One by One

by Chris Carter

  Anna coughed. ‘You think he’s been in our home?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Garcia said with conviction. ‘But I have to be absolutely sure, because the paranoid cop in me won’t rest until I am. You know that.’

  At that moment Anna couldn’t be sure if the emotion in Garcia’s voice was anger or fear.

  ‘So this is the same person who abducted and killed that LA Times reporter who was on the paper this morning,’ she finally said. ‘He broadcast it over the Internet, didn’t he? Just like he did with Pat and me.’

  Garcia didn’t need to reply. Anna knew she was right.

  He kept his eyes on the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel, bottling all he could inside. What he really wanted to ask Anna was for her to leave Los Angeles until they had this psycho behind bars. But she would never agree to it, even if her life were in danger. Anna was a determined, very stubborn and totally committed woman. She worked with deprived elderly people, people who needed and depended on her on a daily basis. Even if she could, she wouldn’t just get up and leave them overnight. And Garcia had no way of knowing how long this hunt would take.

  Garcia had agreed with Hunter that today, this killer had no real intention of harming Anna. But he took it as a warning, an eye-opener. The killer could very well change his mind tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that . . . and Garcia knew there was very little he could do about it. What the killer had broadcast this afternoon had filled him with real fear, and highlighted a frightening truth. The truth that despite who he was, despite how much he wanted to, he couldn’t truly protect Anna twenty-four hours a day. The killer knew that. And today he made sure Garcia and Hunter knew it too.

  Sixty-Six

  With the old-fashioned, closet-sized elevator stuck somewhere at the top of the building, Ethan Walsh took the steps up to his fourth-floor apartment in a hurry, and two at a time. The problem was that physical exercise wasn’t even part of his vocabulary, never mind his daily routine. By the time he hit the second floor, he was out of breath, red-faced and sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna about to have a heart attack. Though Ethan had gained a little extra weight in the past few months, he wasn’t exactly fat, but he sure was unfit.

  Usually he would’ve taken his time conquering the eight flights of stairs that led up to his flat, cursing as he reached the top of each one, but tonight he was already ten minutes late for his half-hour, face-to-face call with his four-year-old daughter, Alicia.

  When Alicia was born, Ethan’s life seemed to be on a plain-sailing course to success. Ethan was an independent videogames programmer, and a very good one at that. He had developed several online games by himself, and for three consecutive years he’d won the prestigious Mochis Flash Games Award for Best Strategy and Puzzle Game of the Year. But with the advent of direct online stores for major platforms like Microsoft’s X-Box 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3, a whole new world had been presented to independent videogames developers. And there was a hell of a lot of money to be made.

  Ethan had discussed the idea of creating a game for the X-Box 360 with Brad Nelson, a brilliant Canadian games programmer he had met several years back. Brad said that he had also been playing around with the same idea, but doing it alone was a mountainous task. After a few more talks, they decided to do it together, and that was how Ethan and Brad created AssKicker Games just six months before Ethan’s baby girl was born.

  Brad was very well connected, and on the strength of Ethan’s games awards he managed to secure a couple of very healthy investments, which enabled both of them to quit their day jobs and concentrate solely on developing their first major console game.

  Within seven months they had a short playable demo that went viral on the X-Box 360 store. An incredible buzz started about the game and their company, but Ethan was a perfectionist, and he kept on stripping and redoing enormous chunks of the game, which severely hindered its progress. Arguments started breaking out between Ethan and Brad on a daily basis. The completion date for the game just kept on being put back further and further, and two years later it was still under development. No one knew for sure when it would be finished. The buzz about the game and their company had died down. The investments dried up. Ethan ended up remortgaging his house and putting everything he had into the company.

  The pressure and frustration Ethan was under at work started seeping through into his relationship with his wife, Stephanie, and they started rowing practically every night. Their daughter was almost three then. Ethan was obsessed, depressed and becoming a nervous wreck. That was when Brad Nelson decided to pull the plug on the company. He’d had enough. The arguments had gotten out of hand. He was out of patience and out of money, but not as in debt as Ethan.

  The partnership ended badly. Brad refused to sign the papers that would transfer his share of the company to Ethan, and that meant that Ethan could not carry on developing the game on his own. Fifty percent of the game’s intellectual property belonged to Brad, and he declined to let it go. Ethan had no money to hire a lawyer and try to fight Brad in a court of law. If he were to develop a game for the X-Box 360, he would have to forget everything he’d done so far and start a new one from scratch. He didn’t have the means or the mental stamina for that.

  Ethan was left completely broke, including his spirit. He didn’t know what to do, but the experience had left him bitter, and he didn’t want to program anymore. He was in so much debt that his only way out was to declare bankruptcy. He lost his house to the bank, and with that the arguments at home intensified. Stephanie moved out and filed for divorce six months ago. She’d taken their daughter with her, and was now living in Seattle with someone she’d met while still married to Ethan.

  Ethan missed his daughter like crazy. In the past six months he had seen her only once. His only comfort at the moment was that twice a week he would speak to her on a thirty-minute Internet, face-to-face call, as stipulated by a family court judge.

  When Ethan got to the door of his apartment, his breathing was so heavy he sounded like a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. He fumbled for his keys, opened the door and stepped inside the small, dark and claustrophobic flat.

  ‘Shit!’ he murmured, checking his watch. It had taken him three minutes to climb up to the fourth floor. His hand found the light switch on the wall, and the old yellow bulb in the center of the ceiling flickered twice before bathing the room in such a weak light it made almost no difference at all. He rushed over to the laptop on the Formica table pushed up against one of the walls, and quickly turned it on.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon, boot up, you prehistoric brick,’ he urged it, waving both hands at the old computer. When it finally did, he brought up his face-to-face call application and clicked the “call” button. His daughter’s account was already programmed in.

  His ex-wife answered it at the other end.

  ‘You are unbelievable,’ she said, her tone angry. ‘Fifteen minutes late . . .?’

  ‘Don’t even start, Steph,’ Ethan cut her short. ‘I left work on time, but the bus had a flat. We all had to get out and cram into the next one . . . Anyway, who cares? Why am I wasting my time talking to you? Where’s Alicia?’

  ‘You’re a jerk,’ Stephanie said. ‘And you look like shit. You could’ve at least combed your hair.’

  ‘Thank you for the kind words.’ Ethan ran a hand through his fair hair to try to smooth it into place, before using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead. A second later Alicia’s smiley face appeared on his screen.

  Alicia was a stunning little girl. Her rosy cheeks and curly blond hair made her look like a cartoon character. Her eyes were deep blue, and their shape gave the impression that she was always smiling, which incidentally she usually was. And it was a smile that could disarm any grown-up.

  ‘Hi, Daddy,’ Alicia said, waving her hand vigorously at the camera.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, Daddy.’ She brought her
little hand to her mouth and started giggling. ‘You look funny.’

  ‘Do I? How funny?’

  More giggles. ‘Your face looks all red like a big strawberry, and your hair is sticking up like a pineapple.’

  ‘Well,’ Ethan said. ‘You can call me “fruit salad Daddy” today, then.’

  Alicia laughed one of those contagious laughs that people couldn’t help but join in.

  Ethan laughed with her.

  They talked for another twelve minutes. Ethan felt a knot grow tight in his throat, as he knew he would soon have to say goodbye to Alicia. It would be four days before their next Internet chat.

  ‘Daddy . . .?’ Alicia said, frowning, her eyes displaying a little confusion.

  ‘Yes, honey. What is it?’

  ‘Who is . . .?’

  Ethan’s cellphone rang inside his shirt pocket. He always switched it off when he talked to Alicia, but because today he was in a hurry, he’d forgot ten.

  ‘Just a second, honey,’ he said, reaching for the phone. He didn’t even check the caller display. He simply turned it off and placed it back in his pocket. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Who is what?’

  For some reason Alicia looked scared.

  ‘Darling, what is it?’

  She lifted her little arm and pointed at the camera. ‘Who is that man standing behind you, Daddy?’

  Sixty-Seven

  Garcia dropped Anna off at her parents’ house in Manhattan Beach and headed straight back to his apartment. As he told Anna, the paranoid cop inside of him was screaming ‘check and recheck’, but logic told him that the killer hadn’t been inside their home.

  Garcia and Anna lived on the top floor of a six-story building in Montebello, southwest Los Angeles. They had no balcony or back alley fire escape. The only way in was through the front door. Garcia had worked too many house burglaries as a uniformed cop to know better. He had installed an anti-snap, high-security, ten-lever lock on his door. The lock was extremely resistant against picking and drilling attacks, even from someone with special tools. If somebody had breached that lock, there would be signs everywhere. There were none.

  Satisfied, he called Hunter and found out that he was on his way to the FBI headquarters to talk with Michelle. Garcia told him he would meet him there.

  Hunter had been waiting for less than five minutes when Garcia pulled into the parking lot behind the FBI building in Wilshire Boulevard.

  ‘How’s Anna?’ Hunter asked as his partner stepped out of his car. He knew Garcia would have told her the truth.

  ‘She’s rattled, but you know Anna, she’s putting on a brave face. I left her with her parents until I get back. How did you get on?’

  Garcia didn’t have to tell Hunter that no matter what he’d told Anna, she wouldn’t simply pack up and leave Los Angeles. Hunter also knew how determined and committed to her job she was, and though he believed that the killer had targeted Anna solely to prove a point, neither he nor Garcia was prepared to take any chances. They had agreed earlier that since they couldn’t keep an eye on her twenty-four hours a day, somebody would.

  ‘The paperwork is all done,’ Hunter said. ‘And it’s already been approved by the captain. Anna will have a police escort with her 24/7, until we call it off. A squad car has just been dispatched to your place.’

  Garcia nodded but made no comment. The look in his eyes was distant and pensive.

  ‘Why don’t you go home, Carlos?’ Hunter said. ‘Go pick Anna up and stay with her. She needs you by her side . . . and you need her.’

  ‘I know I do. And that’s why I’m here. Me being with Anna . . . The best surveillance in the world . . . None of it will make any difference while this psycho is still out there. He proved that today.’ Garcia paused and looked at Hunter. ‘Even the tiniest glimpse into how the mind of a perpetrator works can turn out to be a huge step toward capturing him . . . You taught me that, remember?’

  Hunter accepted it with a head gesture.

  ‘So one way to get closer to him is to know all we can about how he does what he does, and Michelle and Harry are the only people who can help us understand how he does it.’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘I’ll pick Anna up straight after I leave here, but right now this is me doing the best I can do to protect her.’ Garcia started walking toward the building.

  Sixty-Eight

  Harry Mills had come up from the Cybercrime Division’s underground floor to greet Hunter and Garcia at the entrance lobby of the FBI building. He guided them past the reception desk, through the security doors, down the hallway and finally into the elevator, but this time he pressed the button to sublevel three instead of sublevel one.

  ‘Michelle is at the underground shooting range on the third sublevel,’ Harry explained. ‘It’s how she lets off steam – Metal music and shooting the hell out of a paper target.’ The elevator doors seemed to take forever to close, and Harry repeatedly stabbed his finger at the button.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Hunter asked.

  Harry shrugged. ‘We just got some bad news. A victim in one of the pedophile cases we’re investigating committed suicide about an hour ago. She was twelve.’

  The silence that followed was only broken by the mechanical female voice announcing they’d arrived at underground level three.

  The elevator doors slid open, and Harry escorted them down another concrete corridor. Light came from fluorescent tubes that ran down the center of the ceiling. They turned left, then right, and arrived at a set of thick, dark glass double doors. Harry swiped his FBI ID card through the electronic keypad on the wall, typed in a six-digit code and the doors buzzed open.

  As they stepped inside a small anteroom, the very familiar sound of target practicing filled their ears. A weapons master sat alone inside a separate room, visible through a large security glass window on the east wall. Harry signed both detectives in.

  ‘She’s in the usual booth,’ the weapons master said, jerking his head to one side.

  Another short hallway finally led them into the target practice range, where the noise level shot up five-fold. Twelve individual shooting booths were lined side by side facing a large westward target forum. The first four booths were taken by FBI agents in crisp black suits, yellow-tinted shooting glasses and clunky earmuffs. None of them acknowledged the new arrivals.

  The next seven booths were empty. Michelle Kelly was occupying the very last one. She was wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans and black boots. Her long hair had been twisted around and thrown forward over her right shoulder in a casual manner. Instead of the usual large earmuffs, she had white earphones stuck deep into her ears. As they approached her booth, they all saw her fire six quick shots with a semiautomatic handgun at a male torso painted onto a paper target twenty-two yards away.

  Michelle removed her earphones and thumbed the safety on before placing the gun on the booth ledge in front of her. She pressed the button that controlled the target slide, and the male torso came flying toward her like Superman.

  Six body shots – four around the heart area, one to the left shoulder and one at the stomach/chest borderline.

  ‘Great shooting,’ Hunter said.

  She looked at him with fire in her eyes. ‘If you think you can do better, grab a gun, hotshot.’

  Garcia and Hunter cocked their heads back in surprise.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Hunter said. ‘And I wasn’t being sarcastic. That was actually very good shooting.’

  ‘For a woman, you mean?’

  Hunter looked at Garcia, then Harry, then back at Michelle. ‘I didn’t say or imply that either.’

  Garcia sleekly took a step back, sensing trouble. He didn’t want to get caught in whatever it was that was happening.

  ‘Why don’t you grab a gun?’ Michelle forced the issue. ‘Let’s do this. FBI against LAPD. Guy against girl. Whatever you want to call it. Let’s see how well you can shoot.’

  Hunter held her burning stare for a second. She definitely hadn’t
let off enough steam yet.

  ‘I can save you the hassle,’ he said. ‘I’m not that accurate.’ He nodded at the paper target as she unclipped it from the slide and put a brand-new one in place. ‘And we don’t have a lot of time to spare, Michelle.’

  ‘That’s a bullshit excuse. And this won’t take more than a few seconds,’ she replied, slotting a new ammo clip into her gun. ‘9mm pistol OK for you?’ she asked, but answered it herself. ‘But of course it is. Harry, could you, please?’ She nodded toward the weapons room.

  Hunter and Garcia knew full well that arguing with a woman when she was in that frame of mind was a futile exercise. Especially one with a gun.

  A minute later Harry was back with a pair of protective earmuffs, a pair of yellow-tinted anti-haze glasses and a 9mm Glock 19 compact pistol – the same type Michelle was using.

  Hunter said no to the glasses.

  ‘Standard six shots practice,’ Michelle said, even though the Glock 19 ammo clip holds fifteen bullets. She indicated the empty booth to her left. ‘Kill shots only, and don’t hold back. I’ll know if you do.’

  Garcia peeked at Hunter but said nothing.

  Hunter took booth number ten, leaving an empty one sandwiched between him and Michelle. She returned her earphones to her ear, cranked up the volume on her MP3 player and gave Hunter a head signal. Still, he waited for Michelle to fire first.

  The shots came out fast and furious. Twelve shots in eight seconds.

  When the noise died down, they both removed their ear protection and reached for the target slide buttons.

  Michelle’s target showed three heart-shots, two head-shots – left cheek and forehead – and one throat-shot. She smiled as she unclipped the paper target.

  Hunter had placed one shot on the target’s left shoulder; the other five were spread around its chest area. Only two could be considered lethal shots to the heart.

  Michelle looked at Hunter’s targets. ‘That’s not very reassuring, taking into account that you’re trained to protect and serve.’