Written in Blood

by Chris Carter

  Twenty-Two

  It had rained while Hunter, Garcia and Angela were inside the Rendition Room – one of those famous LA ‘flash downpours’. Puddles reflected the scale of the rain, but the sky would confuse anyone. There wasn’t a single dark cloud in sight. The sun was already back out, trying its best to produce some warmth, but the rain had chilled the afternoon air and filled it with humidity.

  As they stepped outside, all three of them quickly zipped up their coats. Despite the rain and the fact that it was a Tuesday afternoon, the streets were heavy with shoppers.

  ‘So am I free to go now?’ Angela asked. ‘I can walk home from here or jump in a bus. It’s just a short ride.’

  ‘Not that simple,’ Garcia replied.

  ‘Why not?’ Her eyes pleaded. ‘There’s nothing else I can do to help you. This is it. This is all I know, and you just had confirmation that I’m telling the truth, didn’t you? Why else would that dude come back here dressed as a cop, check the CCTV footage for the exact time I told you I was here and then delete it, if not to hide his identity? The cameras obviously picked up his face.’

  ‘Maybe his wasn’t the only face the cameras captured,’ Hunter said. His gaze kept on running up and down the street, as if he were looking for someone. ‘And I’m sure that that was what he was really after.’

  Angela’s features knotted in doubt. ‘I’m not really with you here.’

  ‘Do you think you would recognize him if you saw him again?’ Hunter asked. ‘Like on the streets, or something?’

  Angela chuckled. ‘Were you listening when I told you what happened? I never got to see his face. He had a hood on and he never really lifted his eyes from his cellphone. He could bump into me right now and I wouldn’t know it was him. I’m telling you, there really is nothing else I can do to help you find him. Just let me go . . . please.’

  Hunter checked his phone. Still no email from Dr. Slater.

  ‘We need to get back to the PAB,’ he informed Angela. ‘There’s still a little bit of paperwork to be done. After that, you’re free to go.’

  ‘More paperwork? Are you kidding?’ Angela threw her hands up in the air, annoyed. ‘You don’t need me there for that. Can’t you guys do that on your own?’

  ‘How about your backpack?’ Garcia asked.

  Angela had forgotten about the fact that her backpack was still back at the PAB, but what was really bothering her was the feeling that Hunter was trying to dodge explaining what he meant.

  ‘Sure,’ she finally agreed. ‘Let’s go back to the PA whatever, but first you have to stop ducking the question.’ She stopped Hunter with a pissed-off look. ‘What did you mean when you said that maybe the man’s face wasn’t the only face the CCTV cameras captured?’

  Hunter walked back to Angela. His gaze stopped wandering the streets and he locked eyes with her. His eyebrows came up ever so faintly.

  The penny dropped.

  ‘My face?’

  ‘Would it really surprise you,’ he asked, ‘that whoever the owner of that journal is, he wants it back?’

  Angela’s lips drew a tight line when she remembered that she had already taken off her wig and her contact lenses when she boosted the man’s leather bag.

  ‘From his point of view,’ Hunter continued, ‘the only way he can do that is by finding you first. That’s the main reason why he came back here for the CCTV footage.’

  A few seconds went by as Angela’s brain processed everything. Then, her stare returned to Hunter. ‘Is that why you keep looking up and down the street?’

  Hunter stayed quiet.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ It was Angela’s turn to quickly scan the crowd of shoppers. ‘That’s why you’ve asked me if I would be able to recognize him if I saw him again. You think that he might be staking this place out on the off-chance that I come back here?’

  ‘If he has managed to get a clear image of your face from the CCTV footage,’ Garcia jumped in, ‘then that would be a pretty logical move on his part, don’t you think?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Angela gasped, as she pulled her hoodie over her head as far as it would go.

  All of a sudden, going back to the PAB sounded like a great idea.

  Twenty-Three

  The idea of staking out the Rendition Room had occurred to the man. He knew that thieves, particularly pickpockets, tended to stick to the same areas, busy areas, which they knew were lucrative. If the person who had taken his bag was really a professional pickpocket, which the man believed was the case, then that person probably wouldn’t go back to the Rendition Room so soon – too risky to hit the same establishment in such a short period of time – but there was a fair chance that the thief would be working other bars or shops in Tujunga Village, especially over the Christmas season when the movement of people increased exponentially. Knowing that, staking Tujunga Village wasn’t such a bad idea, but first the man needed to identify the little weasel who had taken his bag. His only chance of doing that was if the CCTV cameras inside the Rendition Room had captured the thief’s face.

  Posing as a cop had been a great move. People were much more inclined to cooperate if they believed that they were talking to a law enforcement official. Once the bar manager showed the man to his office and left him alone to check the CCTV footage, he was free to do as he pleased.

  The man wasn’t really worried about his face showing up in any of the recordings. That was something he was always extremely careful about – never going anywhere without his aviator sunglasses and his hood up over his head. True, he had taken off his sunglasses inside the Rendition Room that Saturday evening, but not before identifying the position of all three CCTV cameras. Once at his table, he had positioned himself facing east, away from all three cameras. His biggest mistake that night, he knew, had been placing his leather bag on the floor, by his feet.

  Since the man had started writing his diary, he kept it with him at all times, taking the book with him wherever he went – a mixture of paranoia and fear of needing to write something down and forgetting what it was if he didn’t do it straight away. That night, as he placed his bag on the table inside The Rendition Room, he almost knocked his glass over. That prompted him to place the bag on the floor. A big, big mistake.

  Since, on Saturday, the man had positioned himself facing away from all three cameras, he was concerned with the possibility that the thief, whoever he or she might be, also did the same. In their line of work, they couldn’t really afford not to be cautious. If that had been the case, then the man would be stuck. He would have no other way of identifying who had taken his bag.

  The man didn’t check any of the CCTV camera footage while inside the manager’s office. That would’ve taken way too long. Instead, he copied the recordings of all three cameras onto a flash drive, including the footage from the camera over the cash register, and deleted it.

  Back at his place, the man connected the flash drive to his computer and began scanning what he had. First up was the camera that was positioned by the lounge’s entrance. Instead of scanning the footage from the beginning, he started from the time he had arrived – around five twenty-five in the afternoon – because he first needed to identify the thief, and it didn’t take him long. Just after he had told that old man who had asked to share his table to get lost, he noticed that the woman who was occupying the table just behind his finished her drink but didn’t leave immediately. Instead, she took out her cellphone and made a call, or at least pretended to make one. Oddly, the woman could’ve made the call from where she was standing, but she instead moved around to the other side of her table, a lot closer to where his bag was.

  Her phone conversation lasted less than a minute and though the camera angle wasn’t wide enough to show what was happening at floor level, the man was sure that she was using her foot to slowly drag his bag away from him and closer to her.

  She was good, the man had to give her that. No panic, no awkward body movement, nothing suspicious whatsoever – just so
meone having a perfectly normal conversation on her phone.

  Then something unexpected happened, because all of a sudden everyone looked right, including him.

  At his computer, he paused the footage and thought about it for a moment.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said as he remembered. There had been a loud crashing noise. A waiter had dropped a tray of drinks by the other end of the bar. Once the man resumed the footage, he saw that in a flash, the woman thief recognized the opportunity and reached down to take the bag. By the time he had returned his attention to his cellphone, she had already rounded her table and left the bar.

  The man couldn’t help smiling at how calm and smooth the woman had been. There was no question that she was a pro.

  The problem he had was that not once during that whole footage segment did the woman look up, not even as she was exiting the lounge, which meant that he didn’t have a clear shot of her face. But at least he now knew who to search for.

  The man rewound the footage back to about five in the afternoon and began again. It wasn’t until around five-thirty that he saw the woman entering the Rendition Room lounge. He had to rewind and watch that segment of the footage a few times to make sure, because she looked different. When she entered the bar, she had short black hair, instead of a blonde, side-swept bob. What gave her away was the coat she wore.

  ‘There you are,’ the man said, nodding at his screen. His voice was dry and husky, as if his vocal cords had somehow been scarred. ‘C’mon, glance up. Say hello to the camera. All I need is one look.’

  But he wasn’t so lucky. Keeping her head down, the woman entered the lounge, zigzagged through the crowded bar area and moved straight toward the other end of the room. The line of vision of the camera above the entrance didn’t reach that far, so the man couldn’t quite see where she went, but it looked like she had aimed for the bathrooms. She stayed in there for quite a while – almost fifteen minutes. Once she resurfaced, she moved to the bar, ordered a drink and took the table that had vacated just behind her, right next to the one that the man was occupying.

  Still no clear shot of her face.

  ‘C’mon, baby, look up. Let me have a look at that pretty face of yours.’

  Still no luck. Time to check the footage from the other camera – the one positioned by the doors to the bathrooms.

  This time it all moved a lot faster, as the man knew the exact time frame to look for – five-thirty in the afternoon.

  From this new camera angle the man saw the woman zigzag the crowd and push open the door to the lady’s bathroom, all the while keeping her head down.

  The man began losing hope. If the woman was a regular, someone who was used to boosting bags and wallets from inside the Rendition Room, then it was only logical that she knew the locations of the ceiling cameras. That could’ve been why she never looked up or positioned herself in a direct angle to any of them.

  ‘Last chance saloon,’ the man said without much optimism, as he fast-forwarded the footage. At around 5:47 p.m. the woman reappeared and that was when Lady Luck finally smiled on him. As the thief pulled the door open and stepped outside the washroom, her head angled slightly left and up for a very brief moment.

  The man immediately stopped the footage before rewinding it frame by frame.

  ‘Bingo!’ he said as he came upon a frame that showed all of her facial features. ‘There you are.’ A bright smile graced his lips. ‘So nice to finally meet you.’

  The man took a snapshot of that particular frame before opening it in a professional image editor. After cleaning and sharpening the image as best as he could, he saved it to his desktop. Now all he needed to do was find her, and he had a pretty good idea of where to start.

  Twenty-Four

  It was nearly a quarter to five when Hunter, Garcia and Angela got back to the PAB. Before signing her out, Hunter retrieved her backpack from the holdings office and handed it back to her.

  Angela unzipped it to check its contents. Inside it she found her cellphone and the change of clothes she had packed when trying to flee her apartment.

  ‘It’s still there,’ Hunter said. ‘The cash is in the outside pocket.’

  Angela checked the pocket. It was all there. Every dollar. She looked back at him, surprised.

  ‘We can’t prove that the money doesn’t belong to you,’ Hunter explained. ‘If we did confiscate the money, it would just sit in the holdings office until the end of time, because we’d have no way of finding out who to return it to.’

  Angela zipped up her backpack and swung it over her right shoulder.

  ‘The LAPD will send someone to fix your front door,’ Hunter said, consulting his watch. ‘But unfortunately it probably won’t be today.’

  ‘You better,’ Angela said in return. ‘Or else my landlord will have my ass.’

  ‘Do you have somewhere else you can stay?’

  Angela detected real concern in Hunter’s voice.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll find a way to lock my door for tonight, but you guys really better get that fixed.’

  ‘We will,’ Hunter reassured her. ‘I have your cellphone number in case I need to contact you anyway.’ He handed her a card. ‘My cell number is on the back, in case you need to get in touch with me.’

  Angela regarded Hunter for a beat. The concern was still in his voice, but it went deeper than just a busted door. She didn’t take the card.

  ‘This isn’t just about my front door, is it? You’re concerned about this guy.’ She took another moment studying the detective before her. ‘You’re worried about that CCTV camera footage, aren’t you? You’re worried that whoever this guy is, he might now have an image of my face.’

  Angela was quick on the uptake, Hunter couldn’t deny that. ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘Well, so am I,’ Angela accepted. ‘But let me ask you something – what’s the population of Los Angeles?’

  Hunter already knew where Angela was going with this.

  ‘Over four million,’ he replied.

  ‘Exactly, so now he has a problem.’

  ‘I know,’ Hunter took over. ‘Even if he now knows what you look like, he still needs to somehow find out who you are. And in a city with over four million people, that’s not an easy thing to do when all you have is a photograph.’

  ‘There’s hope for you yet,’ Angela said with a cheery smile. ‘Look, his only point of reference when it comes to finding me is Tujunga Village. You know that.’ She pointed a finger at Hunter. ‘That’s why you were so worried earlier on when we were standing outside the Rendition Room, isn’t it? Looking up and down the street? Because you thought that he might’ve been staking the place out in the hope that I would go back.’ Angela didn’t wait for a reply. ‘So the answer is simple – I’ll stay the fuck away from Tujunga Village from now on.’

  ‘That’s definitely a good move,’ Hunter agreed.

  Angela regarded Hunter for another moment. ‘But you still look worried.’

  ‘Of course I’m worried,’ Hunter explained. ‘As a detective running an investigation, I have to consider every possible scenario. We don’t even know if your face does or does not appear on the CCTV footage from the Rendition Room. If it does and the owner of that journal now knows what you look like, then the possibility of him somehow finding you, however small, does exist, and if that possibility exists then you need to stay vigilant at all times. Staying away from Tujunga Village is a great move, but not the only one. Be alert, be on the lookout.’ Hunter was still holding out his card for Angela. ‘This guy is not your average, run-of-the-mill criminal.’

  Angela still didn’t reach for the card.

  ‘Look,’ Hunter said. ‘I’ve spent my entire professional life studying and chasing murderers like the owner of that journal.’

  ‘You mean serial killers.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed. ‘Serial killers. Very few are as prolific as the man you saw on Saturday evening. The reason for that is because most of them will inev
itably make a mistake one time or another.’

  ‘So then all you have to do is wait for this guy to make a mistake and we’ll be fine,’ Angela said lightly.

  ‘That’s the problem.’ Hunter’s tone, on the other hand, was deadly serious. ‘Whoever he is, he’s been doing this for years. The book you stole is proof of that. He’s claimed at least sixteen victims so far and we didn’t even have a clue he existed two days ago. What that translates into is that in all these years he’s been active, he’s never made a mistake.’ He paused so the significance of what he was trying to tell Angela could sink in.

  ‘So what are you really saying?’

  ‘All I want is for you to understand that whoever this guy is, he’s careful, he’s methodical, he’s thorough, and he seems to be very ingenious. Him turning up at the Rendition Room dressed as a cop, so he could access the CCTV recordings before doing away with them, is just an obvious example of how resourceful and determined this guy can be.’

  Angela moved her backpack from one shoulder to the other.

  ‘It would be a big mistake on our part,’ Hunter continued, ‘for us to underestimate such a person.’ He once again offered Angela his card. ‘All I want is for you to be careful and if you get suspicious about anything, whatever it is, don’t hesitate – give me a call.’

  This time Angela took the card. As she turned and walked away, Hunter’s cellphone vibrated inside his jacket pocket – two quick bursts – announcing that he had just received a new email. He quickly checked it – Dr. Slater had finally sent them the photographs of all the pages in the journal.

  Twenty-Five

  As soon as Hunter got back to his desk, he opened the email he had received from Dr. Slater. The file contained one hundred and twenty images, each matching a page in the journal. To avoid confusion, the forensics agent who had taken the photographs had, at Dr. Slater’s request, re-matched all the Polaroid photos to their respective pages, keeping them in the exact order that they appeared in the book. Hunter downloaded the attached zip file.