by Chris Carter
He gave her a subtle headshake, while at the same time pressing a speed dial button on his cellphone. A second later there was a barely audible beep, followed by Hunter’s ‘unavailable’ message. Garcia frowned. That meant Hunter’s cellphone was switched off. Hunter never switched his phone off.
‘I decided to change the rules yet again,’ Graham calmly said. ‘This time there will be only one death method, not a choice of two. You see, Detective, I want to test how benevolent the people of California are. If they care enough, she lives. If they don’t, she dies. It’s that simple.’
About halfway down the right-hand edge of the screen, the word SAVE appeared followed by the number zero and a green button. Directly underneath it, the word EXECUTE appeared, also followed by the number zero and a second green button.
‘This will be a simple race to the finish line, Detective. Ten minutes, at the end of which we count the votes. SAVE – she lives. EXECUTE – she dies. Does that sound fair?’
No reply.
‘All she needs is for the people of this great state we live in to care enough.’ Graham laughed out loud. ‘So what do you think, Detective Garcia? In the days of today, are people more inclined to give a complete stranger the benefit of the doubt, or condemn her to die simply because they see the word GUILTY on the screen? Can people really be that gullible?’
No reply.
‘I guess we’ll find out in ten minutes. But there’s something else I want you to do. Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘Exactly two minutes before time is up, I want you to use a different computer and log onto the following IP address.’ Graham dictated the address to Garcia. ‘Two minutes from time up, not a second before. If you log onto it anytime before two minutes, I’ll know it, and the deal is off. I will kill her no matter what, and I will kill her slowly. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
The line went dead.
The digital clock at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen started counting down – 9:59, 9:58, 9:57 . . .
One Hundred and Thirteen
Still with the hands-free earpiece securely in his ear, Hunter exited the car, unholstered his weapon and cautiously moved toward the door of the high-roofed building at the back of the disused stable. It was a medium-sized, unremarkable brick and cement construction, where unequal patches of green mold covered the walls outside. Old debris and garden weed surrounded the entire property. The only two windows Hunter could see from where he was had been boarded up, but the heavy wooden door he’d just approached on the east wall looked new. So did the two deadbolt locks on it.
Hunter moved closer and placed his right ear against the door. It was too thick and too solid for him to be able to hear anything coming from the other side.
‘It’s not a trick, Detective Hunter,’ Graham’s voice came through the hands-free once again, taking Hunter by surprise. ‘I am not going to shoot you as you walk through the door. That’s a promise. I really want you to see what’s inside. Just push the door. It’s open. And let me remind you – the clock is already ticking.’
Hunter had no other option but to trust Graham. He took a deep breath, cocked his gun and slowly pushed the door open.
The space inside was large and bare, like an empty family house stripped of all the walls. There was an odd smell in the air, a combination of disinfectant with something sweet and sickly, like dried-up old vomit. The light was uneven, coming from the north end of the room. Instinctively Hunter’s eyes moved in that direction, and a suffocating knot immediately formed in his throat.
Pushed up against the wall was a large, solid, metal-bar cage. The bars were at least one inch in diameter. Sitting at the center of it, naked and firmly strapped to a metal chair, was the woman he saw on the photograph he’d found earlier in Graham’s basement. She looked absolutely terrified. As her blurry, full-of-tears gaze found Hunter’s, her whole being was filled with hope, electrifying her entire body. She tried screaming, but her weak voice, made even weaker by her tired and wasted vocal cords, made no impression through the thick gag in her mouth. She used whatever strength she had left in her to try to swing her body from side to side and rock it forward, away from the chair’s backrest, but the straps that held her tight were too strong. Her eyes, though, communicated with Hunter in a clear voice.
Please help me.
A strange, metal-mesh mask had been attached to a mechanical arm and placed just a couple of inches in front of her face.
Directly in front of the cage, Hunter saw an internet camera. To the left of the cage, he saw a large computer monitor displaying the exact same images that were being broadcast over the Internet. The clock at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen was counting down – 6:05, 6:04, 6:03 . . . The voting display at the right-hand edge of the screen read:
SAVE: 12,574.
EXECUTE: 12,955.
Hunter was about to take a step toward the cage and the woman when he heard Graham’s voice again. This time he didn’t need the hands-free. The voice came from a dark spot at the west end of the room, directly in front of him.
‘Not so fast, Detective Hunter.’
Hunter immediately raised his gun in the direction of the voice, but shadows expertly cloaked that corner of the room.
‘I’d be careful with that gun if I were you,’ Graham said.
Hunter searched the darkness for a hint of movement, something he could use as a target. He found nothing.
‘Allow me to explain to you what is happening, Detective Hunter,’ Graham’s voice boomed around the room again. Due to how it echoed across the walls, Hunter couldn’t use it to pinpoint Graham’s exact location. Still, he kept his gun firmly aimed at the west end corner.
In a calm and unexcited voice, Graham explained to Hunter exactly what he had explained to Garcia over the phone.
‘As you can see, Detective,’ Graham said. ‘The hour of truth is almost upon us.’
Hunter peeked at the computer monitor again.
CLOCK: 4:18, 4:17, 4:16 . . .
SAVE: 14,325.
EXECUTE: 14,693.
Hunter slowly and subtly moved the aim of his gun from left to right, still looking for something he could use.
‘Shooting me won’t help you, Detective. The lock on that cage door is unbreakable and unbreachable. Bullets will have no effect on it. Nothing will. Actually, no one can unlock it. Not even me. It’s on a time-release mechanism. When that clock reaches zero, if SAVE is ahead, the door will automatically unlock, and she will be freed. If EXECUTE is ahead, the door will automatically unlock after five minutes, by which time my hand-made metal-mesh mask will have slowly compressed against her face, slicing through her flesh and facial bones like a piece of rotten animal carcass, before reaching her gray matter, finally killing her.’
The woman in the cage squealed in terror.
‘You can’t stop it from happening, Detective Hunter. You can’t save her, no matter what you do. Her fate will be decided by the people of California in the next few minutes. It’s their choice now.’
Hunter stole a peek at the woman again. She was shivering violently from fright and was about to pass out.
‘But wouldn’t you like to know who she is first before that clock reaches zero?’ Graham asked. ‘How she fits in with my plan?’
‘Graham, don’t do this,’ Hunter pleaded.
Graham simply ignored Hunter’s words. ‘Her real name is Julie, but in cyberspace she goes by the handle MSDarkDays. She is what is known as an Internet troll, Detective. I am sure you’re familiar with the term.’
Hunter knew exactly what an Internet troll was. Someone who deliberately posts offensive and derogative messages in online communities such as social networks, chat rooms, blogs, forums, etc. with the sole purpose of hurting others and provoking an emotional response.
‘When the video footage of my son’s suicide appeared online for the first time,’ Graham continued, ‘MSDarkDays was the first person to post
a message. Would you like to hear that message, Detective Hunter?’
Hunter stayed silent.
‘The ugly fuck did the right thing. If my face were that fucked up, I would’ve killed myself a long time ago. Los Angeles has one less ugly freak to deal with. If all the ugly, fucked-up schoolkids who can’t deal with their own problems followed suit and topped themselves, LA would be a much better place,’ Graham quoted the post word for word. ‘Not content with what she wrote in that first post, MSDarkDays returned to the site several times over a period of weeks, adding several more posts. But I won’t bore you with them all, Detective. We don’t have the time.’
Hunter let out a deep breath. ‘We all make mistakes, Graham. You, me, her – no one is free of them. Don’t make another one now.’
Graham laughed a slightly crazy laugh.
CLOCK: 2:19, 2:18, 2:17 . . .
SAVE: 21,458.
EXECUTE: 21,587.
‘I’m not making a mistake, Detective. But if you use that gun, you might. You wouldn’t want to shoot the wrong person, would you?’
At that exact moment the clock reached 2:00. A new light came on, weak and yellowish but strong enough to make some of the shadows disappear, bringing Graham out of the darkness.
But Graham wasn’t alone. He was crouching down behind another metal chair, hiding behind the person strapped to it.
Hunter immediately took aim, but as his eyes settled on the person strapped to the chair he felt as if his heart had shot up his throat, blocking his intake of oxygen and making him feel faint.
Graham was hiding behind Anna – Garcia’s wife.
One Hundred and Fourteen
Using the computer on Hunter’s desk, Garcia typed the private IP address that Graham had given him onto the browser’s address bar and hit the ‘enter’ key.
Captain Blake was standing just behind him.
The screen flickered twice before the images loaded and, as they did, Garcia’s world came crumbling down in front of his eyes.
The broadcasting camera had been positioned high, and seemingly at the northeast corner of the room. The diagonal angle allowed it to cover a wide area. Standing on the left of the picture Garcia could see Hunter. His weapon was drawn and firmly aimed at the two people across the room from him. One of those two people was Anna.
‘Oh my God!’ Garcia mumbled the words almost catatonically.
Anna had been gagged and strapped to a high-backed metal chair in the same manner as the woman who was sitting inside the metal-bar cage. The difference was, she hadn’t been stripped of her clothes, and unlike the other woman Anna looked drugged. Her eyes were lazy and unfocused, her body depleted of all energy, her lips drooping to one side.
Cowardly hiding directly behind the chair was someone they couldn’t clearly see, but who they could only assume was Graham Fisher. He was holding a gun to Anna’s head.
Captain Blake was watching the images wide-eyed, her mouth half open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ She finally uttered the words like someone who had just awakened from a deep sleep, still groggy.
Garcia couldn’t find the strength to answer back.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Graham’s voice came booming out of the small speakers on Hunter’s desk.
One Hundred and Fifteen
‘I must apologize for this crude improvisation,’ Graham said to Hunter. ‘This certainly wasn’t how I had planned this final broadcast, but since I underestimated you and your partner, Detective Hunter, this was the best I could come up with in the few hours I had.’ A very short pause. ‘But enough with the apologies. I bet that you’re wondering how on earth I managed to get to your partner’s wife when she had a police unit following her everywhere she went.’
Hunter remained quiet.
‘Well, knowing the exact police car identification number, how difficult do you think it would be for someone like me to hack into the LAPD radio frequency, pretend I’m dispatch and call off the police escort, Detective?’
‘You’ve got to let her go, Graham,’ Hunter finally spoke, his aim still uncertain. ‘She’s not part of your plan. She’s never been part of your plan. I’m the one you want, not her. I’m the one you blame, not her. She had nothing to do with what happened to your son, before or after the bridge incident.’
‘That’s true,’ Graham admitted. ‘She was never part of my original plan. But as I’ve said, due to very late developments, I had to improvise, and if I’m honest I think it’s going quite well so far.’
CLOCK: 1:27, 1:26, 1:25 . . .
SAVE: 29,783.
EXECUTE: 29,794.
Hunter steadied his aim.
‘Go on, Detective, take a shot,’ Graham challenged him. ‘I know you want to. I also know how good a shot you are. I read your whole file. From this distance you can practically shoot the wings off the back of a fly. All you need is a chance, right?’
Hunter said nothing.
‘What’s wrong, Detective Hunter, confidence wavering a little? Not so certain of that kill-shot right about now? Oh, that’s right. If you miss, you could kill your partner’s wife. How would you explain that, then?’
No reply.
‘I have one more surprise for you, Detective Hunter. The camera high on the wall to your right is also broadcasting. Not to the World Wide Web, but to your partner back at the Police Administration Building, and whoever else he has in the room with him.’
Hunter’s attention didn’t flicker.
‘Oh, and he can hear us too. The microphone is on. So let me ask you this, Detective Hunter. What do you think your partner would say to you right now? Would he want you to take a shot or not? Bearing in mind that if you miss me, and by some miracle also managed not to hit his wife, then it will be my turn to pull my trigger.’ He pressed his gun harder against the side of Anna’s head. ‘From this distance, I know I won’t miss.’
Hunter tensed.
As if teasing Hunter, Graham shifted behind Anna for a split second.
Hunter held his breath. His left-hand grip tightened on his gun, while his right hand relaxed just a fraction, allowing his trigger finger to become more flexible, and his arms to better control the recoil. But the fact that Anna was Graham’s shield played in Hunter’s mind and he hesitated, giving Graham the chance to disappear behind her again.
CLOCK: 1:01, 1:00, 0:59 . . .
SAVE: 31,125.
EXECUTE: 31,148.
‘Sartre once said,’ Graham spoke again, ‘that the only real choice a man has in life is whether or not to commit suicide. Are you familiar with that quote, Detective Hunter?’
Hunter felt an uncomfortable anxiety run through him.
‘Yes or no, Detective?’ Graham demanded.
‘Yes,’ Hunter replied.
Graham paused for an instant. ‘Good, because I’m forcing that choice upon you right now, Detective Hunter. You want to save your partner’s wife’s life? Then I want you to put your gun to your head and pull the trigger.’
Absolute silence ruled over the room. Even the air seemed to stop moving.
‘You have until that clock reaches zero,’ Graham said. ‘Not a second more.’
CLOCK: 0:47, 0:46, 0:45 . . .
SAVE: 33,570.
EXECUTE: 33,601.
‘It’s a simple choice, Detective Hunter,’ Graham continued. ‘An innocent life for a guilty one. If you put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, she lives. I guarantee it. No harm will come to her. But if that clock reaches zero and you are still standing, I will blow her brains all over this room with no hesitation and no equivocations.’ He cocked his gun. ‘What happens after that makes no difference to me. Like I said, MSDarkDays’ fate isn’t in your hands. There’s nothing you, or I, can do to change it. But your partner’s wife’s is. Do you understand what’s happening here, Detective? I want to know if you are prepared to save her in the same way you were prepared to save my son, or will you try harder this time?’
Hunter said nothing.
/> CLOCK: 0:28, 0:27, 0:26 . . .
SAVE: 33,888.
EXECUTE: 33,903.
‘I want you to take your own life just like my son took his,’ Graham said in an indignant, disgusted voice. ‘I want to watch you do it just like you watched him do it.’
A million things were going through Hunter’s mind at that moment, but he knew he had time to consider none of them.
‘Police officers have to be prepared to put their lives on the line for others, isn’t that right, Detective Hunter? But are you really prepared for it or is that just a bullshit motto? Would you give your life for someone else’s, Detective? Would you give your life to save an innocent one?’
CLOCK: 0:16, 0:15, 0:14 . . .
SAVE: 34,146.
EXECUTE: 34,155.
Hunter knew he had run out of time. He also knew that he had underestimated Graham Fisher, because out of all the possibilities he had run through in his head of how his encounter with Graham could’ve ended up, blowing his own brains all over the floor had never been one of them.
He now understood that Graham had indeed played him all along. This had always been the grand finale to his master plan. As Graham had said, he wanted to watch Hunter take his own life, just like Hunter had watched his son, Brandon Fisher, take his. Only then would Graham’s revenge be complete. And he played it to perfection. Even broadcasting the final act to Garcia so he could watch Hunter decide if his wife lived or died.
Hunter had no counterplan, no more time left, and in truth only one option. He knew Graham wouldn’t falter. When that clock reached zero, he would end Anna’s life right there and then. He had the same determination in his eyes and in his voice as his son did that night on the bridge. He wasn’t looking for help, or salvation. His decision had been made a long time ago.
‘Ten seconds, Detective,’ Graham said.
Hunter looked at Anna, not an ounce of doubt in his mind anymore.
He brought his gun to him and placed it under his own chin, but didn’t shut his eyes like most people would have. He kept them open . . . proud . . . staring straight ahead.
