who was leaning against the edge of his desk.

‘OK. So what do you think?’

Garcia got to his feet, pushed his chair out of the way and approached the picture board.

‘Remember when we discussed the note that was sent to Mayor Bailey?’ he asked, indicating it on the board. A copy of the first two notes had been pinned side by side. ‘We both agreed that the third paragraph constituted a challenge of sorts, right?’ Garcia didn’t wait for Hunter’s reply. ‘Well, the way I see it, the whole of this third note, other than it being coated in arrogance, is nothing but one big challenge.’

Hunter scratched his chin. ‘OK, I’m listening.’

‘The problem is,’ Garcia continued, ‘the killer has now made it personal. Here, have a look.’ He walked over to his desk. Hunter followed. Garcia then indicated all five instances where the killer had referred to Hunter by name. ‘In fact, he has made it very personal, Robert. He went all the way to your home to deliver it.’

Hunter nodded his agreement, but allowed Garcia to continue without interrupting him.

‘Just look at this.’ Garcia returned to the picture board, unpinned the copy of the killer’s second note and brought it to his desk. ‘At the beginning of this new note he makes several references to his previous one.’ Garcia indicated each line on both notes as he mentioned them. ‘“Best of the best”, “So-called expert”, “Bring justice to the victims”, “See only what you want to see” and “Look into my eyes and find out what I have become”. The difference here is, on the previous note all of that sounded like an open invitation to the LAPD, or the FBI, or a special task force, or whoever. But not this time. This time all of those challenges are aimed at a specific subject.’ Garcia’s eyebrows lifted as he nodded at his partner. ‘You, my friend. Whether you like it or not, he’s bringing this fight to you.’

So far, Garcia’s assessment of the note had been right on the money with Hunter’s. Hunter wasn’t chasing this killer alone, and he was sure that the killer knew that full well. Nevertheless, this time the killer had made every single challenge personal to Hunter, not to a task force, or the LAPD, or the FBI, or even the UV Unit. The killer had, once again, been very careful when phrasing his written work to leave as little doubt as possible.

‘But I don’t think that this is “personal” personal.’ Garcia used his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air.

Hunter questioned by narrowing his eyes a touch.

‘What I mean is, I don’t think that this guy’s got a personal grudge against you,’ Garcia clarified. ‘I don’t think that this is someone you put away in the past, or someone related to anyone you put away in the past. I’m even willing to bet that your paths have never crossed before, Robert.’

‘Because if that were the case,’ Hunter agreed, ‘he would’ve made it personal on the first or second note. Why wait until now? And the second note wouldn’t have been sent to the mayor. It would’ve been sent directly to me.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia accepted. ‘The way I see it, he would’ve brought this fight to the doorstep of whoever became lead investigator in this case. We were just the unlucky ones.’

Hunter made a face. ‘Aren’t we always?’

‘But now that he has a counterpart, he not only reiterates the challenges of the second note, he goes beyond it. He bullies.’ Once again, Garcia indicated on the note:

How’s that going for you so far, Detective Hunter?

Are we having fun yet, or am I moving too fast for you?

Are you still keeping count, or are the bodies piling up too quickly?

. . . will you see only what you want to see, or will you prove me wrong, Detective Hunter?

‘And then he threatens,’ Garcia added.

Because you haven’t seen anything yet. I am just getting started.

‘After the threats,’ Garcia continued, ‘he feels the need to explain the reason why he’s doing what he’s doing. Though it all sounds like bullshit to me.’

‘Delusions of grandeur,’ Hunter commented. ‘You know how most sociopaths are blinded by them. And because some truly believe that they are better, superior to everyone else, they also believe that whatever it is they’re doing can’t be understood by us mere human beings unless it’s explained. And even then, they still don’t expect us to fully understand the reasons behind their actions, or the complexity of their geniuses.’ Hunter shrugged. ‘How could we, when our intellect could never measure up?’

Garcia chuckled, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. ‘So this crackpot truly believes that he’s creating history?’

‘Or, as he put it, rewriting it?’

‘Yeah, but rewriting whose history?’

Hunter turned and faced the picture board. ‘I don’t know. His own, maybe.’

‘And what the hell is this crap at the end?’ Garcia said, bringing Hunter’s attention back to the new note. ‘Is this his attempt at being funny? Let me give you a clue as to who I am, and that clue is in the name – “DEATH”. Yeah, hilarious.’

Hunter wasn’t really sure what the killer meant by that, but he had a hunch that, whatever it was, it wasn’t meant as a joke.

Fifty-One

The stairwell that led down to the underpass reminded Alison of one of those old, black and white B-movies. The ones that weren’t supposed to be scary, but were. Her footsteps echoed loudly against the concrete risers and all of a sudden she was painfully aware that she was alone, in a badly lit and isolated underpass.

Alison Atkins had missed her bus stop. She had done three double shifts at Donny’s in just as many days, and when she’d boarded the bus almost an hour ago she’d felt the same sort of exhaustion one feels after a long and debilitating illness. She’d sat alone at the back of the bus, as she usually did. Ten minutes into the forty-minute trip to where she lived, Alison had decided to rest her head against the window, just for a moment, so she could close her tired eyes. But it was OK, because she reopened them only five minutes later – or so she thought.

As she sat up and looked out the window, she was overcome by an uncomfortable feeling. The feeling that she was in a place she didn’t belong. She quickly rubbed the blur of tiredness from her eyes, turned her head around and looked out the window across the aisle from where she was sitting.

No, she didn’t recognize any of it.

She craned her neck and looked at the digital display toward the front of the bus.

She had definitely missed her stop.

‘Shit!’ she said between clenched teeth, quickly getting to her feet and pressing the ‘stop’ button.

A minute later, the bus pulled up to the next stop on its route.

Three passengers jumped out with her – two women, counting Alison, and a middle-aged man. The man, who appeared to be in a hurry, quickly headed west. The other woman, who looked to be about the same age as Alison, went north.

Alison paused and looked around. This was an ugly part of town. A part of town that she would never visit during the day, never mind at night.

She checked her watch – five minutes past one in the morning. Her bus route wasn’t part of the ‘Owl Service’ that ran 24/7 in LA – but she knew that her route ran all the way up to two a.m. Alison crossed the road and began walking to the bus stop on the other side. She reached into her bag, but as she rummaged around for her purse, she felt a pit begin to materialize in her stomach.

No purse.

She stopped walking, pulled her bag open with both hands and began fumbling inside it again, this time a little more desperately.

Nothing.

‘Oh no, no, no, no, no,’ Alison cried out, almost sticking her whole head inside her bag to look for it. Lipstick, foundation powder, makeup brush, loose change, cellphone, a pen and house keys.

Her purse was gone.

‘Oh, fuck!’

She knew she’d had it with her when she boarded the bus because she kept her TAP card in it.

While she slept at the back of the bus, she’d of course never noticed the hooded eighteen-year-old kid who had first sat across the aisle from her, before stealthily moving over to her side once he’d noticed how deeply asleep she was. When he left the bus, his pocket was a little heavier, and Alison’s bag a little lighter.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

In today’s double shift she had made a total of two hundred and twelve dollars in tips.

The pit in her stomach had now turned into a well.

She desperately needed that money to pay her bills.

Alison looked around one more time. The bus stops on both sides of the road were empty, and the streets looked almost deserted. She didn’t know the area but she didn’t like it one bit. She felt vulnerable.

Feeling cheated and lost, Alison quickly pondered what to do. She could go to the police, but she was certain that there wasn’t much they would do. Lorena, one of the other waitresses at Donny’s, had also been pickpocketed inside a bus on a different route a couple of months back. She’d gone to the police. They’d taken down all her details, and the pep talk they’d then given her about how she should be more careful and more attentive when in a crowded space had made her feel like it all had been her fault.

Alison decided that the best thing she could do was to get home as quickly as possible.

Hanging on tightly to her bag, she began walking south as fast as she could.

She’d been walking for almost forty-five minutes when she reached the underpass. She’d been through it plenty of times before, just never this late at night. But the good news was that the underpass was just a five-minute walk from her place.

Alison began walking faster, but as she did so she heard something else other than her own footsteps echo behind her. She looked around wildly for a moment. She could see no one behind or in front of her, but due to the shadows created by the poor lighting, she just couldn’t be sure.

Definitely a B-movie horror scene, she thought.

Alison exhaled slowly, as if blowing out hot air would carry with it the ripples of fear that had iced over her heart a moment earlier. The echoes faded around her and she listened to the raspy sound of her own breath.

Seconds later she began walking again, and again she could swear that she heard something else behind her other than the echoes of her own footsteps, but this time she was also overwhelmed by a sense of narrowing. It was as if the walls around her had closed in ever so slightly.

Alison shook her head, hoping that by force of vigorous motion she could cleanse the sensation from within her.

It didn’t work. Instead, the sensation grew stronger, moving to plain and simple fear.

She swung her body around to look behind her one more time.

That was when she saw him.

The middle-aged man who had stepped off the bus with her. He had been following her since she’d left the diner. When she’d missed her stop, he’d sat tight. He jumped off when she did, and followed her from a distance.

In the underpass now, he was no more than four steps behind her.

Where the hell had he come from? How was he able to move so fast?

Three steps.

His hand came out of his jacket pocket.

Two.

He was holding something.

One.

Oh my God, is that a syrin—

Too late. The needle had already been plunged into her neck.

Fifty-Two

When Hunter got to their office, Garcia was standing by his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for something. His attention, though, was on the several printouts neatly arranged on his desktop.

‘What’s all that?’ Hunter asked, pressing the ‘space’ bar on his keyboard to wake up his computer.

‘Forensic lab reports,’ Garcia replied, his gaze not moving from the paper. ‘They all came in less than ten minutes ago. I just printed them out.’ He grabbed one of the files and passed it over to Hunter. ‘The toxicology on our first victim, Nicole Wilson, came back negative,’ he announced. ‘The killer kept her completely sober for six to seven days while raping and torturing her. We’re still waiting on the results from Sharon Barnard.’

He turned to face his partner.

Hunter nodded while he scanned the report.

Garcia leaned back against the edge of his desk. ‘If this was any other killer, I would’ve said that toxicology on the second victim would mimic the first, but with this guy . . .’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Expect the unexpected. He doesn’t even have an MO. It wouldn’t really surprise me if we found out that, unlike Nicole Wilson, Sharon Barnard had been drugged to her eyeballs.’

Hunter couldn’t argue with Garcia’s logic.

Garcia reached for a couple more sheets of paper from his desk, passing them to Hunter.

‘OK, moving on,’ he said. ‘Forensics checked the telephone pole on Allenwood Road. They found no finger-prints, but what they did find were two tiny screw holes that didn’t seem to belong. They were high off the ground, just past the first set of telephone cables. They checked them against all the other poles on that road.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘No other pole had them. AT&T confirmed that the holes shouldn’t be there.’

‘Camera holder?’

‘That’s also my opinion,’ Garcia agreed. ‘According to IT forensics, it could’ve been easily done. The camera could’ve either stored the recorded images to some sort of hard drive, or streamed them live over the Internet.’

Hunter seemed unsure. ‘Storing it to a hard drive would have meant using a camera bulkier than the killer would’ve wanted, or having a separate hard drive connected to it. Forensics found only one set of screw holes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So no separate hard drive. A bulkier camera would’ve also been easier to spot from the road. I don’t think he would’ve gone for that option.’

‘Neither do I. Live streaming would’ve been the best option by far. IT forensics said that a camera with a wireless Wi-Fi connectivity could’ve piggybacked the Wi-Fi connection from any of the neighboring houses and no one would’ve known. Some of those cameras are as small and as light as a credit card.’

‘So our killer could’ve staked out the street from the comfort of his living room, miles away,’ Hunter said. ‘No suspicious characters or vehicles on the road. Risk of being spotted – zero.’

Garcia nodded again. ‘As if we didn’t know, this guy is clever.’ He pushed one document aside and picked up a new one. ‘Forensics also managed to identify the type of pen the killer used to write the note that was sent to Mayor Bailey.’

‘So what have we got?’

‘The killer used a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.’ Garcia lifted his right index finger as he said the word ‘large’ to stress the emphasis. ‘BIC Cristals are probably the most popular ballpoint pens in the whole of America,’ he explained. ‘They are inexpensive and can easily be purchased from just about anywhere – corner shops, supermarkets, minimarkets, stationery stores, post offices, you name it. But the interesting thing here is; the most popular BIC Cristals are the medium ballpoints, not the large ones. Those are a little rarer.’

Hunter peered at the copies of the killer’s notes pinned on to the picture board before his attention returned to Garcia.

‘But still,’ Garcia added. ‘Even though the large ballpoints aren’t as popular, they’re still popular enough.’

Hunter could’ve guessed that would be the case.

Garcia moved on to a new batch of documents. ‘We still have nothing relevant from Nicole Wilson’s laptop,’ he said. ‘Nothing from her emails either, but IT forensics have now managed to break through the security on Sharon Barnard’s tablet computer and cellphone. I already have someone going over the computer files. So far, nothing of any significance.’ Garcia’s eyebrows lifted promisingly, as if he had left the best for last. ‘But we did get something very interesting from her cellphone.’

Fifty-Three

Hunter, who was still going over the numbers on the last report Garcia had handed him, lifted his eyes to look at his partner.

Garcia searched through the printouts on his desk, then passed two new sheets over to Hunter before explaining: ‘These are the transcripts of the very last text message conversation Sharon Barnard had.’ He paused and his demeanor changed to something more somber. ‘That conversation was between Sharon and the killer.’

Hunter sat up. He hadn’t been expecting that. The first text message at the top of the file was time-stamped – 19:23.

C’mon, answer your phone, Sharon. Don’t you want to play?

Hunter read those first ten words, paused and looked back at Garcia.

‘We’ve already checked the sender’s number,’ Garcia said. ‘Surprise, surprise – prepaid cellphone, untraceable. No calls or messages were made or sent prior to or after what was sent to Sharon Barnard. All the calls and text messages made and sent from that phone were to Ms. Barnard’s number. After that, the signal died. He destroyed the phone.’

Hunter’s attention returned to the file.

Sharon Barnard’s reply:

Go fuck yourself, freakshow. Whoever you are, I’m blocking your number.

Then the killer.

You know what? Forget about the phone. Let me ask you something. Did you remember to lock your front door?

No reply from Sharon Barnard.

Killer:

C’mon, open the door, Sharon. I’m right outside. Let’s have some fun.

Hunter flipped over to the second sheet.

Again, no reply from Sharon Barnard.

Killer:

OK, who needs the door anyway? Maybe I can get in some other way.

The file came to an end.

Hunter reread the entire transcript a couple of times over. ‘Is this it?’

‘That’s it,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘We’ve got nothing else. But the killer called her twice just before sending the first text message. Neither of the calls lasted very long.’

Hunter gave him a questioning look.

‘Yeah, we’re already in contact with her cellphone provider to see if we can get either a recording or a transcript of those conversations. We might have something by tomorrow.’

Garcia began pacing in front of the picture board. ‘Have you ever encountered anyone like this guy, Robert? I mean, he’s like a fucking chameleon when it comes to the way he operates.’ He indicated the sheets on Hunter’s desk. ‘Those text messages show another complete change of MO from his previous murder.’

Hunter knew exactly what his partner was talking about.

‘He went for pure fear this time,’ he agreed, locking eyes with Garcia.

‘Exactly. With Nicole Wilson, instead of terrorizing her, he befriended her with that whole horseshit story about being Ms. Bennett’s cousin from Texas. He wasn’t looking to scare her. He was after her trust. But with Sharon Barnard –’ Garcia shook his head – ‘He wanted her fear, not her trust.’

‘And he certainly got it,’ Hunter told him. ‘The lack of response to these messages.’ He indicated them on the transcript. ‘The reason she didn’t answer them back isn’t because she was ignoring him, it’s because she was petrified. She knew he was about to break into her house.’

‘So why didn’t she try calling nine-one-one?’

‘Maybe she did but the call never got through. Maybe she didn’t have time. Or maybe, in her panic, she didn’t think of it. Thinking straight under that sort of fear is a huge task, Carlos.’

Three knocks sounded on Hunter and Garcia’s office door.

‘Come in,’ Garcia called.

‘Detectives,’ the man who pushed the door open said, lifting the blue folder he held in his right hand, ‘I think you’ll want to see this.’