by Chris Carter
Hunter walked around to the right side of the house, where he found a door with a large frosted-glass window. Through the frosted glass he couldn’t see much, except that the door looked to lead into the kitchen.
Hunter paused and considered his options for a short instant, before taking off his jacket and rolling it around his right fist. He looked left, then right. All quiet. He held his breath, steadied his legs and sent a firm punch through the frosted window. It smashed with a muffled crash. Instinctively, Hunter looked around again. Still all quiet.
‘Awesome,’ he said to himself. ‘Breaking and entering, followed by an illegal house search. The captain is going to love this.’
Hunter retrieved a latex glove from his pocket, gloved up, slipped his hand through the broken glass and unlocked the door. After pulling his pen flashlight from his gun holster, Hunter stepped into the house.
He quickly cleared the dark kitchen, surfacing in a spacious living room decorated with a combination of antiques and modern furniture. A staircase at the south end of it led to the house’s second floor. Hunter decided to check upstairs later.
Now that you’re in here, Robert, he asked himself. What the hell are you actually looking for? Do you have any idea? He got to the door at the other side of the living room. It led him into a den with leather seats, plush white rugs and a tall bookcase. The east wall was framed entirely by full-length windows, looking out into the house’s backyard. Hunter checked some of the titles on the bookcase and a pit started forming inside his stomach. There were books on medicine, electronics, mechanical engineering, information technology, law, forensic psychology, forensic investigation and police procedure.
‘It looks like he likes to research,’ Hunter said. He was about to go back on himself and check the rooms upstairs, when he noticed a wooden door by the other end of the bookcase. Faint spots of light were coming from underneath it. Cautiously, he walked over, flattened his ear against the door and listened for a moment – some sort of low droning noise was coming from the other side.
Hunter tried the door – unlocked. As he twisted its handle, he felt his heart pick up speed inside his chest. An uncomfortable tingling sensation began rubbing the back of his neck, as if trying to warn him about something. This time he tried to listen, but the sensible voice inside of him had said its piece and was now long gone.
Hunter reached for his gun.
The door opened without a single squeak, revealing a narrow flight of concrete stairs going down into some sort of basement. The stairs were lit by a single light bulb that hung from a wire above Hunter’s head. The air was damp and soiled with a musty smell. At the bottom of the stairs, another closed door.
Hunter took the steps down one at a time, being extremely cautious not to misplace a foot and slip. His grip tightened around the handle of his semi-automatic, and as he got to the bottom, his eyes ping-ponged from one door to the other several times. He stood still for a while, listening for any sort of sound. Still, all he could hear was the low droning noise coming from somewhere on the other side of the new door.
Hunter wiped his forehead with the back of his gun hand and tried the door handle – unlocked. He pushed the door open just enough for him to be able to take a peek inside. He didn’t need his flashlight anymore. At the other side of the door, a large basement room sprawled out before his eyes. There were several shelving units lining the walls to his right and left, with different-sized boxes occupying every inch of space on them.
Without twitching a muscle, and keeping his breathing as steady as he could, Hunter observed from the door for a two full minutes. Nothing. No movement. He took a deep breath, steadied his trigger finger and stepped inside.
The large basement was lit by two fluorescent tube lights, parallel to each other on the ceiling. The droning sound seemed to be coming from somewhere behind one of the shelving units at the other end of the room.
Hunter took tiny steps forward. With each step, his eyes scanned and re-scanned his surroundings as if he was point in a Delta team, but with so many units and boxes, he might as well be walking into a minefield.
The tingling sensation at the back of his neck intensified.
After his tenth step, something to Hunter’s left caught his eyes and he stopped moving. His gaze shot in that direction and towards the large board that had been fixed to the wall.
As he realized what he was actually staring at, his blood froze in his veins.
‘Oh . . . fuck . . .’
Eighty-Nine
Cory Russo was still looking at Mr. J with firm steady eyes.
Mr. J stared back at him calmly, his gun still aimed at his forehead. He didn’t mind the defiant look in Russo’s eyes or the challenging smirk on his lips. He seen it before so many times, he actually enjoyed it, because he knew that soon, very soon, that defiance, that smirk, the entire ‘badass’ attitude, would vanish. In its place would come petrifying fear, and a hell of a lot of begging and crying.
Mr. J reached into his pocket and took out a small, wallet-sized photograph.
‘Remember her?’
Russo’s eyes settled on the picture for no longer than three seconds. ‘Nope. Never seen the bitch before.’
Mr. J had been staring straight at Russo’s eyes. He saw the recognition in them. He saw the lie coming.
‘Is that right?’
Russo matched his stare.
Mr. J didn’t ask again. He simply squeezed the trigger on his pistol. The nine-millimeter round missed Russo’s left ear by a mere fraction, exploding against the white tiles behind him and sending shards and dust flying in the air. Mr. J had missed on purpose.
Russo’s hand shot up to his ear like a rocket.
There it was, the vanishing of the defiant grin. The crumbling of the badass attitude. The crying would come soon.
‘What the fuck, man?’ Russo yelled. ‘Are you fucking nuts?’
Another squeeze of the trigger. This time, the bullet missed Russo’s right ear. More shards. More dust.
Up came the other hand. ‘Fuuuuuuuck. What are you doing? Stop, man. Stop.’
Mr. J said nothing. He simply tapped his finger on the photograph.
‘OK, man, OK,’ Russo said. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy, though. She wasn’t one of mine.’
Mr. J found the answer a little odd. ‘One of yours? You better start talking plain English.’ He nodded with the barrel of his gun.
‘Yeah, man, she wasn’t one of mine,’ Russo said again. ‘She was supposed to be one of Toby’s.’ His chin jerked up slightly.
‘No. That still makes no sense,’ Mr. J said.
Russo saw the determination in Mr. J’s eyes and knew that he was about to squeeze the trigger again.
‘Wait, wait!’ he yelled, lifting his hands in surrender. ‘That’s how we did it, man,’ Russo began, his voice a lot less steady. ‘I scouted the ones for him, he scouted the ones for me, then we’d swop info. We live across town from each other and we thought that there was no way anyone could link the women back to us. On his nights, I made sure that I was in a place full of people, and I made sure that they remembered me, you know what I’m saying? On my nights, he did the same.’ Russo paused and nodded at the photograph. ‘But Toby never got to her, man. I did scout her out for him, yes. Gave him her picture and all, but he never did her, man. Not yet. She was . . . still to come.’
Mr. J was stunned. He now realized that he had the wrong guy. Cory Russo was a scumbag, but not the scumbag who had murdered Cassandra. He and his pothead friend, Toby, were two sack-of-shit rapists, who had devised a cunning plan so as not to be caught. In his job as a plumber, Russo would no doubt visit several homes a week. Toby would have a similar kind of job and did the same. They would then pick victims out for each other, probably based on some sick criteria. They would swop information, then choose a day. When Russo was out raping some poor woman that Toby had chosen for him, Toby would be at a bar, or at a park . . . somewhere with lots of people, and he would
make sure that he was noticed. If the victim reported the crime, and Mr. J knew that the sad reality in the USA was that less than 50 percent of rape victims would report the attack, there was a chance that the investigating team would come knocking on Toby’s door, but Toby would have a number of witnesses who could vouch for his whereabouts on the day or night of the crime. The process would work the other way around when Toby was out raping.
A brand-new pit of hate began digging its way through Mr. J’s heart.
‘What was the time frame?’ Mr. J asked. Despite his anger, his voice remained unaltered.
‘What?’
‘The time frame. How long between the picking of the victims and the attack?’
Russo stayed quiet.
Big mistake. Mr. J squeezed the trigger for the third time. This one exploded against Russo’s right hand, splattering blood and flesh against the wall, fracturing several bones, and severing two fingers. They bounced against the cold tiled floor.
Russo went flying back, crashing against the wall, his face contorted in pain. Blood flowed from his mutilated hand.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ Russo’s left hand moved to what was left of his right one. ‘Are you fucking insane? You’re a fucking cop, man. You can’t do this.’
‘The time frame.’
‘We waited six to eight months, man. Six to eight months.’ Spit flew from Russo’s mouth. ‘I’m going to fucking sue your ass, you motherfucker. I’m going to fucking sue the whole police department for this shit. You can say goodbye to your fucking badge, do you hear me?’
‘You’re as stupid as you look, do you know that?’ Mr. J said. ‘Let me ask you something. Do you know what this tube, this extension to the barrel of my gun is?’
The pain in Russo’s face was blurred by confusion.
‘Well, do you?’
‘Yeah, it’s a fucking muffler, a silencer, so what?’
The smirk was now on Mr. J’s lips. ‘How many cops do you know walk around with a silenced gun?’
Russo’s eyes widened.
The bullet hit him inch-perfect right between them.
As Mr. J exited the house through the kitchen door, he stopped by Toby, still unconscious on the floor.
Calmly, Mr. J grabbed Toby’s head with both hands and, in one swift but firm move, snapped his neck from left to right.
Ninety
Hunter stood before a large organizational board divided into twelve columns. Each column started with a photograph of the person it represented. There were eight women and four men. Underneath each image, a printed sheet carried all sorts of information about the subject on the picture – name, address, age, phone number and so on. The very last item on every sheet read: ‘Question to be asked’. A red ‘X’ had been drawn over the faces of three of the twelve subjects. Three faces which were now very familiar to Hunter, but the twist was, they didn’t belong to the three victims of the ‘video-call killer’.
As Hunter’s eyes studied the subject pictures, he felt sick, his stomach twisting inside of him, because he had been right.
The photographs on the board had all been downloaded from social media websites. They were the exact same photographs Hunter had been looking at back in his office.
‘How could I have failed to notice this before?’
Click.
The sound of a round being chambered into a semi-automatic pistol came from just a few feet behind Hunter.
‘If I were you, I’d put that gun down, Detective.’
As Hunter recognized the male voice, his muscles tensed and his finger curved itself firmly over the trigger of his H&K Mark 23.
‘Do you really think you’re fast enough?’ the killer asked, as if reading Hunter’s thoughts.
Hunter was a great marksman and a very fast mover, he knew that, but being able to spin around and squeeze a shot before the killer’s bullet got to him first was a trick he didn’t think he could pull off.
‘Drop the gun, Detective,’ the killer said one more time, his voice unaltered, ‘or I’ll blow your head off, and since the weapon I’m holding is a three fifty-seven Magnum, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, it will blow your head clean off your shoulders. The only way that they will be able to identify you, after scooping your brains off that wall, will be through fingerprints or DNA.’
‘You should know that well enough, Nick,’ Hunter replied. ‘After all, that’s where your expertise lies, isn’t it? Fingerprints.’
Nicholas Holden, the fingerprint expert forensic agent from Dr. Slater’s team, smiled. ‘Well, since you are in my basement uninvited, it’s obvious that you figured out who I was. I’m intrigued by how you did it, because I know I’ve made no mistakes, but we’ll get to that soon enough. Now, drop your weapon, or this conversation is about to end very badly, at least for you.’
Hunter closed his eyes and cursed himself. Walking into that basement alone had been a mistake. He should’ve trusted the tingling sensation he’d got moments earlier. He should’ve called for backup. There were too many shelving units down in that basement. Too many places one could hide behind. There was no way that he could’ve secured that whole area single-handed. What he should’ve done was have a SWAT team with him.
All a little too late now.
‘Arms wide open, Detective. Weapon dangling from your left index finger.’
Too many shelving units down in that basement. Too many places one could hide behind – that worked both ways. If Holden could hide behind them, so could Hunter . . . or so he thought.
Without turning his head, Hunter’s eyes quickly moved left then right. The closest shelving unit to him was on the left, but it was about seven feet away – way too far for him to get to before a bullet either blew his head off or added a hole the size of a grapefruit to his back.
‘Still wondering if you’re quick enough, Detective?’ Holden asked. ‘Why don’t you give it a go and we’ll find out. My money is on me. Want to take that bet?’
No reply.
‘Arms wide open, Detective,’ Holden repeated. ‘Weapon dangling from your left index finger. Do it now.’
Hunter knew he had no other option but to comply. He took a deep breath and did as he was told.
‘Now, toss it to your left. Don’t drop it, toss it, and make me believe you mean it.’
Hunter didn’t move.
‘Now, Detective.’
Angering a man holding a three fifty-seven Magnum was a mistake in any imaginable scenario. Angering a serial killer holding a three fifty-seven Magnum was just plain stupid.
Hunter flicked his wrist firmly and his weapon flew across the room. As it hit the floor several feet away, it slid up to a cardboard box by a shelving unit. Hunter followed it with his eyes.
‘Keep your arms wide open, Detective,’ Holden said. ‘They come down, you go down, minus a head, is that clear?’
‘Crystal.’
There was a long silent pause and Hunter couldn’t help but wonder if he was about to get shot in the back anyway. What did the killer have to lose? He’d already killed three people, and according to his ‘death board’, there were nine more still to come. Adding Hunter to that list wouldn’t make a difference.
‘Admit it, Detective . . .’ Holden finally broke the silence. Hunter could tell he had moved a little to his left. ‘You’re impressed by my work, aren’t you?’
Hunter hadn’t seen it, but Holden had nodded at the board.
‘I’m not sure “impressed” is the word I’d use, Nick.’ Despite how fast Hunter’s heart was beating, he still managed to keep his voice composed and its pace steady. ‘More like . . . sickened by it.’
The new pause that followed felt heavy and Hunter wondered if he had just sealed his fate with his poor choice of words.
‘That’s because you don’t understand it, Detective.’
This time Hunter put more thought into his reply. ‘What is there to understand, Nick?’
Hunter kept using Holden’s first name for
a very simple reason – he was trying to insert a subliminal message into his sentences. Trying to make Holden’s subconscious mind perceive him as a friend, not an enemy. As he spoke, Hunter’s eyes stayed on the board in front of him. The more he looked at it, the more dots he connected.
‘You were . . . punishing innocent people by killing someone they were close to. Someone they loved.’
The three familiar faces with the red ‘X’ over them didn’t belong to the killer’s three victims. They belonged to the people who the killer had called – Tanya Kaitlin, John Jenkinson and Erica Barnes. They had been the real targets of the ‘video-call killer’.
‘Innocent?’ Holden asked, his tone almost sarcastic. ‘Have you looked at the pictures at the top of each column?’
‘I have,’ Hunter confessed.
‘And can’t you see what they’re doing?’ Holden’s voice was still calm, but Hunter could tell that anger was starting to creep into it.
‘Yes, I can.’
The accident Hunter had read about back in his office was the connecting link between Holden and his targets . . . his victims. It was the reason behind all his torturing. The reason behind all his murders.
The accident had happened three and a half years ago in Lancaster, Northern Los Angeles. At around two in the morning, on Sierra Highway – a single-carriageway road that links Los Angeles to Mojave – a blue Ford Fusion driving south crossed over on to the north-heading traffic and collided head-on with a white Saturn S. Both occupants of the Ford Fusion, a couple in their early twenties, died instantly. The Saturn S was carrying a family of four: Nicholas Holden; his wife of ten years, Dora; and both of their daughters, nine-year-old Julie and Megan, seven and a half. Nicholas Holden was the only survivor of that tragic collision.
Back in his office, Hunter had had no trouble accessing the report by the Collision Investigation Unit. The conclusion reached by the investigating detective had been that the accident took place because the driver of the Ford Fusion had diverted her attention off the road. The reason for that, as witnessed by the driver of another car, was that she had been using her cellphone to take a selfie with her boyfriend while the vehicle was moving at speed.
