by Chris Carter
Pamela took a deep breath as tears welled up in her eyes.
‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Where?’
‘Not far from her house.’
A waitress, who could easily have run for Miss California, approached them.
‘Hello, and welcome to The Edison,’ she said with the same smile Hunter was sure she gave every guest. ‘Would you like to see our cocktail menu?’
‘Um . . . no, that’s OK,’ Pamela said, shaking her head. ‘Can I just have a vodka martini, please?’
‘Absolutely.’ The waitress looked at Hunter, ready for his order.
‘I’ll just have a black coffee, please.’
‘Coming right up.’ The waitress turned and walked away.
‘Who is capable of something like that?’ Pamela asked. Her voice had gone dry, as if she had something stuck in her throat. She took a moment and swallowed down her tears. ‘We were able to find some snippets of the original Internet broadcast. Did you see it?’
Hunter held her gaze for an instant before nodding once.
‘What the hell was that she was in? A handmade glass coffin?’
Hunter didn’t reply.
‘And those buttons on the Internet. People were voting on how Christina was going to die?’
Still no reply.
‘They did, didn’t they?’ Pamela looked disgusted. ‘People actually voted. Why? They didn’t even know who she was. Did they think it was funny? Did they think it was some kind of game? Or did they simply believe that because the word GUILTY was written at the bottom of the screen, she was actually guilty of something?’
This time the intensity in Pamela’s eyes demanded an answer.
‘I can’t tell you what people were thinking when they clicked one of those two buttons, Ms. Hays,’ Hunter said, his voice even. ‘But all the reasons you’ve just put forward are valid. People could’ve believed that it was some sort of game, that it wasn’t real . . . or maybe they believed the GUILTY headline.’
Hunter’s words made Pamela pause, holding her breath. She quickly read between the lines. Headlines were what she used on a daily basis . . . what the press used to catch people’s attention. She knew that the more sensational the headline, the more attention it would grab, so to maximize the impact of what was said, words were chosen very carefully. Sometimes a single word was all that was needed. She also knew very well that, psychologically, headlines served different purposes. Sometimes they were geared toward grabbing people’s attention, while at the same time attempting to stamp a preconceived opinion onto one’s subconscious. And its power was much greater than what people gave it credit for. It worked. She knew it did.
‘The killer used Christina’s trade trick against her,’ Pamela thought, and that made her shiver.
The waitress came back with their drinks. She handed Pamela her martini, and even before she had placed Hunter’s coffee on the table Pamela knocked her drink back, emptying the glass in three large gulps.
The waitress looked at her, trying her best to hide her surprise.
‘Could I have another one, please,’ Pamela said, handing the glass back to the waitress.
‘Um . . . of course.’ The waitress moved back toward the bar.
‘Is it OK if I ask you a few questions now, Ms. Hays?’
The drink had settled her nerves a little. Her attention refocused on Hunter and she nodded. ‘Yes, and stop calling me Ms. Hays. It makes me feel like I’m back in Catholic school again, and I hated that place. Call me Pamela, or Pam. Everybody does.’
Hunter began with simple questions, just to establish what sort of relationship Pamela and Christina had. It was soon clear that Pamela wasn’t just Christina’s boss, but that over the years they had also become very good friends. She told him that as far as she knew Christina wasn’t seeing anyone. Her last relationship, if anyone could’ve called it that, ended about four months ago. It had lasted only a few weeks. Pamela told Hunter that it had been doomed from the start. The guy was a lot younger than Christina, a total womanizer, and a drummer in an up-and-coming rock band called Screaming Toyz.
Hunter’s eyebrows arched. He had seen Screaming Toyz play at the House of Blues not too long ago.
The waitress returned with the new martini, and this time Pamela sipped it instead of gulping it.
Hunter asked her about the three letters – SSV – and the number sequence – 678. Pamela thought about it for a long moment, but said that they meant nothing to her, and that she couldn’t think of how they could relate to Christina Stevenson either.
Hunter thought about asking Pamela if she’d heard the name Kevin Lee Parker before, but decided not to. Chances were she hadn’t, and there was no escaping the fact that she was still a reporter. Hunter was sure she would check the name later, and consequently find out that he’d also been murdered just a few days ago. Armed with that information, a sensational headline about a new serial killer who liked to broadcast his own killing show would be across the front page of the LA Times in no time at all. One dramatic murder headline across the front page of the papers created shock and got people talking, but the news of a new serial killer loose in LA would create city-wide panic. He’d seen it happen before. And right now Hunter and the investigation could do without it.
‘Did she mention anything about any threats?’ he asked. ‘Any letters, emails, phone calls? Anything that was worrying her at all? People who disliked her?’
Pamela chuckled nervously. ‘We’re reporters for the fourth-highest-circulating newspaper in the whole of the USA, Detective. Due to the nature of what we do, everyone dislikes us, no matter how friendly they seem. For example, you and all your cop friends across the road do.’
Hunter said nothing. But she was right. He was yet to meet a cop who liked journalists.
‘On people’s “scum scale”, we rank right up there with corrupt politicians and lawyers.’ Pamela paused and had another sip of her martini. Despite her aggressive words, she knew full well what Hunter meant.
He waited for the moment to subside.
Pamela went back to the question. ‘The fact is, as reporters, we have all written articles that have upset some people. We have all received threatening letters and emails and phone calls. We still do every so often, but it’s all just bravado, really. People get angry when we expose the truth, because a lot of the time the truth doesn’t suit them.’
There was no denying that Pamela Hays was very passionate about her job.
‘Has Ms. Stevenson ever mentioned any of these letters, or emails, or phone calls to you? Something that she believed to be more than just bravado?’
Pamela started shaking her head, but paused halfway through the movement. Her stare became more purposeful, and if her Botoxed forehead could crease, it would have.
‘What did she say?’ Hunter asked, trying to seize the moment.
Pamela sat back on her chair. Her hand came up to her chin, and she partially extended her index finger so it was touching both of her lips. Her eyes moved down to her lap.
Behavioral psychology read the finger-over-mouth gesture as a tell sign – someone who was about to say something, or wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure if he or she should. In certain situations, the gesture was a clear giveaway that a lie was about to be told.
Hunter watched Pamela. Her reporter’s mind was clearly considering something, wondering if she should share whatever information she had, or hold it back. There could be a story there.
The problem for Pamela was that she wasn’t a crime reporter. The information would have to be passed over to someone at the crime desk. And she hated those pricks. Always looking down at everyone else, specially the entertainment desk, or as they called it the gossip pit.
Hunter sensed her hesitation and urged her again. ‘Pamela, even the tiniest piece of information could help us catch whoever took Christina. Was she frightened of something, or someone?’
Her gaze returned to
Hunter’s face, and in his eyes she picked up the sort of determination and sincerity she didn’t see very often. Her features relaxed a little.
‘About four months ago, Christina wrote an article on a guy called Thomas Paulsen.’
‘The software millionaire?’
‘The one and only,’ Pamela replied, a little surprised that Hunter had heard of him. ‘What happened was, she was contacted by a former employee of Mr. Paulsen with a potentially big story. Christina came to me, and I gave her the go-ahead to investigate it. She spent two months working on it, and she unearthed a truckload of dirt on the scumbag. The story went to print, and Mr. Paulsen’s business and personal life were affected.’
‘What was the story about?’
Pamela had one more sip of her drink. ‘He liked to take his secretaries, PAs or whoever he fancied inside his company to bed, then intimidate them, using whatever means he saw fit, into keeping their mouths shut. He’s married with a daughter. When the exposé was printed, it was revealed that he’d been doing it for years. He allegedly bedded over thirty-five employees.’ She paused, measuring her words. ‘I know that to many that might not sound too devastating, but this is the USA, a country full of false morals and where being religious, faithful and a true family man counts for more than you would know. And this is LA, a city where the tiniest of affairs can end someone’s career overnight. The article affected Mr. Paulsen’s life pretty badly.’
Hunter wrote something down on his notebook. ‘And did he threaten Ms. Stevenson?’
Pamela pulled a dubious face. ‘Right after the article came out, she started getting these phone calls . . . something about pain, making her suffer and dying slowly. Christina had been through stuff like that before, and she wasn’t the type who would spook easy, but I know that something about those calls did really frighten her. We tried tracing the calls, but whoever was calling her was too smart. The calls were being redirected all over the place.’
‘Was she still receiving them recently?’
‘I’m not sure. She hadn’t mentioned anything for a while.’
Hunter took some more notes.
‘But we’re talking about articles she wrote while with the entertainment desk,’ Pamela offered. ‘Before I brought her over to entertainment, Christina was with the crime desk for nine months. And before that she’d spent time with just about every other desk in the paper. If what happened to her was because of an article she wrote, you’re looking at a very long list.’
‘Yeah, we know,’ Hunter said. ‘Is there a way I could get an archive of all the articles Ms. Stevenson wrote while with the entertainment desk? I’d like to start there.’
Though Pamela looked surprised, her eyebrows didn’t move. ‘We’re talking two years’ worth of articles here.’
‘Yes, I know. We have a team working on gathering them, but your help can really speed things up.’
She held his stare for a couple of seconds. ‘OK. I’m sure I can gather everything together and get a compressed archive to you by tomorrow.’
Fifty-Seven
The driver had started his day before the break of dawn. He had patiently sat behind the wheel, quietly observing the entrance to the apartment block across the road from where he was parked. Most people would consider the task boring, but he didn’t mind it at all. He actually enjoyed the stakeout process. All that waiting gave him time to think. To organize his thoughts. To work things out. Plus, he loved watching people. One could learn so much just by observing from afar.
For example, at 6:45 a.m., a balding, heavyset man, wearing an old and ill-fitting gray suit, exited the building and crossed the road. He walked slowly, defeated, with hunched shoulders and his head down, as if his thoughts were too heavy for him. His entire demeanor screamed one thing – sadness. Just getting through each day was a terrible struggle. The driver could tell that the man hated his job, whatever it was that he did. The thick, golden ring strangling his chubby finger on his left hand indicated that he was married, but it also indicated that he had put on a lot of weight since that ring first graced his hand. It was safe to assume that his marriage had long lost the fire that it might have once had.
The driver looked up at the building. On the first floor a woman with short dirty-blond hair, and clearly carrying a little more weight than she would like to, was staring out the window at the heavyset man. Her eyes followed him until he disappeared down another street. When he was gone, she faded back into the apartment, but three minutes later she was at the window again. This time, her anxious gaze concentrated at the opposite end of the road. The driver also noticed something different about the woman. Her hair had been brushed and the unflattering nightgown she was wearing was gone, replaced by something sexier.
Five minutes elapsed and nothing else happened. Then the woman’s lips spread into a smile. The driver followed her stare all the way to another man who had turned the corner and was now hurriedly walking toward the apartment block. He was at least forty pounds lighter than her husband, and about ten years younger. The woman’s lips broke into a wide smile.
The driver chuckled. Yeah, the things you can learn just by observing.
But he wasn’t there to catch anyone’s extramarital affair. His task was much more important than that.
At 7:15 a.m., another man exited the building. This one was tall with an athletic build. He walked with purpose. His eyes showed strong resolve and determination. Reflexively, the driver slid down on his seat, making himself even more unnoticeable, while at the same time attentively observing the man as he jumped into his own car and drove away.
The driver smiled. Everything was going to plan.
Twenty minutes later, his mark finally stepped out of the building. He sat forward and watched her walk to her car. She was attractive, with a charming aura around her, and a body he knew would be the envy of all her friends.
He took a deep breath and allowed the excitement to avalanche down his spine. Adrenaline rushed through him as he checked his broadcasting equipment and started his engine.
He’d spent the entire day tagging her, waiting for the right moment to strike. He knew that his success depended on choosing the perfect moment. Anything less than perfect and things could turn around very quickly.
After so many hours, that moment had finally arrived.
His show was about to go online again.
Fifty-Eight
When Hunter got back to the PAB, Garcia was rubbing his eyes vigorously.
‘Everything OK?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia looked up and let out a deep breath. ‘I just finished watching that film – The Devil Inside.’
‘Anything?’ Hunter asked, taking a seat behind his desk.
Garcia got up and massaged his neck. ‘I don’t think the note the killer left in Ms. Stevenson’s bedroom refers to the film.’
Hunter paused and looked at him.
‘As I said before, the plot revolves around a young woman whose mother had murdered three people while supposedly possessed by a demon. I was mainly interested in finding out about those murders. Specifically, the method used.’
‘And . . .?’
‘No resemblance at all to our case. It was a frenzied knife attack. All three victims were slaughtered inside the same house, in the same night, and in the space of minutes. The film then focuses on the woman’s daughter attending several exorcism sessions to try to figure out if her mother was really possessed by the devil when she did it. No one is locked inside any sort of enclosure, glass or not. No wasps or any other insect appear. No one is left inside an alkali or acid bath, nothing is broadcast over the Internet, and there’s no voting or choosing between death methods. If there really is a meaning behind the message the killer left in Ms. Stevenson’s bedroom, that film isn’t it.’
Hunter’s focus moved to the pictures board and the fluorescent orange fingerprint powder photograph. He scratched his head. ‘The devil inside. What the hell does that mean?’
‘H
ow about Ms. Stevenson’s emails?’ he asked. ‘Any developments at all?’
Dennis Baxter, from the Computer Crimes Unit, had batch-downloaded all of Christina Stevenson’s emails into an external hard drive, now connected to Garcia’s computer. No more going over them on a 3.5-inch screen, and no more risk of being locked out of her account.
‘Nothing so far that I’d call suspicious,’ Garcia replied, returning to his desk. ‘There are a lot of quick-fire internal emails between Ms. Stevenson and other LA Times reporters – jokes, gossip, discussions about articles . . . things like that. I’ve filtered all her emails, searching for everything that didn’t come from a @latimes.com address. I’m hoping that will give us some sort of separation between her personal and work emails. Nothing has flagged up yet, but I still have a long way to go here. How about you?’
Hunter ran over his meeting with Pamela Hays.
‘Whoa, wait,’ Garcia said, lifting his right hand and pausing Hunter when he told him about the phone threats Christina had been getting. ‘Who’s this guy?’
‘His name is Thomas Paulsen,’ Hunter explained. ‘He’s a software millionaire, based right here in LA.’
‘Software?’ A muscle flexed on Garcia’s jaw. He was already typing Paulsen’s name into a search engine.
‘That’s right. His company was one of the first to create enterprise Internet database systems.’
Garcia looked up from his screen. ‘When did you get time to research him?’
‘I didn’t,’ Hunter replied. ‘I read a lot. I read the piece in Forbes magazine a while ago.’
‘Did you read the article Christina Stevenson wrote on him?’
‘Not yet.’
Garcia clicked on the topmost result link on the page returned by his search. It took him to PaulsenSystems’ website. He quickly skimmed through the information on the ‘About Us’ page. According to it, Hunter had been right about everything. Paulsen’s company had been among the very first ones to develop enterprise Internet database systems, and it was now one of the world leaders. Its systems were used by companies all over the world.
