by Chris Carter
‘Have you seen either of these two women around here?’ Hunter asked, now showing the building super a photo of Nicole Wilson and one of Sharon Barnard.
While studying the photographs, Moreno kept his mouth closed and ran his tongue against his upper front teeth. His top lip bulged with the movement.
‘Umm . . . nope, they don’t look familiar to me.’
‘Are you sure?’ Garcia insisted.
Moreno kept his gaze on the pictures for a while longer. ‘Yep. Positive, ese’
‘Who else works here? Like, who takes your place on your day off, or on your once-a-week shower day.’
Garcia’s joke was completely missed by Moreno.
‘My cousin, ese, but he’s not around till the end of the week. You can come back then and speak to him, if you like?’
‘Maybe we will,’ Garcia said.
‘You do have the keys to apartment two-eleven, right?’ Hunter asked.
Moreno looked at him, then at Garcia, then back at Hunter. ‘Yes, of course I do, but don’t you need some sort of warrant to go up in there? This place might be a dump, but it’s not a free-for-all, ese.’
‘Oh, sure,’ Garcia replied. ‘We can go get a warrant if you like, and maybe we’ll come back here with more than just a warrant for apartment two-eleven, ese. We’ll have a warrant for this whole building, including your office back there.’ He pointed at the closed door just behind Moreno. ‘And while we’re at it, we’ll bring a few health inspectors and immigration officers with us too. Sound good?’
‘Aw, pincbe culero.’ Moreno rubbed his greasy forehead while looking down at the floor.
‘Usted sabe que hablamos español también, ¿no?’ Garcia said, reminding Moreno that he and Hunter both understood Spanish.
Moreno didn’t look back at him. Instead, he simply opened one of the drawers behind the counter and picked up a set of keys.
‘OK, ese, but the only way you’re going up there is if I go with you.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, ese,’ Garcia said, taking a step back and pointing toward the staircase. ‘After you, compadre.’
Sixty-Four
By the time they cleared the four flights of stairs that took them up to the second floor, the building superintendent looked like he was about to go into cardiac arrest. His forehead was dripping with sweat and his breathing was so labored he sounded like an asthmatic Darth Vader.
‘Are you OK?’ Hunter asked as Moreno finally reached the second-floor landing. It had taken him almost two minutes to get through fifty steps.
‘Hijo de perra.’ Those words came out as a gasp. ‘Yeah . . . I’m fine, ese . . .’ he finally replied, in between deep breaths, while holding on to the wall. ‘I just need a moment.’
‘Yeah, you look fine,’ Garcia observed. ‘You sound fine too.’
Once again, Moreno simply ignored the sarcastic comment.
Down the short corridor in front of them, a door opened just enough for someone to peek outside, quickly shutting again a second later.
‘OK,’ Moreno said, standing up straight and wiping his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘Let’s just get on with this. The two of you walking these corridors is bad for business, comprendes? You guys even smell like cops.’
Garcia frowned at Hunter before quickly bringing his left forearm to his nose, smelling it, then doing the same to his right one.
‘You mean, we’re making the place smell nice?’ he said.
Moreno looked back at him, a reply almost materializing on his lips, but then he thought better of it.
Apartment two-eleven was the first door on the left as they entered the hallway. Moreno was about to slide his master key into the lock when Hunter grabbed his arm, gesturing for him not to. He pulled the building super to one side, moving him away from a direct line with the front door.
‘We knock first,’ Hunter whispered.
‘Why, ese? I told you, he’s not here.’
‘That may well be, but we still knock first.’
Hunter pulled Moreno away so that the two of them were standing against the wall to the left of the door. Garcia did the same, but on the right side.
Hunter knocked three times.
No answer.
Another three knocks.
Still no answer.
‘See? I told you, ese.’
‘OK.’ Hunter nodded. ‘You can use your key now.’
As Moreno unlocked the door and pushed it open, it creaked just as loudly as the one down at the entrance lobby.
From the outside, they could only see as far as the light that seeped in from the hallway allowed them to, which wasn’t far. Most of the room lay in shadow as all the curtains were drawn shut.
‘Lights?’ Hunter asked, once again pulling Moreno back a few steps.
‘On the wall.’ Moreno indicated from outside. ‘To the right of the door.’
Garcia reached in and flipped the switch.
At the center of the ceiling, a bulb flickered twice before coming on, bathing the small room in crisp, bright light.
‘Mathew Hade?’ Hunter called from the door.
No reply.
‘Mathew Hade?’ Hunter called again. ‘This is the LAPD. We would like to ask you a few questions.’
There was no one there.
As both detectives finally stepped inside, they paused, their eyes searching the room. It smelled slightly of bleach and disinfectant, with a hint of orange, as if somebody had spring-cleaned it not that long ago.
Intrigued, Garcia turned and checked the number on the door again – 211. They were indeed in the right apartment.
The room was completely bare, save for a simple wooden desk by the window on the north wall, a single chair and a two-drawer cabinet to the left of it. There was no sofa, no rug, no table and chairs, no TV, nothing hanging from the walls, none of the items one would expect to see in a living room.
‘Like I said, ese,’ Moreno said again. ‘He’s not here. I haven’t seen him for several days.’
‘It looks like he’s never been here,’ Garcia said, still looking around.
The living room offered two other doors, one that led to a small kitchen and the other to the bedroom and the bathroom.
While Garcia walked over to the window to pull open the curtains, Hunter moved into the bedroom. It was just as bare as the living room, with a single bed pushed up against the east wall, a bedside table with no drawers and a twodoor wooden wardrobe.
There was no bedding on the bed, as if no one had ever slept there. Resting against the wardrobe were an empty plastic bucket and a string mop.
Hunter grabbed a pair of latex gloves from his pocket before pulling open the wardrobe doors.
Empty.
One drawer at the bottom of it.
Also empty.
Hunter got down on his knees and took a look under the bed and the wardrobe.
There was nothing there. There was nothing anywhere.
He lifted the mattress and checked under it.
Clear.
He ran his hand across the top of the wardrobe.
Nothing but what was expected – dust.
He pulled the wardrobe away from the wall and checked behind it.
Nothing on the wall.
Nothing on the back of the wardrobe.
Hunter reached for the plastic bucket and checked inside it. Completely dry. Not even a drop of water. He brought the bucket to his nose. It carried the same faint smell of bleach and disinfectant with a hint of orange as the living room.
Hunter put the bucket down and checked the string mop. There was still a little bit of moisture on its strings. It smelled identical to the bucket, only not as faint. Hunter guessed that it had been used no more than four, maybe five days ago.
He returned the mop to its place, turned and stepped into the small, white-tiled bathroom. There was a washing basin on the left with a fixed mirror on the wall above it. The toilet was against the wall opposite the basin, w
ith the shower enclosure to its right. On the basin, Hunter found a shaving razor and a half-used tube of toothpaste – no toothbrush. The piece of soap inside the shower enclosure looked like it had only been used a couple of times. There were no towels of any sort inside the bathroom, paper or otherwise. No toilet paper either.
Hunter paused in front of the mirror and stared at his tired reflection for a moment, as though if he stared at it long and hard enough, the mirror would either tell him a story or reveal the reflection of who had last been standing before it.
Neither happened.
Hunter returned to the bedroom.
There was no doubt that apartment two-eleven was nothing more than a crash pad, a place Mathew Hade used from time to time and for only a day or so at a time. This was not where he lived – and if he really was who they were looking for, it certainly wasn’t the place where he kept his victims.
Sixty-Five
While Hunter searched the bedroom and the bathroom inside Mathew Hade’s apartment, Garcia checked the rest of the flat.
At least, this won’t take long, he thought, approaching the only three furniture items in the barren living room.
The desk and chair seemed relatively new, but the old-looking two-drawer cabinet looked as though it had been salvaged from the city dump. It was covered in nicks and scratch marks. The good news was that the drawers had no locking mechanism, which made things a lot easier.
From his pocket, Garcia retrieved a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on before pulling open the cabinet’s top drawer. Inside it, he found several sheets of regular, white printer paper, nothing else. He removed the sheets from the drawer and quickly fanned through them.
They were all blank.
Just to be sure, he swapped hands and fanned through them again from the other side.
Yes, all blank.
He returned them to the drawer before closing it and moving on to the bottom one. It slid open a lot less smoothly than the first drawer, as if one of its runners had been severely damaged.
From the look of the cabinet, Garcia didn’t find that at all surprising.
The drawer came open only about halfway before jamming.
Garcia tried again.
Same result. It was certainly jammed.
He tried once more, giving it a firm pull this time, but it made no difference, the drawer got stuck at the exact same point. But the firm pull made something that was lying at the back of the drawer roll forward – a red, BIC Cristal, ballpoint pen.
A millisecond later, Garcia’s memory spat out images of the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey, and the one that had been slid under Hunter’s door. Both had been written on crisp white sheets of printer paper, and forensics had identified the pen used as a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.
Garcia reached for the pen inside the drawer and for a quick instant he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. On the body of the pen, in tiny white letters, he saw the BIC logo, followed by the words ‘Cristal 1.6 mm’.
In his hand, he was holding a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.
Garcia curbed his excitement and retrieved a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. He dropped the pen inside it, sealing the bag.
Squatting down, Garcia looked inside the jammed drawer. It seemed empty. He stuck his hand inside it and felt around. Nothing. He closed the drawer and reopened the top one. From the paper pile inside it he retrieved the topmost sheet, before lifting it up to the window to study it against the light.
He was looking for impressions that could’ve been left behind. Depending on the pressure a person applies to a pen when writing, if a second sheet of paper is used as a base for the one that is being written on, partial and sometimes even full indentations might be left behind.
The sheet of paper was completely clear. No impressions of any kind.
Garcia reached for the sheet at the bottom of the pile and repeated the process, just in case he had returned the pile to the drawer the wrong way around after fanning through them.
Nothing.
Still, together with the red BIC Cristal, they would all be taken back to the forensics lab for further analysis.
Garcia left the living room and entered the kitchen. It was even more barren than the living room. There was a fridge-freezer at one end of the short kitchen worktop, a sink at the center of it and a small stove at the other end. Just under the worktop, Garcia saw two drawers together with three cupboards. Three other cupboards were mounted on to the wall above the sink. The only item on the chrome-plated dish rack to the left of the sink was a sponge. An electric kettle was to the left of the stove. There was no dishwasher, no washing machine and no microwave oven. Just like the rest of the apartment, a faint smell of bleach and disinfectant with a hint of orange lingered in the kitchen.
Garcia started by checking the fridge. There was nothing inside it except two small and unopened bottles of water. The inside of the fridge was sparkling clean. The freezer was completely empty.
Next he checked the three cupboards on the wall.
First one on the left.
Empty.
Middle one.
Empty.
Last cupboard.
Garcia found a can of tomato soup, a jar of coffee and a small pack of sugar, nothing else.
He moved on to the cupboards under the sink.
First one on the left.
He found a bottle of bleach, one of washing-up liquid, one trigger spray bottle of Orange Plus, two large sponges and a pack of cleaning cloths.
Middle one.
There were two plates, two tumblers and one coffee mug, all of them plastic.
Last cupboard.
Empty.
Garcia closed them all and reached for the sponge and the dish rack. Both were completely dry. No one had used either in a while.
He placed the sponge back on the rack and opened the drawer by the fridge.
Empty.
He walked to the other end of the kitchen worktop and opened the final drawer. All he found was one fork, one knife and a teaspoon – again, all of them plastic – together with a plain black book of matches with no logo on the front or back cover. He picked it up and flipped it open. The matches were also black with a bright red head. Five of them were missing. The inside of the book of matches differed from the outside because it was white instead of black.
Garcia stared at it for a couple of seconds before he finally realized what he was looking at.
Goosebumps rose on the back of his neck again. ‘Fuck!’
Sixty-Six
With his back flat against the wall, Squirm sat alone in the darkness of his cell. His knees were pulled up against his chest and his arms hugged his legs so tightly they were starting to go pale. The tips of his toes were moving up and down robotically, as if tapping to the beat of a slow song only he could hear. Despite the darkness, the boy kept his one good eye open, staring at nothing at all. The pain in his left eye was still there but Squirm simply didn’t care anymore.
‘The Monster’ had left soon after he had told Squirm how much money he’d been paid by the boy’s father to take him away.
‘Do you know what your father said to me?’ the man had asked Squirm back in the kitchen. ‘He told me that once I had taken “that plague” away from his life, I could do with you whatever I wished – kill you in whichever manner pleasured me most – as long as your body was never found. Now, what sort of father says something like that about his own child?’
Squirm had trembled at those words. Not because of the threat of death – in his own way he had already accepted that that was what was going to happen to him – but because he then knew that the story ‘The Monster’ had told him was true. That was exactly what his father used to call him – ‘plague’.
Immediately, an avalanche of memories came crashing down inside the boy’s mind.
All of them bad.
You’re like a fucking disease, you hear? A goddamn plague th
at torments my life.
You are the reason your mother left, did you know that? You are a plague. No wonder you have no friends. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you.
Get the hell out of my face, you fucking plague, or I will tear you a new asshole.
‘I would’ve done it for nothing, you know?’ ‘The Monster’ had said, bringing the boy back to reality. His next words, though delivered in a chillingly cold voice, were overflowing with what could only be described as a morbid passion.
‘What can I say? I like killing people. I like looking into their eyes as life leaves them. I like to savor every drop of their fear. I like how they beg me for mercy . . . not God . . . me. I like how they cry. How they promise to do whatever I want. Yes, I like it all, Squirm, but most of all I like the way it makes me feel.’
The man had paused for a moment. Just talking about it had filled him with such exhilaration he was practically shaking.
‘Do you know how killing someone makes you feel, Squirm? Powerful . . . strong . . . special. No one can ever again tell you that you don’t matter because right at that moment you know that you matter more than God.’ ‘The Monster’ moved his head from left to right and as he did so he shivered in a creepy sort of way. ‘You are their God.’
‘The Monster’ had laughed at how spooked Squirm looked.
After that, ‘The Monster’ had locked Squirm back in his cell, telling him that he would see him later that night. That had been hours ago. Squirm had then sat down on his dirty mattress, hugged his legs and not moved from that position since.
The boy’s rational mind didn’t want to believe it but the more he thought about it, the more it all made sense.
Due to his father’s inability to hold down a job, brought on by his struggle with alcohol, they had moved five times in the past three years. Eight times in the past five years, which made making friends a very difficult task and keeping them damn right impossible. That fact alone placed Squirm in a not very desirable category – the category of ‘loner’. He had no friends and, since his mother left them, no family either, with the exception of his father. No one really knew who he was because he’d learned to play the ‘loner’ part terribly well. He kept himself to himself as much as he could, especially in school. He was, in everyone’s eyes, the proverbial ‘invisible boy’ and that fitted his father’s plan like a glove. All he had to do was drop by Squirm’s school to let them know that they had to move again. That was it. Problem solved.
