One by One

by Chris Carter

  Captain Blake’s forehead creased. ‘Find what?’

  ‘Some sort of clue,’ Hunter said. ‘Because that’s how he likes to play.’

  Captain Blake picked up the phone on Garcia’s desk once again, dialed an internal extension and started barking commands down the line.

  ‘Tell them to check out the park and the roads immediately surrounding the PAB, Captain,’ Hunter said. ‘Tell them to look everywhere – trashcans, park benches, flowerbeds, street gutters, everything.’

  CLOCK: 3:15, 3:14, 3:13 . . .

  CRUSH: 9199.

  STRETCH: 9180.

  On the screen the camera zoomed in on the man tied to the wooden table. The fear etched on his face had intensified ten-fold, as if he’d received some kind of warning or had simply sensed his time was about to run out.

  It was a proven fact that if a human being is deprived of one of his/her senses, the remaining ones compensate by over-sensitizing. Maybe it was that, together with a super flow of adrenaline, that gave him a new surge of strength, and all of a sudden he sprang to life, fighting against his restraints once again, tugging, pulling, shaking and kicking as hard as he could. It was all for nothing. The leather straps were too well secured, the chains too strong. No one, no matter how physically fit or strong they were, would’ve been powerful enough to escape that torture table.

  Just as suddenly as the man’s new fight had begun, it ended. The little strength he had left had now been completely drained from his body. All his hopes and prayers had abandoned him.

  No one was coming. There would be no last-minute miracle.

  ‘Why the hell are people still voting?’ Captain Blake spat the question out, truly dumbfounded. ‘Everyone knows this isn’t a game anymore, or a publicity stunt for a movie. This is real. The papers made sure everyone out there knows that.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘He’s going to die. No fake. No tricks. They all know it, and they’re still voting . . . Why?’

  ‘Because this is the crazy reality we live in today, Captain,’ Hunter said. ‘No one cares. People upload their happy slapping, or gang fight videos to YouTube, and it gets hundreds of thousands of hits. The more violent the better. And people are begging for more. You give them real violence – not staged, no actors, no fake – and you will have people out there jumping for joy. You turn it into a “reality show” and give people the chance to participate by voting, and you will have millions tuning in, itching to click that button just for the hell of it. The killer knows that. He knows the psychology behind it. He knows the mad society we live in. That’s why he’s so confident. It’s a game he knows he can’t lose – a winning formula we see every day on TV.’

  The camera zoomed in on the man’s face. His teary eyes saddened even further. There was nothing else in them. He knew it was over.

  The captain’s cellphone vibrated inside her pocket once again. This time she didn’t even look at it, letting it ring out.

  CLOCK: 2:04, 2:03, 2:02 . . .

  CRUSH: 9969.

  STRETCH: 9965.

  Total silence.

  CLOCK: 1:49, 1:48, 1:47 . . .

  CRUSH: 9995.

  STRETCH: 9995.

  Everyone held their breath.

  . . . 10,000.

  Seventy-Seven

  On their computer monitors, the entire picture faded to black, as if the broadcasting camera had been turned off. A second later the word STRETCH reappeared, larger, blood-red, blinking at the center of the dark screen, quickly followed by the number 10,000.

  Everyone inside Hunter’s office was transfixed.

  As the blinking word and number faded out, the images of the man tied to the wooden table faded back in. This time there were no other distractions on the screen – no buttons, or words, or numbers – nothing.

  The camera had zoomed out, once again enabling all viewers to see the man’s entire stretched-out body, together with all four leather straps and a portion of the chains.

  Captain Blake brought both hands to her face, cupping them over her nose and mouth, as if about to say a prayer, but no words left her lips.

  Suddenly a metal grinding mechanical noise exploded through the computer speakers on both detectives’ desks, sending a horror wave across the room. The rollers had been activated.

  ‘What the hell?’ the captain blurted out.

  ‘He enabled the camera’s microphone,’ Hunter said, feeling his heart rate pick up speed inside his chest. ‘He wants us to hear him die.’

  The tension in the room was pierced by the man’s first agonizing scream, muffled only by the tight gag around his mouth. It sent shivers down everyone’s spine.

  ‘There are over a quarter of a million viewers watching this,’ Michelle, who was still on the phone, announced. Her voice was cloaked by an angry sadness.

  ‘Isn’t there any way you can scramble this broadcast?’ Captain Blake asked her.

  ‘I wish there was,’ a defeated Michelle replied.

  The man screamed again, this time trying to form words, but the gag and the excruciating pain he was going through made whatever he was trying to say indecipherable. Spit and blood flew out of the corners of his mouth, producing a thin red mist, only to splash back down again onto his face, neck and chest.

  Reflexively the man stretched his neck as far as it would go, as if that would give his arms and legs an extra centimeter or two and ease his agony, even if just for a brief moment. It didn’t work. Pain had now reached every fiber of every muscle in his body. Soon those fibers would be stretched beyond human endurance, which would cause them to lose their ability to contract, rendering them completely ineffective. After that, the fibers would start to slowly tear, ripping his muscles in a multitude of ways and locations, and drowning his body in unimaginable pain.

  The man’s eyes rolled back into his head and his eyelids flickered like butterfly wings over them for a second or two. It looked like he was about to pass out, but instead he coughed violently a couple of times before throwing his head to one side and vomiting.

  Captain Blake looked away.

  Hunter clenched his fists.

  The next noise the man made wasn’t so much a scream but a guttural shriek that stabbed at everyone’s eardrums.

  Garcia anxiously brought a hand to his face, half rubbing his forehead, half shielding his eyes. His subconscious mind was once again playing with him.

  POP! POP!

  Two distinct popping noises followed in quick succession.

  Hunter’s jaw tightened and he softly closed his eyes for just an instant. He knew those popping noises were the sound of snapping cartilage, ligaments and maybe even tendons. Pretty soon they would hear the tormenting sound of bones fracturing.

  The man’s eyes came back from his head, but they had no more focus in them, wandering deliriously, as if he’d been drugged.

  The leather straps were now cutting deep into the man’s skin and flesh – blood was dripping from his wrists, drawing thin red veins on his forearms. His feet were also covered in blood from where the straps had dug into his ankles.

  The next sound they heard were bone breaks.

  ‘Oh my God! No.’ They all heard Michelle plead through the phone.

  The skin around the man’s armpits was starting to rupture.

  Captain Blake kept her eyes on the screen but placed her hands over her ears. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

  As the mechanical rollers started working harder to overcome the resistance posed by skin and muscle, their grinding sound became louder, more piercing, like an office shredder fighting to chew through too many sheets of paper.

  The man made as if he was about to scream again, but he had no more strength left in him, no more air in his lungs, no more voice in his vocal cords . . . no more life to give. His head slumped to one side and his eyes disappeared back into his head a millisecond before his eyelids closed over them. His body convulsed a couple of times, and that was when blood really started dripping from his armpi
ts, as the man-made rack finally started to rip his arms away from his body.

  It would now be just a matter of seconds before the pressure applied by the rollers snapped the brachial artery, the major blood vessel in the upper arms, producing massive blood loss.

  They all watched it happen.

  Blood gushed out from the man’s torso, where the arms had once been, with incredible speed and pressure.

  The armless man writhed and twitched several times, but each one less erratic than the previous, until he lay motionless.

  Three seconds later the website went offline.

  Seventy-Eight

  It had been almost an hour since pickadeath.com had gone offline. Captain Blake was back in her office. She had spent most of that time on the phone to the mayor of Los Angeles, the Chief of Police and the governor of California. Everybody wanted answers, but all she had were more questions.

  Not surprisingly, the press was already bombarding the LAPD Media Relations Office with hundreds of questions and interview requests. Captain Blake was still refusing to schedule a press conference because she knew exactly what would happen. Questions and comments would be lobbed at them from all corners of the room – some defiant, some angry, but all of them derisive of what the LAPD and the Homicide Special Section had accomplished so far. The captain knew that they wouldn’t be able to supply answers to anything, not yet, and that would simply fuel the press to criticize their efforts and sensationalize the story even more. No, for now, still no questions.

  Instead, the LAPD Media Relations Office would issue a new statement to the press. The statement would reveal nothing at all about the progress of the investigation. The true purpose behind it was to ask the press and the media for their cooperation in launching an appeal for the identity of the latest victim. The statement would be accompanied by a portrait photograph of the victim, captured from the early part of the broadcast, asking every paper to print it out, and every TV station to broadcast it as soon as possible. Somebody out there had to know who he was.

  Seventy-Nine

  Immediately after the broadcast ended, Garcia called Anna at work. She was doing fine. She knew nothing about what had just happened, but he knew she would find out soon enough. There was nothing he could do about that. He just wanted to make sure she was OK. After he disconnected from the call to his wife, Garcia went to the bathroom, locked himself inside a cubicle and silently threw up.

  Hunter sat at his desk, trying his best to gather his thoughts together while his gut fought waves of nausea and an almost incontrollable desire to be sick. He knew he needed to watch the entire broadcast recording again, probably several times over, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it quite yet. Right now, what he really needed was to get out of that office.

  Two minutes later he and Garcia were downstairs talking to the senior sergeant in charge of searching City Hall Park and the streets immediately surrounding the PAB.

  ‘So far, we’ve got trash,’ the sergeant announced, clearly annoyed with the ‘garbage hunt’ task he was given. He’d been on front-desk duty all day and had no idea what had happened less than fifty minutes ago. ‘Wrappers, all kinds of it,’ he continued, his tone a step away from being sarcastic. ‘Burgers, sandwiches, candy bars, Twinkies – you name it, we’ve got it. We also have truckloads of cans, bottles and paper coffee cups.’

  Hunter was listening to the sergeant, but his eyes were roaming around the park, the streets and all the buildings surrounding it. He was positive the killer would still be nearby. This killer took too much pride in what he did to simply walk away without savoring the result to such an audacious trick, like making the call from just outside the Police Administration Building, and maybe, leaving something behind for the LAPD to find. Psychopath or not, it would appeal to his sense of satisfaction. It follows the same principle as when a person surprises someone else with a present that he/she spent a long time creating, or choosing. The real satisfaction comes from observing that someone’s reaction as he/she unwraps the gift.

  Yes, Hunter thought, this killer will be observing. He’ll be close by. No doubt about it. But where?

  Hunter’s eyes kept searching, but rush hour had just begun. Crowds of people were leaving work and making their way back home. There were too many people on the streets and in the park, too many public buildings surrounding the area, too many places where someone could easily observe the park from, without looking suspicious or being noticed. In downtown Los Angeles the killer wouldn’t have found a better place than City Hall Park for what he had in mind. It being located just across the road from the PAB was just the perfect bonus.

  The sergeant pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed it over his sweaty forehead. ‘We’re bagging every little piece of trash into evidence bags, and you know why?’ He was in no mood to wait for an answer. ‘Because no one told us what the hell we’re supposed to be looking for out here, and if that one thing so happens to be a bubble gum wrapper and we miss it, it’s my ass, and I’m not losing my retirement pension over this bullshit. You guys want it, you can sort through it in your own time. Good luck with it.’

  The radio clipped to the belt around the sergeant’s thick waistline crackled loudly before a thin voice came through.

  ‘Um . . . Sergeant, I think I’ve . . .’ HISS, HISS. ‘. . . here.’

  The sergeant unclipped the radio from his belt, clicking the ‘talk’ button. ‘That’s a negative, officer. Ten-one. You gonna have to repeat that.’

  Both detectives knew that 10-1 was police ten-code for ‘poor reception’.

  More radio crackles.

  The sergeant moved around to the other side of Hunter and Garcia.

  ‘I said that I think I’ve got something here, Sergeant,’ the officer came back. This time the reception was much clearer.

  Reflexively the sergeant looked back at both detectives to check if they’d heard the message.

  They had.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the sergeant replied. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Not quite sure, Sergeant.’

  ‘OK, then. Where are you?’

  ‘Northeast corner of the park, by the trashcan.’

  Hunter, Garcia and the sergeant turned and looked in that general direction. They’d been standing by the Frank Putman water feature, right at the center of the park, not that far from the northeast corner. They could see a young officer standing by a trashcan waving at them. They quickly walked over.

  The officer was in his early twenties and looked to be fresh out of the police academy. He had bright blue eyes, red, acne-riddled cheeks and a pencil-tip nose. He was wearing a pair of latex gloves and holding a compact, black camcorder in his hands. He greeted everyone with a single head nod.

  ‘I found this in there, Sergeant.’ He pointed to the trash-can to his left. ‘It was inside a regular brown-paper sandwich bag.’ He handed the camera to his sergeant, who barely looked at it before passing it over to Hunter.

  ‘This is your show,’ he said, looking very uninterested.

  Hunter gloved up and took the camera. The letters and numbers on one side of it read Sony Handycam CX250 HD. The camera was one of those with a flip-out screen on the side.

  ‘I’m not really sure what we’re looking for out here, sir,’ the officer explained. ‘But that’s a brand-new digital camera, worth at least a few hundred bucks. It’s got no business being in the trash.’

  ‘Where’s the sandwich bag the camera was in?’ Hunter asked the officer, who promptly produced a clear plastic evidence bag.

  ‘All bagged up and ready to go, sir,’ he said. ‘I figured somebody would want this separate from the rest of the garbage.’

  Garcia acknowledged the officer’s good work before quickly checking the sandwich bag.

  Nothing. No marks, no stains, nothing written anywhere.

  He and Hunter returned their attention to the camcorder.

  ‘Did you try turning this on?’ Hunter asked
the officer.

  He shook his head. ‘Not my place, sir. I found it and called it in straightaway.’

  Hunter nodded his agreement. For an instant he considered if he should take the camera straight to forensics, but the reality of the matter was that there was no clear evidence that that camcorder had indeed been left behind by the killer.

  Hunter flipped open the viewer screen and froze. He didn’t need to turn the camera on to know. Staring back at him was all the confirmation he needed.

  Eighty

  The man stood at the crowded bus stop by the northwest corner of City Hall Park, calmly observing the events unfold on the South Lawn. He had to admit that he was surprised.

  He had considered using a thick blood-red marker pen to write Detective Robert Hunter – LAPD on the sandwich bag he’d left inside the trashcan at the northeast corner of the park less than an hour ago. By doing so, he would make sure that if anyone else came across the bag, like a garbage collector (homeless trashcan scavengers tended to stay away from the park due to its proximity to the Police Administration Building), chances were they’d drop it in at the PAB. But in the end the man had decided against it. He’d read a lot about Detective Robert Hunter in the past few months. Hunter was supposed to be ‘a class above’, according to some of the articles he’d read. Well, how good could he really be, if he wasn’t even able to figure out that there was bound to be a hidden reason behind the fact that the LAPD was allowed to trace his last call? A reason other than the pure fun factor of being just outside their front door while tormenting them.

  But the man had to admit that he was a little bit surprised because things had happened fast. Faster than what he had foreseen. Very shortly after the Internet voting had ended, a team of five uniformed officers exited the PAB and purposefully crossed the road in the direction of the park. One of them, an officer with red acned cheeks and a thin-tip nose, had almost bumped into him. The team was being coordinated by an overweight senior officer, probably a sergeant, now too old and too fat for any kind of more physically demanding job, the man concluded. The four young officers under his command had clearly been instructed to search the park, not to stop and interview people.