by Chris Carter
‘That is one of the possibilities,’ Hunter agreed. ‘A strong one.’
Garcia’s face was a picture of confusion. ‘A strong one? What’s another?’
Hunter knew that that question was coming. ‘You’re correct about some sort of very traumatic experience involving our killer and a young, white, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy of around seventeen years of age, but the actions you’ve mentioned – abused, hurt, humiliated, or whatever – might’ve not happened directly against our killer.’
Garcia brought two closed fists to his head before quickly moving his hands away, while at the same time spreading his fingers and making an ‘explosion’ sound.
‘My head just blew up, Robert. What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Traumas can occur in a variety of ways, Carlos,’ Hunter clarified. ‘Yes, they mainly come from acts experienced by the traumatized party, but they may also come from something they saw, or read, or heard.’
Garcia became pensive.
‘Maybe the abuse, the hurt, the humiliation,’ Hunter continued, ‘wasn’t experienced directly by our killer, but it was something he either saw, or heard, or read about. Maybe the person who was hurt was a family member . . . a brother, or a sister, or his mother, his father, or a close friend, or whatever. Maybe it was no one he really knew, but a story that he read or heard and the awful details stayed in his subconscious.’ Hunter’s palms turned to face the ceiling. ‘At this point there’s no telling exactly how our killer was traumatized by the figure of a young, white, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy, but from what we know now . . .’ He pointed at his computer screen. ‘The most logical psychological diagnosis, like we’ve concluded, would be that our killer has suffered a terrible trauma where somehow a boy that matches that description is to blame.’
Garcia folded his arms in front of his chest, as his forehead creased with thought.
‘Hold on a second there,’ he said.
From Garcia’s facial expression alone, Hunter already knew what was coming next.
‘If this is true for the second victim mentioned in the diary,’ Garcia asked. ‘Then wouldn’t it also be true for the first one? Because correct me if I’m wrong, but according to his diary, the reason why he buried Elizabeth Gibbs alive was because voices told him to do so.’
Hunter nodded. ‘And now we’re back to the point where I said that this whole thing sounded off. The voices he hears . . . something doesn’t seem to add up here.’
As Hunter’s attention returned to his screen and the diary entries, Garcia’s cellphone rang on his desk. It was Anna, his wife.
‘Hey, baby,’ Garcia said, bringing the phone to his ear. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Where are you?’ Anna asked, her tone not quite annoyed, but close. ‘Are you coming to pick me up or what?’
It took about half a second for the wrecking ball to hit Garcia.
‘Oh damn!’ His eyebrows arched, as his eyes moved to Hunter, who frowned at him. ‘The Christmas Ball.’
Those three words were meant for Hunter just as much as they were for Anna.
‘Don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten?’ This time, her annoyance was crystal clear.
Hunter immediately sat back on his chair and threw his head back. Both of his hands shot to his head before he checked his watch – 18:09. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered under his breath.
At that exact moment, the door to their office was pushed open to reveal a very stylishly dressed Captain Blake.
‘What the hell are you two still doing here?’ Her uncompromising stare bounced between both of her detectives. ‘You guys should be at the Globe by now.’
‘I’m on my way, baby. Sit tight.’ Garcia ended the call and reached for his jacket. ‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving,’ he said, as he squeezed past Captain Blake and shot across the detective’s office like a bullet.
The captain leaned against the doorframe.
‘Please tell me that you’re going to wear a goddamn suit, Robert. We’ll be sitting at the same table as the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California.’
Hunter got to his feet, grabbing his jacket. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll be wearing my very best suit.’ He too quickly squeezed past his captain. ‘I’ll see you at the Globe.’
Hunter only had one suit.
Twenty-Seven
Angela took one last drag of her cigarette before flipping the dying butt into a puddle. She wasn’t really a smoker. In fact, she hated the awful taste that lingered in her mouth after she’d finished a cigarette, but a few years back she had discovered that nicotine had an almost magical way of calming her down and taking the edge off. To Angela, cigarettes were like a bad-tasting medicine – something that she went back to when her nerves got the best of her. That had been her eighth cigarette since she’d left the Police Administration Building that afternoon.
‘This guy is careful,’ Hunter had said, his words still ringing in her ears. ‘He’s methodical, he’s thorough. It would be a big mistake if we were to underestimate such a person.’
Angela unwrapped a stick of gum and placed it in her mouth.
This was not what she had in mind. All she wanted to do was teach that jerk a lesson for being rude to an old man. How could that have ended up with a serial killer trying to track her down? How totally crazy was that?
Angela returned the pack of gum to her pocket and entered the liquor store, located just across the road from her apartment building.
After leaving the PAB late that afternoon, Angela had gone back to her apartment, but once there, she didn’t know what to do with herself. First, she paced her living room for over an hour, one million thoughts falling over themselves inside her head. When her four walls became too much to bear and the urge for a cigarette too strong to resist, she grabbed a coat, some cash, came up with a quick fix for her front door and aimlessly took to the streets. She smoked two cigarettes and walked for about twenty minutes until she reached a green area, several blocks west from where she lived. At that time on an early Tuesday evening, there weren’t that many people around. Angela found a bench by a small pond, lit up another cigarette and allowed her thoughts to wander.
There’s no way this guy can find me, Angela thought. The calming effect from the nicotine was taking control of her nerves. How could he find me in a city as large as LA when all he’s got is a photograph. And he might not even have a photograph. I don’t remember looking up at all while at the Rendition Room. Maybe the cameras never caught my face, and even if they did and this guy does have an image of me, what’s he going to do with it? Go around the streets asking people?
Angela laughed. The life of a pickpocket was a lonely one – no real friends, no romantic relationships, nothing, so asking around, even with a photo of her, would yield no results. She was very sure of that. The only person who she had properly gotten close to had been about four years ago, when she had just arrived in LA, and he was long gone.
As Angela finished another cigarette, a new thought came into her head, a thought that made her shiver. Maybe there was a way in which the man could find her. Dizzy K.
Every professional pickpocket, in any major city around the world, has a ‘fence’ – the middleman who takes the stolen goods off of the thieves’ hands before passing them on, usually to people inside organized crime. Angela always kept the money from the wallets she boosted, but she had no real use for all the credit cards and cellphones she stole. Instead of throwing them away, she sold them to a heavily tattooed, mixed-race man in his early thirties who went by the pseudonym of Dizzy K.
Dizzy K ran his business out of Vermont Knolls, a rough and dangerous neighborhood in South LA.
He’s methodical, he’s thorough, and he seems to be very ingenious. Hunter’s words echoed inside her head again.
If this guy really were as clever and as ingenious as that detective painted him to be, then he would know about fences. If he knew about fences, it wouldn’t take him long to do the math. What if he started
asking around with a photo of Angela? What if he managed to track down Dizzy K?
Angie, stop overthinking things. This is Los Angeles, how many fences do you think exist in this city? . . . Probably thousands. Do you really think that this guy, clever or not, ingenious or not, will manage to go around asking every fence in LA? And then there’s the small issue of some dude walking around the Los Angeles underworld, asking questions, trying to identify someone in a photo. How well do you think that that is going to go down?
Angela had a couple more cigarettes before deciding that she needed a drink. Actually, she needed a whole bottle. The only thing she had at home was a half full bottle of white wine and that just wouldn’t do. Tonight she needed something a lot stronger.
At the liquor store, Angela decided to go with a bottle of Bulleit bourbon. She also got a large bottle of cola, just in case. She had one last cigarette before making her way back to her apartment. At the entrance lobby, she checked her postbox – nothing except a menu for a new pizza joint about a block away called ‘Pizza 2 Your Door’.
‘Actually,’ she thought as she took the stairs up to the third floor. ‘I could do with a pizza.’
She scanned the menu. They had all the traditional ones, plus a few crazy options.
‘Banana, cheese, sugar and cinnamon?’ Angela read out loud. ‘Cheese, ham, pineapple and peaches? What sort of evil pizza joint is this?’
All of a sudden, as she took the last flight of stairs to the third floor, she felt an odd tingle start somewhere deep in her stomach. Something just didn’t feel right. She paused at the last step and looked down the corridor . . . at her door stood a tall and well-built figure, wearing a long black coat with its hood pulled over his head, seemingly studying the damage to her doorframe and lock.
The first thought that popped into Angela’s head was that the man was from the LAPD and he was there to fix her door.
That thought lasted less than a breath, immediately substituted by a much darker one.
Angela froze.
She didn’t know if she made any noise or not, but for whatever reason, the man at her door looked up at the right moment and he and Angela locked eyes for a fraction of a second.
The man straightened his body.
Angela let go of the pizza menu and the bottle of bourbon, which shattered as it hit the floor, and in a flash, turned around and ran.
A split second later, she heard his heavy footsteps coming after her.
Twenty-Eight
Just like Garcia had done that same morning, Angela didn’t actually run down the stairs; she leaped down them like a terrified frog – her mouth bone dry, her palms clammy. As she reached the landing halfway between floors two and one, she heard the man’s boots land heavily on a landing not that far above her. He was following her example – leaping over the stairs instead of running down them.
Angela’s head-start was three, four seconds at best, but the man was much taller than her, which meant that he had longer legs and, therefore, longer strides. If she didn’t think of something fast, the man would be upon her in a matter of seconds.
Angela jumped the next three flights of stairs like a champion hurdler, every fiber in her body pumped with adrenaline. She hit the ground-floor landing and in a blink of an eye she was at the lobby door. She had no idea of how she thought of it so quickly, but the lock at the building’s entry door was one of those that had an internal lock switch. When engaged, the key cylinder would lock in place and the key simply wouldn’t turn. A person coming into the building would be stuck outside, but all someone who was trying to get out had to do was disengage the switch on the inside of the door.
As Angela pulled the door open, she quickly flipped the switch to ‘lock’. She knew that she wasn’t locking the man in. Her trick was meant to buy her a few very valuable seconds. And it worked.
Angela slammed the lobby door closed and took off toward Colfax Avenue, her heart now smashing against the inside walls of her chest like a wrecking ball. Two seconds later, she heard someone trying and failing to pull the door open behind her. As much as she wanted to, she didn’t look back. That would’ve cost her time. Time she didn’t have. As she sprinted away, she heard the man desperately tugging at the door, trying to pull it open by sheer brute force.
That little trick cost the man ten seconds, more than enough time for Angela to get to Colfax Avenue and cross over to the other side, but now what? Keep on running down the road? Rush back into the liquor store and ask someone for help? Try to hide somewhere? What?
Think, Angie, think.
But luck didn’t seem to have abandoned Angela quite yet. On Colfax Avenue, just a few yards ahead of her, a cab had just pulled up to drop someone. The passenger paid the driver, opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Angela got to the cab just as the passenger was about to close the back door.
‘I’ll take it. Thank you.’ The words came out of her mouth in a rush as she threw herself into the backseat of the yellow and blue Crown Vic and slammed the door shut, a move that not only startled the driver at the wheel, but severely dis-pleased him.
‘What are you doing, crazy woman?’ he said, swinging around to look at her, his eyes wide open.
‘Please, sir,’ Angela pleaded in a shaky voice, also swinging around on the backseat to search for the man. He had just crossed to their side of Colfax Avenue. ‘My ex-husband wants to beat me up again. Please, sir, just go . . . please. Last time he broke both of my arms.’
The quiver in Angela’s tone was a clear indication that she was holding back tears.
‘What?’ the driver asked, confused. His eyes left Angela and moved to his rearview mirror. He saw a tall and burly figure in a long black coat fast approaching his cab.
‘Please, just drive.’ Angela begged, turning to face the driver. Her heart was beating in her throat.
The driver locked eyes with her for just a flash. In them, he saw nothing but panic.
The man was less than three feet from the cab.
The driver faced forward and put the car in gear.
The man reached for the backseat door.
The driver stepped on the gas. The Crown Vic’s tires screeched loudly against the asphalt and the car shot forward with a jerk.
The man’s fingertips grazed the cab’s backdoor handle, but he wasn’t able to grab hold of it in time. In anger, he sent a heavy kick toward the cab. The steel toe tip of his boot almost connected with the right rear light, missing it by a hair’s breadth.
Angela swerved on the backseat to look behind her once again. The man was standing on the sidewalk, watching the cab distance itself from him.
Twenty-Nine
‘What the hell is wrong with him?’ the cab driver asked, using the rearview mirror to fix Angela with a stare that was part fright, part anger and part surprise.
Angela breathed out in relief. Only then did she realize how much her whole body was shivering.
‘He’s a very violent man,’ she replied, slumping back on the rear seat.
‘And very big,’ the driver added. ‘You should go to the police.’
Angela wasn’t listening anymore. Her thoughts were in turmoil. How is this even possible? How the fuck did he find me so fast? He knew where I lived.
‘Hey, lady?’ the driver called again, this time waving at her through the mirror.
Angela looked up to meet his eyes. She was so lost in reflection that she didn’t even notice that he had asked her the same question three times.
‘Sorry?’ she said with a slight shake of the head. ‘What did you say?’
‘Where to?’ the driver asked for the fourth time. ‘Where would you like me to drive you to? Do you want to go to the police?’
Angela turned to look behind them one last time. They were too far away now for her to be able to spot the man. ‘I’m not sure.’ Her voice was still unsteady.
The driver took Ventura Freeway underpass, staying on Colfax Avenue. ‘Well, you have to give me a
destination, lady, unless you just want me to drive around.’ He shrugged and indicated the meter. ‘It’s your money, but if you want to go to the cops, North Hollywood Police Station isn’t that far from here.’
Angela’s thoughts slowly began to unfog.
‘My cellphone number is on the back,’ the detective had said, as he handed her his card. ‘In case you need to get in touch with me.’
‘Hold on a second,’ she told the driver, reaching into her front-right jeans pocket. All she found was the money she had brought with her, about fifty bucks. Front-left pocket – her packet of gum. Back pockets: left one – nothing. Right one – her cellphone. Hoodie pockets – her cigarettes and a lighter. No card. ‘Fuck,’ she cursed under her breath once she remembered that she had left Hunter’s card on the kitchen counter back in her apartment. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
The driver was still waiting.
Angela could ask him to drop her at the Police Administration Building in downtown LA, but she was sure that neither of the two detectives she had spoken to that afternoon would still be there. She would have to speak to an officer at the reception desk. After explaining that she had lost the detective’s card, the officer would ask her to take a seat. Since he wouldn’t be able to disclose Detective Hunter’s personal cellphone, he would have to try to get in contact with him at that time in the evening. Angela could be sitting at the PAB for hours.
‘Shit!’ She tried to think.
Maybe she could call Matteo, an Italian guy with whom she had gone out on two dates with, several months ago. He lived in Toluca Terrace, not that far from where they were. She still had his phone number in her cellphone.
Are you nuts? she thought to herself. Have you forgotten what kind of man he is? In that case, let me remind you – he’s a dick and a bully. Are you really prepared to owe him a favor?
And he’s a bad fuck to boot. You go to his place and you know that you’re going to have to sleep with him, right? Are you prepared to endure that pencil dick?
