by Chris Carter
‘Let the girl go,’ Agent Richardson commanded. His voice was calm but overflowing with determination.
The man said nothing in reply, his big and powerful hand completely covering the girl’s neck, his fingertips rounding it to her nape. He wouldn’t need a second hand to snap the life out of her.
‘Let the girl go,’ Agent Richardson commanded again. ‘It’s over. You know you can’t win.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ the man said, his eyes moving down to his hand before returning to the five agents before him.
Heather tried to breathe through her nose, but the air seemed to travel into her nostrils in chunks, making her entire head shake with the effort, her tears now wetting the man’s hand.
‘It’s OK, Heather,’ Agent Richardson said. Though he was speaking to the girl, his eyes never left the man standing behind her, holding her by the neck. ‘Your mommy sent us. We work with her. We’re going to take you home, sweetheart.’
The girl tried to speak, but the man’s grip against her neck was too tight and all her vocal cords were able to produce was a meager squealing sound.
‘It will take me just a split second to break her neck,’ the man said, his eyes playing a tug-of-war with Agent Richardson’s. ‘You know that, right?’
‘You really want to talk calculations?’ Agent Richardson replied. ‘OK, I think I can do that. If you were lightning fast, it would take you maybe a second to do what you said you would do, but you would need both hands to be able to do it that fast. With only one hand it would take you one, possibly two seconds more, and remember, you would still have to be lightning fast to be able to accomplish that. The problem you have is that we’re all carrying modified M16 assault rifles with high-velocity ammunition. That means that a round will leave the barrels of our weapons at an average speed of 2,750 feet per second, or 1,875 miles per hour. The distance between our weapons and you is about eight feet, give or take a couple of inches. If we throw that into the equation, we’ll get that any one of our rounds would reach your chest in about 0.00002 of a second. I can’t really compare that to anything to give you a better example because nothing in this world can travel that fast. So, like I’ve said, whichever way you look at this, you’ve lost. You and the girl are coming with us, whether you want it or not. The girl will be unharmed, there’s absolutely no doubt of that, but you’ve got a choice – unharmed, or in a body bag – and I’ll give you three seconds to make that choice. Three . . .’
In the eye tug-of-war the man could see he was losing.
‘Two . . .’
Fingers tightened against triggers.
‘One . . .’
The man let go of the girl’s neck.
One Hundred and Two
Three days later
‘Agent Fisher is out of danger,’ Adrian Kennedy announced to Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake. He had flown in from Washington again that morning. ‘She lost her hand. It was amputated at the elbow.’ His eyes moved to Garcia, who didn’t shy away from the tough stare.
‘How about her daughter?’ Hunter asked. He was sitting back on his chair, fingers laced in front of his chin, elbows resting on the chair’s arms.
‘Have you met her?’ Kennedy asked.
‘No, unfortunately not.’
‘You should. She’s the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet, plus you were the one who saved her life.’
‘I would like to one day,’ Hunter replied. ‘Anyway, how is she doing?
‘She’s all right. Obviously a little shook up and a bit upset because her mother has lost her hand, but she’ll be fine.’
‘Since we’re on that subject,’ Captain Blake cut in, ‘what’s the full story on that, Robert? How did you go from pretty much being ambushed to finding out the killer’s address?’
Hunter shrugged. ‘I was trying to put some facts together and an idea came to me,’ he explained. ‘We knew that this killer traveled. He had already taken four victims in four different states. With that in mind, we were trying to sieve through airlines’ passenger manifests, looking for a name that repeated itself arriving or leaving those four cities in the vicinity of the murder dates.’
‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘You told me about that long shot, but you got nothing from it.’
‘You’re right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘We didn’t get a single name from those manifests, but that was because the idea we had was right, but the method was wrong.’
‘How so?’
‘When the searching through passenger manifests was suggested,’ Hunter replied, ‘we didn’t know that Arthur Weber was a collector. We were still working with the art-piece theory then, but once we figured out what he was actually doing, some of the parameters on that search had to be altered. Arthur Weber was collecting body parts, which meant that after murdering his victims and harvesting the selected piece, he would have to transport them back to wherever he kept that collection – his gallery, so to speak.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘There was just no way he would be doing that through any means of transport that would involve more than one passenger – himself. He just couldn’t risk getting those body parts past airport security, or into a bus or a train. What if something went wrong with the luggage? Or there was an accident? Or whatever? Too many unknown factors, and someone like Arthur Weber would never risk that.’
‘So he would’ve driven everywhere,’ Captain Blake concluded.
‘That’s right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘The second factor that got me thinking was that to obtain the pieces for his collection, Arthur Weber would’ve driven absolutely anywhere in the country, no matter how far, which suggested that he would have a good and strong roadworthy vehicle. Probably quite comfortable, too – something like a mid-sized to large SUV.’
The captain didn’t find it hard to follow Hunter’s logic.
‘In possession of those new parameters,’ Hunter continued, ‘I called Adrian, who called the US Department of Transportation. They were the only ones who would already be equipped to run the sort of search I had in mind.’
‘Traffic cameras,’ Captain Blake said. She had now clearly tapped into Hunter’s thread of thought.
Hunter nodded. ‘The ones that covered all the entries and exits to those four cities. I asked him to start with the murder dates and then move forward a day at a time, not backward. The way I figured, the killer could have arrived in any of those cities on the day of the murders or any time prior to them – days, weeks, even longer – that would depend on how much preparation he would’ve needed for each murder, which I’m sure varied from victim to victim. But once he had his piece, chances were that he had nothing else holding him to the city in question and he would’ve probably wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.’
‘So the search was only looking for license plates registered to SUV vehicles,’ the captain sai, ‘leaving those cities on specific days, which probably reduced the amount of data considerably.’
‘It certainly did,’ Hunter replied. ‘But it still took us two days to get a match. Arthur Weber’s SUV, an Infinity QX80, was picked up on the I-94 leaving Detroit a day after Kristine Rivers’ murder. It was picked up again on US Route 400, on its way out of Wichita, the day after Albert Greene’s murder. Then again on the I-5 leaving Los Angeles in the direction of San Diego the day after Linda Parker’s body was found, and one last time on the I-19 leaving Tucson the day after Timothy Davis was killed. Too much coincidence, but we still took a huge risk, because we had no time to make any proper checks. I received that information on the day of the ambush, about an hour or so after the paramedics got to us, and that was when I called Adrian with an address and a name.’
‘I didn’t care if we had had the proper checks or not,’ Kennedy took over. ‘A little girl’s life was now at stake and I wasn’t about to risk it due to a technicality, so I immediately dispatched FBI’s top SWAT team. Given the limited intel they had on the location and on the subject, they did an amazing job.’
‘And this Arthur Weber really did have a human-body-parts gallery in his house?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘He did,’ Adrian confirmed. ‘Down in his basement. You haven’t seen the pictures yet? I’ve sent them to Robert and to Detective Garcia.’
‘No,’ the captain replied. ‘And to be honest I’m not sure I really want to. I did read the file we now have on Arthur Weber. His mother homeschooled him, right? She forced him to learn Latin and Greek and she was obsessed with perfection – physical, that is.’
‘That’s exactly right,’ Garcia said. ‘Though her homeschooling was more like a prison than a school. Arthur Weber wasn’t allowed outside. He grew up completely isolated and until the age of twenty-two, his only human interaction had been with his mother, who was a totally domineering and overzealous woman, completely obsessed with physical perfection, an obsession that drove her insane. By the age of forty-five, she’d already had thirty-eight cosmetic surgeries.’
‘Thirty-eight?’ Captain Blake cringed.
Garcia nodded before continuing. ‘But unfortunately her insanity didn’t stop with her. She also wanted her only son, Arthur, to be physically perfect, or at least what she considered to be physically perfect. Remember when I said that until the age of twenty-two, Arthur Weber’s only human interaction had been with his mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘His first non-mother interaction was with a cosmetic surgeon.’
‘She forced him to have surgery?’ Captain Blake asked in bewilderment.
‘Fifteen of them,’ Garcia confirmed, before showing the captain a portrait photograph of Arthur Weber. ‘This is him at the age of eighteen.’ He showed her a second photo. ‘And this is him at the age of thirty.’
Captain Blake’s jaw dropped open. ‘Are you for real? This is the same person?’
There wasn’t a single facial feature on Arthur Weber’s first picture that was recognizable on the second one. His eyes, nose, jawline, cheekbones, brow, mouth, lips, chin, teeth and ears all looked different.
‘He looked much better before all the procedures,’ Captain Blake commented.
‘Also,’ Garcia carried on, ‘probably just to please his mother, Arthur Weber started studying medicine at home – reading books, watching videos, searching the internet . . . whatever.’
‘Now would be a good time to mention Arthur Weber’s IQ,’ Hunter cut in. ‘Rated at one hundred and fifty-two, which would put him comfortably inside the genius bracket.’
Captain Blake frowned at him.
‘What I’m trying to say here is that from books alone he could learn just as well and as easily as if he’d attended classes in an Ivy League university. And that was where all of his medical knowledge came from – books.’
‘How about his computer company?’ the captain asked. ‘Where did that come from? Wasn’t that how he made his fortune?’
‘It was,’ Hunter replied. ‘And it all came from his genius. From what we’ve gathered, Arthur Weber was a natural when it came to computers. He started messing around with them at a very early age and it all just made sense to him – the codes, the electronics . . . all of it. He started creating his own applications at the age of ten. From there it all escalated naturally. He set up his company at twenty-three and by twenty-five, he was already a millionaire.’
‘So what happened with him?’ the captain asked. ‘His mother’s obsession with physical perfection just rubbed off on him?’
‘In a reverse sort of way,’ Hunter said, nodding.
‘What does that mean, Robert?’
‘It will take countless therapy sessions for anyone to be able to properly get to the bottom of it,’ Hunter explained. ‘And that’s only if Mr. Weber decides to talk, but his mother’s obsession no doubt left him with much deeper scars than simply physical ones. Scars that no plastic surgeon can ever fix. But the catch was, unlike his mother, and probably because of his mother, Weber didn’t seek to be perfect himself. His mother had tried that on her and on him and it hadn’t worked. He knew that. He could see that. Chances are that he even hated her for it, but he still admired perfection. He had to. It was drilled into his brain probably since he was a baby.’
‘So he searched the country for people with perfect body parts?’ Captain Blake asked skeptically.
‘The rare and unusual ones,’ Hunter replied. ‘But not in a freaky way, in a more natural, rare way.’
‘So he didn’t actually hate those people for being perfect,’ Captain Blake concluded. ‘He envied them.’
‘We think so, yes,’ Hunter agreed. ‘That’s probably why he never hurt any of them, but again, the real truth about Arthur Weber’s darkest demons will only come out if he ever decides to speak up.’
‘His mother passed away three and a half years ago.’ Garcia took over again. ‘From complications from one of her plastic surgeries. That probably messed his mind up even more. A year after she passed, he sold his company and the speculation is that he began planning his collection then. With his computer knowledge, tapping into the Optum integrated information and technology platform to obtain his victims’ medical records wasn’t much of a problem. The rest, as they say, is history.’
‘Did he have any more victims lined up?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘Does anyone know?’
‘Apparently, yes.’ Kennedy was the one to reply this time. ‘A seventeen-year-old girl from Sentinel, a very small town in Arizona. She had complete heterochromia, with one dark-brown eye and the other light blue. An extremely rare condition.’
‘She has no idea that her life has just been saved, does she?’ Garcia asked.
Kennedy simply shook his head.
‘And where is Arthur Weber now?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘In the infirmary of one of our Federal Detention Centers,’ Kennedy replied.
‘Infirmary?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yesterday morning he came down with a very bad case of food poisoning,’ Kennedy clarified. ‘Arthur Weber had a very OCD personality. At home he never deviated too far from his preferred meals. It appears that his stomach hasn’t really approved of our federal facility’s cuisine. Not yet, anyway.’
The comment brought a smile to everyone’s faces.
One Hundred and Three
That morning, due to a broken-down truck by exit road number four, it took Tyler Weaver exactly twenty-eight minutes and thirty-one seconds to drive the nine miles between his house and his work place. That was about twelve minutes more than usual. Parking the car took him another forty-eight seconds. The walk between the staff parking lot and the staff door were responsible for another thirty-three seconds. Security check, clocking in, dumping his bag in his locker and a quick trip to the bathroom added another eight minutes and forty-nine seconds to his time. Grabbing a quick coffee at the staff room and the final walk down the corridor that led to the control room took another one minute and twenty-seven seconds – which meant that in total it took Federal Detention Center infirmary control-room guard Tyler Weaver exactly forty minutes and eight seconds to go from his door all the way to the worst day of his life.
Guard Weaver felt his heart go from resting to tachycardia as he got near the west wing control room – the infirmary’s maximum-security wing. The square control room with large bullet-proof glass windows was never, ever left unattended, having always a minimum of two officers inside it at any time of day or night, but from halfway down the corridor Guard Weaver could see no one, which was worrying fact number one. Worrying fact number two was that the control room’s assault-proof door was wide open and unattended; but the most disturbing fact of all was the large blood smear that Guard Weaver could see against the inside of the control room’s bullet-proof glass.
‘No, no, no . . .’ His voice got louder as he went from walking to the fastest sprint he’d ever done. With each step, the large ball of keys that hung from his belt bounced loudly against his right thigh.
Guard Weaver reached the control-room door in two seconds and nightmare
became reality.
On the floor inside the control room, Guards Vargas and Bates lay in one massive pool of blood, both of their throats slit.
‘Jesus Christ!’
Guard Weaver had to step over Vargas’s body to reach the blood-splattered cell monitors. Only one maximum-security prisoner was supposed to be in the ward that day. Guard Weaver checked the monitor broadcasting the images from infirmary cell one.
Empty.
Lying in another pool of blood inside the cell was another body, who had been stripped naked. Guard Weaver immediately recognized the body he could see on the monitor as belonging to Guard Torres.
He felt his airways constrict. Breathing became a struggle.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Though he knew it was way too late, the first thing Guard Weaver did was raise the alarm, then with trembling fingers he called the FBI Academy in Quantico.
One Hundred and Four ‘Special Agent Larry Williams’ funeral will be in two days’ time,’ Kennedy said, as he got ready to leave Hunter and Garcia’s office. ‘It will be held in Washington DC. I just thought you’d like to know, in case you guys can make it.’
‘He was a great agent,’ Garcia said.
‘He was one of my best,’ Kennedy came back.
‘So what will happen to Special Agent Fisher?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘Not a special agent anymore,’ Kennedy replied. ‘And once she leaves hospital she will go to prison; there are no questions about that. There will be no trial, as she already said that she wouldn’t contest any charges brought against her.’ There was undeniable sadness in Kennedy’s eyes. ‘She was also a great agent, but first and foremost she was a mother. Nothing can compete with that. She simply followed her heart. She did what she had to do to save her daughter.’ Kennedy paused by the door to Hunter and Garcia’s office. ‘She told me to tell you that she will be forever in your debt, Robert.’
