by Chris Carter
To Garcia, the next couple of seconds moved in slow motion. He saw the man’s right hand seek his gym bag, which was already unzipped. The man blinked once and his hand disappeared into the bag.
Garcia couldn’t see what the man had reached for because the man’s body blocked Garcia’s view.
The man’s eyes returned to Garcia and his body rotated slightly left in the detective’s direction. He was repositioning himself.
What Garcia didn’t know was that SWAT Agent Terrance Shaffer had positioned himself behind the target, keeping him in a direct line of view. Agent Shaffer had also witnessed the man’s movements. Once he saw the man’s hand move into his gym bag, Agent Shaffer made his move, and he moved fast. By the time the man began rotating his body in the direction of Garcia, Agent Shaffer was already flying through the air.
The man never saw him coming.
The tackle, if in a football game, would’ve probably won ‘play of the year’.
While in midair, Agent Shaffer collided with the man’s body with incredible precision, grabbing him by the waist. The man was, without a doubt, a lot heavier than Agent Shaffer, but Agent Shaffer’s momentum, together with him suddenly appearing out of a standing crowd, gave him the advantage.
The heavy impact of body against body catapulted the man forward and into two other hotel guests. All four of them fell to the ground, which immediately prompted a chorus of loud voices to come from the crowd.
Standing just a few feet away, Garcia already had his weapon drawn, as did the two other SWAT agents that had circled the man. Their sights locked onto the man’s head.
‘Freeze,’ Garcia yelled. ‘LAPD.’
The man had hit the ground hard . . . very hard. First his left shoulder, then his head. His unzipped gym bag tumbled against his hip as he fell and most of its contents spilled onto the sidewalk.
Though his full attention was centered on the man on the ground, Garcia’s eyes flickered to the items that had just spilled out of the man’s bag. One of the items ended up almost at Garcia’s feet. He looked down at it, blinked once . . . twice . . . then froze.
‘What the fuck?’
Seventy-Seven
Five minutes earlier – laundry room, sublevel one of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.
‘This is the floor’s laundry room,’ through his video call, the Werewolf informed Hunter. ‘On the far wall you’ll see a large hatch. That’s the laundry chute. Open it and drop the diary down it. Do it now.’
. . .
‘Now, Detective,’ the Werewolf commanded again.
‘How about Angela?’ Hunter asked. ‘The deal was the diary for Angela.’
‘The deal also was for you to accomplish every task in the time given. We’re not having a discussion, Detective. The diary in the chute and you’ll get the girl. You have my word. Otherwise, I promise you that you’ll get a new piece of that little bitch delivered to your door every day for the next two months, do you hear me? You’ve got three seconds. One . . . two . . .’
He watched Hunter rush over to the wall hatch, open it and drop the diary down the chute.
Just a few seconds later the Werewolf watched as the diary fell from the chute onto a pile of dirty clothes, inside a large cart.
‘Nice doing business with you, Detective Hunter,’ he said before disconnecting from the call.
On the floor, by his feet, the Werewolf had an unzipped gym bag. He retrieved the diary from the pile of dirty clothes and pulled the Werewolf mask from over his head before reaching into the bag for an electronic device that looked a little like a handheld metal detector – the kind used by airport security. He switched the device on and brought it to the diary’s front cover.
The needle on the device didn’t move. There was no sound either.
The man flipped the diary over and brought the device to about half an inch from its back cover. As soon as he did, the device began beeping loudly while the needle on the meter kicked all the way to the right.
‘Oh, Detective Hunter,’ the Werewolf said to himself with a shake of the head. ‘You disappoint me. A tracker? Really?’ He reached back into the gym bag. This time, he retrieved a heavy-duty box cutter. ‘OK, then. Let’s have some fun, shall we?’
After flipping open the back cover, he used the cutter to slice the whole of the back cover off the diary. It took him only a couple of seconds to do it. He placed the diary inside his gym bag before walking over to the fire alarm button on the wall by the door to the laundry room and activating it.
In a flash, all thirty-five floors inside the Westin Bonaventure Hotel were taken up by the desperate screams of the fire alarm. A few seconds later, worried guests and hotel employees started pouring into the corridors and stairwells. Confusion and dis-orientation took over the crowd in no time at all, which was exactly what the Werewolf was after.
He grabbed his gym bag, together with the diary’s back cover, pulled his hood over his head and quickly stepped out of the laundry room. The corridors of sublevel one were already busy with people. Guests and employees alike were coming out of the gym, the spa, and one of the kitchens, all located on the same level.
The Werewolf joined the crowd, which was already being guided by a hotel employee, telling everyone to use one of the emergency fire exits, instead of using the stairs to go up to the ground floor. As the man joined the crowd, he couldn’t believe his luck. Only a few paces in front of him, a tall and well-built hotel guest had just exited the gym. The guest was wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt and an LA Dodgers jacket. Hanging from his shoulder was a small black and white gym bag, which the Werewolf noticed was unzipped.
‘Perfect,’ he whispered to himself.
He hurried to catch up with the hotel guest. With everyone so close to each other, the man had absolutely no problem slipping the torn diary cover into the guest’s gym bag.
‘This should be fun,’ he thought. As the group of people exited the building and turned left in the direction of West Fourth Street, the Werewolf turned back on himself and re-entered the hotel.
There was still something he needed to do.
Seventy-Eight
Outside, as the contents of the man’s gym bag spilled onto the ground, Garcia’s eyes flickered to the one item that had ended up just by his feet.
He blinked once – doubt muddled his thoughts.
Twice – that was when he finally realized what he was actually looking at – the torn back cover of the killer’s diary.
‘What the fuck?’
The other two SWAT agents, who also had their weapons drawn, had already moved forward to help Agent Shaffer. It took them just a blink of an eye to get to him. In no time at all, they had immobilized the man on the ground, holding his head tight against the sidewalk and handcuffing his hands behind his back.
‘You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder,’ Agent Shaffer said, as he started to read the man his Miranda warning. ‘You have the right to remain silent . . .’
‘What?’ the man on the ground yelled back. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ The expression on his face was a mixture of anger, surprise and terror. ‘Suspicion of murder? What murder?’
Agent Shaffer disregarded the man’s cries and carried on with the warning. ‘Anything you say can and will be used . . .’
Agent Silva, together with his two SIS Agents, had seen the hurried movement of people, as Agent Shaffer tackled the man to the ground. They too moved in to assist the SWAT agent.
Garcia quickly retrieved a paper tissue from his pocket, bent down and picked up the torn back cover by his feet. He flipped it one way then the other, studying it.
‘What’s going on out there?’ he heard Hunter ask through his earpiece. ‘Do we have him?’
‘Yes, we have the scumbag,’ Agent Silva replied. He had got to the man and was helping the SWAT agents get him back on his feet. As he held the man by his arms and pulled him up, he moved his lips to less than half an inch from the man’s ear and whispered. ‘
Please try to run so I have an excuse to blow your brains out right here . . . right now.’ He let go of the man. ‘C’mon . . . run. You can do this.’
‘Robert,’ Garcia finally said. He was still staring at the torn back cover. ‘I think that we might have a problem here.’
‘What sort of problem?’
Garcia saw Agents Shaffer and Silva, who had also heard Hunter’s question and Garcia’s reply in their earpieces, move their attention from the handcuffed man to him. Both of them had that same question floating around inside their eyes: What sort of problem?
Garcia lifted the cover to show Agents Shaffer and Silva. ‘It looks like Werewolf man has anticipated our move,’ Garcia replied to Hunter.
‘Which move is that?’ Hunter asked.
‘The tracker,’ Garcia explained. ‘Someone tore it off.’
‘What do you mean, “tore it off”?’
‘Someone tore off the whole of the diary’s back cover, Robert. That’s what the suspect we just bagged had with him – the torn-off back cover, which contained the tracker we planted into the diary.’
Agent Shaffer immediately let go of the man, reaching for his gym bag. He rifled through whatever was left inside it for a few seconds before throwing the bag back on the ground. ‘No diary,’ he announced. ‘Fuck!’
The two SWAT agents had already patted the man down. He had no concealed weapons with him, but they did find a wallet with $112 in cash, three credit cards, a driver’s license and a photo of a smiling dark-haired woman next to a little boy that looked to be about three years old. The name on the license matched the one on the credit cards – Gabriel Quinn.
By then, the crowd at that particular spot had moved back considerably, clearing a large space around the man and the LAPD officers. Ninety-eight percent of the crowd that formed the large human circle had their cellphones out and were filming everything.
Agent Shaffer walked over to Garcia and handed him the man’s wallet.
‘Apparently,’ Garcia started telling Hunter, but he was forced to pause, as the fire engines finally started arriving on South Figueroa Street – six in total. ‘Hold on . . .’ He waited for almost a minute until they had all parked and switched off their sirens. ‘OK, apparently the person we’ve just arrested is one Gabriel Quinn – thirty-eight years old, from Palo Alto.’
‘What the hell do you mean – “apparently”?’ the man shouted back, his eyes wide open in shock. ‘That’s who I am.’
‘This could all be a trick,’ Agent Silva said, staring the man down. ‘We all know how clever this guy is.’
This time the man didn’t shy away from the agent’s stare. ‘Oh, you better get ready for the lawsuit of the century,’ he told Silva, his tone defiant. ‘Just have a look around you, buddy. Can you see all the phone cameras pointing your way? Well, that’s called evidence and that’s exactly what I’m going to use to fuck you up.’
‘Mr. Quinn,’ Garcia said, coming up to the man. His tone was calm and a little apologetic. ‘I’m Detective Carlos Garcia with the LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit. You’re right, this might all be a misunderstanding, and if you could please come with me to one of our patrol cars, we can clear all this up in a few minutes.’ He paused and looked at the man’s gym bag on the floor. ‘We might also need your help.’
Seventy-Nine
From when Hunter last spoke to Garcia over the radio, it took him another fourteen minutes to clear the last few flights of stairs and finally get all the way down to the hotel’s reception lobby. It took him another minute and a half to get through the crowds and find the patrol car to which Garcia had taken Gabriel Quinn.
Garcia was just coming off a call to Shannon Hatcher when he saw Hunter appear barefoot from the crowd.
‘I’ve just got off the phone to Shannon,’ Garcia said, as Hunter got to him. ‘Everything checks out. The guy in the back seat . . .’ his chin jerked in the direction of the patrol car and the tall man sitting inside it, ‘ . . . really is Gabriel Quinn from Palo Alto. He’s a web developer. He’s in LA for a convention, which is actually happening right here at the Westin Hotel.’
Hunter already knew that the man’s identity would check out.
‘He was just coming out of the hotel gym on sublevel one,’ Garcia continued, ‘when the alarm went off.’
‘Did you ask him if he remembers seeing anyone coming out of the laundry room right about that time?’ Hunter asked.
‘I didn’t ask him about the laundry room,’ Garcia admitted. ‘But I did ask him if he remembers anyone trying to strike up a conversation with him while he was exiting the hotel, or if anyone bumped into him or anything . . .’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Mr. Quinn laughed. He said that everyone was bumping into everyone . . . everybody was talking to everyone.’
Hunter nodded, disappointment making the edges of his mouth droop.
Garcia shook his head. ‘How the hell did Werewolf man know about the tracker?’
‘He didn’t,’ Hunter came back. ‘But he probably suspected that we would’ve tried something. My guess is that he had some sort of device with him that picked up airwave transmissions. That’s how he found the tracker so fast.’
‘Fuck!’ Garcia whispered under his breath. ‘Now what?’
Hunter knew that there was nothing that they or anyone else could do.
The fire brigade had finally established that there was no fire. It’d been a false alarm, triggered from the laundry room on sublevel one.
Hunter paused and looked back at the crowd that was at last being allowed to go back into the hotel. He wondered if the Werewolf was still around, hanging in the crowd just for the fun of it. Hunter wouldn’t be surprised if he was.
He was about to go to speak to Gabriel Quinn himself when he felt a phone vibrate inside his outside jacket pocket. He frowned at Garcia before reaching for it. As he retrieved the phone, Hunter’s frown morphed into a questioning look. He didn’t recognize the phone. It was neither his own nor the one that he had been carrying with him since he left the Grand Central Market. This time, it wasn’t a smartphone. What Hunter had in his hand was a Motorola Doro 6520. He looked up and searched the crowd again. Obviously, the Werewolf had somehow slipped the phone into his pocket as he was leaving the hotel, which meant that he probably was somewhere close. Probably somewhere where he could see Hunter at that exact moment. The problem was, at that exact moment, most people in the crowd had a phone in their hands.
Half a second was all it took for Garcia to figure out what was going on. His eyebrows arched at Hunter.
‘Are you joking?’ he asked. ‘It’s him again?’
Agents Shaffer and Silva quickly joined the two detectives.
Hunter flipped the phone open – unknown number.
He took the call.
‘Hello?’
‘A tracker, Detective Hunter?’ the Werewolf asked. ‘Really? How much of an amateur do you think I am? You did have a look at the diary, right? Did I come across as an amateur to you?’
Hunter didn’t really know how to reply.
‘All I can tell you right now, Detective, is that your little trick . . . your little tracker, has sealed the girl’s fate.’
‘Don’t,’ Hunter tried. ‘You have your diary back. That was the agreement – you get the diary, we get Angela. Just let her go . . . please. Taking her life will not achieve anything. Let her go.’
‘Oh no, Detective Hunter, it sounds to me like you’re begging. Is that what you’re doing? You’re begging a killer not to kill?’
Hunter took in a deep breath. ‘Yes. I am begging you. Please.
Let her go. Let her live.’
‘That would indeed look very bad on your record, wouldn’t it? Your “tracker” plan goes wrong and it costs the life of a civilian hostage. That can’t be good.’
‘This is not about me,’ Hunter said. ‘I really couldn’t care less about my record. This is about a young woman’s life. A woman who made a mistake when she took your bag. That was all
. She doesn’t deserve to die for that.’
‘Well, Detective Hunter, since you’re begging, let me see you beg.’
‘What?’
‘I want to see you beg me not to kill her. I want to see you get down on your knees and beg.’
Hunter’s gaze went back to the crowd, which was then considerably thinner than moments ago. The only way in which the Werewolf would be able to see him beg was if he did indeed have eyes on him.
Despite the thinning crowd, Hunter could not identify anyone as a likely suspect.
‘I’m waiting, Detective. On your knees.’
Hunter didn’t move.
‘Get on your knees . . . NOW.’
Slowly, Hunter got down on both knees.
Garcia, Agent Shaffer and Agent Silva took a step back and all three of them looked back at Hunter sideways.
‘What are you doing?’ Garcia asked.
‘Now beg.’
‘Please,’ Hunter said, still holding the phone to his right ear. ‘I’m begging you. Let Angela live.’
The penny dropped for Garcia and the two agents. It was their turn to scan the crowd.
‘Motherfucker,’ Agent Silva gasped, as he signaled his agents to get back into the crowd and start looking.
‘Who are we looking for?’ one of the agents asked.
‘Anyone suspicious,’ Agent Silva replied, motioning them to scatter into the crowd.
‘I’m sure you can do better than that, Detective. Say it louder.’
Hunter repeated the same seven words of seconds ago. This time louder.
‘No, no, Detective. I want you to shout it as if your lungs were on fire. Let the world know that you want the girl to live.’
Hunter powered his lungs with as much oxygen as he could breathe in.
‘PLEASE, I’M BEGGING YOU, LET ANGELA LIVE.’
Absolutely everyone around turned to look at the seemingly crazy man, down on his knees, yelling his guts out.
