The Night Stalker

by Chris Carter

  ‘That’s the next neighborhood along from Norwalk,’ the captain said. ‘Smith’s apartment is in Norwalk, right?’

  Hunter and Garcia nodded.

  ‘Only one call?’

  ‘That’s right. My guess is that they talked that day, maybe arranged to talk on the phone again later that week or even meet up somewhere. She didn’t turn up or he got no reply on his next call. He kept on trying, still no answer. He got worried, maybe a little annoyed. When I mentioned Homicide on the phone to Smith, it took him just a few seconds to make the connection.’

  ‘So he started staking out Laura Mitchell’s place to try to spot her, get some sort of confirmation,’ Garcia said.

  ‘That’s what I figured he’d do,’ Hunter agreed.

  ‘Well, for someone who isn’t stupid, that’s a pretty dumb thing to do, don’t you think?’ the captain shot out. ‘You’re gonna tell me that he didn’t at least suspect her place would’ve been watched?’

  ‘You saw the pictures of his collage room, right? He’s been obsessed with Laura Mitchell for years. The kind of obsession that overrides rational thought, Captain – pure, undying love. Of course he knew it was dangerous. Of course he knew he could be caught. But he couldn’t help it. He needed to find out. He needed to make sure she was OK.’

  ‘Like an addiction?’

  ‘Stronger than an addiction, Captain. It’s a compulsion.’ Hunter turned towards the officer in the room. ‘Has he requested a lawyer yet?’

  ‘Not yet. He said he wanted to talk to you.’

  All eyes moved to Hunter.

  His gaze returned to James Smith for a moment longer. ‘OK, let’s do it.’

  Eighty-Two

  James Smith’s eyes darted towards Hunter as soon as he entered the interrogation room.

  ‘I’m Detective Robert Hunter of the Homicide Special Section. We talked on the phone a couple of days ago.’ Hunter placed a tray with a coffee pot and two mugs on the metal table. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘She was kidnapped and murdered?’ Smith’s voice was edgy and concerned. His eyes looked haunted.

  ‘It’s fresh.’ Hunter poured two cups and slid one over towards Smith. ‘And you really look like you could use some.’

  Smith’s eyes didn’t leave Hunter’s face. ‘Laura was kidnapped and murdered?’ He pleaded rather than asked this time.

  Hunter pulled the chair across the table from Smith and sat down before sipping his coffee.

  ‘They told me I was being arrested on suspicion of the kidnap and murder of Laura Mitchell.’

  ‘Yes, she was kidnapped . . . and murdered,’ Hunter said and paused for a second. ‘Everyone in the station has their money on you. They think you did it.’

  Smith closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and breathed out a heartfelt breath. ‘When?’

  Hunter regarded him.

  ‘When was she murdered?’ There was pain in his voice.

  ‘A few days before we knocked on your door.’ In contrast, Hunter’s voice was calm and collected.

  Smith kept his eyes on Hunter but his stare was distant. The kind of stare you get when your mind is somewhere far away.

  ‘We know that you talked to Laura on the last night of her exhibition at the Daniel Rossdale Art Gallery. And we’ve seen the room inside your apartment.’

  His focus returned to Smith’s stare.

  ‘I have the right to have an attorney present, don’t I?’

  ‘Of course you do, but I’m not here to interrogate you.’

  Smith chuckled. ‘Really? So what’s this, a friendly chat? You’re here to be my buddy, is that it?’

  ‘Right now, you need all the friends you can get.’

  ‘Friends won’t help. You already said that everyone’s money is on me. Your mind is already made up. You’ll believe what you wanna believe no matter what.’

  ‘Try me.’ Hunter leaned forward.

  Smith’s focus moved to the two-way mirror and the tension intensified. ‘Do you really think I’d be able to hurt Laura . . . in any way?’ His gaze returned to Hunter. ‘I love her in a way you’ll never understand.’

  Hunter allowed the moment to settle.

  ‘The kind of love that strangles your heart and keeps you awake at night?’ he countered. ‘The kind of love that makes it hard for you to breathe when she’s near, even if she never notices you? The kind of love that if you have to wait forever for just a simple touch, or a kiss, you will?’

  Smith went silent.

  ‘Yes, I know the kind of love you’re talking about.’

  Smith interlaced his fingers together so tight his knuckles started to lose their color.

  ‘Is that how you loved her?’ Something in Hunter’s voice made Smith believe that maybe he understood.

  ‘I knew Laura from the bank. Way before she became a famous painter.’ Smith’s tone was full of melancholy. He gave Hunter a sad headshake. ‘But she didn’t know me. She never noticed me. I don’t think she even knew I existed. I spoke to her a couple of times back then, in the coffee room. She was always nice, don’t get me wrong, but every time I talked to her, I had to reintroduce myself. I was never important or attractive enough for her to remember who I was.’ His eyes filled with sadness. ‘I wasn’t even invited to her leaving party.’

  Inside the observation room, Captain Blake turned to Garcia. ‘We need a list of names and photographs of all bank employees from Laura Mitchell’s section during her last six months there.’

  Garcia was already on the phone. ‘I’m on it.’

  On the other side of the glass Smith relaxed the tight grip on his hands and blood returned to his knuckles. ‘I stayed with the bank for another two years after she left. But I followed her career from the beginning. I read every article, attended every exhibition. I even started liking and appreciating art.’ A sliver of confidence crept into his eyes. ‘Then one day I looked in the mirror and decided that I wouldn’t be weak any more. I decided that I was important and attractive enough for her to notice me, I just needed to polish off some rough edges.’

  ‘So you created your new identity,’ Hunter pressed.

  ‘More than an identity. I created a whole new person. New diet, strict exercise program, new haircut, new hair color, colored contact lenses, new wardrobe, new attitude, new way of talking, new everything. I became someone she would notice. Someone she would talk to and flirt with. Someone she’d like to spend time with. I became James Smith.’

  Hunter had to admire his determination.

  ‘I went to every one of her exhibitions. But I still couldn’t sum up the nerve to say hello to her again. I was scared she’d recognize me. That she’d see straight through me . . . that she’d laugh at me.’

  Hunter knew exactly why. Changing a person’s appearance is easy – it can be done in one afternoon or, in the case of changing a person’s body shape, with the right diet and exercise program – a few months. Changing a person’s personality is much harder, though – it requires work, determination, willpower and it can take years. Smith used to be a shy, low self-esteem, low-confidence, scared-of-rejection person, and though he looked completely different on the outside, he was yet to overcome all his personality glitches.

  ‘She approached you that night, didn’t she?’ Hunter concluded.

  Smith nodded. ‘I was so surprised, I stuttered.’ A glimpse of a smile graced his lips as he remembered.

  ‘Did she give you her number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you call her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember when?’ Hunter leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table.

  ‘I remember the day, the time, and everything that was said.’

  Hunter waited.

  ‘It was the 4th March, at 4:30 p.m. I used a payphone and called her on her cell. She was on her way to her studio. We talked for a while and she asked me to call her back just before the weekend. She said that maybe we could go out for a drink or even dinner. Sh
e practically asked me out.’ Smith’s eyes moved from Hunter’s face to the far wall for a long moment. When they moved back to Hunter, a liquid sheen had formed over them. ‘You’re a detective. Do you really think that after all I’ve done, after so many years trying to get her attention, trying to get her to notice me, to talk to me . . . when she finally does, I’d hurt her in any way?’

  ‘Why did you run when we knocked on your door?’

  ‘I panicked,’ Smith replied with no hesitation. ‘I knew that I had broken the law by living under a false identity. I know that I could be locked away for several years for it. Suddenly the police were at my door. I did what most people in my shoes would do, I didn’t think, I just ran. Before I had time to consider, my picture was in every paper in town. I knew then that something was definitely not right. That’s when I called you.’

  Hunter remained silent. His stare locked on Smith’s face. He’d said all that without flinching, without vacillating and without breaking eye contact with Hunter. If he was lying, Hunter decided, he was a master at it.

  ‘She approached me that night,’ Smith said again. ‘She smiled at me. She flirted with me. She gave me her number and asked me to call her. She wanted to have dinner with me . . . to go out on a date with me.’ Smith faced the two-way mirror. ‘I’d been dreaming about the day she’d finally noticed me for years. My dream had just come true. Why in the name of God would I hurt her?’

  Eighty-Three

  Hunter splashed some cold water over his face and stared at his tired reflection in the mirror. James Smith had requested an attorney. No matter what happened, without actual proof of any involvement between Smith and Laura Mitchell, the LAPD could only hold him without charge for a maximum of forty-eight hours. Captain Blake was already talking to the DA’s office about charging Smith with fraud and impersonation. That way, they could keep him off the streets for longer, at least until they had more information on him, his story and his whereabouts on the nights of all three murders.

  After leaving the interrogation room, Hunter had finally managed to get in touch with Mark Stratton, Jessica Black’s boyfriend. Experience counted for nothing in these situations. There was no easy way to tell someone that their life had just been wrecked. That the person they loved the most had been taken away from them by a brutal killer. People dealt with loss and pain in their own way, but it was never easy.

  Hunter didn’t disclose every detail over the phone. He kept the information down to the bare minimum. Not surprisingly, Stratton thought the call was a prank at first, a very bad joke from one of his buddies. Many of them were notorious for their dark and distasteful sense of humor. Hunter knew denial is the most common initial shock reaction to sad news. When realization finally set in, Stratton broke down the way most people did. The same way Hunter had broken down years ago when a RHD detective knocked on his door to tell him his father had been shot in the chest by a bank robber.

  Hunter splashed some more water on his face and wet his hair. The darkness inside him was lurking around again, murky and deep.

  Stratton told Hunter that he’d be making his way back to LA as soon as possible – sometime today, and that he’d call Hunter as soon as he got back. Jessica Black’s body still had to be positively identified.

  Garcia was reading something on his computer screen when Hunter got back to his desk. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. He understood exactly how difficult making those calls was.

  Hunter nodded. ‘I’m fine. Just needed to cool down, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure? You don’t look fine.’

  Hunter approached the pictures board and studied the photographs of all three victims again.

  ‘Robert,’ Garcia called, his voice just a few decibels louder.

  Hunter turned and faced him. ‘His interval between kidnapping and murdering his victims is shortening.’

  ‘Yeah, I noticed that,’ Garcia agreed. ‘Kelly Jensen was the first to be kidnapped. She was killed almost three weeks later. Laura Mitchell was taken about a week after Kelly, but she was the first to die. We still don’t know for sure, but it looks like Jessica Black went missing no longer than five days ago, and she turned up dead yesterday. It went from weeks to days. So either Jessica Black lost no time in breaking his spell, or he’s simply losing patience.’

  Hunter said nothing.

  Garcia sat back in his chair and pinched his chin. ‘I was just checking the results from your national search on brunette victims with any sort of stitching to their mouths, sexual organs or both.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Not a goddamn thing. It seems like most of the files only date back fourteen to fifteen years. Beyond that, we’ve got almost nothing.’

  Hunter thought about it for a moment. ‘Damn.’

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Police records only started to be properly digitized . . . what? Maybe ten, twelve years ago at a stretch?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘The problem is that the amount of everyday cases is so huge, most police departments around the country don’t have the budget or the personnel to deal with the backlog. Most cases older than maybe fifteen years are probably just sitting inside boxes, getting dusty, down in basement storage rooms. Database searches will never get to them.’

  ‘Great. So even if we’re right, but it happened over fifteen years ago, we’ll never know?’

  Hunter was already typing away on his computer. ‘Police files and databases might not be properly backlogged yet, but . . .’

  Garcia waited but nothing else was forthcoming. ‘But what?’

  ‘But newspaper ones certainly are. I was stupid, I should’ve thought of that at first and searched the national news archives as well as the police ones.’

  Hunter and Garcia searched the net and specific newspaper databases for hours, scanning through any piece that flagged up according to their search criteria. Three and a half hours later Garcia started reading a 20-year-old local newspaper article and felt a shiver run down his spine.

  ‘Robert,’ he called, placing both elbows on his desk, clasping his hands together and squinting at his screen. ‘I think I might have something here.’

  Eighty-Four

  Los Angeles was a trendy nightclub Mecca full of see-and-be-seen clubs, which made the existence of a local bar like the Alibi Room a blessing. It dated back to the days of smoke-filled interiors and drunken games of pool. The place was really just one room with some vintage carpet, a line of locals bellied up to the bar, a single pool table with iffy geometrics and dead rails, a decent jukebox packed with rock albums and the best dive bar attraction of all time: cheap booze.

  Whitney Myers spotted Xavier Nunez as soon as she walked through the door. He was sitting at one of the few low oak tables next to a window to the left of the bar. Two bottles of beer and a basket of corn tortillas were on the table in front of him.

  Nunez was an odd-looking man. In his mid-thirties, he had a shaved head, long pointy face, large dark eyes, bowl ears, small crooked nose, pitted skin and lips so thin they looked like they’d been drawn using a marker pen. The slogan on his shirt read – Tell your tits to stop staring at me.

  Nunez was another of Myers’ contacts, whom she paid very handsomely when she needed information. He worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.

  ‘Nice shirt,’ Myers said as she came to his table. ‘Get loads of girls when you wear it, do you?’

  Nunez took a swig of his beer and looked up at her. Nunez was about to comment on her remark, but Myers smiled at him, and all he could do was melt in his seat.

  ‘So, what have you got for me?’

  Nunez reached for the plastic folder on the seat next to him.

  ‘These were really hard to get.’ He spoke with a heavy Puerto Rican accent.

  Myers had a seat across the table from him.

  ‘That’s why I pay you so well, Xavier.’ She reached for the folder but he pulled it away from her.

&n
bsp; ‘Yeah, but special circumstances cases are really, really hard to get, d’you know what I mean? Maybe I deserve a little extra for it.’

  Myers paused and smiled again, but this time there was no warmth in it. ‘Don’t go there, honey. I can be very nice when you play the way the game should be played. You know that I pay you more than enough. But if you wanna play hardball, trust me . . .’ she placed her hand on his and gave it a subtle but firm squeeze, ‘. . . I can become a real bitch. The kinda bitch you and your homies don’t wanna fuck with. So are you sure you wanna roll like this?’

  Something in her voice and her touch made Nunez’ mouth go dry.

  ‘Hey, I was just joking. I know you pay me enough. I was talking more like you know . . . you and me . . . dinner . . . sometime . . . maybe . . .’

  The warmth came back to her smile. ‘As attractive as you are, Xavier, I’m already taken,’ she lied.

  He tilted his head from side to side. ‘I’d settle for meaningless sex.’

  Myers finally took the folder from Xavier. ‘How about you settle for what we agreed?’ Her voice was menacing.

  ‘OK, that will do too.’

  Myers flipped open the folder. The first photograph was of Kelly Jensen’s face. The stitches to her mouth hadn’t been removed yet. She stared at it for several seconds. Though she’d been told about it by Hunter, seeing the photographs brought a new dimension to the evil of the crime.

  Myers moved to the next picture and froze. They were of the second set of stitches to Kelly Jensen’s body. Hunter had never told her about those. She had to take a deep breath before moving on. The next photo was a wide shot of Kelly Jensen’s entire body. Myers studied it carefully.

  ‘Where are the cuts?’ she whispered to herself, but it didn’t escape Xavier’s ears.

  ‘Cuts?’ he said. ‘There are none.’

  ‘I was told the killer used a knife to kill her.’

  ‘Apparently he did. But he didn’t cut her on the outside.’