by Chris Carter
Garcia pinched his bottom lip. ‘But nothing else was found under her nails except brick dust and her own skin. So she never got the chance to use them.’
‘That’s right.’ Hunter had returned to his desk and was flipping through his notebook. ‘The doctor said that Kelly’s organs showed mild symptoms of dehydration and malnutrition, right? I think she starved herself.’
Garcia frowned.
‘Mexitil. Kelly had no needle marks on her, remember?’
‘He was feeding it to her through her food.’
Hunter leaned against his desk. ‘Most probably, and she figured out the food was drugged.’
‘So she stopped eating to get rid of the dizziness.’ Garcia picked up Hunter’s train of thought. ‘But wouldn’t that make her too weak to fight back?’
‘It would if she’d gone without food for a few days, but that wasn’t the case.’
‘One day only. That’s what Doctor Hove said, right?’
Hunter nodded. ‘Mexitil isn’t a proper sedative. Kelly would’ve only needed to be off it for a few hours.’
‘Enough to get rid of the dizziness, but not enough to take all of her strength away. But how would she know that?’
‘She didn’t. She gambled.’
‘So she filed her nails into the only weapon she could think of.’ Garcia ran a hand through his hair while exhaling. ‘She wanted out of there. She was trying to do something herself because she knew she was running out of time, and she’d run out of hope. She got tired of waiting for us to save her.’
Hunter’s cell phone started ringing.
‘Detective Hunter,’ he said, bringing the clamshell phone to his ear.
‘Detective, this is Tracy from the Special Operations switchboard. I’m managing the information line on the suspect you’re looking for, James Smith.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got someone on the line who claims to be him.’
Hunter pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well, we’ve had about fifty of those so far. Just take his—’
‘Detective,’ Tracy interrupted, ‘I think you should take this call.’
Sixty-One
Hunter snapped his fingers at his partner to get his attention. He didn’t have to; Garcia had already noticed the change in Hunter’s expression.
‘Start a trace?’ Hunter said to Tracy.
‘We’re all set here, Detective.’
Hunter nodded to himself. ‘OK, put him through.’
There was a click on the line followed by a second of static.
Hunter waited.
So did the person on the other end of the line.
‘This is Detective Robert Hunter.’ Hunter eventually broke the silence. He was in no mood for games.
‘Why are you after me?’ The sentence was delivered in a calm, unrushed tone. The voice was like a muffled whisper, as if his phone’s mouthpiece had been wrapped in several layers of cloth.
‘James Smith?’
There was a short pause. ‘Why are you after me?’ he repeated in the same cool tone.
‘You know why we’re after you.’ Hunter’s calm voice matched Smith’s. ‘That’s why you ran, isn’t it?’
‘The newspapers all across town have my picture in them. They say the police want to speak to me in relation to an ongoing investigation, but no other details are given. So I want you to tell me: why are you after me? How am I related to any ongoing investigation?’
‘Why don’t you come in, James? We can sit down and talk. I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.’
A bitter chuckle. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that just now, Detective.’
‘Right now that’s your best option. What else can you do? You can’t run or hide forever. As you said, your photograph is all over the papers. And it’s going to stay there. Sooner or later someone will recognize you – on the streets, in a shop, driving around. You know you’re not invisible. Come in and let’s talk.’
‘The picture in the papers is crap and you know it – grainy, out of focus and partially obscured. It’s a desperate attempt. I had trouble recognizing myself. The newspapers won’t carry on publishing that picture forever, ’specially if you get no results from it. In a week’s time I could dance naked on Sunset Strip and no one would recognize me.’
Hunter didn’t reply. He knew it was only too true.
‘So I’m gonna ask you one more time, Detective. Why are you after me? And how am I related to a major ongoing investigation?’
‘If you don’t know why we’re after you, how do you know we’re running a major investigation? None of the papers mentions it.’
‘I’m not that stupid, Detective. If the LAPD got the papers to publish a snapshot of every person they’d like to talk to, there wouldn’t be enough paper in California for all the pictures. The few that do get published are always related to a major investigation. Something big is going on, and somehow you think I’m involved.’
Smith was right, Hunter thought, he wasn’t stupid.
‘So you’re telling me that you figured all that out by yourself, but you have no idea why we came to your door?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’
Something in Smith’s tone intrigued Hunter. ‘So why don’t you come in, and we can clear everything up?’
‘Goodbye, Detective.’
‘Wait.’ Hunter stopped Smith before he was able to disconnect. ‘Do you know which section of the LAPD I’m with?’
Garcia looked at his partner and frowned.
Smith hesitated for a second.
‘Fraud?’
Garcia’s brow creased even further.
The pause that followed stretched for several seconds.
‘No, I’m not with the fraud squad.’
Silence.
‘James? You still there?’
‘Which section?’
Hunter noticed a different tension in Smith’s voice.
‘Homicide.’
‘Homicide? Look, I don’t like going through switchboards. Give me a number where I can contact you directly.’ The tension in his voice had morphed into anxiety.
‘Why don’t you give me your number?’
‘If you wanna play games, suit yourself. Goodbye, Detective.’
‘OK.’ Hunter stopped him again. ‘We’ll play it your way.’ He gave Smith his number and the line went dead. Hunter quickly pressed a button on his cell phone and got the Special Operations switchboard again. ‘Tracy, are you there?’
‘I’m here, Detective.’
‘Tell me you’ve got something.’
‘Sorry, Detective, whoever this guy is, he really ain’t stupid. He’s using a pre-paid cell phone. Either a very cheap one with no GPS chip, or he knows how to deactivate them.’
Hunter knew the logic of how GPS chip phones worked. They emitted a locator beacon every fifteen or so seconds, similar to the ones used by airplanes. GPS satellites could then very quickly pin the phone location down to the nearest fifteen to twenty feet. It was obvious James Smith knew that too.
‘How about triangulation?’ Hunter asked.
‘As I said before, this guy ain’t dumb, Detective. He was on the move during the call. And I mean he was moving fast. The phone was immediately switched off once he disconnected.’
‘Shit!’ Hunter ran a hand through his hair. He knew that triangulation is the most accurate method of locating a cell phone that doesn’t send out a position signal. A live cell phone is in continual relay with surrounding cell phone towers to ensure they get the best signal available. Triangulation works by identifying the three towers receiving the strongest signal from the phone and drawing their coverage radius. At the point where the three orbits intersect, that’s where the phone is located. Its accuracy depends on how close together the three signal receiving towers are. In a city like Los Angeles, where there are simply hundreds and hundreds of cell phone towers, the accuracy can be almost as precise as with a GPS chip. And that’s where the being on t
he move problem comes from. In Los Angeles, cell phone towers are relatively close together. The process of triangulating can take as long as ten to fifteen minutes. If during that process the cell phone in question moves out of range of one of the three triangulating towers and into the range of a new one, the whole process fails and it has to start again from the beginning. If James Smith was calling from a moving car or even a bus, his signal would be constantly jumping from tower to tower in the space of minutes. Triangulation would be virtually impossible. Tracy was right. James Smith was no first-timer.
‘OK, Tracy, here’s what I want you to do . . .’
Sixty-Two
It was one of those Los Angeles spring mornings that made people happy to be alive. Crisp blue skies, gentle winds, and temperatures not higher than twenty-two degrees Celsius. People just couldn’t help but smile. It was on days like these that every detective in the force wished the LAPD issued unmarked convertibles. In the absence of those, Garcia’s Honda Civic would do. At least it had air conditioning, something that Hunter’s ancient Buick didn’t.
On their way to Century City and the A & E TV network studios, Garcia came level with a scarlet red convertible BMW with its top down. A short-haired brunette with her eyebrows plucked to the thinnest of lines had her head resting on the driver’s shoulder. He was a brawny man with a bullet head polished to shine, wearing a gym vest that looked two sizes too small for his frame. Hunter observed them for a minute. The woman seemed completely loved up. She brushed her fingers through her hair casually, and for an instant she reminded him of Anna, Garcia’s wife.
‘Would you ever hurt Anna?’ Hunter asked, suddenly turning to face Garcia.
The question was so surprising and out of character that Garcia had to do a double take and almost swerved. ‘What?’
‘Would you ever physically hurt Anna?’
‘That’s what I thought I heard you say. What the hell, Robert? Is that question for real?’
A few seconds went by. If Hunter was joking, he wasn’t giving anything away.
‘I guess that means no, then,’ Hunter said.
‘It means hell no. Why would I ever hurt Anna? Physically or any other way?’
Garcia had met Anna Preston in high school. She was a sweet girl with an unusual beauty. Garcia fell in love almost immediately. It took him ten months to gather the courage to ask her out though. They started dating during their sophomore year and Garcia proposed straight after their graduation. Hunter didn’t know of a couple whose love for and dedication to each other matched theirs.
‘No matter what happened, no matter what she did,’ Hunter pressed, ‘you wouldn’t hurt her, in any way?’
The confusion stamped across Garcia’s face intensified. ‘Have you lost your mind? Listen to me. No matter what she does, no matter what she says, no matter what anything – I would never hurt Anna. She’s everything to me. Without her, I don’t exist. Now what in the world are you trying to say, Robert?’
‘Why?’ Hunter’s voice sounded even. ‘Why wouldn’t you ever hurt her? No matter what she did . . . or said . . . or anything . . .’
Garcia had been Hunter’s partner for almost four years, since he had joined the RHD. He knew Hunter wasn’t a conventional detective. He could figure things out faster than anyone Garcia had ever met. Most of the time, no one even understood how he did it until he explained, and then it all seemed so simple. Hunter listened a lot more than he spoke. When he did speak, not everything he said made sense at first, but in the end, everything always slotted into place like a jigsaw puzzle. But sometimes Garcia had to admit Hunter seemed to inhabit a different dimension to everyone on this planet. This was one of those times.
‘Because I love her.’ Unconsciously, Garcia’s words came out coated in tenderness. ‘More than anyone or anything in this world.’
‘Exactly.’ A smile stretched across Hunter’s lips. ‘And, I think, so does our killer.’
Sixty-Three
The traffic began to unclog, but Garcia was still anesthetized by Hunter’s words. Anxious drivers started sounding their horns behind them. The more impatient ones were already shouting abuse out of their windows. Garcia disregarded them and edged forward slowly in his own time. His attention was still on Hunter.
‘Please tell me there’s sense behind the madness. What are you saying, Robert? That the killer is in love with my wife?’
‘No, not with Anna,’ Hunter replied. ‘But what if the killer thinks he’s in love with all his victims.’
Garcia’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. ‘What, both of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘At the same time?’
‘Yes.’
‘And we’re not talking obsessed fan love?’
‘No.’
His eyes narrowed further. ‘If he’s really in love with them, why would he kill them in such a brutal way?’
‘I didn’t say he was in love with them,’ Hunter clarified. ‘I said he thinks he’s in love with them. But what he’s really in love with is their image. Who they represent, not who they are.’
Silence.
Realization came seconds later.
‘Sonofabitch! Both of the victims remind him of someone else,’ Garcia finally caught on. ‘Someone he loved. That’s why they look so alike.’
Hunter nodded. ‘It’s not them he wants. It’s who they remind him of.’ He watched the convertible BMW pull away. ‘The lack of bruising prior to the stitching on both victims has been bothering me from the start. I kept thinking: since he doesn’t kidnap them for ransom, there’s gotta be a reason why he keeps them instead of killing them straight away, but more importantly, there’s gotta be a reason why he never touches them until the last minute. It didn’t make any sense. No matter which path I followed, I couldn’t see how there’d be no bruising. If the killer was keeping these women to satisfy his sexual needs, there’d be bruising . . . For revenge, there’d be bruising . . . Generalized hate against women, or even brunette painters induced by some past trauma, there’d be bruising . . . If he were an obsessed fan, there’d be bruising . . . Sadistic paranoia, there’d be bruising . . . Pure homicidal mania, there’d be bruising . . . Nothing fitted.’
Garcia raised his eyebrows.
‘I heard it first a few days ago, when we were interviewing Patrick Barlett, but I guess it just got filed away in my subconscious.’
‘Patrick Barlett?’ Garcia frowned. ‘Laura Mitchell’s ex-fiancé?’
Hunter nodded as he watched the traffic flow. A black woman driving a white Peugeot to their right was shaking her head and gesticulating while apparently singing along to something. She noticed Hunter looking at her and smiled, embarrassed. He smiled back before continuing.
‘Patrick said that he’d never hurt Laura, no matter what. He loved her too much.’
‘Yeah, I remember that.’
‘Unfortunately, that day I was more worried about observing Patrick’s reactions than anything else. It just escaped me. But it happens more often than you think. It’s a spin-off of the combination of two conditions known as transference and projection.’
Garcia frowned.
‘Some husbands look for prostitutes that remind them of their own wives,’ Hunter explained. ‘Some people look for girlfriends or boyfriends that look like an old high-school sweetheart or a teacher, or even their own mothers or fathers.’
Garcia thought back to a childhood school friend who, in fourth grade, had fallen in love with his history teacher. When he was old enough to date, every girlfriend he had was the spitting image of that teacher, including the one he’d gone on to marry years later.
‘Anyway,’ Hunter moved on, ‘it wasn’t until a moment ago that the idea of resembling someone paired up with transference and projection came into my head.’
‘Shit!’ Garcia let out a slow breath through clenched teeth, the confusion finally starting to clear in his mind. ‘When he looks at the women he’s abducted, his mind sees someone el
se, because he wants them to be someone else. Someone he was truly in love with. Someone he would never hurt, no matter what. That’s why there’s no bruising.’
A quick nod from Hunter. ‘That’s the projection side.’
‘But wait a second.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘He still kills them . . . very brutally. Doesn’t that go against this theory?’
‘No, it strengthens it. The stronger the transference and projection, the easier it is for the killer to be disappointed. They might have the same looks as the person he wants them to be, but they won’t act, or talk, or do anything else in the same way. No matter how much he wants it, they’ll never be who he wished they were.’
Garcia thought about it for a beat. ‘And as soon as he realizes that, why keep them, right?’
‘That’s right. But he still can’t bring himself to kill them directly. That’s why they’re still alive when he leaves them. That’s why he’s not even there when they are supposed to die. He can’t bear to see them go. And that’s why he created the self-activating trigger mechanism.’
‘So he doesn’t have to be there.’
‘Exactly,’ Hunter agreed.
Garcia remained thoughtful. ‘So this true love of his, is she dead?’
‘Most probably,’ Hunter admitted. ‘And that might be why he cracked. His mind just can’t let go of her.’
Garcia puffed his cheeks out before letting them deflate slowly. ‘Do you think she died in the same way his victims died, stitched up? Do you think he killed her as well?’
Hunter stared out the window at a cloudless, baby blue sky, and wished his thoughts were just as clear. ‘There’s only one way we can find out.’
He reached for his phone.
Sixty-Four
The Los Angeles branch of the A & E TV network was located in Century City. It occupied fifteen offices on the ninth floor of building two of the famous Twin Century Plaza Towers. It was no coincidence that the buildings resembled the twin towers that were destroyed in 2001 during the terrorist attack in Manhattan’s World Trade Center. They’d been designed by the same architect.