I Am Death

by Chris Carter

  ‘We shot the breeze for a while, then ended up moving the conversation from the bar to one of the tables, all the while Pete is drinking neat bourbon and I’m drinking cheap whiskey. Once we took the table, Pete began telling me how he hated his life, how his wife had left him years ago for no good reason, and how she had left him stuck with this boy.’

  The man was tracking Squirm’s reactions, but the boy looked as if he had gone into some sort of trance, with his good eye wide open staring back at his captor. The man continued without missing a beat.

  ‘Pete went on and on, telling me how much of a pain in the ass the boy was, that he had been a mistake that should never have happened and so on. In short, Pete blamed this boy for everything bad that had happened to him in his life. I’m telling you, Squirm, this guy hated his son with a divine passion. He told me that there’d been many nights that he’d gotten back home and almost strangled the boy in his sleep. I asked him “Why hadn’t he?” and he told me that if he thought he could get away with it, he would.’

  The man paused, reached for the bacon rasher that Squirm had failed to eat and placed the whole thing in his mouth. He continued only when he was done chewing.

  ‘That was when I told Pete that there were plenty of ways one could get away with murder. One just needed to know what to do.’

  Those words seemed to fill the room with a cold, discomforting air.

  ‘This Pete guy looks back at me,’ the man continued, ‘and his next few words came out sounding like a challenge.’ ‘The Monster’ spoke with a deep sounding voice. ‘“Oh, really? OK, big shot, if it’s so easy, why don’t you do it for me?”’

  ‘The Monster’ let those words hang in the air for a moment, giving the boy a chance to take in every syllable.

  ‘I said nothing in return, but this Pete guy didn’t want to let go, he kept on pushing. “I’m serious, man. You do the kid and I’ll pay you.”’ ‘The Monster’ smiled at the boy. ‘Obviously Pete had no idea who he was talking to, so I looked him deep in the eye and asked him how much he was willing to pay me. Now, I must admit that I thought that all that crap about getting rid of his boy was just the alcohol talking, that deep down he didn’t really mean it, but fuck, was I wrong? He meant every single word.’

  Squirm kept his gaze on the man sitting at the head of the table, but his thoughts were elsewhere. In his mind he could picture the bar scene perfectly, and as he did so he felt something come alive inside his stomach. All the food he’d just eaten threatened to come back up, but this time he didn’t care.

  ‘So once we’d established that neither of us were joking,’ ‘The Monster’ continued with his story, ‘we began to discuss a figure. Would you like to know what that figure was, Squirm? Would you like to know how much your father paid me to take you away and kill you?’

  Sixty-One

  Detective Sanders was right, Mathew Hade could be nothing more than one enormous coincidence. After all, neither Fresno PD nor Sacramento PD had managed to gather enough evidence on him to substantiate any sort of arrest, despite all the suspicions. But then again, neither Hunter nor Garcia subscribed to the ‘coincidence’ fan club, especially when those coincidences began to accumulate in the way that they had. The fan club that both detectives did subscribe to, however, was the ‘check absolutely everything’ one.

  As soon as Sanders had left their office, Garcia asked Operations to compile a detailed profile on Mathew Hade, tracing him all the way back to his childhood. The file would take at least twenty-four hours to compile, so at the moment all they had was the little information contained in the dossier Sanders had handed them. Not much, but definitely a start.

  The address listed on Mathew Hade’s arrest sheet was somewhere in East Los Angeles, not that far from the bar in which he had gotten arrested for getting into a fight. The drive took Hunter and Garcia a little over thirty minutes.

  For the duration of the ride, Hunter kept Hade’s file open on his lap. He had read and reread the dossier twice over, and every now and then Hunter would flip back to Hade’s mugshot and portrait, as if he needed to verify something against both photographs.

  ‘You know,’ Garcia said, as he exited Santa Ana Freeway, heading north. He couldn’t help but notice how often Hunter had checked Hade’s photographs. ‘There’s something about him that bothers me too.’ He jabbed at the mugshot. ‘Something about the look in his eyes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but just look at them. Look at that stare.’

  Hunter did, for the zillionth time.

  ‘It’s a dead, cold stare. Full of anger and –’ Garcia had to pause and think of the best word to use – ‘Determination.’

  Hunter nodded his agreement, but said nothing in return. Garcia didn’t need to explain what he meant. He and Hunter had come across that sort of stare more times than they would’ve liked to. It was the kind of stare they both knew never to overlook.

  Garcia glanced at Hunter from the corner of his eyes. ‘But that wasn’t what you were looking at, was it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘C’mon, Robert, you’ve been staring at those pictures as if you’re looking for Wally. Well, let me tell you, he’s not there. So what is it?’

  Hunter regarded the photographs one more time. ‘Nothing, really. Just something the killer mentioned in his second note.’

  This time Garcia didn’t glance at Hunter. He turned to look at him.

  ‘Shit!’ he said before quoting: ‘“If they looked straight into my eyes, would they see the truth inside them? Would they see what I have become, or would they falter?”’

  Garcia had also memorized the killer’s note.

  ‘I had forgotten about that,’ he admitted. ‘But now that you’ve mentioned it, and looking at those photos, one thing is for damn sure – those eyes can certainly tell a story on their own.’

  ‘Well, these are just photographs,’ Hunter said, finally closing the file. ‘We’ll get a better idea once we meet him face to face . . .’

  ‘. . . and look into his eyes,’ Garcia finished.

  Sixty-Two

  Consciousness returned to Alison like waves breaking over a beach, but the pain was always there whether she was conscious or not. It was an odd kind of pain, a dull ache that started on the left side of her neck and spread with the resolve of soldier ants to the rest of her body, but the worst pain came from her wrists – a burning soreness that felt like her hands were being sawn off with a blunt hacksaw.

  Her head was slumped forward with her chin almost touching her chest. During periods of consciousness Alison’s eyes would flicker and every now and then she could see red toenails resting against the floor. It took her some time to realize that they were her own toenails. She had been stripped naked.

  Alison had no idea where she was but it was somewhere dark and hot, with thick rubber foam sheets glued to the walls and metal pipes above her head.

  Instinctively she tried moving, but that only served to sharpen the pain in her arms. Something dug deeper into her wrists, as if thin metal rods were being forced between her joints and then twisted to one side. The pain quickly moved up her arm before settling on her shoulders. Right then, she truly believed that her arms were being slowly pulled from their sockets.

  Trying to better understand what was happening to her, Alison lifted her chin, a movement that sent waves of nausea rippling through her stomach. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her lids flickered again. She had to summon all of her strength not to fall back into the abyss of unconsciousness.

  With great effort, Alison managed to focus on her arms, which were stretched high above her head. Only then did she finally understand why they hurt so much. Her wrists were shackled by a metal chain speckled with blood. The chain had been looped over a thick metal pipe that ran across the ceiling. All of her weight was being supported by her thin arms and the chain was biting deeply into her bloody wrists.

  Time dragged interminably. S
he tried to remember what had happened. Why was she in this hellhole? But the incessant throbbing in her head made thinking an impossible task. Her throat had swollen up so much that she had to practically force every breath into her lungs, and that had caused her mouth to go bone dry.

  Braving the pain, Alison looked up once again and studied her restraints as best as she could. The chain around her wrists was fastened by a small, brass padlock. A bigger padlock kept the loop around the ceiling pipe in place.

  What the hell is going on? Where was she?

  Nothing made sense.

  Her eyes had gotten a little more used to the poor lighting, enabling her to look around her surroundings. The floor of the room she was in was made of concrete. It was covered in stains of different sizes but Alison couldn’t tell what had created them – oil, water, blood?

  Over to her left she saw a short flight of stairs leading up to a closed door. There were no windows in the room, which led her to believe that she was in some sort of sordid basement. To her right, a little more hidden in the shadows, she could see part of a workshop table. Several tools and instruments were lying on its surface. She couldn’t make them all out but the ones she saw froze her heart – a circular handheld sander, a pair of bolt cutters, pruning shears, a bullwhip and a selection of medical scalpels and forceps.

  She tried to use her feet to push herself up and lessen the stress on her arms but they could barely touch the ground. All she could do was teeter on her toes. The effort produced the exact opposite effect to the one she was looking for, straining her arms even further. The pain made her scream, but the rubber foam that lined the walls muffled the noise as if she were underwater.

  But somebody heard her, because seconds later the door at the top of the stairs opened and a male figure was framed in the light behind it. He stood there, in silence, for a moment. His strong arms hung loosely by his sides.

  ‘Wh . . . who are you?’ she breathed out, but her voice sounded so weak she was unsure he had heard her. She tried again. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  No reply. No movement.

  That only served to fill Alison with even more terror.

  ‘Please . . . please.’

  The figure finally reached for a light switch on the outside of the door and a fluorescent bulb, encased in a metal box on the ceiling, blinked into life, flooding the basement with light.

  Alison immediately looked away, squeezing her eyes tight to protect them from the sudden brightness. Seconds later, she tried to focus on the figure by the door. His shoes clicked against the stairs as he made his way down to the basement floor. Alison’s gaze followed him.

  ‘Please. What do you want from me? Who are you? Why am I here?’

  The man walked over to the workshop table in the shadows and paused, facing her. They locked eyes for a long moment.

  ‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’ he finally said. His voice was deep, cold and guttural – and overflowing with confidence. His posture was firm and strong, like a warrior’s ready for battle.

  Alison concentrated. No, she didn’t recognize him, but she also couldn’t shake the feeling that something about him was very familiar to her, especially his eyes.

  She didn’t have to answer him. He knew she didn’t recognize him. His disguises were always flawless.

  He turned toward the workshop table and reached for something Alison couldn’t see.

  ‘Let me ask you something, Alison.’

  The man began unbuttoning his shirt.

  Alison felt her body begin to convulse with fear.

  ‘Oh no, no, no.’

  He allowed the pause to linger on, stretching the suspense.

  ‘How much do you know about pain?’

  He turned to face her.

  Her eyes locked on to the object he was holding in his hand and her voice completely failed her.

  ‘Because I know . . . everything.’

  Sixty-Three

  ‘OK, this is it,’ Garcia said as he parked his car right in front of an old three-storey construction located halfway down a relatively busy road. The building looked tired and in serious need of some attention. Most of the windows looked like they’d never been cleaned, at least not on the outside, and what should’ve been a front lawn looked more like the remains of an old battlefield.

  It didn’t get any better on the inside.

  The wooden door at the entry lobby creaked loudly as Hunter pushed it open, revealing a small and poorly lit room that smelled of a thousand ashtrays. Water infiltration stains marked the ceiling like freckles on a face. Some of that water had lazily traveled down one of the walls, pushing itself behind the wallpaper and creating blisters that looked ready to pop at any minute. Cigarette burn marks formed an interesting pattern on the old and dirty rug that centered the room.

  ‘Nice. Classy,’ Garcia said as he and Hunter stepped inside.

  It seemed like the creepy sound generated by the hinges on the old front door was used as a shop bell, because as soon as the noise came to a stop, an overweight Hispanic-looking man promptly appeared behind the counter on the south wall. He smelled of spiced refried beans and Taco sauce, and his greasy hair was stuck to his sweaty forehead as if he’d just finished the toughest exercise session ever known to man.

  ‘What can I do for you gentle—’ He paused midsentence, before his shoulders slumped down as if all of a sudden he’d become fed up with life. ‘Aww, cbinga tu madre! Cops.’

  Hunter had had a suspicion that this wouldn’t be a regular apartment building. From the outside it looked like one of those places that rented their apartments by the hour, day, week, month, or whatever arrangement better suited the customer – no questions asked, just as long as they could make the payments.

  ‘Are we that obvious?’ Garcia asked Hunter, looking at him from head to toe.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘What? Are you joking, ese?’ the man said from behind the counter. His Mexican accent wasn’t nearly as heavy as he was. ‘Your badges are practically tattooed on your foreheads. Yes, you are that obvious. Why do you guys like to bust my balls so much, huh? I’m just trying to earn an honest living here.’

  ‘Yeah, that is a wonder,’ Garcia said, emphasizing the way he was looking around the entry lobby and bringing his right hand to his face to cover his nose. ‘Everything around here looks to be right on the money, and that includes the attitude.’

  The man began to murmur something inaudible but Hunter cut him short.

  ‘We’re not here to bust your balls,’ he said, approaching the counter and displaying his credentials.

  ‘Or to criticize your fine establishment,’ Garcia said, coming up behind Hunter. ‘And yes, we are cops.’

  ‘I take it that you are the building’s superintendent, Mr.?’ Hunter said, returning his ID to his pocket.

  ‘Moreno,’ the man replied with a sullen face. ‘Arturo Moreno and, yes, I am the building’s superintendent.’

  The sweat stains on his shirt, directly under his armpits, looked like they were growing larger.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said, being careful to place Mathew Hade’s portrait photograph, not his mugshot, on the counter. ‘We have information that this man lives here. Apartment two-eleven?’

  Moreno eyeballed the picture for a little while.

  ‘Um-hum.’ He nodded, looking bored. ‘But I’d say that “lives” is a very strong word to describe his relationship with apartment two-eleven.’

  Hunter’s eyebrows lifted inquisitively. ‘All right, so how would you describe it?’

  ‘He comes and goes,’ Moreno replied. ‘Like most people here. Sometimes he’ll stay for a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And sometimes he’ll disappear for the same amount of time. Even longer. He’s got no schedule. No one here does.’

  ‘Is he in now?’ Garcia asked, his eyes moving to the staircase to the left of the counter. The severely worn-out red and black carpet that lined the stairs was ripped at the edge of
every step, some of it so badly Garcia was certain it would constitute a health hazard.

  Moreno shook his head. ‘No, he isn’t. I haven’t seen him for . . .’ He paused and looked up at the cobwebs on the ceiling, as if the answer was up there with all the dust. ‘Five, six days, maybe? Maybe less, I’m not sure. Last time I saw him he was only here for a couple of days. If I remember right, he had a friend with him then.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Well,’ Moreno shrugged carelessly. ‘They came in together, chatting like they were friends, so I guess that that’s what they were.’

  ‘Was this friend male or female?’ Hunter queried.

  ‘Hombre,’ Moreno answered. ‘Male.’

  ‘Have you ever seen this friend before?’

  Moreno thought about it for just a couple of seconds. ‘No. I can’t say I have.’ He began scratching the back of his neck as if his life depended on it.

  Garcia frowned at him before taking a step back. He wouldn’t be surprised if the place had a flea or bedbug problem.

  ‘But in this place, ese,’ Moreno continued. ‘A lot of new people come and go with the guests.’ He stopped with the scratching and checked his nails, before rubbing them against the front of his shirt. ‘You know how it goes, right? What the guests do in their apartments is their own business, comprendes? I just take care of the place.’

  And you’re doing a fine job, Garcia thought, but kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Have you ever seen him bring any women back here?’ Hunter asked.

  Moreno coughed a laugh. ‘Are you for real, ese? Yeah, I’ve seen him bring women here and, before you ask, as far as I am concerned they were all of legal age.’