by Chris Carter
The man paused and looked around. All eyes were on him.
‘C’mon, Special Agent Fisher,’ he continued, his tone becoming a little somber. ‘You need to give us a little bit more than this joke of a press release.’ He raised the printout in his hand. ‘You are the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. When it comes to serial killers, you’re supposed to be the utmost authority, not only in the country, but in the world. You study them, you collect them, you pick their brains apart, don’t you? Two months . . . you must’ve had a team of criminal psychologists working non-stop to come up with some sort of profile on this guy, so where is it? What should we look out for? If this press release is all you can give us after over eight weeks of investigation, then it can only be for one reason – the utmost authority in the country doesn’t have a clue where it stands, does it? There’s no profile on this killer because you simply cannot come up with one.’
Agent Fisher immediately put up her hand, anticipating the explosion of voices that was about to come her way. But it never happened. Instead, every pair of eyes that a second ago had been fixed on the tall and slim man, darted toward the agent, but no one said a word. The only sound that could be heard inside the room was the incessant clicking of cameras.
‘You’re wrong,’ Agent Fisher replied. Her voice still solid. Her self-confidence undaunted. ‘Yes, we do have a very extensive profile on this killer, Mr. Curry, and the reason why we can’t share it with any of you is because if we do, it will be all over the news and the papers by tomorrow, and guess what? Serial killers also watch the news. They also read the papers.’ She paused so the whole room could absorb her words.
‘If we reveal our findings on this killer now, it will give him a chance to alter his methods, to adapt, to evade the net that is already in place and quickly closing around him. We can’t risk that, but I can tell you this, Mr. Curry.’ Agent Fisher looked straight into the eyes of the reporter. ‘This killer isn’t intelligent, like you’ve suggested, he isn’t smart, or talented, or creative, or gifted, or artistic, or anything else that he might think he is. No, he’s just another pathetic loser. Another psychopath. Someone who probably blames society for his problems. Someone who, to make up for his many inadequacies, decided to go around playing God. But his days are counted, you can bet on that. We have figured him out and—’
‘What the hell is she doing?’ Garcia asked Hunter, his eyes growing wider with every word Agent Fisher uttered. ‘It looks like she’s trying to piss him off, and I’m not talking about the reporter here.’
‘That’s exactly what she’s doing,’ Hunter agreed.
Garcia listened for a few more seconds. ‘That’s not a smart move, is it?’
‘No,’ Hunter replied, transfixed by what Agent Fisher was doing on the stage. ‘Angering this killer is not a smart move at all.’
Seventy-One
The man had been working at his desk for the past four hours. He had created ten different sketches – ten different plans. All he had to do now was decide which one he liked best, which one he could implement with most ease, but there was no real rush. After all, he had just added a brand-new item to his collection and he deserved a much-needed rest.
The man put down his pen, sat back on his chair and let his head drop back. He was tired and he could feel the muscles around his neck beginning to stiffen up, but more than that, he was hungry and he was thirsty.
In the kitchen, he switched on the small TV on the counter before pouring himself a large glass of unsweetened ice-tea. As he returned the glass jug to the fridge, an image on the small screen caught his attention. He used the remote control to turn the volume up.
Two crazy gunmen, armed with a high-powered, fully automatic assault weapon, had entered a rock concert in Barcelona, Spain, and opened fire on the crowd. The gunmen had managed to kill one hundred and fifteen people and injure another thirty-nine before they were both finally shot down by Spanish police. The attack lasted around forty-five minutes. The report included several shocking cellphone images shot from inside the venue by the fans themselves.
‘This world is going completely nuts,’ the man commented as he made himself a pastrami and cheese sandwich and divided it into four practically millimeter-perfect triangles.
While the news played out, showing more amateur images together with concert survivors’ interviews, the man set a place at the six-seater table inside his kitchen. Drinks coaster, plate mat, napkin, cutlery and finally salt and pepper mills. That was always the order, and all of it always flawlessly aligned.
Like always, when eating a sandwich, the man started with the topmost triangle and worked his way clockwise. After he finished each triangle, which he would do with exactly two bites, the man would have two sips of his drink before returning it to the coaster. He would then dab the corners of his mouth with the napkin and return it to the right side of the plate mat before realigning everything once again. The process would repeat itself until his meal was finished.
As the man took his first bite of the last sandwich triangle, the news on his TV changed and the report about the atrocities in Spain was followed by a national bulletin.
‘On a much more domestic note,’ the TV anchorman announced, ‘the FBI has held a press conference this evening concerning their investigation into the murders of four people. All of them victims of the same predator – a serial killer who has been roaming our streets for over two months now.’
The man stopped halfway through chewing.
‘This is what Special Agent Erica Fisher had to say,’ the news anchor continued.
The man put down his food and turned the volume up.
The report cut to the press conference held in Tucson, which had already been edited by the station’s news team. The segment started with Agent Fisher replying to the LA Times reporter’s question, though his question was never actually shown.
After the agent’s statement, the report cut to the news anchor once again.
‘The FBI reassured the public that they are already closing in on the killer.’
For a moment the man didn’t breathe. He didn’t hear the end of the report either, all he could hear was the words that kept playing back, over and over in his head – this killer isn’t intelligent, he isn’t smart, or talented, or creative, or gifted, or artistic, or anything else that he might think he is. No, he’s just another pathetic loser. Someone who probably blames society for his problems. Someone who, to make up for his many inadequacies, decided to go around playing God.
‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’
The man’s laugh started slowly, like a locomotive leaving the platform. It was a quiet, reserved laugh, but as it gained momentum, it also picked up strength, echoing around the kitchen, with the man’s shoulders bouncing up and down in an odd rhythm.
All of a sudden, the man went dead quiet. If anyone could see his eyes, they would’ve seen the focus, the determination in them.
‘OK,’ he said out loud, his head nodding a couple of times at the TV. ‘You want to play? Let’s play. How about a new game this time? We can call it “No More Mr. Merciful”.’
Seventy-Two
‘Hey,’ Tracy Adams said, as she answered her phone after the second ring. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Hunter replied. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m OK. Thank you.’
‘I really wanted to apologize for having to cancel on you at such short notice . . . again.’
‘But you’ve already apologized, remember?’
Like always, Tracy’s voice was soft, her tone understanding, but Hunter did pick up a hint of disappointment in her pitch.
‘Yes, but through a text message, which I would also like to apologize for.’ Hunter’s voice, on the other hand, sounded tired. ‘It’s been quite crazy over here and I just couldn’t find the time to call, at least not for longer than a minute. I didn’t want to call and then all of a sudden have to put the phone down on you because I had to rush off some
where. Given the circumstances, a text message was my best option and even that had to be done in snatches.’
‘It’s all right, Robert. I know it’s not your fault.’
Hunter got the feeling that what Tracy really wanted to say was: It’s all right, Robert. I’m used to it. It’s not the first time you’ve cancelled on me, is it?
Maybe it was the fact that they were in different cities, different states. Maybe it was the fact that distance was different from time in the way it affected people, but right then, Hunter missed her.
‘I’ll make it up to you when I get back to LA. I promise. I was thinking that maybe I could take you out for dinner somewhere. What do you think?’
Tracy went into a thoughtful silence, one Hunter could hardly blame her for. When he didn’t cancel on her, he would usually cut their date short by having to rush out somewhere after a phone call.
‘When do you get back, do you know?’ she asked.
‘I think we’ll fly back tomorrow morning, or afternoon at the latest. There’s nothing else we can do over here, really.’
Tracy went quiet again, but this time only for an instant. ‘Wait a second, Robert, where are you again?’
Hunter had never told her where he had flown off to.
‘Arizona.’
‘In Tucson?’
Tracy’s tone changed and Hunter couldn’t tell if she was surprised, concerned, or both.
‘That’s correct,’ he replied. ‘How do you know?’
‘I just caught the end of a news report on CNN – an FBI press conference in Tucson, Arizona, about a serial killer they’ve been chasing for some time now.’
‘A little over two months,’ Hunter said.
‘Four victims?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that’s the joint operation you were telling me about.’
‘Yes.’
‘This killer has been active for over two months?’
‘Yes.’
Despite her curiosity, Tracy saw no point in pushing Hunter for answers she knew he would never give her. Instead, she brought the subject back to their date.
‘How about Monday evening?’ she asked.
The sudden change in topic did catch Hunter unprepared.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Our dinner date,’ Tracy explained with a half-laugh. ‘I’m away for the weekend. I’m attending a conference in Sacramento until Sunday evening. I think I told you about it; I’m not sure. Anyway, I’ll be back in LA by Monday morning. If it suits you, we can go for dinner on Monday evening.’
‘Yes, that suits me just fine,’ Hunter replied, a smile now also on his lips. ‘Monday evening sounds great.’
Seventy-Three
Hunter, Garcia and both FBI agents did fly back to Los Angeles the next morning and the rest of the weekend went by in a blur of checking, cross-checking and re-checking.
By Monday morning, the IT experts in Quantico were still trying to breach Timothy Davis’s laptop and desktop security, with absolutely no advance whatsoever. A separate team of analysts, also back in Quantico, had spent the last few days going over a monumental mountain of emails, texts and social-media messages sent to Linda Parker, but with over a quarter of a million followers all around the world, and having to backtrack everything to an indefinite point in time, the team couldn’t even see the summit of their task, never mind get to it.
Though they were still searching, they’d also had no luck so far with the airlines’ passenger manifests. To be on the safe side, Agent Fisher had put in a new request to include private jet companies.
The first real progress made by anyone came only on Monday morning. The FBI had finally managed to obtain a transcript of the telephone conversation between the killer and Owen Henderson, the freelance reporter the killer had called in Phoenix.
Owen had given Hunter a pretty accurate run-down of the entire phone call. Most of it, just like the reporter had described, had been nothing more than a set of instructions on how to get to Timothy Davis’s house and what to do once he got there, but what had really intrigued Hunter had been the killer’s final words to the reporter.
‘We live in a false world – a plastic world where real, natural beauty is the purest and rarest of art forms. The most valuable of art forms. True beauty cannot be fabricated, copied, or duplicated and for that reason, it’s becoming extinct, but true beauty should live forever. I am making sure of that. I hope that you will be able to understand and appreciate true art.’
Hunter had spent the entire morning dissecting those words, breaking down those sentences, searching for hidden meanings between the lines.
‘Anything?’ Garcia asked. He too had spent the last few hours scrutinizing the transcript.
‘It doesn’t make much sense,’ Hunter said, slumping back on his chair.
‘You think?’ Garcia joked. ‘We’re talking about a killer who mutilates his victims, then uses their bodies to stage some sick scene that only he would consider art. Not to mention the cryptic Latin phrases that he likes to carve into their flesh. In other words – this guy is a freak, Robert, a lunatic lost in some crazy world inside his own head. I’m surprised he can actually string a sentence together. Wanting him to also make sense is maybe asking a little too much, don’t you think?’
‘No, I’m not talking about sense in what he said,’ Hunter replied. ‘I’m talking about sense in relation to what we have. He talks about natural beauty being the purest and rarest of art forms, but there’s nothing natural about what he’s doing. He then tells us that it cannot be fabricated or copied. That it should live forever and that he’s making sure of that, but if he believes that he’s creating art, then in a sense he’s fabricating it.’
Garcia mulled over Hunter’s words. ‘Maybe he means “fabricated” in the sense that it can’t be mass produced. That his art is unique.’
‘So why wouldn’t he use the word “unique”?’
Garcia shrugged. ‘Or who knows? Maybe he only said all that because he knew that we would interrogate the freelance reporter and all of this was devised just to confuse us even more, as if we weren’t lost enough already.’
The second progress also came on Monday, late afternoon. The FBI forensics lab had finally managed to reconstruct and identify the partial shoeprint retrieved from the live fence by Timothy Davis’s house. It had come from a Danner Quarry USA Boot, a company based in Portland, Oregon. Its size had been estimated to be anywhere between 11.5 and 12.5, which suggested something that they already knew – the person they were looking for would most probably be over six-foot-two tall. The problem they had was that the Quarry was Danner’s most popular work boot, selling over 100,000 pairs yearly in the USA.
‘One hundred thousand pairs?’ Captain Blake commented, leaning against the edge of Garcia’s desk. Since officially this investigation was a joint effort between the FBI and the LAPD, she liked to keep herself in the loop just as much as the NCAVC director. ‘Well that’s not really a viable avenue for anyone to pursue, is it? No matter how many agents Adrian Kennedy pulls into this investigation.’
‘I know,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI gave it a try.’
Despite the ample space and the advanced technology, Hunter and Garcia didn’t really take to their new temporary office inside the Los Angeles FBI Headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard. Every morning, it took them about five minutes each just to clear security at the entrance, and since it was a widely known fact that federal agents and City police officers didn’t really see eye to eye, the level of animosity that came at them from pretty much every angle, regardless of Adrian Kennedy’s orders, was at the best of times infuriating.
Hunter and Garcia still met with Agents Fisher and Williams every day, but with no real necessity for them to be in the Federal Bureau building, they preferred to work from their own office back at the PAB.
‘And that’s pretty much the only progress that has been made?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘Well,’ Garcia replied. ‘That and the fact that the “crime scene as an art piece” theory has solidified considerably.’
‘Yes, but it’s still only a theory.’ She immediately lifted her hand at Hunter. ‘I know. I know. Everything in an investigation is only a theory until the perp gets caught and the theory gets proven.’
The captain had heard that saying from Hunter so many times, she had lost count.
‘I just hope you can either prove or disprove this theory before the killer decides to go out again.’
Seventy-Four
As Tracy and Hunter got to the WeHo Bistro in West Hollywood, just a couple of hours ago, the sun had begun tucking itself away behind the horizon line, transforming the sky above Los Angeles into a beautiful gradient sheet, but while they were inside, thick, dark clouds had repopulated the sky, covering almost every visible inch of it. As they came out, a thunder roar startled Tracy.
Hunter noticed the quick quiver of her shoulders.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting any rain tonight.’
Tracy wore a black and white, knee-length strapless dress with a charming black bow around her waist. Her hair, which she had straightened for tonight’s date, was loose, falling over her shoulders like a shining red shawl.