One by One

by Chris Carter

  The camera started to slowly pan upward, toward the ceiling.

  All of a sudden Hunter’s office door was pushed open in a hurry and Captain Blake stepped inside. The look on her face was a cocktail of anger, disbelief and dread.

  ‘Are you watching this . . .’ she began, but Hunter lifted a hand, stopping her, and gesturing toward the speakerphone on his desk.

  Too late.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ the caller said, amused. ‘So who might we have joining us now . . .?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘By the angry tone of her voice, I’m guessing – the Robbery Homicide Division Captain herself. Barbara Blake, is the name correct?’

  Captain Blake knew that the killer could’ve easily gotten her name from the LAPD’s official website.

  ‘Welcome to pickadeath.com, Captain. Glad you can join us today. The more the merrier.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said, her words swimming in anger.

  Hunter glared at the captain. Rule number one of any negotiations with any sort of perpetrator – one negotiator only, unless the offender has requested otherwise. Any more, and the negotiation could easily be exposed to confusion, which might in turn frustrate and anger the perpetrator, causing the entire process to collapse.

  ‘Why am I doing this?’ the caller repeated derisively. ‘Are you asking me to do your job for you, Captain Blake?’

  Hunter gave her a subtle headshake.

  The captain stayed quiet.

  The camera carried on panning upward.

  Hunter frowned at the screen again, intrigued by something. The first thing he realized was that the location was different from the one used for the broadcast of the two previous victims. There was no brick wall at the back, and the room seemed larger, much larger. Then something else caught his attention – the camera movement. It took him a few seconds to figure out why. He looked at Garcia and mouthed a few words.

  Garcia failed to understand them, shook his head and moved closer.

  ‘It’s a remote-controlled camera.’ Hunter whispered it this time.

  ‘What?’ Garcia and Captain Blake looked uncertain.

  Hunter pressed the ‘mute’ button on his phone. ‘The way the camera is zooming and panning around the place,’ Hunter explained. ‘It’s too slow, too steady. You try doing that by hand, and there’s no way you’ll get such a smooth and constant movement.’

  Garcia and Captain Blake looked back at the screen.

  ‘He’s controlling it remotely,’ Hunter said. ‘He might not even be there.’

  ‘So?’ Captain Blake shot back. ‘What difference does it make?’

  Hunter shrugged.

  On the screen the camera’s panning came to a stop, and everyone inside Hunter’s office went rigid. Suspended several feet directly above the victim and the makeshift medieval torture device was a man-made concrete slab. It looked to be around one and a half foot thick, four foot wide and about six and a half foot long. The rock easily weighed over a ton. It was being held in place by very thick chains attached to ten metal hooks that had been built into the top surface of the slab. They couldn’t see what the chains were connected to at the very top.

  ‘I guess the picture is now complete,’ the caller said with a chuckle. ‘But the beauty of what I’ve created here is . . . I don’t have to crush him all at once. I am able to slowly lower that concrete rock onto the table, gently compressing his body, like a giant vise, until every bone is crushed.’

  Hunter knew there would be a twist. The rack was originally a medieval torture device, not an execution one. Its main purpose was to slowly stretch a person’s limbs to obtain a confession or to extract information. The pain it caused was so severe that a confession would usually come very quickly, and the stretching would stop after only a few seconds. But if the rollers weren’t stopped, the body would eventually be dismembered – usually the arms would be ripped from the person’s torso. Death would soon follow from blood loss. But the victim would suffer tremendously before dying. Crushing someone to death with a huge concrete block, when compared to using a torture device like the rack, was relatively painless, and very, very fast. This killer simply wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  ‘You sonofabitch,’ Captain Blake blasted out, not caring for protocol or rules anymore.

  The caller’s response was a laugh full of joy. ‘I guess it’s time we start the show. Enjoy.’

  The line went dead.

  On the screen both voting buttons were activated, and at the bottom left-hand corner a digital clock started its countdown – 10:00, 9:59, 9:58 . . .

  Seventy-Three

  Inside the Office of Operations on the first floor of the Police Administration Building, Desiree and Seth were glued to their computer monitors, watching the events unfold on pickadeath.com. They, together with everyone else on their floor, could barely believe their eyes.

  ‘Sweet Lord and His Creation!’ Desiree said, crossing herself and kissing the tiny golden crucifix on the chain around her neck. ‘He wants people to vote if he should crush that poor man to death or rip his arms and legs from his body like an insect?’

  ‘Ten thousand votes in ten minutes?’ Seth replied. ‘That’s a lot of votes when you consider that not every vote will go to the same death method.’

  ‘So you think that if time runs out,’ Desiree came back, ‘and he doesn’t get ten thousand votes, this killer will keep his word and just let this guy go?’

  Seth simply shrugged.

  Watching the events unfold on their computer monitors wasn’t the only thing Seth and Desiree were doing. They were also the ones in charge of recording and tracking the killer’s call to Hunter’s desk.

  The first thing they found out was that the call was coming from a cellphone. Immediately they used an application to query the service provider for the phone’s GPS coordinates.

  Nothing.

  No GPS.

  The caller was either using an old phone or had deactivated the GPS chip.

  Instantly Desiree and Seth moved onto cellphone triangulation, a much more cumbersome and laborious process that usually took several minutes and depended on two main factors. One, the phone must stay active during the whole process. If the caller came off the phone and switched it off, the triangulation procedure failed. Two, the phone must stay inside the same triangulation zone. If the caller was mobile and happened to move out of range of any one of the three triangulating towers, the process collapsed and it had to be started again from scratch.

  But so far, so good.

  The caller was still on the line, and it didn’t look like he was moving anywhere. If he stayed on the phone for just a little while longer, they would probably have a location. But neither Desiree nor Seth showed a lot of excitement with that prospect. They had both worked on the two previous calls from this same perpetrator to Hunter. They had seen how he had expertly bounced the calls all over Los Angeles, laughing at the LAPD. If there was one thing this perpetrator was not it was ‘stupid’. He knew full well that this call, just like the previous two, would be recorded and traced.

  One of the two computers on Seth’s desk beeped once, indicating that the triangulation process had come to an end. Seth and Desiree turned to face the monitor, without paying too much attention to the final coordinates. They were simply waiting for the triangulated location to quickly change, as the caller bounced it onto a different spot, in the same way he had done with the first call.

  It didn’t happen.

  Ten, twenty, thirty seconds passed and the location stayed the same.

  ‘You’re joking,’ Seth whispered, leaning over his keyboard. Only then he and Desiree checked the coordinates for the originating phone call.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Seventy-Four

  ‘Is this for real?’ Captain Blake asked, her disbelieving eyes fixed on the computer monitor on Hunter’s desk.

  Less than sixty seconds had elapsed since the digital clock at the bottom left-hand corner of
the screen started counting back from ten minutes.

  CRUSH: 1011.

  STRETCH: 1089.

  ‘Not even a minute gone, and over two thousand people have voted?’ Captain Blake finally looked at Hunter.

  ‘He’s probably placed links on several major social network sites again,’ Hunter replied.

  ‘He has.’ The barely audible comment came from Garcia’s cellphone on Hunter’s desk. Michelle Kelly was still on the line.

  Garcia quickly switched the call to loudspeaker mode. ‘Can you repeat that, Michelle?’

  ‘I said that he has placed links on several major social network sites. A minute gone and the site has received—’ there was a quick pause punctuated by keyboard clicks ‘—nearly four thousand hits, and the ratio is increasing by the second.’

  ‘That’s just perfect,’ Captain Blake said. ‘Is there anything the FBI Cybercrime Division can do about this?’

  ‘We’re already doing all we can,’ Michelle came back. ‘But this guy looks to have anticipated every move we could make. Whichever way we turn, we hit a wall.’

  ‘Are you and Harry recording this?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Harry isn’t here,’ Michelle said. ‘But yes, I’m recording every second of it.’

  CLOCK: 7:48, 7:47, 7:46 . . .

  CRUSH: 3339.

  STRETCH: 3351.

  Captain Blake’s cellphone vibrated inside her suit jacket pocket. She reached for it and checked the caller display window – the mayor of Los Angeles. She knew exactly what that meant. She declined the call and returned the phone to her pocket. Right now, she had no time for a pointless argument. She would deal with the mayor in her own time.

  Garcia took a step back from his desk and nervously rubbed his face before looking down at the floor and away from the screen. Hunter could almost read his thoughts. After what happened yesterday, Garcia’s subconscious mind couldn’t help but to put forward the worst imaginable scenario for him, swapping the man they could see on their screen for his wife, Anna.

  Garcia quickly shook his head, trying to banish the thought. He took a moment or two to try to calm the rapid beating of his heart, waiting for the rate to settle slowly. When it did, his eyes returned to the screen.

  Captain Blake was also getting fidgety. The helplessness of watching the voting process without being able to move a finger to stop it was polluting the air inside the room like a sarin gas attack.

  ‘Over ten thousand hits.’ They all heard Michelle say. ‘It’s going viral.’

  CLOCK: 6:11, 6:10, 6:09 . . .

  CRUSH: 5566.

  STRETCH: 5601.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ Captain Blake said.

  The phone on Hunter’s desk rang again – internal call. He snapped the receiver off its cradle.

  ‘Detective Hunter, this is Seth Reid from Operations. You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve got a trace on the caller’s location.’

  Seth was wrong: right about now, Hunter would believe anything. He placed the call on speaker mode. ‘You’ve got a fixed location for the originating call?’

  ‘That’s correct. The caller stayed on the line for long enough, and this time he didn’t bounce the call all over the city.’

  Hunter and Garcia frowned. This killer would not make that kind of mistake.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Captain Blake said, reaching for the phone on Garcia’s desk, ready to assemble the whole of the LAPD if necessary. ‘So what is the location?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing . . .’ Seth said. ‘He’s on West 1st Street, somewhere around number 100.’

  ‘What?’ Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake said at the same time, everyone turning to face the speakerphone on Hunter’s desk.

  ‘This building is number 100 West 1st Street,’ Captain Blake said, putting Garcia’s phone back down. ‘Are you telling me he’s calling from just outside the Police Administration Building?’

  ‘Yes,’ Seth replied. ‘That’s exactly what I am telling you.’

  Seventy-Five

  ‘Yo, Spinner, come have a look at this.’ Tim called his best friend over while staring wide-eyed at his smartphone screen.

  Tim was sixteen years old and Spinner seventeen. They were both students at Glendale High, and, just like they did every day after school, they were practicing their moves in the skate ramps in Verdugo Park.

  Spinner kick-flipped his board before performing a 180-spin to face his friend. Tim was taking a break and sitting at the edge of the kidney pool they were riding.

  ‘Damn, dude, you’re on your phone again?’ he called back, shaking his head. ‘You need to skate more and Tweet less. You know what I’m saying? What is it anyway?’

  ‘You have to come check it out, bro. This is sick – literally.’

  Spinner paused and pulled a face at Jenny, another student from Glendale High who was hanging out in the park with them. She also loved skating, but she had a long way to go to get half as good as Tim and Spinner.

  Both Spinner and Jenny kicked their boards up and approached Tim.

  ‘Is it a new move?’ Spinner asked.

  ‘Nah, dude.’ Tim shook his head. ‘Remember I told you about that crazy website – pickadeath.com?’

  ‘The one you said was a film stunt?’ Jenny said.

  ‘Yeah, but you guys saw the paper a couple of days ago, didn’t you?’ Tim replied. ‘It was no stunt, bro. That shit was real. Some crazy fucker killed that woman live on the net.’

  ‘Maybe the bitch deserved it,’ Spinner commented.

  Jenny punched him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be a dick, Spinner. That’s a horrible thing to say.’

  Spinner shrugged. ‘Just saying.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Tim waved a hand, cutting them short. ‘I just got a Tweet from Mel. The site is back online, bro. Check this shit out.’ Tim showed them his smartphone.

  Spinner and Jenny both frowned at the screen at the same time.

  ‘Damn, is this shit for real?’ Spinner asked, his eyes glistening.

  ‘Like I said,’ Tim replied. ‘Last time it was very real. So I think – yeah, bro, this shit is happening. Some dude is gonna die.’

  Jenny pulled a disgusted face. ‘You guys, this is sick. You gonna watch some poor dude get killed live over the Internet?’

  ‘Hell yeah,’ Spinner said. ‘And I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You watch all those crap reality shows on TV.’

  ‘That doesn’t even compare, Spinner,’ Jenny spat back.

  ‘You bet your ass it doesn’t. This beats them all hands down. They should call this American Dead Idol.’

  ‘I like that,’ Tim said.

  ‘Well, I’m not watching it,’ Jenny said, annoyed, jumping onto her board and riding back into the pool.

  ‘Have you voted?’ Spinner asked, not really concerned about Jenny.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, give me a sec,’ Spinner said, reaching into his pocket for his phone. ‘OK, gimme the address, and let’s get this sucker cooked.’

  Seventy-Six

  Even though the window in Hunter and Garcia’s office looked out over South Spring Street on the west side of the Police Administration Building, everyone inside the room instinctively turned toward it.

  ‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Captain Blake said. ‘How can that be possible when he’s broadcasting all this right now?’

  ‘Because he’s controlling the camera and everything else remotely,’ Hunter replied. ‘That’s how.’

  The captain thought about it for a beat. ‘Sonofabitch,’ she mumbled. ‘Is he in the park?’ she asked Seth.

  City Hall Park, or South Lawn, as it was called by many, is a 1.7-acre green park area shaded by a dense canopy of trees that fronted the famous Los Angeles City Hall building. It sits on West 1st Street directly across the road from the entrance to the PAB.

  ‘He could be,’ Seth admitted. ‘We had to use triangula-tion,’ he explained, ‘which is not as accurate as if the phon
e he was using carried a GPS chip. But even then, because we’re talking about downtown Los Angeles, the triangulation accuracy is much better than if he was calling from out of town somewhere – we narrowed it down to an area of only fifty to a hundred meters.’

  ‘And that area is right outside the PAB?’ Captain Blake asked again, still doubtful.

  ‘That’s correct,’ Seth confirmed one more time.

  ‘OK, thank you,’ the captain said and hastily reached for the phone on Garcia’s desk again.

  ‘What are you going to do, Captain?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Get everyone I can out there. What do you think?’

  ‘And ask them to do what?’ Garcia this time. ‘Arrest every male carrying a cellphone?’

  She paused, her eyes rolling from Garcia to Hunter. ‘The psycho who is responsible for this is just outside our front door.’ She pointed to the computer screen. ‘You want me to sit here and do nothing?’

  CLOCK: 4:41, 4:40, 4:39 . . .

  CRUSH: 8155.

  STRETCH: 8146.

  ‘He probably was there during the call,’ Garcia admitted. ‘He’s arrogant enough, and playing these kinds of games empowers him, but I’m sure he’s long gone now, Captain. He knew we would be tracing the call. And the only reason we’ve got a hit is because he wanted us to. This is all planned.’

  ‘Carlos is right, Captain,’ Hunter agreed. ‘He wanted us to know that he was calling from just outside the PAB, and I’m sure he knew exactly how long it would take us to triangulate his call.’

  ‘It’s been almost six minutes since he disconnected,’ Garcia announced. ‘He’s probably miles away from here now.’

  ‘I don’t think he will be,’ Hunter countered. ‘I don’t think he’ll be far at all.’

  Captain Blake just glared at him.

  ‘As Carlos said,’ he explained, ‘he’s too arrogant, and this game of cat and mouse excites him too much. He came all the way to our doorstep to tease us and to make his game a little more challenging and fun . . . at least for him. He’ll want to see how we react to his little joke. He’ll be observing West 1st Street and the South Lawn from somewhere close . . .’ Hunter paused, considering something. The memory of the second victim’s bedroom and what they found on the glass wall behind the curtains coming back to him. ‘No, wait, I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘He won’t be observing just to see how we react. He’ll be observing to see if we find it.’