by Chris Carter
‘This . . .’ he said, ‘will hurt . . . a lot.’
‘Noooooooorghhhh.’ The scream that came out of her throat was gurgling in spit and tears.
Erica was watching everything semi-paralyzed. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped.
‘Let’s have fun, shall we?’ the demon said. His right hand reached for the Skull Crusher’s crank and he rotated it around – one full turn.
The iron jaws, which were already in contact with the sides of Dr. Barnes’ head, began closing in on each other. As they compressed her skull with five hundred pounds of pure pressure, the jagged-edged jaws ripped through her skin. Unimaginable pain caused her eyeballs to stop moving, but her eyes widened as if they were about to explode out of their sockets. The scream she had in her throat died suddenly, as the air was viciously sucked out of her lungs. Her mouth, still wide open, seemed to stutter, with her lower jaw trembling awkwardly in place. The rest of her body began wriggling like a sea snake trying to get away from danger.
With her head now completely immobile, held in place by the powerful iron jaws, the demon moved his palm away from her forehead.
‘Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd . . . we’re back to the game, Erica.’ If not for the digitally altered voice, he would’ve sounded like a game-show host.
Starved of oxygen, Erica’s brain forced her to breathe again. As she sucked in a lungful of air through her mouth and nose, she almost heaved.
‘Your mother’s death anniversary, Erica,’ he asked again, losing no more time. ‘When is it?’
Through her tears, Erica could barely see the small screen on her cellphone. She brought a hand to her face to try to wipe them away. It made no difference.
‘Five . . .’
‘I . . . don’t . . . know . . .’ A heart-melting sob strangled her throat between words.
‘Four . . .’
‘You . . . don’t . . . understand . . .’
‘Three . . .’
‘I . . . have . . . a condition . . .’
‘Two . . .’
‘It . . . hinders . . . my . . . memory . . .’
‘One . . .’
‘Oh, Gwen . . .’
‘Time’s up.’
On the screen, the demon’s hand reached for the crank one more time.
‘Nooooooo.’
Another full turn.
Once again, the jaws closed in on each other, but this time, as they started moving, Erica heard a ‘pop’. It was a very similar sound to the first ‘pop’ she heard coming from her microwave less than ten minutes earlier. The main difference was that this ‘pop’ was followed by a heavy crushing sound.
On the screen, all of a sudden, as tens of blood vessels ruptured beneath the tissue covering the white of Gwen’s eyes, they began hemorrhaging and changing color. Her face contorted out of shape – a consequence of both of her cheekbones fracturing.
Another muffled ‘pop’.
Gwen’s jaw dislocated out of place, distorting her mouth, which was now also filled with blood.
‘Oh . . . my God.’ Erica couldn’t look anymore. She closed her eyes and allowed her body to jolt forward violently before vomiting on to the coffee table.
On her small screen, Gwen’s body stopped wriggling. Her eyes, now completely bloodshot, twitched one last time before the final breath of life left them.
It was done. Dr. Barnes was no more.
‘Sorry, Erica. You lose. I win.’
Erica lifted her head again. Bile dripped from her chin on to the floor between her bare feet. Slowly, her eyes moved back to her cellphone screen. Her sister’s face was unrecognizable, crushed between the two large, serrated metal jaws.
‘Why?’ the question came midway through a sob.
The demon didn’t reply, but the camera began moving again. Then, suddenly, the ugliest face Erica had ever seen appeared on the screen. Her head jerked back in shock as she held her phone with both hands.
It wasn’t a face. It was a mask.
For some reason that Erica would probably never be able to explain, her brain went into automatic mode and she reacted in a way the demon could never have foreseen.
Seventy-Three
As soon as Mr. J got back into his car, he got on the phone to Brian Caldron.
‘Brian, I need you to check something for me.’
There was a labored pause from Brian’s side.
‘Who is this?’ he asked. ‘How did you get this number?’
Only then did Mr. J realize that he was still speaking with a heavy northern California accent, and his tone of voice was still half an octave higher than usual.
‘Brian, it’s me, Mr. J. No one else has this number, you know that.’
‘Umm . . . sorry, Mr. J. For a moment you sounded completely different there.’
Not wanting to lose any time, Mr. J told Brian about what he had found out in Michael Williams’ bedroom. He also sent him a digital picture of Mr. Williams, something he had snapped from a picture frame in Williams’ living room.
‘I need this ASAP, do you hear me, Brian?’
‘Yeah.’ Brian’s voice was full of hesitation. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Mr. J didn’t like that answer. ‘What does that mean, Brian?’
‘It means that obtaining information about this case might prove to be a problem.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because the LAPD Homicide UVC Unit is running this investigation, and though I’ve never met them, there’s one thing everybody knows about them – those guys trust no one.’
‘And how is that my problem?’
‘Well,’ Brian replied, ‘I’m an IT geek. I deal in cyberspace. Yes, I can get you pretty much any information you need, as long as that information exists in cyberspace . . . and that’s where the problem lies with the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit – they don’t trust anyone. Until they close a case, they keep about ninety-five percent of their investigation off-line. Everything they find out, every lead, every interview, every deduction, all of it, is either kept on paper only, locked inside their office, or worst yet, kept nowhere but inside their own heads. Those guys aren’t like normal detectives, Mr. J. They aren’t even like normal people.’
Mr. J ran a hand over his mouth and chin a couple of times.
‘On an open UVC Unit investigation,’ Brian continued, ‘all the information that’s flying around in cyberspace is only there because it was uploaded by a different department – forensics lab, coroner’s, toxicology lab – you know what I’m talking about, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So,’ Brian carried on, ‘if they run any sort of search from their computers, or a result comes back from any lab, or a photo is sent to them . . . anything like that, I can easily grab it and send it your way. But whatever they deduce from the results, or the photos, or whatever it is that they get, that will be in UVC Unit-land only and there’s no way I can get to it.’
Despite the bad news, Mr. J smiled to himself. Detective Hunter was still surprising him.
‘So, do you have anything at all for me?’ he asked.
‘I do. The woman you asked me to find out about – Karen Ward – she was murdered on Wednesday night, four days ago.’
Another victim, Mr. J thought. That was why Detective Hunter asked me if I knew her – if Cassandra knew her. He was trying to establish a link between the killer’s victims. ‘How? What was the cause of death?’
‘Perforation of the temporal lobe, achieved through the left ocular globe cavity.’
‘What?’
‘She was stabbed through the left eye with a glass shank long enough to reach her brain,’ Brian explained. ‘Her face was completely mutilated by glass, as if she’d flown, face first, through several windows. I’ve just emailed you the official autopsy report and all the photographs, together with a file on Ms. Ward. A word of warning, the photographs are shocking.’
‘OK. Anything else?’
‘Yes, earlier today they began a credit-card trans
action check on Cassandra Jenkinson, her husband John Jenkinson, and Karen Ward.’
Mr. J thought about it for an instant. Detective Hunter is checking for that ‘house visit’, he concluded. Any tradesmen who have been to my house or Karen Ward’s house for whatever reason. Whichever names he gets from one credit card, he’ll cross-check with the other. Smart. Unlucky for him that Cassandra had paid Michael Williams in cash.
‘OK, Brian, I’ll need all the results from this search. Whatever they get, I get. Is that clear?’
‘Sure. I’ll ghost the search.’
Mr. J jotted down some notes. ‘OK, now get started on this Michael Williams. Pull whatever stops you need to pull and find me this sonofabitch.’
The call disconnected.
Mr. J’s phone didn’t ring again until 9:52 p.m. that night.
Seventy-Four
It took Hunter fifty-three minutes to get to West Hollywood from Huntington Park. As he pulled up in front of the place Tracy had told him about – a cocktail bar called the Next Door Lounge – he saw her at the traffic lights, just about to cross the road.
Tracy looked even more attractive than Hunter remembered. Her bright red hair was loose, falling in beautiful waves past her shoulders. Her fringe once again looped over and above her forehead, this time forming two very gracious victory rolls. She wore black jeans, a white T-shirt under a cropped leather jacket, black Mary Jane shoes and the same old-fashioned, cat-eye glasses she’d worn the first twice they’d met. Her delicate makeup made her look like a pin-up model.
‘You walked here?’ Hunter asked, meeting her by the lounge’s front door.
‘I told you, I don’t live that far from here.’ She pointed west. ‘Just a quick fifteen-minute walk.’
‘It’s a nice area,’ Hunter commented.
‘It can be,’ Tracy agreed.
‘Shall we?’ Hunter asked, pulling open the door for Tracy.
The Next Door Lounge wouldn’t have looked out of place in a film about the prohibition era in America. Its interior carried all the glamour and forbidden excitement of a speakeasy of the 1920s, with shiny floors, Chesterfield leather seats, and a small stage with an old-fashioned piano where artists would perform jazz and ragtime classics. Even the air carried a very gentle scent that seemed to belong somewhere in the past.
On that Sunday evening, the place wasn’t very busy, which suited Hunter just fine.
‘Would you prefer to sit at the bar or at a table?’ he asked.
‘I don’t mind. You choose.’
‘Table,’ Hunter said confidently, indicating two high-back winged armchairs by a crude brick wall. As they sat down, a waitress walked over and placed two menus on the table in front of them.
‘You’re a whisky man, right?’ Tracy asked.
‘Single malt Scotch,’ Hunter replied. ‘But do you know what? I feel like having something different tonight.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Maybe I’ll go for a cocktail. Why not?’
Tracy replied with a smile that Hunter found hard to read. ‘You’re in good hands. They make some great cocktails in here.’ She paused and pinned Hunter down with a serious stare. ‘But before we order anything.’ She took the menu from his hands. ‘Before your phone rings on you and you dash out the door like you do, I need answers.’
Hunter sat back, crossed his legs and placed his hands on his lap. ‘What answers?’
‘Don’t play dumb,’ she said, with a shake of the head. ‘It doesn’t fit with your image.’
‘You’re talking about you being a psychology professor?’
‘That’s right,’ Tracy confirmed. ‘How did you know? And how did you know it so fast? As I said last night, I know you didn’t figure any of it out from the books I had with me in the reading room that night because none of them were on academia, or on psychology. So how?’
‘I think I’ve answered that question already, haven’t I?’
‘Ha, ha’ Tracy chuckled. ‘Your reply was . . . “It’s just observation”.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘Well, I’m listening. What did you observe? Please feel free to be very specific.’
Hunter regarded Tracy for a moment before he began.
‘OK, I’ve seen you at the UCLA library a couple of times before.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed you there before too,’ she came back. ‘Always at night. Always at the twenty-four-hour reading room, but I didn’t manage to figure out that you were a detective with the LAPD. And, let me add, I never have any psychology reference books with me when I go there. I prepare my lectures in the afternoons or early evenings, never that late at night. And I never prepare them in the library, anyway. I prefer to do it at home. So I know that it wasn’t the books that gave it away.’
‘Not your books.’
Tracy looked puzzled. ‘I’m not sure I get it.’
‘In the library,’ Hunter clarified, ‘you’re always sitting at a table by yourself, while all the other tables usually have groups of students sitting together. In a public library, sitting by yourself is expected, but in a university library, students sit together.’
‘UCLA is a very big university, Robert, with over forty thousand students. And furthermore, when you are there, you sit by yourself too.’
‘True,’ Hunter accepted it. ‘And that’s where the second observation comes in.’
Tracy looked intrigued.
‘I’ll admit that the first time I saw you at the reading room, sitting by yourself, I thought that you went to UCLA, but within a couple of minutes, a group of three, maybe four students, walked past your table, said “hello” and carried on to the next available table. They didn’t ask if you wanted to join them. They didn’t ask if they could join you. That meant that they knew you, but not as a fellow student.’
Tracy finally began catching on.
‘The night we met by the coffee machine,’ Hunter continued, ‘the same thing happened again, but this time one of the students showed you something on her textbook. You looked at it, then smiled and nodded at her. A teacher’s confirmation nod, as if you were saying, “Yes, that’s right.” ’
For Tracy it was as if a light had finally been shone on a dark secret. ‘And the book she showed me was on psychology,’ Tracy said.
‘Forensic psychology,’ Hunter confirmed.
She smiled. ‘That is my main field, yes – forensic psychology, hence why I was so intrigued by your powers of observation and deduction.’ She paused and looked at Hunter in a peculiar way. ‘Thanks for finally clarifying it for me.’
‘Am I in the clear now?’ Hunter asked, extending his hand. ‘Shall we order?’
Tracy handed the drinks menu back to him. ‘Yes, I think that would be a good idea.’
Hunter didn’t stray that far from home, ordering a Scotch-based cocktail; Tracy went for a rum-based one.
‘I guess it’s my turn to come clean,’ Tracy said, as the waitress walked away with their order. ‘I did check you out a little bit.’
‘Did you?’
‘I was intrigued,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted to at least find out which LAPD department you were with.’
‘And how would you have done that?’
Tracy shrugged. ‘I have a few good friends in high places within the LAPD.’
Hunter laughed.
‘The Ultra Violent Crimes Unit?’ From the way Tracy had phrased her words, Hunter wasn’t sure if it had been a question or a statement. He said nothing.
‘I must get you to come and talk to my students some day.’
‘I’m no teacher,’ Hunter replied.
‘You don’t need to be.’
The waitress came back with their drinks and, for the next fifteen minutes, they talked and laughed about different subjects, none of them related to their jobs. They were just about to order a second round when Hunter’s phone rang.
Tracy looked at him dumbfounded, failing to stop the disbelieving smile
that came to her lips. She could barely believe that it was happening again.
Hunter took the call and listened for a moment.
‘I’m on my way,’ he said as he locked eyes with Tracy. The look in them explained more than words could ever do.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, getting up.
Tracy stood up with him, took a step closer and kissed his lips.
‘Call me, OK?’
Seventy-Five
Garcia had just arrived at the address he’d been given when he saw Hunter’s car appear at the top of the road. He waited for his partner to park before meeting him by the police perimeter.
‘Is this guy trying to break a record, or what?’ he said, lifting the yellow crime-scene tape for Hunter to stoop under it. ‘Three victims in five days?’
Garcia’s anger didn’t reflect off the killer’s actions. It reflected off their failure to advance their investigation. Hunter knew this because he felt the same anger inside him. While they barely had anything worth pursuing, the ‘video-call’ killer was claiming victims at the speed of light.
Suddenly, Garcia paused and frowned at Hunter.
‘What?’ Hunter asked.
‘Is that red lipstick on your lips?’
‘What?’ He wiped his lips with the back of his right hand. It came back red.
‘It is lipstick.’ Garcia gave his partner a cheeky smile. ‘Were you on a date?’ The surprise in Garcia’s voice was real. ‘You never told me you were going on a date.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a date.’ Hunter used a paper tissue to wipe his lips clean and quickly moved the subject away from him and Tracy. ‘So, what info do we have on the new victim?’
‘Her name was Gwen Barnes,’ Garcia said, reading from his cellphone. ‘Dr. Gwen Barnes – thirty-eight years old. Born and raised right here in Los Angeles – Hawthorne.’
‘Married?’
‘Divorced. No kids. Ex-husband, Kevin Malloy, lives in Pomona. We don’t have much on him yet.’