I Am Death (20 page)

‘About a week or so ago?’ Hunter asked.

‘Yes,’ Marlon confirmed. ‘I think it was about two or three days before the police came knocking the first time.’

This time Hunter and Garcia exchanged a semi-concerned look.

A loud crackling noise came from the radio attached to Officer Woods’ belt. He quickly reached for it, while getting up.

‘Please excuse me, ma’am.’ He turned toward the detectives. ‘I’ve been waiting for some information to come in. This will be it. I’ll wait for you
outside.’ He addressed Ms. Sloan again, who was about to get to her feet. ‘It’s OK, ma’am, I can see myself out.’ He turned and left the room.

Hunter resumed his questioning. ‘Did you manage to get a good look at this engineer?’

‘I only saw him from the back, while he was up on the post,’ the boy answered with a disappointed look. ‘He was tall, like the two of you. And he wasn’t fat, like the two
AT&T engineers.’

‘Was he skinny, muscular?’ Garcia this time.

‘I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a jacket.’

‘An AT&T work jacket?’

‘I can’t remember, but I don’t think so.’

‘How about hair color?’

Once again, the kid shook his head, disheartened. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t really see it. He was wearing a baseball cap. I wasn’t really paying much attention to him or anything. It
didn’t really look like he was doing anything wrong. I only thought of it because the officer who just left came asking. The only non-residents I’ve seen around the street in the past
weeks were the AT&T engineers, this third engineer I told you about, and the police. That’s it.’

Everyone understood where the kid was coming from.

‘How about his vehicle?’ Hunter asked. ‘You said it was a black GMC Yukon?’

‘Yeah, it was.’

Hunter saw Ms. Sloan consulting her watch one more time.

‘And you said it had roof racks,’ he asked.

‘Yeah, it did.’

‘Did you notice anything else about the car at all? Like . . . were there any big bumps or scratches on the bodywork? Bumper or window stickers? Anything you can remember,
really.’

Marlon looked down at his hands. ‘No, sorry. Only that it was a black Yukon.’

Hunter and Garcia exchanged one more look. There was nothing else they needed from Marlon or his mother, who was now looking rather impatient again.

Both detectives got up, thanked Marlon and Ms. Sloan, and made their way to the door. As Ms. Sloan saw them out, Hunter turned to face her.

‘The therapist session you’re taking Marlon to now, is that for his social anxiety and panic disorder?’

Ms. Sloan frowned at Hunter, mainly because she was surprised by his accurate diagnosis. Her next few words were a lot more guarded than before.

‘Yes . . . it is.’

Hunter glanced at Marlon, who was standing just behind his mother. He had heard the question and now looked a little embarrassed.

‘How long now?’ Hunter asked. ‘How long has he been going to therapy?’

A deeper frown from Ms. Sloan this time.

‘I’m sorry, but I fail to see how that is any of your concern, Detective?’

‘It hasn’t helped a great deal, has it?’

Ms. Sloan looked offended.

‘You should stop with the therapist,’ Hunter said.

Behind his mother, Marlon came close to a smile.

‘Excuse me?’ Ms. Sloan said.

‘You should stop with the therapist,’ Hunter repeated.

‘And why on earth would I want to do that?’

Hunter’s gaze found Marlon before returning to the boy’s mother. ‘The sad truth is that therapy and shrink visits are mainly hogwash. It’s in their financial interest to
keep their patients coming back. Marlon’s condition is a lot more common than you might think, Ms. Sloan. And though you might think you’re helping by being overly protective of your
son, you’re not.’

Ms. Sloan glared at Hunter. Anger crept into her eyes.

He ignored her look and addressed Marlon. ‘Every week, just try to walk a block outside your comfort zone, Marlon, however far that might be. If you can’t manage a block, try half a
block. Find a park bench and have a seat. When your breathing calms down, ask a passing stranger for the time. Next week, ask two. The week after that, three. Next month, walk another block outside
your new-found comfort zone, and repeat what you did before. Before you know it, you’ll be making new friends and the whole anxiety thing will be behind you.’

Ms. Sloan’s glare morphed into an intrigued stare.

‘You don’t need a therapist’s mumbo-jumbo to crack this thing, Marlon. You can do it yourself. One small victory at a time.’

Cautiously, Squirm raised his left hand and brought it to his face, but the tips of his fingers touched nothing. They paused less than half an inch from the swollen flesh that
now surrounded his left eye.

Back in the projection room earlier that day, his trick had worked. By using both of his thumbs and index fingers, he had managed to force his eyes open and keep them that way while those
horrific images played on the large screen before him. ‘The Monster’ didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, he had laughed out loud, telling Squirm it was an ingenious move.

‘I like that, Squirm,’ he said as he used his dirty fingernail to pick something from between his teeth. ‘You were faced with a problem, and you came up with a smart
alternative. That’s clever. I like clever.’

Without noticing, Squirm’s breathing had become labored. He’d never seen so much blood. He’d never heard screams like the ones coming from that woman – guttural and
overwhelmed with pain, drowning in terror, and completely void of hope.

Sharon, that was her name. The man had made him repeat it a number of times while the film played on. Squirm would never forget that name for as long as he lived.

On the screen, Sharon had finally passed out. Somehow she had managed to endure the pain for a lot longer than anyone would’ve imagined. Several minutes, in fact. Squirm actually thought
that she’d finally let go of the desire to live and accepted the inevitable. That the film and her suffering would finally be over. But he couldn’t have been more wrong.

The images played on, and Squirm watched as ‘The Monster’ turned off the sander, placed it on the floor and walked over to where the camera was. Once he got to it, he zoomed in on
the grotesque mess that her face was turning into. Lumps of skin and flesh hung loosely from her forehead and brow. Blood surged from her wounds in sheets. It ran down on to what was still left of
her face, moving past her chin and down to her naked torso, but Squirm could see that Sharon was still breathing.

The ordeal was far from over.

‘Keep your eyes open, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ had said, excitement coating his words. ‘It’s just about to get really good.’

Squirm felt like something had gained life inside his stomach and had begun crawling its way up the inside of his chest. Shock had forced the boy’s mouth to fall half open. His hands were
shaking and he had to keep readjusting his fingers so as not to let go of his eyelids. Cold sweat had begun trickling down his face and back.

The screen flicked to black for a moment, then it started again.

‘I had to stop filming.’ For some reason, the man sitting beside him had decided to explain. ‘It took me the best part of twenty minutes to wake her up again. But I’ll
tell you something, Squirm, she was one tough bitch.’ He let out a croaked, over-enthusiastic laugh that made the boy’s skin crawl.

The new segment started from where the previous one had left off. More blood and tiny chunks of skin began flying up, propelled by the sander’s rotating disk, before cascading back down
over everything like rain.

‘Next time, maybe you can watch it live, Squirm, what do you say? Wouldn’t you like to be in that room with us?’

Whatever had begun crawling its way through Squirm’s insides gained momentum. All of a sudden, it rushed up through his throat with incredible speed.

Squirm hadn’t thought it possible, but Sharon’s screams had gotten even louder, assaulting the boy’s ears with the effect of piercing needles. He was still doing his best to
hold his eyes open, but there was no stopping the crawling creature from his stomach which had burst into the kid’s mouth in avalanche style.

Squirm’s body jerked forward violently and he projectile-vomited the little that he had in his gut all over the dark-gray linoleum floor. Some of it reached the screen.

‘You ungrateful sonofabitch,’ ‘The Monster’ had barked, jumping up from his seat. He was careful not to step on the mess Squirm had made on the floor.

The boy looked up at the man with total panic in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll clean it. I’m sorry.’ He fell to his knees and used his hands to try to collect
what he had regurgitated on to the floor.

POW.

The man’s opened hand connected with the side of the kid’s face, just by his left eye, with such force it sent the boy tumbling across the floor. He only stopped when his head
smashed against the wall. Squirm’s eyes rolled back into his head a fraction of a second before he collapsed on to the ground like an empty sack of potatoes.

Without caring, ‘The Monster’ grabbed the unconscious boy by the hair, dragged him downstairs and threw him back in his cell.

‘What was that about?’ Garcia asked Hunter as both detectives joined Officer Woods by his black and white unit outside.

‘Nothing, really. Just trying to give the kid a tip.’

‘OK,’ Woods said as he finished writing something in his notepad. ‘I’ve just come off the radio with Operations. Before you guys got here, I had asked them to run a quick
check on what Marlon had said. That was the info I was waiting for.’

Hunter and Garcia were quietly impressed by Officer Woods’ approach. Most officers would have left all the checking to the detectives.

‘Anything?’ Garcia asked.

‘You tell me,’ Woods began, reading from his notes. ‘There really was a fault with the phone lines reported last month. AT&T sent two engineers to fix it on the twelfth,
and yes, they did have a basket-crane truck with them. The fault was fixed that same day. Since then, AT&T has had no other reports, and they have no knowledge of any other faults with the
phone lines in this area. They also said that they did not send any other engineers up here for a subsequent check since the fault was fixed. Not on the fourteenth of last month, or at any other
time for that matter, and that includes last week.’

‘And it couldn’t have been a different phone company?’ Garcia asked.

‘No,’ Woods replied. ‘No other supplier services this area.’ He closed his notepad. ‘It seems like you have got yourselves a mysterious telephone
engineer.’

‘Marlon said that they were working on the telephone pole in front of property number eight-four-five-six,’ Hunter said, looking north.

‘That’s correct,’ Woods confirmed. ‘And that’s the one, right over there on the corner.’ He pointed at the T-shaped telephone pole directly in front of a
white-fronted, single-storey house that sat right where Allenwood Road bent sharply left, about thirty yards north of where they were standing.

Hunter and Garcia walked over to have a better look. Officer Woods followed.

It was a regular-looking telephone pole, brown in color, and made of southern yellow pine. It stood somewhere between thirty-five and forty feet tall. A total of seven telephone cables ran
through it – five at the very top, through the horizontal arm of the T, and the remaining two just a few feet beneath the first five, through the long, vertical arm.

Hunter and Garcia spent less than ten seconds looking up at the post before both of them came to the same conclusion.

To reach the first of the cables, an engineer would have to climb about thirty to thirty-five feet. No wonder the AT&T engineers used a basket-crane truck to get up there. On the other hand,
a single engineer, even with a long telescopic ladder, would be facing a very tough and somewhat dangerous task.

Hunter walked around the pole, checking it from both sides.

‘Do those cables service this whole street?’ Garcia asked, still looking up at the pole.

‘I’m not sure,’ Woods replied. ‘But I would say so.’ He observed the two detectives for a moment.

‘Do you think it was him?’ Garcia asked his partner.

Hunter paused and looked north, where the road bent left and disappeared behind property 8456.

Garcia waited.

Hunter then looked south, in the direction of the Sloan and Bennett houses. If Marlon was at his bedroom window, Hunter wasn’t able to see him. The angle of the window in relation to the
pole’s position, coupled with the way the light reflected off the glass, made it virtually impossible for anyone standing at the pole to see inside.

‘Yes,’ Hunter finally replied. ‘I think it was him.’

Garcia’s gaze moved to the telephone cables. ‘Do you think he bugged the phone lines?’

Hunter looked up at the pole one more time. ‘There’s no reason why he would’ve needed to do that,’ he replied. ‘If that’s what he wanted, then it
would’ve been a lot easier, and less risky, to do it via the telephone exchange box.’

‘So if you think that this mysterious telephone engineer was your man,’ Woods said. ‘What was he doing up on the telephone pole?’

Hunter looked north again. Past the pole, the road bent sharply left and disappeared behind the house they were standing in front of, impeding his view. From where he was, he could see no other
houses, which meant that no other houses could see him either. He then turned and looked south. From that point, he had a clear and unrestricted view of every house on Allenwood Road, including the
Bennetts’.

Hunter finally answered Woods’ question with another question.

‘How difficult do you think it would be for someone to place some sort of camera up there?’

Night arrives slowly in the summertime, gently gaining ground like a silent soldier. First, lazy shadows find the alleyways, then they start creeping across sidewalks, up walls
and through windows, until finally darkness takes hold. By the time Hunter and Garcia got to the coroner’s office, after receiving a phone call from Doctor Hove just half an hour earlier,
darkness had stealthily found its way into almost every corner of Los Angeles, with the exception of a sliver of purple sky that still colored the horizon over Santa Monica, but that too was fading
fast.