by Carter Chris
Slowly, Hunter retrieved the gun and felt the weight of it in his hand. The empty magazine made it quite light.
‘Good, now just let your arm fall to the side of the chair. The round is already chambered, remember?’
Hunter’s arm dropped to the side of the chair and his index finger curled over the weapon’s trigger. Inside his chest, his heart began its own drum solo while a kaleidoscope of butterflies was released inside his stomach.
The Werewolf nodded and allowed his arm to drop to the side of his chair.
‘This is it, Detective Hunter,’ he said. His voice was peaceful, accepting.
Hunter kept his gaze cemented on the Werewolf’s face. And it surprised him. The ex-soldier had no discernable expression. No anger . . . no pity . . . no remorse . . . nothing. Hunter was looking at a man who would either die or kill someone in the next few seconds and he was treating it as if he was just about to pour himself a bowl of cornflakes. He also seemed to have no psychological response to danger. His pupil dilation, skin tone and breathing remained exactly the same.
‘OK,’ the Werewolf said, giving Hunter a single nod. ‘Let’s do this.’
A second drum set joined the one already inside Hunter’s chest.
‘On three. And I’ll show you who is the best.’
Hunter breathed in through his nose, trying to take in as much oxygen as he could without making too sudden a movement. His eyes would not leave the ex-soldier.
‘One.’
The Werewolf’s facial expression was absolutely still, his arm was like a dead limb by the side of his chair.
Hunter wondered if the ex-soldier would really stick to his word, or if he would fire his weapon on the count of two instead of three. The anticipation threatened to send a shiver down Hunter’s arm, but he fought it with all he had. A shaky arm would be the last thing he needed right then.
‘Two.’
Absolutely no movement whatsoever from the Werewolf. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
Hunter’s finger made itself comfortable around the SR22 trigger. He relaxed his shoulders and breathed out through his mouth just as the count reached ‘three’.
In a flash, both of their shooting arms came up.
Only one of them managed to fire his weapon.
Ninety-Five
A few minutes earlier.
After hearing the two gunshots that to her sounded like two explosions, Angela Wood had begun pacing the small cell.
‘What the hell is going on out there?’ she asked in a voice loud enough to reverberate off the cinderblock walls, but quiet enough not to activate the ceiling sprinklers.
Angela could feel her whole body shivering under her. Her mouth went desert-dry and she struggled to breathe. To her, it felt as if the cell walls were wrapping themselves around her like fingers closing into a fist. She knew exactly what was coming because she had felt like that a few times before – they were the telltale signs of a panic attack.
‘No . . . please don’t,’ she begged her body and her brain. ‘I don’t need this now. I really don’t need this now.’
She squeezed her eyes tight and did her best to concentrate on her breathing, trying to calm it down before it got completely out of control.
‘Breathe, Angie,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Long, deep breaths, not short bursts.’
That was what a doctor once told her to do.
It took Angela a several minutes, but the exercise worked and she managed to get her breathing under control and halt the panic attack before it could take her over.
As her breathing stabilized, she heard the sound of a door closing somewhere outside her cell, followed by footsteps.
‘What the fuck?’ she whispered, before approaching the door to her cell. She knew much better than to put her ear against it, though that was exactly what she wanted to do.
‘Hello?’ she called out in a tentative voice. ‘Is anyone there?’
She got no reply.
‘Hello?’ she tried again.
Nothing.
Angela got as close to the door as she possibly could without touching it. She was about to call out one more time, when something beat her to the punch.
BANG!
A third gunshot, but this time it sounded like it had come from a lot closer than the previous two. Practically, just outside her door. The sound was so loud, ice-cold water started raining from her ceiling.
Fear hit Angela like a speed train and she quickly stepped back from the door.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she thought. ‘Something’s seriously wrong here.’
That was when a whole new train of thought entered her mind, making her heart almost stall.
What if I’m not the only one? What if he’s got other hostages locked into cells just like this one? What if he’s angry and he’s going around killing them one by one? What if I’m next?
Angela tried to think, but her confused brain kept on misfiring.
The ceiling sprinklers finally came to a stop, but just as they did . . .
BANG!
A fourth shot.
This one did not reactivate the ceiling sprinklers, but did send Angela’s heart back into overdrive.
‘Fucked if I’m going to just sit here and wait for this psycho to come and kill me,’ Angela said to herself, as she walked back to the bed. ‘I’m not going out like that. If I’m going down, I’m going down with a fucking fight.’
Facing the door, Angela got into a linebacker position – body bent forward, left leg in front, right leg behind, ready to push her whole body forward with all the strength she had left in her.
‘The only way that you’re getting in here is through that door, you sick sonofabitch,’ she said in a murmur, taking deep breaths to psych herself up. ‘And as soon as that door opens, I’m coming at you like the fucking thunder. You might kill me, but I’m going to break your fucking ribs before I go.’
Through the tiny gap between the door and the cement floor, Angela saw two dark shadows appear – feet. Someone had walked up to her cell.
‘Here we go.’
A key was inserted into the lock.
Angela clenched her fingers into a fist.
The door unlocked and Angela shot forward like a human cannon ball.
Ninety-Six
Seven tenths of a second – that was how long the duel between Hunter and the Werewolf lasted.
Both of their arms shot up like rockets, but even before the countdown began, the Werewolf already knew that he would win.
Hunter’s weapon was a lot lighter than his and the Werewolf knew that that gave Hunter an advantage, but still, the power of his 9mm against Hunter’s 22-caliber pistol gave him a much bigger edge.
Just like the Werewolf had explained, the only way in which Hunter would be able to stop him would be if Hunter’s single bullet hit him right on the forehead. The projectile had to pierce his skull and then his brain to bring him to a stop . . . and that was the problem. Even from a distance of eight paces, Hunter would have to aim to hit his target, while the Werewolf didn’t necessarily have to. His expanding round would cause enormous damage wherever it hit – stomach, chest, arm, leg, head . . . it didn’t really matter. As long as the Werewolf’s round hit Hunter, it was pretty much the end for the detective. Even if the Werewolf hit him on the leg, the pain of shattered bone and ruptured muscle and nerves would be so intense, Hunter would immediately drop his weapon.
Game over.
If the Werewolf’s first bullet didn’t kill him, the second one, fired against a wounded Hunter, would blow his head off.
‘This is way too fucking easy,’ the Werewolf thought before counting to three.
On ‘three’, he knew that Hunter was as good as dead, and so were the two hostages in the confinement cells.
Ninety-Seven
‘Three.’
Both of their arms shot up like rockets, but only one of them managed to fire his weapon.
Just like the Werewolf, Hun
ter was an excellent shot, one of the best in the whole of the LAPD, but he also knew for a fact that the Werewolf was a much better marksman than he was . . . much more accurate. The ex-soldier had proven that by missing Hunter’s head by no more than an inch, twice, in a double-tap discharge. Hunter was good, but not that good. He knew that.
What he also knew was that their duel would not be won on accuracy. From a distance of about eight paces, he was sure that both of them could bullseye a target, even under pressure, but worse of all, Hunter knew that he was really the only one who needed to hit the target – the Werewolf’s forehead. The Werewolf’s bullet could hit him just about anywhere on his body and the destruction power of the 9mm expanding round would do the rest. So Hunter knew that the only way he would be able to win that duel would be if he either cheated or came up with some sort of magic trick.
Magic it was.
As soon as the Werewolf handed Hunter the SR22 pistol, his analytical brain began calculating the odds.
The first factor he took into consideration was the weight of their weapons.
The SR22, with a full clip, weighed around 1.4lb, but the magazine in Hunter’s gun was empty. All he had was a chambered round. With an empty clip, the SR22 weighed only around 1lb, which wasn’t the case for the P228. Unloaded, the P228 weighed around 1.85lb. Its magazine was bigger and the rounds larger and heavier than the SR22, and the Werewolf’s magazine was almost full. Hunter guessed that the ex-soldier’s weapon would weigh well over a pound more than his.
The second factor that entered Hunter’s calculations was the amount of pressure each trigger required to activate and release the hammer. Being a much smaller and lighter weapon, the SR22 required around 3.5lb of pressure on the trigger to activate the hammer. A straight-from-the-factory Sig P228 required around 12lb of pressure on the trigger. Many professionals customized their weapons, making the trigger lighter for faster action, but even if that was the case with the Werewolf’s P228, the reduction on the trigger pressure would be around 4–4.5lb, no more. Customized or not, Hunter’s SR 22 would have a much faster trigger action than the Werewolf’s P228.
Those two factors alone – the Werewolf’s weapon being over a pound heavier than Hunter’s and the considerably higher trigger pressure needed to activate and release its hammer – would give Hunter a couple of fractions of a second advantage in a game that they both knew wouldn’t last more than a second. That tiny advantage was exactly what Hunter needed to make his magic trick work, because his trick was in his arm movement.
On three, the Werewolf’s entire arm shot up, searching for a fire position.
Hunter, on the other hand, decided that on the count of three, instead of moving his whole arm from a resting position into a shooting one, he would simply bend his elbow and fire. That would allow him to fire from waist height – a position that he was extremely comfortable firing from – and that was where his trick lay, because it angled his shot.
The Werewolf wasn’t lying when he told Hunter that the only way to stop him would be to put a bullet in his brain, which meant that in normal circumstances – a bullet traveling horizontally – Hunter would have to hit the Werewolf square on his forehead, but Hunter’s round was traveling at an upward angle, starting at waist height, and that meant that his bullet could now hit the Werewolf practically anywhere on his face.
And that was exactly what happened.
Hunter’s round struck the Werewolf just below his nose. Despite being a small bullet, from such a short distance the 22-caliber round was still powerful enough to rupture through bone, muscle tissue, and cartilage, reaching the Werewolf’s brain through the bottom of his eye socket. In the brain, the bullet ripped through the mesencephalon and the pituitary gland, before finally losing momentum and terminating its journey at the top of the Werewolf’s parietal lobe.
The destruction was severe and irreversible and the ex-soldier’s brain ceased functioning way before it could send his finger a signal to squeeze the trigger on his weapon.
Hunter saw his round hit the Werewolf in the face. The entry wound was minimal – practically the size of a nostril, maybe a little smaller – but due to the bullet’s upward traveling angle, Hunter knew that it would reach the ex-soldier’s brain matter. In there, its destructive power would be lethal.
As the round hit the Werewolf, a restricted blood mist sprayed up from the wound, coloring the air directly in front of the ex-soldier’s face. His head jerked back violently and his torso slammed against his chair’s backrest. His arm, which was about a quarter of the way up, carried on with its momentum, but his hand lost all its grip on the P228, releasing it into the air. The weapon flew from his hand in Hunter’s direction, almost hitting him in the head.
Momentum gone, the Werewolf’s arm collapsed back down by his limp and already lifeless body. His head tilted a little to the left. His eyes, still wide open, were staring straight at Hunter. The look in them was cold and determined.
Blood cascaded from his nose-wound down to his mouth and chin, before dripping onto his chest. His legs shook awkwardly for a couple of seconds, before coming to a full stop. Life, for the Werewolf, had finally been extinguished.
It took Hunter another full minute to properly catch his breath and feel his heart slowing down inside of him.
He was still tied down to his chair. Only his right arm was free, but the Werewolf was gone.
Hunter took another deep breath and threw the whole weight of his body forward, throwing himself and the chair to the floor. He used his free arm to break the fall, then to drag himself across the concrete floor until he got to the control desk. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He still couldn’t believe that he had somehow managed to cheat death one more time.
Hunter caught his breath once again and reached for the stainless-steel knife that the Werewolf had used to cut the zip-ties minutes earlier. He had left it on the control desk.
It took Hunter no time to completely free himself from the chair.
Hanging from the Werewolf’s belt, Hunter found the keys to the confinement cells. He grabbed them and walked through the metal door to the left of the control desk, which the Werewolf had left unlocked. The dimly lit corridor that he saw as he walked through the door was a lot longer than he had expected. In fact, it seemed to go on forever before it curved left in an ‘L’ shape. There were only two doors on the left wall, separated by a gap of about twenty yards.
Hunter checked the keys in his hands. From the monitor inside the control room, he knew that Angela was in cell number three. He followed the corridor to the end and then around to the left. Confinement cell number three was just ahead of him.
Hunter got to it and unlocked it. As he pushed the door open he was tackled so hard, he heard one of his ribs crack.
Ninety-Eight
Police Administration Building – Sunday, December 13th.
‘So,’ Captain Blake asked, as Hunter and Garcia stepped into her office and closed the door behind them. She had called for an early meeting in anticipation of her afternoon briefing with the Chief of Police and the Mayor of Los Angeles. ‘Are you guys and forensics finally done with that hell house?’
The Werewolf’s hideout location turned out to be a large and dilapidated structure at the edge of some woodland in Santa Clarita. The building, they learned, was an abandoned retirement home. It had been left to decay for over a decade. For the past two days, Hunter, Garcia and a small team of forensics agents had been scrutinizing every inch of it.
‘Well, we are,’ Garcia replied. His eyes peeked at Hunter before moving back to Captain Blake. ‘Forensics will still be there for a while. Hell knows how many different samples of DNA they’ll be able to collect in there.’
‘Fair enough,’ the captain acknowledged, sipping on her coffee. ‘So what have you guys come up with so far?’
Garcia chuckled. ‘What haven’t we come up with, Captain?’ His eyes moved to Hunter again, who took over.
‘The killer’s re
al name was Dean Turner,’ he began. ‘He was forty-two years old, originally from Fresno. He came to LA after his “kill team” was disbanded.’
Hunter had already briefed Garcia and Captain Blake on the back-story that the Werewolf had told him.
‘But we still have no real confirmation that this “kill team” really existed, do we?’ the captain asked. ‘No confirmation that this freak was really in the military.’
‘No,’ Hunter replied. ‘And we’ll never have that confirmation, Captain. Like I’ve explained – it was a clandestine team. No code name . . . no call sign . . . nothing. For total secrecy, all team members were enlisted under false names. This is the kind of outfit that our government, our military, doesn’t want anyone to know exists.’
Captain Blake sat back on her chair and laced her fingers together.
‘Do we at least know how many people he’s murdered since he came to LA?’ she asked. ‘Do we even know when he first came to LA?’
‘I did ask him how many subjects there were before he started his diary,’ Hunter said. ‘But he couldn’t remember. All he said was that he was sure that there had been a few.’
‘Fuck!’ the captain cursed under her breath. ‘So definitely more than sixteen?’
‘No doubt,’ Hunter agreed.
‘The mayor will love that,’ the captain said, sarcastically. ‘How about the hostages at the hideout?’
Hunter’s eyes darkened, as vivid images of the Werewolf entering the blonde woman’s cell and shooting her in the face came crashing back to him.
‘The one he murdered while I was there was Alexandra Berger,’ he said. ‘Twenty-four years of age from Santa Monica. We found her handbag with her driver’s license and house keys stashed in one of the rooms. She shared an apartment, also in Santa Monica, with her boyfriend, Luke Bradford. I gave him the news yesterday.’
Captain Blake shook her head while her eyebrows arched. She knew only too well how tough the job of passing on that sort of news was. ‘How about the other one?’
