I Am Death (15 page)

‘Opposite feeling?’ Garcia looked a little confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Whoever wrote this note put a lot of effort into it, Carlos, carefully choosing every word. And here’s the twisted bit. He didn’t do it to confuse us, on the contrary. He did
it to leave the least amount of doubt possible.’

Garcia paused what he was doing, turned toward his partner and allowed his gaze to settle on the note on Hunter’s desk.

‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘Let’s try to break this down into parts.’

He slid a copy of the note to the edge of his desk. His coffee had finally cooled down enough for him to have his first sip. It tasted like paradise.

‘Have a look just at the first and second paragraphs and tell me what you think they mean. Don’t try to read between the lines or find any double meanings to anything. Just read them
and tell me what you think.’

Garcia didn’t bring his chair around. Instead, he just leaned over Hunter’s desk, placing both hands on the desktop.

Garcia read the paragraph three times before scratching his chin and looking back at Hunter.

‘He’s preaching, being condescending even, reminding us of who we are, what our job is, what the public expect of us, and what happens when we fail or make a mistake.’ There
was a short pause. ‘There’s also a blatant accusation, saying that we see only what we choose to see. And this line –’ he pointed to it on the note – ‘
‘‘
And the problem with that is that when they play at being blind men, people suffer . . . people get tortured . . . and people die.”
Though very aggressive,’ Garcia
continued, ‘it doesn’t sound like a threat. It sounds like a statement.’

‘You’re exactly right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘There’s no other way of interpreting those two paragraphs, Carlos. They’re clear and concise. No ambiguity, no
sarcasm, no play on words, no double meanings, and nothing hidden between the lines.’

Garcia’s attention didn’t deviate from the note.

‘Now, have a look at the third paragraph and tell me what you think. Again, forget double meanings and all. Just read it like a letter.’

Garcia thought about it for a moment. ‘It’s . . . a challenge,’ he said. ‘He’s defying us to go find him. To pick him out of a crowd. To identify
him. That’s the invitation to the game. As you’ve said before, he wants to play.’

‘Right again,’ Hunter said. ‘But there’s something else. Something not actually hidden. You just need to read it carefully.’

Garcia frowned and reread the paragraph a couple more times. ‘OK,’ he said, standing up straight and shrugging. ‘I’m missing it, then. What else? What am I not
seeing?’

‘He’s not only challenging us to pick him out of a crowd, Carlos. He’s questioning if we’d be able to see what he has
become.
That’s a very powerful
statement.’ Hunter had another sip of his coffee. ‘Think of what that word actually means.’

‘He’s telling us that he wasn’t always like this,’ Garcia said, looking at Hunter, his voice a touch more excited then a moment ago. ‘He wasn’t always a
monster, a killer. He’s not your textbook sociopath because he wasn’t born that way. He, for the lack of a better word, became that way.’

Hunter nodded slowly.

‘Something changed him.’

The man woke up as the first rays of the morning sun seeped through the dirty curtains covering the window on the east wall of his small bedroom. Out on the streets, garbage
trucks were already noisily moving around and, far off in the distance, a couple of sirens wailed like coyotes barking at the moon.

He’d finished with Sharon Barnard in the early hours of the morning, but he’d felt too tired to drive all the way back to his place, a two-storey house somewhere northeast of Los
Angeles. He’d found the property many years ago, hidden away in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but empty terrain. He had paid cash for it and used false documentation, which
meant that the house could never be traced back to him. Because the building had been so run down, he’d got it for an absolute bargain. After years of repairs and heavy modifications, which
he did himself, he ended up with just the perfect place. No matter how much noise anyone made from inside his house, no one would ever hear it. No one would ever come for them.

The one-bedroom apartment he was in at the moment was just a crash pad somewhere in East Los Angeles. He had paid a year’s rent in advance, all in cash. He really only used it from time to
time, when circumstances demanded. Just like this morning.

As soon as the man opened his eyes, he swung his feet off the single bed, sat up straight and rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. He didn’t have a watch, and there was no clock
anywhere in the room, but it didn’t matter. He knew exactly what time it was.

He reached for the medicine bottle that was on the bedside table, poured two capsules into his hand and flung them into his mouth. He didn’t need any water to wash them down. He simply
filled his mouth with saliva, threw his head back with a jerk, and down they went. He walked naked to the window, his feet padding across the worn-out and scratched wooden floorboards. Outside,
city life was slowly trickling on to the streets.

The man crossed over to the bathroom and paused before the small mirror on the wall just above the washbasin. He could barely recognize the stranger staring back at him now. So much had changed
over the years. He would never be the same again. He knew that full well but it didn’t matter. Not to him. Not anymore.

In his reflection he saw the proud glint of accomplishment deep inside his eyes, and that caused him to smile, something he didn’t do too often.

He brushed his teeth and then stood under a warm shower, washing meticulously from his head down, before using a brand new razor blade to shave off every strand of hair from his body, including
his head, a ritual he repeated every morning. When he was done, he dried himself and returned to his bedroom.

From the wardrobe he retrieved the only two items that hung there – a dark suit and long-sleeved white shirt. The tie rack on the back of the wardrobe door held a single black and white
striped tie. There was a solitary drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. It contained one pair of white boxers, a pair of black socks and a large plastic laundry bag. He slipped on the boxers and
got dressed, then took the bed sheet, the pillowcase and the cover sheet and stuffed them into the laundry bag, together with the clothes he’d been wearing the night before.

He walked into the living room, grabbed a red pen and a loose sheet of paper from the bottom drawer of an old two-drawer cabinet, and took a seat at the wooden table that faced the window.

The man barely had to think about what he wanted to write. He’d gone through it in his head a thousand times, until he had it worded perfectly, just the way it needed to be.

Once he was done, he carefully folded the note in half and slipped it into a brown paper envelope. This time, the note wasn’t addressed to the mayor, or any other politician. He
didn’t need to use the same trick again because this time he knew exactly who to address it to – Detective Robert Hunter, LAPD Robbery Homicide Division.

‘OK, Detective,’ he said in an angry voice. ‘Let’s see how good you really are.’

Despite leaving San Francisco International Airport fifteen minutes late, US Airways flight 667 landed at Los Angeles International Airport exactly on time, at 08:55 a.m.

Tom Hobbs had been the lead flight attendant on the fully booked, one hour and twenty-five minute flight, and he had struggled through every second of it. By the time the flight touched down,
Tom’s brain was turning to mush.

He staggered through the airport, pulling his inflight case behind him. He felt tired, hungover and nauseated, but the worst was now behind him. Or so he thought.

Tom slipped on his sunglasses and stepped out of the building into another scorching hot summer’s day. Outside he paused for an instant, trying to decide what to do. He had driven to the
airport yesterday morning. His car was parked at the Central Terminal Area parking lot, building 2A, but he was in no state to drive. He felt shivery, his headache was now so intense it could wake
the dead, and he hadn’t eaten anything yet; courtesy of the cocktail of drugs he had consumed overnight. Finally, deciding to listen to reason, Tom chose to leave his car where it was and
take a cab home.

The almost ten-mile trip from Los Angeles LAX to the house he shared with Sharon in Venice took the cab driver just under half an hour. Twice Tom almost asked the driver to pull up by the side
of the road. The stop and start motion, due to traffic lights and road congestion, brought him to the verge of being sick, but somehow he managed to hold it all in.

‘You OK back there?’ the cab driver asked, checking Tom through the rearview mirror. He was sloshing on the backseat with his head propped against the window, his eyes closed.

Tom’s reply was barely audible.

‘Buddy, you all right? Do you need me to stop? You don’t look so good.’ The driver asked again, this time reducing his speed.

Tom forced his eyes open. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll be all right.’ His voice sounded hoarse and fatigued. ‘I just need to get home and get some sleep.’

‘Rough night?’ The driver followed the question with a dubious smile.

Tom saw it, and didn’t like it.

‘No, just bad food. I’ll be OK once I get home and get some sleep.’

The driver didn’t make any more small talk, but stepped on it and kept checking on Tom via the rearview mirror every couple of minutes. The faster he got to Tom’s address, the
better. The last thing he wanted was to have to clean up puke from his back seat.

Tom stepped out of the cab and squinted at how bright the day seemed, even through his dark glasses. The glaring light made him feel sick again. He took an enormous deep breath, hoping that that
would be enough to keep his nausea at bay.

‘I’ve gotta stop partying like this,’ he said to himself as he started toward the house. But that certainly wasn’t the first, and probably wouldn’t be the last time
he’d recited those exact same words. The flesh was weak, he had admitted to that many times.

As he paused before his front door, his stomach roared so loudly he thought that maybe his large intestine was now devouring the small one. But despite how hungry he felt, Tom would think about
food later. All he wanted right now was to collapse in bed and sleep until tomorrow morning.

He reached for his key and slid it into the door lock. His stomach roared again, this time louder and for longer, making him curl over a little with pain. OK, maybe he would have to eat a candy
bar or something before heading for bed, just to try to calm the storm brewing inside his belly.

Tom tried rotating the key, but it didn’t move.

‘Hum!’

He tried a couple more times.

Nothing.

‘What the hell?’ He twisted the doorknob. The door was unlocked. Tom found that very strange. They never forgot to lock the door, not even when they were
in
the house. Venice
wasn’t the most secure neighborhood in LA.

‘Sharon,’ he called, pushing open the door.

The first thing that hit him was the smell, an odd combination of putrid and bittersweet that seemed to rip its way though his nostrils before lodging itself at the back of his throat, choking
him and making him gag. He felt a drop of bile come up through his esophagus and spill into his mouth. For some reason, instead of spitting it out, he swallowed it back down.

Tom squeezed his eyes tight behind his shades. The smell had also made his eyes water. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes.

‘What the fuck? Sharon?’ he called again. Had she left a whole chicken outside the fridge in this heat?

He coughed a couple of times before finally looking up and into his living room. His eyes were still half blurred, so it took them a few seconds to refocus.

For a moment Tom hesitated, his tired and confused brain struggling to make sense of the grotesque images his visual nerves were sending in. Reality had just morphed into the sickest nightmare
he’d ever had.

‘What?’

His whispered voice caught in his throat as a rush of adrenalin took over his body. It fired bullets of uncontrollable fear down his spine and into his heart. Bitter bile shot back up from his
stomach but this time it wasn’t only a drop, and this time it would’ve been impossible for Tom to swallow it all back down.

Sick exploded out of his mouth before he collapsed on to the floor and into the pool of blood his living room had become.

‘Something changed him?’ Captain Blake asked with a frown. She was sitting behind her desk, nursing a fresh cup of coffee. ‘How so, Robert?’ Her hair
was loose, tucked behind her ears, and she wore a black pencil skirt with a tight-fitting plum cotton blouse. She had asked Hunter and Garcia to come to her office as soon as she arrived at the
PAB.

‘I’m not really sure how, Captain,’ Hunter replied. ‘But what I’m very certain of is that he chose the words he used on his note very carefully, doing his best to
avoid doubt. He ends his third paragraph by writing:
“Would they see what
I have become, or would they falter?”
He could very easily have written “see what I
am?” Or “who I am?” Or “the monster in me?” Or something along those lines.’