by Chris Carter
The man’s lips stretched into a skewed, wry smile. Maybe Detective Hunter’s reputation is true after all. The man was sure that the order to solely search the park, instead of wasting time interviewing passersby, had come from Detective Hunter’s office. Which meant that he had very quickly made a connection between the triangulated location of the incoming call and the possibility of a clue or a teaser being left behind.
‘Not bad, Detective Hunter,’ the man said under his breath. ‘Not bad at all.’
His smile widened a fraction as he saw Detective Hunter himself, followed by Detective Garcia, exit the PAB and make their way toward the park. The look on their faces told its own story, and it spoke of frustration, defeat, unrelenting concern and maybe even fear. It was the same look the man had had etched on his face for many years. But not anymore.
The man’s left leg started hurting again, and as he began rubbing his knee with the palm of his hand he saw the young officer who was searching the northeast corner of the park wave at both detectives and the sergeant.
The man’s smile grew wider still, and he felt a wave of excitement surge inside him.
The officer had found it.
As the number 70 bus to El Monte pulled in at the bus stop, the man saw Detective Hunter flip open the camcorder’s view screen. The look on his face made the man want to throw his head back and laugh loudly, but instead he quietly turned around, boarded the bus and took a seat toward the back.
It was almost time to finish this whole thing off.
Eighty-One
The sergeant and the pencil-tip-nosed officer both craned their necks awkwardly to have a better look at the camcorder’s view screen before intense frowns simultaneously shadowed their faces.
They saw the same thing Hunter and Garcia did. They just didn’t understand it.
‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia murmured, his breath catching in his throat.
Hunter said nothing, but his eyes left the camcorder and quickly returned to searching the park. That was the event this killer wouldn’t want to miss. What he had waited around for – the moment they came across his little gift. Hunter was sure this killer would want to be looking straight at them so he was able to see the surprise on their faces. To the killer, it would be the perfect punch line.
But with the rush hour picking up momentum, the streets and the park had gotten busier. People were cutting across it in a multitude of directions, all in a hurry to get somewhere fast. Hunter’s eyes moved as quickly as they could. He understood that this killer needed only a second, maybe two, to completely savor the moment and laugh at their frustration. After that, satisfied, he would just fade back into anonymity. Just another honest living person trying to make his way back home. There was no need for the killer to allow his gaze to linger on their group for longer than a brief instant and risk being spotted.
Maybe if Hunter had looked west first, he would’ve noticed the man standing at the bus stop by the northwest corner of the park, staring straight at them. The smirk on his face was insolent, arrogant . . . proud, even. But Hunter had instinctively looked up from the camcorder in his hands and forward. He was facing east. By the time his gaze reached the bus stop, the man had his back to them, waiting patiently at the end of the line, ready to board the bus – just another commuter facing rush hour.
Hunter missed him.
His attention returned to the camcorder.
Using what seemed like a special glass-writing marker pen, the killer had written the word STRETCH across the view screen.
‘Stretch?’ The sergeant wrinkled his nose. ‘Does that mean anything to you guys?’
Garcia nodded in silence and felt something tighten deep down in his gut, as his subconscious mind started spitting out random images of the broadcast.
Hunter’s forefinger hovered over the ‘on’ button, for a moment unsure and hesitant if he was ready for whatever new surprise the killer had in store for them, but the doubt vanished fast.
He pressed the switch.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
‘Battery seems to be dead,’ the pencil-tip-nosed officer offered matter-of-factly.
Despite holding no real hopes for any sort of clue to come from it, Hunter asked the sergeant to get the sandwich bag the camcorder was found in to forensics ASAP. He and Garcia rushed back to the Police Administration Building and went straight down to the LAPD Computer Crimes Unit.
Eighty-Two
Dennis Baxter told them that he had watched the entire Internet broadcast from his desk, but he had no idea the killer’s call had been traced. Hunter gave him a very quick run-through of the past few minutes.
‘And he left this inside a trashcan out in the park?’ Baxter asked, looking down at the compact camcorder Hunter had placed on his desk. The word STRETCH stared back at him from the flip-out view screen.
‘That’s right,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘It looks like he was controlling everything remotely.’
Baxter thought about that for a second.
‘How difficult would that really be to accomplish?’ Garcia asked.
‘For an average person? Quite a bit. For someone with his knowledge of computer programming and electronics, not hard at all. All he had to do was develop an application that monitored the voting process and link it to a second program that controlled the mechanics of both death methods. As soon as one of them reached a specified number, in this case ten thousand, it would activate the machinery for that specific death method. It’s the same engineering behind any regular timer, but instead of a specific time he used a count. The way the camera zoomed in and out during the broadcast could’ve easily be controlled from anywhere with a simple smartphone application.’
Someone’s personal cellphone rang a few desks away, grabbing everyone’s attention. The ringtone was the original theme tune to Star Wars.
Hunter was mulling over what Baxter had just said. The truth was that this killer could’ve done the exact same thing with all the previous broadcasts. He could’ve controlled them remotely if he wanted to. There was no real need for him to be there, and no real proof that he was.
Baxter finally retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his top drawer, slipped them on and cautiously picked the camera up from his desk.
‘It looks like the battery is dead,’ Garcia explained. ‘Do you have a power supply that will fit it?’
Baxter nodded. ‘I do.’ But instead of looking for it, he turned the camera upside down and flipped open a very small hinged lid on the underside of it. He paused and chewed on his bottom lip for a second. ‘But a power supply will make no difference here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is a CX250 Handycam,’ Baxter explained, pointing to the model number specified on the side of the camera. ‘It’s a fairly well-known camera, and the reason why it’s smaller than some of the more expensive models is because it has no hard drive. It uses something called a memory stick duo. What that means is that this camera has no storage facility built into it. Everything it records gets saved into a removable memory stick, which goes in here.’ He indicated the now opened hinged lid. The compartment was empty. ‘In this model,’ he added, ‘even after unclipping the lid you would have to press down on the memory stick so it clicks in before popping up.’ He made an ‘eject up’ movement with his index finger. ‘It’s a double safety mechanism, which means that the memory stick didn’t fall out by mistake: it was removed.’
That caused both detectives to pause momentarily.
‘I can get a power supply and plug it in if you want. It will turn the camera on, but that’s all it will do. There will be no images in it for you to see, if that was what you were expecting.’
That was exactly what both detectives were expecting.
‘So nothing can be retrieved from this camera?’ Garcia asked.
‘Image-wise, no,’ Baxter replied. ‘As I’ve said, the camera has no hard drive that can be explor
ed. Without a memory stick, it’s just like an old photographic camera without the film. It becomes nothing more than a box with a lens.’
‘Let’s do it anyway,’ Hunter said after a short, uncomfortable silence. Right now he wasn’t prepared to put anything past this killer.
‘Give me a sec,’ Baxter replied and disappeared into a back room. Moments later he came back carrying a power supply that was slightly larger than a regular cellphone charger. He plugged it in and switched the camcorder on.
There was nothing there.
The camera worked just as it should, but it recognized that it was missing the memory stick, disabling the ‘view and playback’ menu.
‘As I’ve said,’ Baxter commented, ‘no memory stick, no images or stills for us to see here.’
No one said anything for a long moment. Hunter had to admit that he was expecting the camera to contain some sort of footage. What exactly, he wasn’t sure – maybe a short clip of one of the victims prior to being abducted, or pleading for mercy or something. Some new twist just to further torment their thoughts and their investigation.
Why leave us an ‘empty’ video camera?
If all the killer wanted to do was to prove that he had really been standing outside when making the call, he could’ve written his little dig at the police on absolutely anything – a piece of paper, a burger box, a sandwich wrapper, a paper cup . . . anything. He no doubt had anticipated that once the call had been traced, the LAPD would be emptying and bagging the contents of every trashcan in the park and around the PAB in a hurry. They would’ve eventually found his message, no matter what it had been written on.
No, Hunter thought. Even a compact camcorder is way too big and clunky for such a simple task. There has to be another reason.
His next consideration was that the camera could’ve belonged to the victim. Maybe he had it on him when he was first abducted. Maybe that was why the memory stick was missing. Maybe the victim had filmed the killer by accident – strolling down the street, buying a hot dog, at a gas station, or worse . . . something incriminating. Something that could’ve given away the killer’s identity. Maybe that was why he had become the latest victim. They would have to wait for forensics to examine the camera, and hope that they could get something out of it.
Hunter couldn’t remember an investigation where he felt more defeated or powerless. All he had was a long list of maybes, ifs and buts, and none of it made any real sense. Three victims tortured and murdered in the most brutal ways while he watched, unable to help. And that helpless feeling was spreading through him like strong poison. Even his thoughts were starting to fail him.
He was right. This game of cat and mouse excited the killer like a brand-new drug, but right now Hunter couldn’t tell who was the cat and who was the mouse.
Eighty-Three
For Hunter, falling asleep that night was an almost impossible task. There were way too many thoughts and questions bouncing around inside his head for his brain to disconnect, and one thing he’d learned over the years was that battling insomnia with pills and stubbornness only made things worse. The best remedy was just to roll along with it. And rolling along was exactly what he intended to do, but he couldn’t face doing it alone inside his claustrophobic one-bedroom apartment.
Hunter sat at a small table toward the back of the bar, staring at the glass tumbler in front of him. Inside it, a single dose of twelve-year-old Cardhu single-malt whisky with just a little water. Single malts were Hunter’s biggest passion. Back in his apartment he had a small but impressive collection that would probably satisfy the palate of most connoisseurs. Hunter would never consider himself an expert, but he knew how to appreciate the flavor and robustness of single malts, instead of simply getting hammered on them. Though, sometimes, getting hammered worked just fine.
He brought the glass to his lips and had a small sip, letting the clean, crisp oak and sweet malt infuse his whole mouth for a moment before allowing the smooth liquid to travel down his throat.
Soothing, no question about it. A few more and he would probably start to relax. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. Rock music blasted through the tiny speakers strategically positioned on the ceiling throughout the bar area, but the music didn’t bother him. It actually helped him think.
‘This killer has been playing you from the start.’
Harry Mills’ words from yesterday still echoed in his ears like a loud scream. And Harry was right. Hunter remembered how, with his first victim, the killer had tricked him to pick water instead of fire, only to add a sadistic, chemical twist to it. With the second victim, the killer had used a small level of psychology to trick his viewers into picking eaten alive, a much more intriguing and painful death method than the alternative – buried alive.
Now with the third victim, it appeared that no trick had been used to influence the voting. It had been too close to call – CRUSH: 9997, STRETCH: 10,000. Instead, the killer had seemingly allowed the voting to play out unaided, not knowing himself the final outcome. Hunter was sure that that had excited him like a young child with a new toy.
What the killer had decided to do this time in order to demonstrate his cleverness over the police was to control everything remotely, but not just from anywhere – from literally outside the LAPD headquarters’ front door. He had allowed the LAPD to trace his call and even waited until the voting was finally over before writing his message onto a camcorder’s view screen and stashing it inside a trashcan in City Hall Park. And just to add insult to injury, the killer had timed everything perfectly to coincide with the rush hour. That way, he could stay within eyesight distance, but still remain anonymous among the high flux of people. So close, yet they couldn’t touch him.
‘This killer has been playing you from the start.’ The words rang out in his head again.
What else had the killer thrown at them just for fun? The abbreviation – SSV? The two different number sequences – 678 and 0123? The words – The Devil Inside? The camcorder? Did any of it mean anything at all, or was it all just to keep the police guessing and running around in circles?
Well, if that was the intention, it sure was working.
Maybe even the IV stand reflected onto the glass coffin lid hadn’t been a mistake. Maybe the killer did it on purpose. One more twist added to the tale.
Hunter brought both hands to his face and massaged his exhausted eyes with his palms. The more he thought about it, the more it made his head hurt. How could he come up with answers when he didn’t even know what questions to ask anymore?
‘Did you see that thing on the Internet today?’ Hunter overheard the barman ask a brunette and a redheaded woman at the bar, while he poured them a couple of cocktails.
Hunter’s gaze subtly moved to them.
‘I did,’ the redhead replied. ‘Absolutely awful. And everyone is saying that was no hoax.’
‘It isn’t,’ the brunette one agreed. ‘It was in the papers. He broadcast the murder of an LA Times reporter just a few days ago.’
‘Did you watch it today?’ the redhead asked.
The brunette woman shook her head. ‘Everyone in the office was glued to their screens, watching it. I just couldn’t. It would make me sick. I can’t believe something like this is now happening on the Internet.’
‘You watched it?’ the barman asked the redhead.
She nodded.
‘Now the big question is – did you vote?’ he asked.
She pushed her hair behind her ear and shook her head. ‘No. Never. Did you?’
The barman’s gaze flicked to the brunette and then back to the redhead. ‘Um . . . no, I didn’t. I watched it, though.’
Even from where Hunter was sitting, it was easy to pick up their tell signs. They were both lying.
His cellphone lit up and rattled against the tabletop before him. He frowned at the name displayed on the caller screen before answering it. ‘Michelle?’
‘Robert, I’m sorry to be calli
ng you this late and out of office hours.’
Hunter checked his watch. ‘It’s not that late, and I haven’t worked office hours since . . . ever.’
Michelle started saying something else, but stopped midword. ‘Um . . . is that Black Stone Cherry playing in the background?’
Hunter paused and listened to the music for a moment. The song was called ‘Blame it on the Boom Boom’. ‘That’s correct,’ he said. ‘Do you know the band?’
Michelle almost choked on the question. ‘Do I know Black Stone Cherry? Are you kidding? I’ve seen them live five times. Where are you?’
‘At the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset Strip.’
‘For real? That’s one of my favorite bars in LA.’ She hesitated for a beat. ‘I’m not that far from Sunset. Do you mind if I join you?’
Hunter looked at his almost empty glass. ‘Not at all. I’m just starting here.’
Eighty-Four
The Rainbow Bar and Grill was a famous old-school casual restaurant and dive bar located on Sunset Boulevard. The décor was simple but effective – big red-vinyl booths and dark wood. Every inch of wall space was crammed with rock star snapshots. Since the 1980s the Rainbow had been known as the hangout hot spot for rock musicians and fans alike, with one of the most laid-back atmospheres in the whole of West Hollywood. The food and their great selection of single-malt whiskies weren’t bad either.