I Am Death

by Chris Carter

  She checked her watch – five minutes past one in the morning. Her bus route wasn’t part of the ‘Owl Service’ that ran 24/7 in LA – but she knew that her route ran all the way up to two a.m. Alison crossed the road and began walking to the bus stop on the other side. She reached into her bag, but as she rummaged around for her purse, she felt a pit begin to materialize in her stomach.

  No purse.

  She stopped walking, pulled her bag open with both hands and began fumbling inside it again, this time a little more desperately.

  Nothing.

  ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no,’ Alison cried out, almost sticking her whole head inside her bag to look for it. Lipstick, foundation powder, makeup brush, loose change, cellphone, a pen and house keys.

  Her purse was gone.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’

  She knew she’d had it with her when she boarded the bus because she kept her TAP card in it.

  While she slept at the back of the bus, she’d of course never noticed the hooded eighteen-year-old kid who had first sat across the aisle from her, before stealthily moving over to her side once he’d noticed how deeply asleep she was. When he left the bus, his pocket was a little heavier, and Alison’s bag a little lighter.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  In today’s double shift she had made a total of two hundred and twelve dollars in tips.

  The pit in her stomach had now turned into a well.

  She desperately needed that money to pay her bills.

  Alison looked around one more time. The bus stops on both sides of the road were empty, and the streets looked almost deserted. She didn’t know the area but she didn’t like it one bit. She felt vulnerable.

  Feeling cheated and lost, Alison quickly pondered what to do. She could go to the police, but she was certain that there wasn’t much they would do. Lorena, one of the other waitresses at Donny’s, had also been pickpocketed inside a bus on a different route a couple of months back. She’d gone to the police. They’d taken down all her details, and the pep talk they’d then given her about how she should be more careful and more attentive when in a crowded space had made her feel like it all had been her fault.

  Alison decided that the best thing she could do was to get home as quickly as possible.

  Hanging on tightly to her bag, she began walking south as fast as she could.

  She’d been walking for almost forty-five minutes when she reached the underpass. She’d been through it plenty of times before, just never this late at night. But the good news was that the underpass was just a five-minute walk from her place.

  Alison began walking faster, but as she did so she heard something else other than her own footsteps echo behind her. She looked around wildly for a moment. She could see no one behind or in front of her, but due to the shadows created by the poor lighting, she just couldn’t be sure.

  Definitely a B-movie horror scene, she thought.

  Alison exhaled slowly, as if blowing out hot air would carry with it the ripples of fear that had iced over her heart a moment earlier. The echoes faded around her and she listened to the raspy sound of her own breath.

  Seconds later she began walking again, and again she could swear that she heard something else behind her other than the echoes of her own footsteps, but this time she was also overwhelmed by a sense of narrowing. It was as if the walls around her had closed in ever so slightly.

  Alison shook her head, hoping that by force of vigorous motion she could cleanse the sensation from within her.

  It didn’t work. Instead, the sensation grew stronger, moving to plain and simple fear.

  She swung her body around to look behind her one more time.

  That was when she saw him.

  The middle-aged man who had stepped off the bus with her. He had been following her since she’d left the diner. When she’d missed her stop, he’d sat tight. He jumped off when she did, and followed her from a distance.

  In the underpass now, he was no more than four steps behind her.

  Where the hell had he come from? How was he able to move so fast?

  Three steps.

  His hand came out of his jacket pocket.

  Two.

  He was holding something.

  One.

  Oh my God, is that a syrin—

  Too late. The needle had already been plunged into her neck.

  Fifty-Two

  When Hunter got to their office, Garcia was standing by his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for something. His attention, though, was on the several printouts neatly arranged on his desktop.

  ‘What’s all that?’ Hunter asked, pressing the ‘space’ bar on his keyboard to wake up his computer.

  ‘Forensic lab reports,’ Garcia replied, his gaze not moving from the paper. ‘They all came in less than ten minutes ago. I just printed them out.’ He grabbed one of the files and passed it over to Hunter. ‘The toxicology on our first victim, Nicole Wilson, came back negative,’ he announced. ‘The killer kept her completely sober for six to seven days while raping and torturing her. We’re still waiting on the results from Sharon Barnard.’

  He turned to face his partner.

  Hunter nodded while he scanned the report.

  Garcia leaned back against the edge of his desk. ‘If this was any other killer, I would’ve said that toxicology on the second victim would mimic the first, but with this guy . . .’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Expect the unexpected. He doesn’t even have an MO. It wouldn’t really surprise me if we found out that, unlike Nicole Wilson, Sharon Barnard had been drugged to her eyeballs.’

  Hunter couldn’t argue with Garcia’s logic.

  Garcia reached for a couple more sheets of paper from his desk, passing them to Hunter.

  ‘OK, moving on,’ he said. ‘Forensics checked the telephone pole on Allenwood Road. They found no finger-prints, but what they did find were two tiny screw holes that didn’t seem to belong. They were high off the ground, just past the first set of telephone cables. They checked them against all the other poles on that road.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘No other pole had them. AT&T confirmed that the holes shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘Camera holder?’

  ‘That’s also my opinion,’ Garcia agreed. ‘According to IT forensics, it could’ve been easily done. The camera could’ve either stored the recorded images to some sort of hard drive, or streamed them live over the Internet.’

  Hunter seemed unsure. ‘Storing it to a hard drive would have meant using a camera bulkier than the killer would’ve wanted, or having a separate hard drive connected to it. Forensics found only one set of screw holes?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So no separate hard drive. A bulkier camera would’ve also been easier to spot from the road. I don’t think he would’ve gone for that option.’

  ‘Neither do I. Live streaming would’ve been the best option by far. IT forensics said that a camera with a wireless Wi-Fi connectivity could’ve piggybacked the Wi-Fi connection from any of the neighboring houses and no one would’ve known. Some of those cameras are as small and as light as a credit card.’

  ‘So our killer could’ve staked out the street from the comfort of his living room, miles away,’ Hunter said. ‘No suspicious characters or vehicles on the road. Risk of being spotted – zero.’

  Garcia nodded again. ‘As if we didn’t know, this guy is clever.’ He pushed one document aside and picked up a new one. ‘Forensics also managed to identify the type of pen the killer used to write the note that was sent to Mayor Bailey.’

  ‘So what have we got?’

  ‘The killer used a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.’ Garcia lifted his right index finger as he said the word ‘large’ to stress the emphasis. ‘BIC Cristals are probably the most popular ballpoint pens in the whole of America,’ he explained. ‘They are inexpensive and can easily be purchased from just about anywhere – corner shops, supermarkets, minimarkets, stati
onery stores, post offices, you name it. But the interesting thing here is; the most popular BIC Cristals are the medium ballpoints, not the large ones. Those are a little rarer.’

  Hunter peered at the copies of the killer’s notes pinned on to the picture board before his attention returned to Garcia.

  ‘But still,’ Garcia added. ‘Even though the large ballpoints aren’t as popular, they’re still popular enough.’

  Hunter could’ve guessed that would be the case.

  Garcia moved on to a new batch of documents. ‘We still have nothing relevant from Nicole Wilson’s laptop,’ he said. ‘Nothing from her emails either, but IT forensics have now managed to break through the security on Sharon Barnard’s tablet computer and cellphone. I already have someone going over the computer files. So far, nothing of any significance.’ Garcia’s eyebrows lifted promisingly, as if he had left the best for last. ‘But we did get something very interesting from her cellphone.’

  Fifty-Three

  Hunter, who was still going over the numbers on the last report Garcia had handed him, lifted his eyes to look at his partner.

  Garcia searched through the printouts on his desk, then passed two new sheets over to Hunter before explaining: ‘These are the transcripts of the very last text message conversation Sharon Barnard had.’ He paused and his demeanor changed to something more somber. ‘That conversation was between Sharon and the killer.’

  Hunter sat up. He hadn’t been expecting that. The first text message at the top of the file was time-stamped – 19:23.

  C’mon, answer your phone, Sharon. Don’t you want to play?

  Hunter read those first ten words, paused and looked back at Garcia.

  ‘We’ve already checked the sender’s number,’ Garcia said. ‘Surprise, surprise – prepaid cellphone, untraceable. No calls or messages were made or sent prior to or after what was sent to Sharon Barnard. All the calls and text messages made and sent from that phone were to Ms. Barnard’s number. After that, the signal died. He destroyed the phone.’

  Hunter’s attention returned to the file.

  Sharon Barnard’s reply:

  Go fuck yourself, freakshow. Whoever you are, I’m blocking your number.

  Then the killer.

  You know what? Forget about the phone. Let me ask you something. Did you remember to lock your front door?

  No reply from Sharon Barnard.

  Killer:

  C’mon, open the door, Sharon. I’m right outside. Let’s have some fun.

  Hunter flipped over to the second sheet.

  Again, no reply from Sharon Barnard.

  Killer:

  OK, who needs the door anyway? Maybe I can get in some other way.

  The file came to an end.

  Hunter reread the entire transcript a couple of times over. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘We’ve got nothing else. But the killer called her twice just before sending the first text message. Neither of the calls lasted very long.’

  Hunter gave him a questioning look.

  ‘Yeah, we’re already in contact with her cellphone provider to see if we can get either a recording or a transcript of those conversations. We might have something by tomorrow.’

  Garcia began pacing in front of the picture board. ‘Have you ever encountered anyone like this guy, Robert? I mean, he’s like a fucking chameleon when it comes to the way he operates.’ He indicated the sheets on Hunter’s desk. ‘Those text messages show another complete change of MO from his previous murder.’

  Hunter knew exactly what his partner was talking about.

  ‘He went for pure fear this time,’ he agreed, locking eyes with Garcia.

  ‘Exactly. With Nicole Wilson, instead of terrorizing her, he befriended her with that whole horseshit story about being Ms. Bennett’s cousin from Texas. He wasn’t looking to scare her. He was after her trust. But with Sharon Barnard –’ Garcia shook his head – ‘He wanted her fear, not her trust.’

  ‘And he certainly got it,’ Hunter told him. ‘The lack of response to these messages.’ He indicated them on the transcript. ‘The reason she didn’t answer them back isn’t because she was ignoring him, it’s because she was petrified. She knew he was about to break into her house.’

  ‘So why didn’t she try calling nine-one-one?’

  ‘Maybe she did but the call never got through. Maybe she didn’t have time. Or maybe, in her panic, she didn’t think of it. Thinking straight under that sort of fear is a huge task, Carlos.’

  Three knocks sounded on Hunter and Garcia’s office door.

  ‘Come in,’ Garcia called.

  ‘Detectives,’ the man who pushed the door open said, lifting the blue folder he held in his right hand, ‘I think you’ll want to see this.’

  Fifty-Four

  That morning, just like every morning since Squirm had been taken into captivity, ‘The Monster’ unlocked the door to the kid’s cell at exactly 5:45 a.m. Squirm had been feeling ill all night. His dinner the night before had been his own vomit, eaten from the floor in the projection room upstairs – and ‘The Monster’ had made him eat every last scrap. Squirm had puked again, but not until he’d made it back to his cell, away from the man’s eyes. This time, shrouded by the fear of what could happen if he dirtied the floor one more time, he did it into his latrine bucket.

  ‘Rise and shine, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ said from the doorway, his voice bright and jovial. ‘It’s a quarter to six. Time for your chores.’

  Squirm had barely slept. His left eye remained badly swollen and the pains in his stomach felt like knife stabs. They were a combination of hunger pains and the result of heaving for so long on a completely empty stomach. His head also hurt with a deadly purpose, as if somehow thorns had found their way into his skull, lodging themselves just behind his eyeballs and were now digging at them like crazed woodpeckers. There also came a point during the night when he wasn’t sure if he’d gone delirious, or ‘The Monster’ had brought a new victim home, because he was certain that he could hear a woman’s screams.

  ‘I know you’ve heard me, Squirm. So get your lazy ass out of bed. Don’t make me come over there.’

  Squirm was curled up into a ball, lying down sideways on his dirty mattress, facing the wall. As he heard the man’s voice, he felt the will to carry on living desert him.

  And Squirm didn’t fight it.

  What was the point in living if he had to go through another day at the hands of this monster?

  Squirm knew exactly what was coming because every day always played out the same. He would be beaten up, sodomized, starved, then beaten up some more – most days, until he passed out and was thrown back into his cell, ready for the whole process to repeat itself the next day.

  ‘Get up, Squirm.’

  Maybe if Squirm didn’t move . . . maybe if he didn’t respond . . . maybe if he disobeyed the man’s orders, this would all end? Maybe the man would get angry enough to dish out a beating so severe the boy’s fragile body and internal organs would finally give up, and life would at last abandon him.

  Was it wrong for an eleven-year-old to want to die?

  Squirm didn’t think so, because in his mind what was wrong was for an eleven-year-old to live in this way.

  Squirm had also given up praying, because he simply didn’t know to whom he was praying anymore. If there was a God, he had no idea what he had done to piss him off so badly.

  Once again, tears came to the boy’s eyes. He was tired of them. He was tired of all the pain, and the hunger, and the darkness, and the fear. But most of all, Squirm was tired of living.

  As he heard the man take his first heavy step into the cell, the young boy began shivering. Instinctively, his body curled up into an even tighter ball, readying itself for the inevitable.

  But Squirm didn’t care anymore. In fact, he would rather be dead.

  All I have to do, Squirm thought, is piss him off enough that he won’t stop beating me when I pa
ss out. Yes, that’s it. I just need to make him angry and that won’t take much doing.

  ‘The Monster’ took another step toward the boy.

  Squirm drew in a deep breath, as if he was breathing in courage, rolled his body over on the mattress to face his captor and looked him straight in the eye.

  It was time to die.

  ‘Fuck you, you sick piece of shit.’

  Fifty-Five

  Garcia didn’t recognize the man standing at the door to their office. Decked out in a well-fitting black suit, a crisp white shirt, and a red silk tie, he was way too well dressed to be a CSI. He also didn’t look anything like any of the IT forensics people Garcia had ever met.

  ‘Please come in,’ Hunter said, getting to his feet. ‘Carlos, this is Detective Troy Sanders,’ he said, putting an end to Garcia’s questioning look. ‘He’s the head of the Missing Persons Unit’s Special Division based in Ramirez Street. He was also the detective in change of Nicole Wilson’s investigation.’

  ‘Please, call me Troy,’ Sanders said, shaking Garcia’s hand before turning to face Hunter. ‘I just came over to hand you this,’ he said, nodding at the file he had with him. ‘It’s the results of the search you asked me to run.’

  As Sanders handed Hunter the file, his gaze moved past the RHD detective and settled on the picture board directly behind him. A second later, his eyes widened.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sanders whispered under his breath.

  Hunter and Garcia followed his stare.

  ‘You already have a second victim?’ Sanders asked, his eyes moving about the board.

  Neither Hunter nor Garcia said anything.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Her body was found the day before yesterday,’ Garcia replied.

  Sanders’ expression was a mixture of surprise and incredulity. ‘A day after the first victim was found?’

  Garcia gave him a single, subtle nod.