by Chris Carter
The kitchen was tiny, and it smelled as if Michael Williams had been deep-frying lard in goose fat. The back door was wide open and Mr. J got to it just in time to see the motorbike vanish through a side passage on the backyard fence. He squeezed two shots from his pistol, but it was way too late. The shots hit the woodwork.
In a flash, Mr. J turned and ran back into the house. He got to the living room and was about to run out to his car when his mind let go of the anger and began thinking clearly again.
What’s the point in trying to go after him now, he thought. He’s on a bike, cutting through small alleyways and backstreets. Right now he could be three, four, maybe even five streets over in any direction. Driving around in a car to try to find him is a pretty dumb idea. He looked around the living room. Your best chance to find him is in here, somewhere. Something in here will give him up.
Mr. J walked to the front door and looked outside to see if anyone had seen what had happened. The street was as dead as it was when he got there. He calmly closed the door and began searching Michael Williams’ house.
Sixty-Five
Garcia was just getting off the phone with the LAPD Cyber Crime Unit when Hunter got back to their office.
‘Robert, you’ve got to come have a look at this.’
Garcia’s tone filled Hunter with intrigue. He walked over to his partner’s desk.
‘I’ll admit that I made a huge mistake,’ Garcia explained. ‘I spent a lot of time going over Cassandra and John Jenkinson’s social media pages, searching through entries, looking at photos . . . everything.’
‘How’s that a mistake?’
‘It’s the same mistake I made the first time around, Robert. I looked through everything in both Karen Ward and Tanya Kaitlin’s personal pages, remember? But I found absolutely nothing there. The break came when I looked at their friend’s page, Pete Harris, and that was when I remembered something very important about our second victim – she’s got a son, Patrick Jenkinson, who is twenty years old and goes to college in Boston. To his generation, social media is like oxygen. They can barely function without it.’
‘So you checked his page.’
‘Pages,’ Garcia corrected Hunter.
‘He’s got more than one?’
‘Not exactly, but he’s a member of several different groups,’ Garcia explained. ‘Each one with their own page, so I spent the whole morning bouncing from one page to another, reading entries, replies, basically everything I could find, until I came across this.’ He loaded a page on to his browser and scrolled down until he found the entry he was after. ‘Check it out,’ he said, tapping his finger on the screen.
Hunter leaned forward by his partner’s left shoulder.
‘You only have to read up to the fourth reply to know what I’m talking about.’
The thread had been created on a group page, not by Patrick Jenkinson, but by another member. A woman named Isabel.
Isabel: Oh, my father is in so much with my mom after last night. He’ll be sleeping in the living room for a month.
The first question came from another female member named Martha:
Why? What happened? . Tell. Tell. Tell.
Isabel: He forgot their wedding anniversary. Turned up after work with nothing - no , , not even a shitty card from a gas station. Didn’t mention a thing. My mom was , but she also didn’t say anything. This morning, at breakfast, she was all quiet. My dad asked - ‘are you OK, hon?’ That was when the shit hit the fan, and let me tell you, that fan is still spinning lol
Martha: Oh that’s bad. That’s real bad. . My dad is awesome when it comes to that. Twenty-three years married, never forgot it once.
The next comment came from Patrick Jenkinson:
I know exactly what you’re talking about, Isabel. My dad doesn’t remember his and my mom’s wedding anniversary anymore either. Hasn’t for several years. My mom used to remind him, but not without getting into an argument at the same time. She gave up after a few years. If he couldn’t remember it by himself, what was the point?
Hunter looked at Garcia.
‘You were right again,’ Garcia said. ‘The killer knew beforehand that Mr. Jenkinson wouldn’t know the answer to his question.’
Sixty-Six
Mr. J’s ribs hurt as if they were broken. The kick Michael Williams had delivered to his abdomen had gotten him completely by surprise. At the time his body wasn’t exactly relaxed, but it wasn’t rigid or foreseeing an attack so soon either, so the kick had penetrated with maximum force.
‘You should’ve expected that, J,’ he whispered to himself, while opening another drawer inside Michael Williams’ bedroom. ‘What the fuck were you thinking? You turn up unannounced, pretending to be a cop, and you thought he would just invite you in for donuts and milk?’ He lifted his shirt to take a look. Bruising was already starting to come through.
Mr. J had already gone through every drawer, every box, every hole he had found in Michael Williams’ living room. So far, he’d found nothing that could give him a lead as to where he could’ve run to, but the search wasn’t over yet. Inside a box that had been slid under an old display unit, he’d found receipts, house bills, and some documents regarding NoLeaks Plumbing. The company had been established two and a half years earlier, and it belonged to Michael Williams himself. As far as Mr. J could tell, he was also its only employee.
Once he was satisfied that he had looked absolutely everywhere in the living room, Mr. J moved his search operation to Michael Williams’ bedroom. Just like the living room, the bedroom was small, lightly furnished, and it smelled of stale sweat and fried food.
Mr. J started with the chest of drawers that was pushed up against the east wall. His living room search had already told him that Michael Williams was an extremely organized man. Every object seemed to have its specific place, but the bedroom told him that Mr. Williams was undoubtedly OCD. Every item of clothing he’d found inside the drawers had been folded to perfection, completely maximizing the use of space, but the obsession didn’t end there. The items had also been color- and type-coordinated.
Mr. J unfolded and looked through each and every single item, including pockets. He found nothing, not even a scrap of paper.
Next, he tried the small wooden wardrobe, where he found a gray suit that looked to have been purchased from a charity shop, two white button-up shirts, one striped tie, a pair of heavy-duty working boots, and a pair of black shoes, which had certainly seen better days.
He checked all the clothing before looking on top and under the wardrobe but, once again, Mr. J found nothing.
There was only one bedside table, set on the right side of the bed, closer to the door, and that was where things began getting exciting. In the drawer, Mr. J found a Beretta 96 A1 .40-caliber pistol. Next to it, two boxes of 180-grain full-metal-jacket ammunition.
‘I don’t suppose I’ll find a permit for this anywhere,’ Mr. J said, as he picked up the weapon and released its twelve-round magazine. None were missing. He brought the gun’s chamber up to his nose. It didn’t smell of gunpowder, but of oil and lubricants.
After securing the pistol between his trousers’ waistband and his lower back, Mr. J got down on all fours and checked under the bed – nothing except for a dark-gray suitcase. He reached for it and dragged it towards him.
It was a polycarbonate suitcase, with a two-way zipper, held shut by a three-digit combination locking mechanism. It felt very light, as if it was empty, but if that was the case, why was it locked?
Mr. J reached for his pocketknife. The average commercial suitcase locking mechanism is there more as a deterrent, rather than as a security feature. All it really takes is a quick flick with the tip of a knife and the system comes apart. It took Mr. J less than three seconds to breach this one.
Zippers free, he flipped the suitcase top open and frowned. Inside it he found a second bag – this one a military-style, thick canvas duffle bag. Its zipper was secured shut by a high-grade, enclosed sha
ckle padlock. There was no way Mr. J was breaching that lock with a pocketknife, but it was still only a zipper on a canvas bag, and that, a pocketknife could rip open in no time.
‘OK,’ Mr. J said to himself. ‘I’m done playing games.’ He stabbed the knife through the zipper, forced its jaws open, and looked inside.
‘Motherfucker.’
Sixty-Seven
In seeing what Garcia had achieved from searching the social-media sites, an idea came to Hunter. He returned to his computer and called up his browser before reaching for the phone on his desk and dialing an internal extension.
‘Dennis Baxter, Computer Crimes Unit.’ A tired-sounding voice answered after the third ring.
‘Dennis, it’s Robert from the UVC Unit.’
Baxter coughed to clear his throat. He knew that when Hunter called him on his work line, something serious was either going down, or about to. ‘Hey, man, what’s up?’
‘Listen,’ Hunter said, ‘does the LAPD have some kind of bogus social media account? Something I can use without having to create a whole bunch of accounts myself?’
Garcia’s brow creased as he leaned sideways on his chair to look at Hunter past their computer screens.
‘You mean a bogus personal account,’ Baxter questioned back. ‘Not a business one. Something with which you could send out friend requests, and messages, and join conversations and all that?’
‘Exactly,’ Hunter replied. ‘Does the LAPD have anything like that?’
‘Yeah, we’ve got a few of those. Why? Do you need one?’
‘By yesterday.’
‘Sure. No problem. What do you need, Facebook?’
‘I need everything you can get – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – whatever it is that people are using the most these days.’
‘OK. Do you need the same email account to be the primary account across the board here? For legitimacy?’
‘Not really necessary,’ Hunter answered. ‘All I want to be able to do is browse through a few pages, but I understand that I can’t really do that without an account.’
‘Yes, that’s right. So you mean to tell me that you don’t have a Facebook or a Twitter account?’
‘I don’t have any social media accounts.’
‘You’re a caveman,’ Baxter laughed. ‘OK, any particular look or gender you’d rather have or be? I can give you any sort of profile you need – hot chick, super nerd, naive little girl, badass motherfucker, old, young, black, white – when it comes to cyberspace profiles, I provide a God service.’
Hunter thought about it for a second or two. ‘Can I get two identities? One male, one female. Just average people will do.’
‘Sure,’ Baxter replied. ‘Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll email you back.’
‘What’s going on, Robert?’ Garcia asked once Hunter had put his phone down. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I’m not really sure, myself. But it looks like our killer spends a lot of time on social media sites. That could be how he got his insight into his victims’ lives. If that really is how he does it, then I need to do the same.’
The phone on Hunter’s desk rang twice before Hunter picked it up.
‘Sending the email with your new identities to you now,’ Baxter said.
Hunter called up his email application and his eyebrows arched – [email protected] and [email protected]? ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Swift.’
‘Wait until you see their profile pictures I gave you,’ Baxter said. ‘The passwords to the accounts are in the email.’
‘Thanks, Dennis.’
‘No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.’
‘Will do.’
Hunter ended the call and used his new cyber-identities to log into several different social media sites at the same time.
‘OK,’ he said to himself. ‘Let’s start digging.’
Sixty-Eight
Without knocking, Captain Blake pulled open the door to Hunter and Garcia’s office and stepped inside. They were both sitting at their desks.
‘OK,’ she said in an already irritated tone, her eyes bouncing from one detective to the other. ‘What have you guys got for me on this? And you better tell me you’ve got something good, because with this second victim, Cassandra Jenkinson, those freaks from the media have caught the smell of blood, and when it comes to anything that could possibly turn out to be a serial homicide story, they all become ravenous vampires. And the colony is starving.’
Hunter was amused by the comparison.
‘Word on this killer broadcasting his murders live over a video-call hasn’t got out yet,’ the captain continued. ‘But that’s just a matter of time, we all know that. Since the new murder last night, the phones in our press office have been ringing off the hook. Right now, everyone is looking for some sort of statement from us.’
Both detectives knew that that was coming.
‘Has one been issued yet?’ Garcia asked.
‘What?’ Captain Blake glared at him. ‘Is that a joke, Carlos? How the hell could we issue anything if no one, other than the two of you, knows what’s really going on with this case?’
Garcia sat back and clasped his hands together over his stomach. ‘I thought bullshitting was our press office’s specialty.’
‘Oh, we’ve got jokes now, is that it?’ Captain Blake said, her eyes about to flash fire. ‘Because this seems like the ideal moment to crack one.’
‘What would you like to know, Captain?’ Hunter asked in a serene tone, bringing her attention to him.
‘Everything, Robert,’ she replied, checking her watch. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Chief Bracco in two hours, and he’ll be expecting to be fully briefed. Unless you’d like to go in my place?’
‘No, I’m good. Thanks, Captain.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t think so.’ The captain took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘So, the last time I left this office we had one victim and the speculation seemed to be moving in the direction of a stalker. Is that still the case?’
‘You better make yourself comfortable, Captain,’ Garcia said.
Captain Blake grabbed a fold-up chair that was resting against a metal cabinet by the office door. Once she had a seat, Hunter and Garcia took turns explaining everything that had happened since her last update, including their new Internet discovery just moments ago.
‘Wait a second,’ the captain said, lifting a finger to pause Hunter as he explained the results to Cassandra Jenkinson’s autopsy exam. He’d been detailing the bizarre way in which she’d been murdered. ‘It says here, and I quote.’ She read from the copy of the postmortem report they’d handed her: ‘ “With a forceful traumatic impact, the skull bone depresses in the shape of the striking instrument” – I take it that that means any striking instrument?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So to create a pyramid splinter fracture, the killer didn’t have to use a pointy chisel?’
‘Nope,’ Hunter replied. ‘He didn’t even have to use a chisel at all, Captain. The hammer on its own would’ve been more than capable of doing that.’
‘So why did he?’ she asked, looking unsure.
‘Because the problem with using any sort of blunt instrument on its own,’ Hunter clarified, ‘is that it would’ve been a lot harder to control and measure the impact, and there was no guarantee that the killer would’ve achieved the desired effect.’
‘What desired effect, Robert, death? I’m sure that a hammer to the head would’ve done the job, no problem.’
‘Not death, Captain,’ Hunter said, sitting back on his chair, ‘blood.’
Captain Blake didn’t voice a question. All she did was look back at Hunter and shake her head ever so slightly.
‘There’s something you’re forgetting, Captain.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘This killer is broadcasting his murders live over a video-call, so whichever way you look at this, you can’t deny that what he’s es
sentially doing is putting on a show. It doesn’t matter if he’s got an audience of one or a million. To him, it’s still a show. And the game he plays requires two main things to happen in order for his show to work the way he wants it to.’ Hunter lifted his right index finger. ‘One: He needs the person on the other end of the line to panic, because that plays directly in his favor and he feeds off it. It empowers him.’ Hunter paused for breath. ‘If he had used a hammer on its own, that would’ve been a lot harder to achieve, if he’d managed to do it at all.’
‘Are you saying that if the killer had decided to hammer Cassandra Jenkinson’s head in, her husband wouldn’t have panicked? Watching it live over a video-call?’
‘Sure he would’ve, but that could’ve easily played against the killer’s second requirement.’
‘And what requirement is that?’
‘For our killer to have his “fun”.’ Hunter used his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air. ‘The killer also needs his victims to stay alive for at least two wrong answers, because that’s how he gets his kicks, Captain. To him, torturing and murdering his victims isn’t enough. He needs more because his sadism goes way beyond killing. He needs the total desperation from the person watching. He needs them to lose their minds. He needs to make them feel guilty.’
The captain paused and mulled over that thought for an instant. Hunter helped.
‘This game he plays, though it may sound like it’s a simple enough question-and-answer game, it’s been very well thought of, Captain, and meticulously designed to unbalance the person answering the questions.’
This time, it was Captain Blake who sat back on her chair. ‘You’re going to have to give me a little bit more than that, Robert, if you want me to at least try to follow this surreal mind of yours. What the hell are you talking about?’
‘OK,’ Hunter accepted, getting up and walking over to the picture board. ‘Hidden in this question game our killer plays are some simple, but very effective psychological elements.’
