by Chris Carter
Captain Blake accepted it with a head nod. ‘And the second reason?’
‘The shock effect. The credibility. Seeing a handwritten, original note, and a Polaroid photograph, two tangible items, something that the mayor could actually handle, packs a much bigger punch then something the mayor could only see through his computer screen. It makes the threat a lot more real. That’s also the reason why the killer used a Polaroid, instead of a regular photo.’
Garcia nodded. ‘An attached photo could’ve been Photoshopped to the last pixel. A Polaroid is practically impossible to touch. As Robert said, it gives the killer credibility.’
‘OK,’ the captain agreed. ‘But why send it to the mayor?’
‘Urgency,’ Hunter replied. ‘If this package had come straight here to the PAB and to your office, would you have informed Chief Bracco, or the mayor?’
‘No, of course not.’
Hunter nodded once. ‘And if it had gone straight to Chief Bracco’s office, do you think he would’ve informed the mayor?’
Captain Blake caught up with Hunter’s logic.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘There’d be no need to worry the mayor. But send it directly to the mayor a couple of weeks before an election, and you start a hierarchical panic chain reaction – the mayor, who’s obsessed with citizen safety, takes it straight to the chief of police, who brings it straight to me.’
‘As I’ve said,’ Hunter added. ‘This guy’s got a big ego, and he wants to play, but he wants to make sure he’s playing against the right opponents. As he wrote on his note – the best of the best – because in his mind, he deserves nothing less. Getting the mayor involved would guarantee he got what he wanted.’
‘Well, so, he’s in luck,’ the captain said, walking back behind her desk. ‘Because you two are supposed to be the best I have.’
Twenty-Four
Night had already recolored the sky by the time Sharon Barnard opened the door to the house she shared with Tom Hobbs in Venice, in the Westside region of Los Angeles. Today she had worked a return flight from LAX to Kansas City, where for three and a half hours each way, she had endured a battery of cheesy pick-up lines and humorless anecdotes, all of them from overweight businessmen who smelled of cheap cologne and did a piss-poor job of hiding their wedding bands.
She smiled in relief as she finally closed the door behind her, put her cabin crew suitcase on the floor and began rubbing the back of her neck with both hands. Her neck and shoulder muscles felt a little stiff, but it was nothing that a long shower followed by a nice bottle of wine and some relaxing music couldn’t fix. And tonight she had the house to herself. Tom had flown to San Francisco that morning, where he’d spend the night, probably partying somewhere in the Castro, the largest gay neighborhood in the USA, before flying back tomorrow afternoon.
Both Sharon and Tom had been away for a day and a half. The house had been locked, all the windows shut and the curtains drawn. With the early August heat, the place felt like a sauna. Sharon opened one of the living room windows before crossing over to the kitchen and grabbing a cold bottle of beer from the fridge to cool her down.
In spite of it not being a career choice she had ever really considered until just a year earlier, Sharon loved her job as a stewardess.
Ever since she was a young girl, Sharon had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, and that was due in part to her obsession with the television series ER. She had the entire collection on DVD. She had watched every episode at least ten times, but still she just couldn’t get enough of it. But ER was not the only reason. Sharon had always had a kind heart, and helping people in need satisfied her in a way that very little else ever did. The interesting thing was that she had never even considered being a doctor, and that was indeed ER and Nurse Carol’s fault – Carol Hathaway had always been her favorite character and she wanted to be just like her. But Sharon was a very down-to-earth person. She fully understood that a nurse’s reality would certainly be very different from the half-glamorous life she saw on the little screen.
With that in mind, Sharon decided to follow the advice of her school counselor and the school nurse, and straight after high school she enrolled herself into the Licensed Practical Nurse program where she showed tremendous talent and aptitude, graduating top of her class twelve months later. Though LPN gave her the initial skills she needed, dealing with real patients would prove to be a whole different ballgame.
Her plan was to try to gain practical experience as a working nurse for at least one year before going back to school and enrolling into the Associate Degree in Nursing program, which would then allow her to become a registered nurse.
Upon graduating from the LPN program, and with the help of two of her tutors, Sharon was immediately offered a nursing position at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, ranked among the top three medical centers and hospitals in California. She jumped at the chance, and was assigned to the neurological ward, commonly known as the coma ward. And that was when everything went sour.
Only six days after she first started working on the ward, Sharon saw the arrival of a nine-year-old black girl named Joan Howard. Joan had been playing alone on the sidewalk right in front of her house when she was practically run over by an eighteen-year-old kid who, just for the fun of it, had decided to see how fast he could go on a bicycle. The bicycle collided with Joan with such force that she was projected forward and through the air several yards. She landed on the road, hitting her tiny head against the asphalt and fracturing her cranium in two places, causing her brain to hemorrhage. The kid on the bicycle was never caught.
‘A miracle,’ the head nurse at the coma ward had told Sharon on her first day on the job. ‘That’s pretty much the only thing that can make most of our patients wake up and get out of here, and trust me, you will probably see some miracles happen right in front of your eyes in this place. But they are very few and far between. What I’m trying to tell you is – don’t get attached, don’t be too human, don’t succumb to your emotions, because it will only hurt you and compromise your professionalism. Be objective. Most of the patients in this ward are half dead. That’s why they’re here.’
And a miracle had been exactly what Joan’s family and everyone else had hoped for. Nothing else could help. The doctors had done all they could do. But as the days started to melt into weeks, and the weeks into months, hope began to fade, except for Sharon, who wasn’t able to follow the head nurse’s advice and had fallen in love with the little girl. Maybe it had been because Joan reminded Sharon of her best childhood friend, who had been murdered when she was ten years old during a gang drive-by shooting, just east of MacArthur Park, where she used to live.
At first, Joan’s father, who was a single parent, would come in every day after he’d finished work and spend several hours by his daughter’s bed, holding her hand, reading her stories, singing her songs, and combing her hair, but soon hope abandoned him too. First he started spending less and less time with his daughter every day, then the visits became less frequent.
Sharon caught up with him one night as he was leaving, and with teary eyes begged him not to desert his daughter. Even without ever having seen one, she tried to explain to him that the sort of miracles that happened in that ward depended as much on the families not giving up on their loved ones as it did on divine intervention. Joan’s father looked like he had aged ten years in just a few months. He said nothing to Sharon. He simply stared at her with heavy, pain-stricken eyes for a whole minute before turning and walking away in silence.
He didn’t come back the next day.
And that was the night Joan passed.
Sharon had been unable to hide her distress after the little girl’s death, and that made her question her willingness to become a nurse. She decided to take some time off and rethink. During her break, her old school friend, Tom Hobbs, suggested that she looked into becoming an air stewardess. Sharon decided to give it a try. She told herself that she had nothing to lose.
Th
at had been just over a year ago, and she hadn’t looked back since.
In her bedroom, Sharon opened another window, turned on the portable stereo system on her bedside table and switched to the radio. ‘Maps’ by Maroon 5 came on and she immediately began swinging her hips to the beat as she sang the words. It was one of her favorite songs. While doing so, she undressed and finished her bottle of beer. She thought about having a second one, but she didn’t handle mixing drinks very well. It usually gave her a horrible headache and a zombie-like hangover, and she was really looking forward to her bottle of wine.
Sharon grabbed a freshly washed towel from the cupboard in the corridor and walked into the bathroom. She got the shower running but didn’t get under it. Instead, she took a step back, faced the mirror above the washing basin and regarded herself for an instant – first her left profile, then the right one. After a few seconds of deliberation, she decided that she was relatively happy with her figure, though, in her mind, there was always room for improvement.
She finally stepped under the shower, leaned forward, placed her forehead against the white tiles and allowed the strong jet of lukewarm water to sluice over her head, shoulders and back. It felt like a dream. As soon as the water came in contact with her skin, her tense muscles began to relax.
Shower over, she wrapped herself in her towel and returned to the kitchen.
Sharon and Tom had quite a nice selection of wine, and tonight she felt like having something fruity and refreshing.
‘Perfect,’ she whispered to herself as she selected a bottle of New Zealand Gewurztraminer from the fridge, uncorked it and poured herself a glass. She had just returned the bottle to the fridge when her cellphone rang. She had left it on the kitchen counter. She closed the fridge door before reaching for her phone and checking the display screen. She didn’t recognize the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Sharon.’
The male voice didn’t sound familiar to her.
‘Umm . . . Hi. Sorry, but who’s this?’
‘Would you like to take a guess?’
Sharon frowned at the phone. She just wanted to relax and enjoy her wine. She was in no mood to play games with anyone.
‘No, I wouldn’t, actually. And if you don’t tell me who you are, this call is over.’
‘OK, how about if I tell you that I’m the one waiting at the end. Will that do?’
‘Waiting at the end? At the end of what?’
First the voice at the other end chuckled at the question. When it spoke again, the words came out slowly, and in a tone that could only be described as morbid.
‘Life, Sharon. I am the one waiting at the end of life, for I am death.’
Sharon didn’t scare easy, but there was something about this voice that sent a chill trickling down her spine.
‘You know what? That’s one horrible joke, whoever you are.’
‘Who said it was a joke?’
‘Fuck you, you sick freak. Don’t call me again.’ In a burst of anger, Sharon almost slammed her cellphone against the sideboard but she stopped herself just in time.
A few seconds later, it rang again – same number. Sharon just let it ring out.
A few more seconds after the ringing had stopped, a text message came through.
C’mon, answer your phone, Sharon. Don’t you want to play?
Sharon knew that she should just ignore it, but after such a long day her anger got the better of her. She quickly typed a reply.
Go fuck yourself, freakshow. Whoever you are, I’m blocking your number.
Ping.
Just moments after Sharon had replied, a new text message arrived.
You know what? Forget about the phone. Let me ask you something. Did you remember to lock your front door?
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
All of a sudden, the handle on her front door twisted three times in quick succession.
‘Jesus!’ Sharon jumped back, almost dropping her cellphone. Her frightened stare shot toward the door. ‘What the fuck?’
Thankfully, she had locked the door. Ping. A new message.
She looked down at her phone again. Only then did she realize that she was trembling.
C’mon, open the door, Sharon. I’m right outside. Let’s have some fun.
The handle on the front door moved again, this time a lot slower, and only once.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’
As Sharon began panicking, her eyes immediately filled with tears.
Ping.
OK, who needs the door anyway? Maybe I can get in some other way.
The pause that followed was suddenly punctuated by desperate fear.
Oh fuck, Sharon thought as the memory came back to her. The window.
Despite how frightened she actually was, Sharon’s survival instincts took over and she exploded toward the living room window. She never knew her legs could move that fast. As she slammed it shut and drew the curtains, her towel came undone and fell to the floor. She was way too scared to care.
Between heavy breaths, her terrified gaze flitted between the door and the window for a long moment. Finally, her brain, which had gone momentarily numb, re-engaged.
What the fuck are you waiting for, Sharon? she told herself. Call 911 now.
She quickly tapped the numbers into her cellphone and pressed the ‘call’ button.
Nothing. No dial tone.
‘What the hell?’ She looked at the display screen. She had not one signal bar. ‘How can this be?’ she yelled at her phone through clenched teeth. Just a moment ago she’d received a new message.
What Sharon had no way of knowing was that every time the caller got off the phone, he switched on his own cellphone signal scrambler.
Instinctively, she stretched her arm out and moved it around, searching for a signal.
Nothing. Not even half a bar.
‘Shit. Shit.’
Her brain turned another rusty wheel.
‘Landline.’
She rushed toward the phone on the counter in the kitchen, but just as she was about to snatch it from its cradle, it rang.
Stunned, Sharon brought it to her ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Let’s play a game, Sharon.’
Sharon froze.
‘And it starts like this. Lights out.’
In that instant, her entire house fell into darkness. Sharon let out another terrified scream. Her eyes circled the room but she saw nothing.
‘Oh my God, what the hell is happening?’ she said into the phone in a shaky voice. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?’
Sharon still had her cellphone in her hand. She swiped her thumb across the screen and turned on the flashlight application.
‘Do you know what your mistake was, Sharon?’ The voice came through the landline receiver once again.
Sharon could do nothing but breathe hard.
‘You went for the wrong window.’
Terror ripped through her heart as she remembered – her bedroom window.
Panicking and completely out of ideas, Sharon frantically moved her cellphone around. The weak light that came from the tiny flashbulb at the back of it cast shadows everywhere, but as those shadows passed over the door that linked the living room to the corridor, she saw a human silhouette move across it.
The next time she heard the man’s voice, it did not come from the receiver by her ear. It came from behind her.
‘I’m already inside.’
Twenty-Five
As he finally placed his pen down on his desk, Hunter noticed that his hands were shaking. Beads of cold sweat had also formed on his forehead.
He stood up, and as he did his knees clicked noisily. He’d been sitting down for way too long. He stretched his long frame and the stiff muscles in his back and legs responded with what felt like a thousand painful pinches. Hunter forced the stretch even more, this time bringing his neck into it. It clicked just as noisily as his knees.
Damn,
he thought, grinding his teeth. Carlos is right. Maybe I am getting too old for this crap.
Hunter had just spent the last three hours transcribing and re-transcribing every word from the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey that morning. He’d made twenty-five copies of it, trying to match the killer’s handwriting as best as he could.
And he’d done a great job.
The exercise was simple. Hunter wasn’t trying to memorize the note word for word, though, after recopying it so many times, that was exactly what had happened. But no, what he was really trying to do was to get some sort of insight, however small, into the killer’s mind, into the killer’s way of thinking. He was trying to think like the killer did, to feel what the killer felt when he wrote those words. He was looking for hidden meanings and word tricks. Trying to read between the lines.
After three laborious hours, Hunter had come up with very little. To him, it felt as if the killer knew that the note would be scrutinized to its very last detail. Every word, every letter, analyzed and reanalyzed – physically and psychologically – and the killer had locked every door; he had left no openings, no pathways into his psyche.
Hunter knew that carrying on any longer would bring him no better results.
He poured himself another large cup of black coffee, returned to his chair and half swiveled it around to face the old-fashioned picture board by the east wall. Despite how young their investigation was – less than twenty-four hours old – the board was already plastered with information and photographs.
Forensics had come back with the results of the test that had been run on the blood used to write the note that had been left lodged inside the victim’s throat – I AM DEATH. As Hunter and Garcia were expecting, the killer had used Nicole Wilson’s blood to write it, but according to the forensics report, it didn’t seem as though he had used a brush to do it. Instead, he had used his own fingers, dipping them in his victim’s blood before carefully inscribing each letter. Not surprisingly, forensics had found no fingerprints, partial or otherwise. The killer, no doubt, had been wearing gloves.