by Chris Carter
Every inch of skin on Talicia’s body turned cold. She coughed to clear her throat.
‘I’m sorry, sir. Who did you say is dead?’
‘Number three.’
Talicia halted her typing for just a moment.
‘Are you saying that there are three people who are dead?’
‘You are not listening to me, are you?’ the man said calmly, but didn’t give Talicia a chance to reply. ‘Number three is dead. Her name is Alison. Number four will soon follow. A lot sooner than you think . . . for I am death.’
This time, the thought that came to Talicia’s mind was the opposite of what she had thought about the previous call. What had started seriously was now beginning to sound bogus.
‘Did you get that? Alison. Her name is Alison. Make sure you have it. Make sure they know it.’
Talicia couldn’t risk it.
‘Alison. Yes, I got it, sir. Do you have a last name for her?’
‘Good. Now write this down. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, sir, I’m ready.’
‘I. Am. Death. Tell that to the cops when you dispatch them.’
‘I got it,’ Talicia said. ‘What address shall I dispatch them to?’
‘Run your trace. Find this phone and you’ll find her.’
‘Sir? Hello? Sir?
The line didn’t disconnect but the caller was gone.
Seventy-Five
Lopez Canyon Road, in Lake View Terrace, stretches out from Foothill Freeway all the way into the small western tip of the Angeles National Forest, before sharply bending right and reaching Kagel Canyon Road, where it finally ends. Less than a mile after the sharp right bend, a disused and uneven road forks out and to the right of it, going up a small hill. The call that Talicia had taken had come from there; more specifically, from inside an abandoned wooden building right at the top of that road.
It was past two in the afternoon when Hunter and Garcia received a second call from Doctor Snyder. He had just arrived at the crime scene and, as he entered the building, the first thing he did was reach for his phone and call the UV detectives.
Even with the sirens on, the twenty-five-mile drive that saw Hunter and Garcia cutting through South Central before hooking on to Glendale Boulevard, and finally to the western tip of the Angeles National Forest, took them an hour.
Thanks to the isolated location, and the fact that the whole of the disused road was flanked by nothing more than rough terrain and dense, impassable shrubs, the LAPD could set a perimeter right at the road’s entrance. No reporter or press van was able to get within a mile of the building.
Garcia flashed his credentials at the officers by the outer crime-scene tape, took a right and drove up the bouncy road.
‘Is this place secluded and out of the way enough for you, or what?’ Garcia asked as he parked by a forensic-van at the top of the road.
Hunter had just checked his cellphone – still no news about Mathew Hade.
As they exited Garcia’s car, Hunter took a moment to study the building.
It was a relatively small, rectangular, wooden structure, with an old-style gable roof. Entrance was through large double doors at the eastern end of it. Both Hunter and Garcia’s first impression was that the building very closely resembled a barn, with the exception that its roof wasn’t as high as one would expect it to be. The outside had once been painted white but, after years of being battered by sun and rain, only small patches of color remained. Also, as a result of their harsh contact with the elements, a few planks of wood from the south wall, the one that they were facing, were either partially missing or broken.
Three police officers stood to the right of the double doors. All three of them looked like they’d just been sick.
As Hunter and Garcia approached the yellow crimescene tape that further restricted the entrance to the building, they were greeted by a peculiar smell that came from inside – a mixture of rotten food and a sweet, metallic odor. Both detectives recognized the smell immediately because they’d been around it too many times.
Blood.
And lots of it.
They flashed their credentials at the lone officer with the crime-scene log book, who handed them a Tyvek coverall and a pair of latex gloves each.
Hunter and Garcia suited up, stooped under the yellow tape and pushed open the doors. They’d taken only two steps inside before the force of the image that met their eyes sucked all the air from their lungs, and held them fast.
They now understood why the officers outside looked like they’d been sick.
But the savagery of what stood before them wasn’t what had driven Hunter and Garcia to a stunned silence, or made their hearts skip a beat.
It was the fact that they both knew who the victim was.
Seventy-Six
Hunter and Garcia stood at the entrance to a large open area. Just like the impression they’d got from the outside, the inside also reminded them of a ranch barn, only to a smaller scale. The harsh sun in the sky outside, beating down on the building’s old wood walls and black gable roof, made its interior feel like an oven. They had been inside for less than ten seconds and beads of sweat were already starting to form on their foreheads and on the back of their necks.
Doctor Snyder was standing toward the back of the room, talking something over with one of his forensics agents. As he saw the detectives come through the doors, he made his way over to greet them. He had to travel around the edge of the room to avoid all the blood.
‘Robert. Carlos,’ he said with a small nod. His coverall was zipped up to the base of his neck but the hood was down, resting against the back of his shoulders. Once again, he had no nose mask.
Both detectives returned the gesture but kept their attention focused solely on the female victim before them. Her head was slumped forward, with her chin touching her chest, but her face was still visible. And that was what Hunter and Garcia seemed so transfixed by.
Doctor Snyder narrowed his eyes at them. Something wasn’t adding up. Despite the brutality of the entire scene and the amount of blood splashed around the place, their gaze was cemented firmly on the victim’s face. Why? The doctor spoke again.
‘Her name is—’
‘Alison,’ Hunter said almost robotically. ‘I don’t know her last name.’
Intrigue turned to surprise in Doctor Snyder’s eyes. ‘You know her?’
‘We both do,’ Garcia said. ‘She’s a waitress at Donny’s.’ He paused, closed his eyes, subtly shook his head and corrected himself. ‘Was a waitress at Donny’s, a diner two blocks away from the PAB. We sometimes eat there.’
Doctor Snyder processed that information in silence before adding, ‘Atkins. Her name was Alison Atkins. She was twenty-eight years old.’ He read the way Garcia looked at him and added, before he could ask the question, ‘The killer used her cellphone to make the nine-one-one call. Once he was done, he put the phone down by the door but never disconnected. He wanted it traced so we could find her.’
Hunter immediately made a mental note to get a copy of the 911 call as soon as they got back to the Police Administration Building.
‘She was a very sweet woman,’ Hunter said. ‘Always smiling. Always very polite. The type who loved life.’
There was a new emotion in Hunter’s voice that Doctor Snyder failed to properly identify. Sadness? Anger? He couldn’t tell.
‘Do you think that she became a victim because you knew her?’ he asked.
Hunter’s focus hadn’t yet diverted from Alison’s face. He gave Doctor Snyder the slightest of shrugs. Right at that moment, he really didn’t know the answer to that question.
The doctor looked again at the victim.
Alison had been stripped naked. Her arms had been shackled together at the wrists by a long metal chain, which in turn had been looped around the thickest of the three wood beams that ran across the ceiling. The loop was kept in place by a small padlock. Alison’s arms were fully extended above her head. Her feet grazed
the floor beneath them just enough to stop her body from moving around.
There was so much blood on the floor directly under her body that, at first guess, Hunter would have said that she had bled to death. But what Hunter and Garcia knew had made the police officers outside lose their lunch by the side of the building was the way in which she had bled out.
A horizontal incision, which crossed her body from side to side, had been made across her lower abdominal area. Once the incision had been made, her lower gastrointestinal tract, or small and large intestines, had been removed from her abdominal cavity and left on the floor in front of her. But neither her small nor her large intestine had been completely severed from her body. They were still attached at the highest point – the stomach.
‘The killer disemboweled her?’ Garcia asked disbelievingly, his eyes now moving to the large pool of blood on the floor.
‘That’s exactly what he did,’ Doctor Snyder confirmed.
The killer had cut open the victim’s abdomen, reached inside and gutted her while she was still alive.
As Garcia breathed in, he felt his body shiver.
‘I’ve seen disemboweled bodies before,’ he said, his voice restrained, ‘but I’ve never seen one where the intestines have been completely stretched out this way. How long can it get to?’
Doctor Snyder kept his eyes on Alison Atkins’ eviscerated body for a moment longer before following Garcia’s.
‘Both intestines together will measure about twenty-five feet in length,’ he said, the tone of his voice matching the detective’s.
The killer hadn’t only dragged her small and large intestines out of her abdominal cavity. He had also stretched them to their full extent, twisting and looping them around at points. The visual result was as unbelievable as it was grotesque. As the victim hung in the air with her arms stretched out above her head, the entirety of her lower gastrointestinal tract could be seen exiting her body as if it were an oversized, alien, umbilical cord. It then lay extended, twisted and looped outside her body, splashed on to the floor, lying in an enormous pool of blood.
But what boggled the mind was that all this had been done while she was still alive and, most probably, conscious. Death would’ve come very slowly and in agonizing pain. Neither Hunter nor Garcia needed to ask. They both knew those facts very well.
‘I wanted both of you to see her in situ before we cut her down,’ Doctor Snyder said. ‘As you can tell, this place feels a like a sauna, which will speed up the decomposition process. Rigor mortis had just started to set in when we got here, which means that the killer waited for her to die before making the call. She died no more than three to five hours ago.’
Hunter finally allowed his attention to deviate from Alison. Garcia did the same. As they turned around and faced the large doors behind them, they paused.
There it was.
Written in blood across the inside of both doors was the killer’s signature – I AM DEATH.
‘Do you think he filmed it again?’ Doctor Snyder asked, also facing the morbid script.
‘Probably,’ Garcia replied. ‘Filming it, or taking pictures, or whatever, is his token. His trophy. His sick way of keeping them alive for ever. To him, the recording itself would be just as important as the attack, or the victim, or the violence.’
In silence, all three of them looked around for another full minute before the doctor spoke again.
‘The place is an absolute mess. It’s been abandoned for years. There’s debris here dating back to who knows when. If we decide to look at everything, we might be here for days.’ He paused and made a face.
Hunter had no idea if they’d find anything in there. If they did, it was because the killer wanted them to, but it now made no difference. What the killer didn’t know was that they already knew who he was. They just needed to find him.
Seventy-Seven
Hunter and Garcia spent the rest of the afternoon at the crime scene in the Angeles National Forest. They watched as Alison Atkins was freed from her shackles, placed inside a body bag and loaded into a coroner’s van. Her intestines were carefully collected by one of Doctor Snyder’s forensic agents. Despite all his years of experience, at times he looked like he was about to be sick.
Both detectives were still checking their phones every five minutes or so. Still no sign of Mat Hade. Hunter had also checked with the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles – Mathew Hade had no vehicles registered under his name at present. His last one had been a used 2003 black Ford Escape, which he’d acquired in February 2007 and kept until October 2014. After that, nothing. He also had no outstanding fines.
At 8:30 p.m. Hunter and Garcia received another call from Doctor Snyder. He had the first of the two test results they’d been waiting for – the pen ink analyses. Forensics had first collected a small ink sample from the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey and chemically compared it to the ink in the BIC Cristal Garcia had found inside Mat Hade’s apartment. The result had been inconclusive. But forensics hadn’t given up. They’d placed the ballpoint pen under a Leica digital microscope and found out that the roller ball at its tip had a couple of faults – scratches. Those scratches, though invisible to the naked eye, would certainly show on any sort of stroke made by the pen. When they’d placed the note under the same microscope, they’d got a perfect match. The killer’s note had been written with that exact same pen.
They had their guy.
They just didn’t have their guy yet.
With this new discovery, a new APB had also been sent out. Orders had been updated from ‘observe and inform the case detectives’ to ‘carefully approach and apprehend’. All they had to do now was sit and wait until Mat Hade was arrested. They just had to hope that this would happen before he claimed another victim.
Garcia went home at around 9:00 p.m., but only after Hunter practically ordered him to.
‘Get the hell out of here, Carlos,’ he said, pointing at the door. ‘Because if you don’t, Anna won’t be angry with you, she’ll be angry with me. And I’d rather face the wrath of a serial killer any day than that of a pissed-off woman, especially Anna.’
‘That is a very wise decision, my friend,’ Garcia said as he powered down his computer. ‘Because when she gets angry, she could make the devil look like Casper the friendly ghost.’ He paused as he reached the office door. ‘How about you, Robert? You’re not going to spend the night in here again, are you? There’s nothing else we can do but wait. He’ll get picked up soon enough. We have the whole of the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department looking for him. He can’t hide for ever.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’ll be leaving soon. I just need to check on a few more things first and I’ll be right behind you. Ten, fifteen minutes max.’
‘Do you need any help?’
‘No, man, I’ll be fine. Send Anna my love, will you?’
Over an hour later and Hunter was still at his desk.
He swiveled his chair around to look at the picture board again. They had already added several new items to it – the two photographs they had of Mathew Hade and a number of new crime-scene shots from that afternoon. Operations was still gathering a full dossier on Alison Atkins.
Hunter breathed out as he stared at the crime-scene shots. He hadn’t exactly known Alison, but he had seen her go about her job, full of life, smiling at every customer, and that had inevitably altered the way in which seeing her hanging from that wood beam had affected him – first total sadness, then absolute rage.
‘Where the fuck are you, you piece of shit?’ Hunter said between clenched teeth, moving his attention to Mat Hade’s photographs.
He checked his cellphone again. Still nothing.
He pushed his chair away from his desk, leaned back and rubbed his face with both hands. He felt tired, hungry and drained. Garcia was right. There was nothing else they could do. Maybe it was time to go home, but as that thought entered his mind he remembered something he’d forgotten about – the 911
call. The killer had been the one who had called it in, using Alison Atkins’ phone.
Hunter needed to listen to that recording.
He quickly pulled his chair back to his desk and began typing commands and navigating through folders and locations. It took him just over a minute to find it. He cranked up the volume on his computer speakers and double-clicked on the sound file.
As he listened to the recording and to how calm and collected the killer sounded, Hunter could feel his heartrate doubling because he knew that Mat Hade had just eviscerated Alison Atkins prior to making that call. As he’d spoken to the 911 operator he had probably been standing in a pool of her blood, treading over her gutted intestines and staring at her lifeless face.
How could anyone be that cold, that senseless?
Once the recording had played, Hunter rewound it and played it again. Then again. Then again. That was when something struck him as odd.
‘Wait a second,’ Hunter whispered to himself as he played the call one more time.
‘Why?’ he said out loud, mulling over something specific the killer had said to the operator. ‘Why would he do this? It makes no sense.’
Hunter got up, approached the picture board and reread the note the killer had pushed under his door.
Something began moving the gears inside his head.
He stepped back and stared at the whole board for a minute. Then his eyes began moving from victim to victim to victim. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
He read the note one more time. The gears in his head were now moving at full speed.
‘That is one dumb idea, Robert,’ he said, shaking his head to try to ban a new thought.
It didn’t work.
He looked at the wall clock – 10:48 p.m. ‘Fuck!’ he said as he sat back at his computer. ‘Here goes nothing.’ He began searching.
Seventy-Eight
Whatever result it was that Hunter had first imagined he’d get from his search, it sure as hell wasn’t what appeared on his screen. As pages and pages of material began loading, he leaned forward, placed both elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his knuckles.
