by Carter Chris
There was a break in the text, where the killer had added a detailed hand sketch of a teardrop-shaped Jacuzzi, containing specific measurements.
The tub was filled with soot and fire debris, but as luck had it, it carried no structural damage. All it needed was a good cleaning and then I had the perfect container for the task at hand. On Monday, June 11th 2018, I followed the voices’ instructions. The subjects were chained together, back-to-back, and thrown into the Jacuzzi. When I asked them to choose which one of them would die that night, what followed wasn’t quite what I had expected.
Hunter quickly loaded the next image.
After all the expected crying and the pleading that happens with every subject, the first to finally speak concerning the question I had put to them was the male subject. Maybe I am naïve when it comes to matters of the heart, but I was somehow expecting him to beg me to take his life instead of his wife’s. I was expecting him to tell her he loved her so much and that he would rather be dead than to be without her. But what I got was the exact opposite. With tears pouring down his face like a little girl, he began by saying that he had a lot more to live for than his wife did. A lot more to contribute to society than his wife did. In hearing those words, the female subject was so shocked that she did actually stop crying – her bloodshot eyes widening to the size of two casino chips. Completely taken by anger, the female subject uttered the words ‘you motherfucker’, and back-head-butted her husband. If I had chained them together facing each other, I’m fairly sure that she would’ve bitten his nose or his lips right off. Maybe that was why the voices asked me to chain them back to back. They were already counting on such a reaction. In my personal opinion, I think that if the female subject had spoken first, she would’ve asked me to take her life and not her husband’s. I’m pretty sure she would have, but after the male subject’s outburst, she hit back at him with, ‘You fucking spoiled mama’s boy, good-for-nothing, cheating asshole. You’re so blinded by your own bullshit that you are oblivious to any of the signs that I’ve been sleeping with three of your so-called friends.’ From then on, it turned into carnage, with abuse and overly aggressive back kicks, elbow jerks and back-head-butts being thrown back and forth like confetti during carnival. I observed the two subjects badmouthing and fighting each other for several minutes. It’s impressive watching people feed off their emotions, and off the emotions of others, but after a while, it got boring. When the voices told me that they’d also had enough, I gave the two subjects the bad news. Following the instructions of the voices, I had lied to them. They would both die that night, not just one of them. Their argument had been an exercise in futility, but one that had revealed a lot about the two of them and entertained the voices. The revelation that they would both die did quiet both subjects, at least for a few seconds, before the screaming and pleading began again, but it was when they realized how they would die that pure and uncompromising terror took over both of them. I hadn’t placed them inside a Jacuzzi just for fun. There was a reason for it. ‘The container holding the two subjects,’ the voices had said, ‘is to be filled either with H2SO4 (sulfuric acid), or NaOH (caustic soda).’ Both extremes of the acid/base scale. The choice was left to me. My decision wasn’t made based on the fact that base chemicals tend to cause less pain but more damage than acidic ones. When you are covering a subject with enough of either substance to be able to submerge them in it, the pain and the damage will be unbearable and fatal, no matter what is being used. No, my decision was made based on how easy and non-suspicious it would be for me to acquire either of them. It turns out that getting my hands on enough caustic soda to fill a bathtub was considerably easier than getting my hands on the same amount of sulfuric acid. As I poured the first gallon of caustic soda into the tub, I intentionally directed it more toward the male subject, though since they were chained to each other, the female subject got just as much on her as he did on him. The screams were inhuman. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before, and I’ve heard plenty. They fought helplessly like insects caught on a spider’s web, but the screams and the fighting soon died down. Undiluted caustic soda will do away with the layers of human skin with tremendous ease. Once the skin is gone, that’s when the hell really starts. By the end, the Jacuzzi looked like a witch’s cauldron. Needless to say that, before they finally perished, both subjects had to endure the sort of pain and agony that not even the Bible talks about. Due to the condition of the bodies, or what was left of them, I decided that the best resting place for their remains, which I had to scoop out of the tub with a shovel, would be the ocean, not the earth. Their remains were dropped into the Pacific approximately 2.2 miles due southwest of Santa Monica beach.
That was the end of the entry.
Hunter sat back in his chair while memories of a past case clouded his mind. He knew exactly what caustic soda could do to a human body. A few years back, he and Garcia were made to watch, via a live Internet broadcast, a very similar death. The killer had placed his victim inside a large, makeshift glass container before filling it with a mixture of water and caustic soda. Even in a diluted composition, the damage and the pain caused were indescribable.
‘I’ve got nothing,’ Garcia said, shaking his head in frustration.
It took Hunter’s brain a couple of seconds to register Garcia’s words. He looked back at his partner with a blank stare.
‘B-F-O-A,’ Garcia clarified. ‘Every definition I’ve come across for the acronym makes no sense in the context we have – “I’ve never raped anyone, BFOA or otherwise”.’
Hunter had been so taken by what he’d just read that for a moment the acronym conundrum had escaped his mind.
‘Hold on a sec,’ he said, reaching for his cellphone. After searching his contacts list, he hit the ‘call’ button.
‘Who are you calling?’ Garcia asked.
‘An old friend,’ Hunter replied, as the phone rang once . . . twice . . . three times.
‘Hello,’ a gruff male voice answered at the other end of the line.
‘Mr. Wilson?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yes, this is he. To whom am I speaking?’
Despite Wilson recognizing Hunter’s voice, who called him at least once a month, the eighty-four-year-old, ex-US Army command sergeant major, always answered the phone in the exact same manner.
What followed was a ritual.
‘Mr. Wilson, it’s Robert. Robert Hunter.’
‘If you lose your strength, you will fail.’
‘I cannot fail,’ Hunter replied. ‘For strength lives within me.’
‘You what?’ Garcia frowned at his partner. ‘What lives within you?’
With a shake of the head, Hunter signaled his partner to ignore what he’d just heard.
At the other end of the line, Hunter’s reply was met by a loud guttural laugh. ‘I hope it does, Robert. I really hope it does.’
Command Sergeant Major Adrian Wilson was the father of Scott Wilson, Hunter’s first ever partner when he joined the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division. Way over a decade ago, Scott had made Hunter promise him that if anything ever happened to him, Hunter would check on his father from time to time. A year and a half after that promise, Scott lost his life in a boat explosion – an assassination that was made to look like an accident.
Hunter had never forgotten the promise he’d made and since that tragic day, he would either call or drop by Mr. Wilson’s house at least once a month. Not that Mr. Wilson needed any looking after. A highly decorated veteran, having fought for the US Army in Vietnam, Lebanon and Nicaragua, Mr. Wilson was, even at eighty-four years of age, an impressive figure – lucid, funny, strong and full of life.
‘How are you doing, sir?’ Hunter asked.
Even though Hunter had never been in the military, he treated the US Army CSM with the respect he’d earned and deserved.
‘Oh well, you know me . . . spitting blood, pissing blood, coughing blood, bleeding all over the house.’ Despite the joke, there was an undeniably authoritativ
e tone to every word Mr. Wilson spoke.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Hunter replied, his tone concerned. ‘You’re not really pissing blood, are you?’
Garcia cringed from his desk. ‘What the hell? Pissing blood what? Who are you talking to?’ A split second after he asked that question, his right hand shot up in a stop gesture. ‘Actually, I don’t want to know. You go ahead and do your thing, Mr. Strength Within.’
On the phone, another guttural laugh from Mr. Wilson. ‘No, Robert, of course not. I’m just messing with you. You have to learn how to laugh a little, son.’
‘I need to ask you something, sir.’
The urgency in Hunter’s voice caused Mr. Wilson to hesitate at the other end of the line.
‘That sounds serious.’
‘I just need your help with something.’
‘Sure, son, fire away. What would you like to ask?’
‘In a military context,’ Hunter began, ‘does the acronym B-F-O-A have any meaning you can think of?’
In the silence that followed, Hunter could practically hear the gears inside the old man’s brain gathering momentum.
‘Nothing obvious comes to mind,’ Mr. Wilson replied after several thoughtful seconds. ‘But this is an old mind, as you know, and my memory misfires a lot nowadays.’ A quick pause. ‘Maybe if you give me a little more, son. Where did you hear that? I mean, in which context?’
‘It’s a line in a written statement,’ Hunter replied.
‘And what does that line say?’
‘“I’ve never raped anyone”,’ Hunter quoted. ‘“BFOA or otherwise. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to start now”.’
To Hunter, the new pause that came from Mr. Wilson’s end of the line felt as if the old man had held his breath.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes, son.’ Mr. Wilson’s voice sounded heavy with sorrow. ‘I know what BFOA means.’
Forty-Seven
The man left Franklin Canyon Park about fifteen minutes after it officially opened its gates to the general public. Despite how secluded his favorite spot was, he knew that, come rain or sunshine, trackers, joggers, cyclists and dog walkers would, with their distasteful and annoying colorful clothes, completely spoil the natural beauty of the place, not to mention the noise they brought with them, scaring most of the wildlife into hiding. Now, with a clear mind, the man was ready for what was about to come.
The drive from the park to Santa Clarita, where the man had transformed a deep underground basement into a horror chamber, took him just under an hour.
Inside the disused building, which stood at the edge of some isolated woodland, he descended a set of worn concrete steps one by one. His shadow, cast onto the brick and cement walls by a single fluorescent tube lamp at the top of the stairwell, danced ominously before him with each step he took. The smell at the stairwell was an odd combination of mildew, sour milk and disinfectant, as the man would clean those steps religiously, every week.
The stairs curved right in an angular L-shape, where the already weak light from the fluorescent lamp at the top lost most of its strength. At the bottom, the man came to a three-foot-wide by seven-foot-tall metal door. Instead of a key, its sophisticated locking mechanism required either a six-digit combination or a thumbprint. The man pressed his right thumb onto the digital reading pad and the door opened with a loud buzz, allowing him to step into a square and empty room, except for a flat workbench pushed against the far wall. A multitude of steel pipes, some thick, some thin, ran across the ceiling in all different directions. The walls were made of solid cinderblock. The man flicked the light switch to his right and a new tube lamp, this time long and nestled between two pipes above his head, struggled to come to life, blinking on and off for several seconds before finally engaging and bathing the room in a dull orange glow.
Directly across the room from where the man was standing was a new metal door, this one heavier than the first. Once again, the locking mechanism required either a six-digit combination or a thumbprint. This time, the man pressed his left thumb onto the digital reading pad and the door clicked open. The room beyond was a little smaller than the one before. It contained a control desk, a couple of chairs and a large computer monitor mounted onto the wall directly above the desk. To the right of the desk there was a tall metal unit filled with electronics and computer equipment. To the left of the desk there was yet another metal door. The door sat so perfectly in its frame that no hinges were visible.
The man flicked on the lights and the eight halogen bulbs on the ceiling immediately sprang to life, burning the room with bright light.
Eight steps took him over to the control desk, where he pressed a button to switch on the computer monitor. As he did, the screen before him was filled by four different images, each occupying an exact quarter of the screen – two at the top and two at the bottom.
The door to the left of the control desk led to a very long and dark L-shaped corridor. Along that corridor there were five rooms. Four of those were individual containment cells that he had built himself – all of them escape-proof. Each of those cells had a CCTV camera sitting inside a metal mesh box at the center of the ceiling, which could be quickly switched into infrared mode if needed, just like they were right then. The images on the computer screen above the control desk were being broadcast live by those cameras. Only one of the four containment cells was empty.
The man got comfortable on the office chair that faced the monitor and observed the screen for an instant before speaking.
‘How are you all doing this morning?’ he asked in a murmur, as his eyes jumped from one image to the other. ‘Let’s take a closer look, shall we?’
The man typed a command into the keyboard on the control desk and the four-way split image on the screen changed into a single one. At the top of the new image, small white letters read – ‘cell 1’. He typed a new command – ‘cell 2’. And again – ‘cell 3’. He spent several minutes going back and forth from one camera to the other, watching the three subjects. The person inside cell one was sitting with her back against the northwest corner of the cell, her thighs pressed against her chest as she hugged them, her head down into her knees. The man didn’t have to switch on the microphone inside the cell to know that she was crying. He could see the slight bobbing of her head and shoulders.
The man moved on to the camera inside cell two. The second subject was sitting on the cement bed, his legs crossed under him, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands locked together in a prayer position. The man couldn’t tell if he was really praying or not, but he didn’t really care. Prayers didn’t matter. They never did.
The subject inside cell three seemed to be sleeping. She was lying facing the wall in the fetal position.
The man flipped once again between the three cameras. He had a decision to make – who out of those three would die that day.
The man chuckled, amused with himself.
‘Life is indeed unpredictable, isn’t it?’ he asked, as if he were talking to the three subjects at the same time. ‘I bet that none of you ever thought that your fate would be decided by a nursery rhyme.’
The man sat back on his chair as he started singing. ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe . . .’
Forty-Eight
There was something in the way in which Mr. Wilson spoke that made Hunter hold his breath in anticipation. He waited, but Mr. Wilson went quiet again.
‘Sir?’ Hunter called. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’ Mr. Wilson coughed to clear his throat. ‘Son, one thing that I’d like you to understand is that in times of war, certain things can happen, regardless of orders or whichever bullshit rules-of-engagement and treaties have been signed by stupid politicians in some good-for-nothing international organization. Soldiers aren’t machines, son. They’re human beings. They’re people just like you and I, and just like you and I they are sometimes guided by emotions instead of orders, or even reason. Sometimes our soldiers will act on pure anger,
brought upon by an overwhelming feeling of revenge, especially when fighting against certain enemies.’
‘Certain enemies?’ Hunter asked.
‘You are a very intelligent person, son, so I know that you’ll know this to be true – no country, when at war – when defending its freedom and the lives of its citizens – will one hundred percent stick to these rules. It’s impossible, and I’m talking about democratic countries like the USA. Now, there are certain countries on this planet, where the oppression, the torture and the murder of their own citizens is an intrinsic part of their governing system. You know that, right?’ The old man didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Those countries don’t give a rat’s ass about any piece of paper trying to dictate how they should fight their wars. To them, international laws don’t mean spit, so they fight like they fight, and let me tell you, son, they fight filthy dirty, and they make no distinction between soldiers and civilians. Sometimes, for whatever reason it may be, democratic armies fighting against these enemies may find it valid to give some of their filth back to them.’ Before continuing, Mr. Wilson paused and cleared his throat once again. ‘Rape, or sexual violence, is a weapon that’s frequently used by these enemies as a means of psychological warfare. They use Psy-Ops in order to humiliate their opponents. You more than anyone can understand how tremendously effective that would be, right, son?’