by Carter Chris
‘The Criminalistics Lab?’ Garcia asked, his eyes narrowing at his partner. ‘Do we have a result pending?’
‘No,’ Hunter replied, before quickly recounting the conversation he’d just had with Dr. Slater.
‘A notebook?’
‘That’s what she said,’ Hunter confirmed.
‘And the Doc gave you nothing more?’ Garcia got up, also reaching for his jacket.
‘Just that we needed to have a look at it.’
‘Yeah, of course I’m in,’ Garcia said. ‘I’ve always been a sucker for suspense.’
Four
In city traffic, on a Monday afternoon, it took Hunter and Garcia around twenty-eight minutes to cover the almost six miles between the Police Administration Building on West 1st Street, and the California State University in Alhambra. After parking in the area reserved for law enforcement officers, the two detectives made their way to the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center – an impressive five-story building, situated in the southwestern quadrant of the university campus. Once they cleared reception, Hunter and Garcia took the stairs up to the second floor, where the Trace Analysis Unit lab was located and where Dr. Slater had told Hunter to meet her.
‘Are you looking forward to the ball tomorrow?’ Garcia asked, as they cleared the first flight of stairs.
‘You mean the LAPD Christmas Ball?’ Hunter replied, his facial expression totally lacking excitement. ‘Are you?’
‘Yeah.’ Garcia, on the other hand, looked genuinely thrilled. ‘I’ve got my Zombie-Santa outfit and all.’
‘Zombie-Santa?’ Hunter’s lips stretched into a thin line. ‘Really?’
‘Hell, yeah! Those parties are so boring. Need to inject a little bit of fun into them.’
‘And a Zombie-Santa outfit is your idea of how to inject fun into a party?’ Hunter asked.
‘You’re just jealous cause you can’t wear a costume,’ Garcia countered. ‘You and Captain Blake are at the mayor’s table, aren’t you?’
Hunter nodded as he rolled his eyes. ‘That will be a ton of fun.’
Garcia chuckled. ‘Yeah, I bet.’
The Trace Analysis Unit was one of the eight units that comprised the FSD Criminalistics Lab. Its main function, as the name suggested, was to perform analyses on trace evidence that might have occurred as a result of physical contact between suspect and victim during a violent crime. It also analyzed any traces of materials, organic or not, that might have been found at a crime scene.
At the lab double doors, which were kept locked at all times, Hunter pressed the buzzer and waited. A couple of seconds later, the doors unlocked with a subdued hiss.
The lab, which was easily the size of the entire Robbery Homicide Division’s floor, was chilled to a couple of degrees below comfortable, but was still relatively warm compared to the temperature on the streets. Several forensics agents, all of them in long white lab coats, were busy at different workstations. Soothing classical music played at very low volume in the background.
‘Over here, guys.’
Both detectives heard Dr. Slater call, as the doors slowly closed behind them.
The doctor was sitting in front of an inverted microscope, not that far from where Hunter and Garcia were standing.
In her mid-thirties, Dr. Susan Slater was five-foot seven, with a slim, toned body, high cheekbones and a delicate nose. Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a disheveled bun at the top of her head. Her makeup was subtle and brought out the light blue of her eyes.
‘Thanks for coming over so quickly,’ she said as she greeted both detectives with a simple head nod.
‘Well, you really hooked us with that mysterious phone call,’ Garcia said with a smile. ‘So what is it that you got?’
‘Exactly what I told Robert over the phone,’ Dr. Slater replied. Her voice was soft and jovial, but also full of knowledge and experience. ‘Someone hand-delivered a package to my mailbox over the weekend – probably late last night or in the early hours of this morning. The envelope alone grabbed my attention.’
‘Why?’ Garcia asked. ‘What was wrong with it?’
‘No address or stamp, to start with. Just my name. No return address either.’ She indicated a large, see-through evidence bag that was on the worktop by the inverted microscope in front of her. Inside the evidence bag they could all see a brown envelope. Across the front of it, handwritten in large black capital letters, was her name – Susan Slater.
‘May I?’ Hunter asked, indicating the evidence bag.
‘Be my guest.’
Hunter picked it up so he and Garcia could study the envelope inside it.
‘I’m guessing you’ve tested it for prints already?’ Garcia asked.
Dr. Slater nodded. ‘None other than mine.’
‘The handwriting?’ Hunter this time.
‘All capitals and nothing special about it. The pen used was a cheap marker pen with a fine tip. No point in trying to trace the ink to any specific brand, as the result would most certainly lead us to the kind of marker pen that is stocked by all major supermarkets.’
Hunter nodded, as he put down the evidence bag. ‘And you mentioned something about a notebook?’
‘Yes,’ Dr. Slater said, pointing toward the back of the lab. ‘And that’s where the plot really thickens. Come, let me show you.’
Hunter and Garcia followed her past a group of forensics agents, all too absorbed in what they were doing to even acknowledge the two detectives. As they reached one of two separate enclosures at the far end of the lab floor, they waited while Dr. Slater entered an eight-digit code into a metal keypad on the door handle.
The enclosure was about twenty-six feet long by twenty wide. Inside it, on three separate worktops, sat five computer screens and six different microscopes – two laser-scanning, two stereo, one inverted and one laser confocal. The temperature inside the new room dropped another degree or two when compared to the rest of the lab. Dr. Slater guided Hunter and Garcia to an empty worktop to the left of the door.
‘This morning,’ she explained, ‘when I checked my mailbox and picked up the envelope, I came this close to opening it right there and then.’ She indicated with her thumb and forefinger. ‘I couldn’t remember ordering anything over the Internet, but I’ve been known to order stuff and completely forget about it, especially if it takes over three days to arrive. Also, sometimes, either the FSD or some other forensics lab around the country will send me unsolicited samples, material, whatever, simply because . . .’ She shrugged. ‘They do stuff like that. Anyway, I was about to rip the envelope open when my brain decided to wake up. No one from the FSD, or any other forensics lab around the country, would hand-deliver an unsolicited package to my door. If they did, it would be because it was something quite urgent and they would ring the bell and deliver it to me, not drop it in my mailbox. With that in mind, I brought it straight here and this morning the package went through three different scanners – regular X-ray, which revealed that the contents were a notebook; explosive detection, which came back negative; and poisonous or hazardous substances, which also came back negative. So, after feeling like a complete idiot for being too paranoid and wasting government resources, I finally opened the package.’ She indicated another evidence bag that was on the worktop directly behind her. Inside it was a leather-bound notebook. ‘And that right there is what I got. Don’t forget to glove up before opening the evidence bag.’
From a dispenser mounted onto the wall by the door, Hunter and Garcia each picked up a pair of blue latex gloves and put them on.
With the notebook still inside the evidence bag, the first thing that both detectives noticed was that the book’s black leather cover was thicker than you would expect on a notebook. There was no design, no inscription, no carvings, no marks of any kind to either the front or the back cover.
The second thing they both noticed was that the journal weighed relatively more than a regular notebook, even though it only seemed to be about one hu
ndred and twenty pages long, maybe a little more. When looked at from a side angle, it was obvious that the pages didn’t sit smoothly between the two covers. Most of them were warped, which indicated that either those pages had gotten wet, or they had something stuck onto them, or both.
Hunter and Garcia repositioned themselves around the workstation before Hunter pulled the notebook out of the see-through plastic bag. He then placed it on the worktop and flipped it open to the first page.
Contrary to what one would expect from a personal diary or a journal, it didn’t open with an owner’s information page. Nothing on the flipside of the front cover either. No name, no address, no cellphone number, no email . . . nothing.
Hunter and Garcia quickly checked the first page.
The entry also differed from that of a regular diary in the sense that there was no date or any other sort of time stamp at the top or anywhere else on the page. There were also no page breaks and no paragraphs, just word after word, forming line after line in a seemingly interminable block of text, but the entry writer had at least made use of punctuation, which, if nothing else, helped to separate his thoughts and make the text less confusing.
The handwriting throughout the whole book was cursive and relatively neat, all in black ink. Any mistakes were dealt with via a single line across the wrong word or phrase – no White-Out, no erasing, no scratching . . . no mess. There was no yellowing of the pages or its edges either, which immediately indicated that the diary couldn’t have been that old. Despite the pages being unlined, Hunter was impressed with how straight the writer had kept the text.
Garcia was just about ready to start flipping through pages in the journal when Hunter placed a hand on his right arm, stopping him. His eyes had moved to the first line on the page and he had started reading it.
Her name was Elizabeth Gibbs, born 22nd October 1994. Not that I care at all about their names, who they were, or any other aspect of their lives. After so many, they become nothing more than meaningless faces lost in darkness. One will morph into another . . . which will morph into another . . . and so on. The cycle never ends. My memory isn’t so good anymore. I forget things. I forget a lot of things, and it’s just getting worse. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to keep this journal. The second is for security. I should’ve started these records a while ago, when I first heard the voices, but that’s water under the bridge and the journal is here now. I did try remembering facts . . . details from past events, but my memory isn’t so good anymore and it won’t be getting any better, only worse. Once again, the voices were very specific about the subject. Female. Minimum height: five-foot seven. Hair: black – long – straight. Eyes: dark. Weight: no heavier than 165 pounds. Ethnicity: white. It took me only a few days to find her. It wasn’t hard. After tailing the subject around town, an opportunity to take her finally showed itself. Date and time: February 3rd 2018 – 19:30. Location: Albertsons’ parking lot, Rosecrans Avenue, La Mirada. Photo: Same night, a few hours after abduction.
Hunter turned the page. There was nothing written on the reverse of it. The writer had decided to use only the front of each diary page. The next one along started with a gap of about three inches – roughly fifteen lines. Two tiny holes right at the top of the page indicated that something had been stapled to it. On the right, closer to the page’s edge there was a smear of what looked like blood. Hunter’s eyes moved to Dr. Slater.
‘There was a photo?’ he asked.
‘There was indeed,’ she replied, as she walked over to a different worktop to pick up yet another evidence bag before handing it to Hunter. Inside it there was an instax-mini Polaroid-style photograph – sixty-two millimeters long by forty-two wide. It showed a woman in her mid-twenties. Her long, straight black hair fell loosely over her shoulders. The look in her dark eyes mirrored the expression on her face – total and utter terror. Tears had come and gone, dragging most of her mascara and eyeliner with them, creating a crisscross of watery black lines all the way down to her chin. The light-red lipstick she had worn that night was smeared over her lips and across her face. The collar and shoulders of the pale-blue blouse she had on were wet with perspiration. The photo had been taken against a cinderblock wall.
‘They have all been bagged,’ Dr. Slater added. ‘Ready to be taken for analysis,’
‘They?’ Garcia asked, his eyes moving from the photo to the doctor.
She nodded as she breathed in. ‘There were a total of sixteen photos stapled to that journal. Sixteen different “subjects”.’
Hunter and Garcia had both noticed the small pile of evidence bags on the worktop directly behind Dr. Slater, but had assumed that those were evidence belonging to different cases.
‘How about this smear at the bottom of the page here?’ Hunter asked. ‘Is this blood?’
‘It is,’ Dr. Slater confirmed. ‘Every single photo I retrieved from that notebook came accompanied by a similar blood smear. The logical conclusion is that the blood belongs to the subject in the photo. I’ve swabbed that specific one you’re looking at and the swab has already been sent to the DNA Unit for testing.’ She crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘But please, carry on reading. The really good part is just a few lines ahead.’
Hunter placed the evidence bag down on the worktop next to the journal before allowing his attention to return to the writing, which re-started directly after the gap. On this page, there was a sketch showing a rectangular box. Underneath it, the word ‘wood’ had been written. Every dimension to the box panels, including the lid, were clearly noted.
Unlike the last subject, which turned out to be a terribly messy affair, the preparation and delivery of this one was relatively simple. No blood. No torture. No humiliation. No degradation. I heard the voices loud and clear – ‘You need to bury her alive.’
Five
Hunter paused. His concerned stare returned to the Polaroid photo inside the evidence bag before moving once again to Dr. Slater.
‘Is this for real?’ Garcia asked, a skeptical expression on his face. ‘Are you sure that this isn’t a hoax?’
‘Well,’ the doctor began. ‘That’s why I called you guys. I wouldn’t like to waste your time, so I took the liberty of checking her name and photo against the Missing Persons database.’ Her eyebrows arched as she reached into her lab-coat pocket. ‘Elizabeth Gibbs,’ she read from the printout in her hand. ‘Born October 22nd, 1994, right here in Los Angeles. Resident of La Mirada. She was reported missing on February 4th, 2018, by her boyfriend, Phillip Miller, with whom she shared a house not that far from the location cited in that book – the Albertsons parking lot on Rosecrans Avenue. Her car, a white Nissan Sentra, was found abandoned by the Sheriff’s Department at that exact location. Nothing was found in her car – no prints, no clues. Elizabeth Gibbs has also never been found. She’s still listed as missing.’ Dr. Slater returned the printout to her pocket. ‘If you missed that, the date matches the entry in that journal.’
‘Yeah, I got that,’ Hunter said. His brow was creased in thought.
‘Does that printout mention the name of the detective assigned to the case?’ Garcia asked.
Out came the printout again. ‘Detective Henrique Gomez,’ she informed them. ‘LAPD Missing Persons Unit. Do you know him?’
Hunter and Garcia both shook their heads.
‘As you might expect,’ Dr. Slater continued. ‘Miss Gibbs’s boyfriend came under heavy scrutiny, but his alibi was solid.’
Garcia scratched his forehead uncomfortably as he breathed out. ‘I’m starting to get a severe case of déjà vu here.’ His eyes widened at Hunter. ‘Another notebook describing victims and how they were murdered?’
Hunter knew that his partner was making a reference to Lucien Folter – without a doubt the most dangerous and delusional serial killer they had ever chased – but thanks to their team effort, Lucien’s new permanent address was the United States Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
‘This isn’t t
he same thing, Carlos,’ he came back.
‘I’m not saying it is,’ Garcia agreed. ‘All I’m saying is that a notebook describing victims and how they were murdered brings back some pretty awful memories.’
‘What are you guys talking about?’ Dr. Slater asked, curiosity all over her face. ‘What memories?’
‘It’s an old case we worked on,’ Hunter replied, but left it at that. His attention reverted back to the notebook on the worktop so he could finish reading the rest of the entry.
Building the box where the subject lay was easy. The voices gave me no specifications when it came to the container itself, so I was free to do as I liked. A few solid planks of wood and a bag of nails was all it took. There was no point in making the inside of the container comfortable. The technical side of the request took me a whole day to finally get it all working, but in the end everything ran smoothly and without glitches. The subject was never retrieved from its resting place – 34°15'16.9"N 118°14'52.4"W.
Garcia’s jaw dropped open. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
Hunter felt a surge of adrenaline rush though him. The writer had ended the entry with longitude and latitude coordinates.
‘I think so,’ he replied.
Both detectives looked back at Dr. Slater, who nodded almost apologetically.
‘Call me curious, but I couldn’t wait. I entered those coordinates onto a web map application.’
‘And?’ Garcia asked, eagerly.
‘And what I got was a somewhat remote location by a cluster of trees near some hills, about a mile into Deukmejian Wilderness Park, in Glendale. Though the location is somewhat remote,’ the doctor added, ‘it’s certainly accessible.’
For a moment, the room went completely silent.
Garcia saw the look on Hunter’s face and spoke first.
‘OK.’ He nodded at his partner. ‘I know that look, Robert. I know what you’re thinking, but before we take this to Captain Blake asking for a green light for a digging expedition, don’t you think that we should at least wait for the DNA results from that blood smear? Elizabeth Gibbs’s DNA will be on file with the Missing Persons Unit. If there’s a match then I’m sure we’ll get a “go ahead”, but if we go up to the captain right now with nothing more than matching dates on a suspicious notebook, she’ll red-light us. You know she will, especially with all these budget cuts that the department’s been getting.’