I Am Death (26 page)

Garcia read the note several times over before finally lifting his eyes to look at Hunter again, who was leaning against the edge of his desk.

‘OK. So what do you think?’

Garcia got to his feet, pushed his chair out of the way and approached the picture board.

‘Remember when we discussed the note that was sent to Mayor Bailey?’ he asked, indicating it on the board. A copy of the first two notes had been pinned side by side. ‘We both
agreed that the third paragraph constituted a challenge of sorts, right?’ Garcia didn’t wait for Hunter’s reply. ‘Well, the way I see it, the whole of this third note, other
than it being coated in arrogance, is nothing but
one
big challenge.’

Hunter scratched his chin. ‘OK, I’m listening.’

‘The problem is,’ Garcia continued, ‘the killer has now made it personal. Here, have a look.’ He walked over to his desk. Hunter followed. Garcia then indicated all five
instances where the killer had referred to Hunter by name. ‘In fact, he has made it
very
personal, Robert. He went all the way to your
home
to deliver it.’

Hunter nodded his agreement, but allowed Garcia to continue without interrupting him.

‘Just look at this.’ Garcia returned to the picture board, unpinned the copy of the killer’s second note and brought it to his desk. ‘At the beginning of this new note he
makes several references to his previous one.’ Garcia indicated each line on both notes as he mentioned them. ‘“Best of the best”, “So-called expert”,
“Bring justice to the victims”, “See only what you want to see” and “Look into my eyes and find out what I have become”. The difference here is, on the previous
note all of that sounded like an open invitation to the LAPD, or the FBI, or a special task force, or whoever. But not this time. This time all of those challenges are aimed at a specific
subject.’ Garcia’s eyebrows lifted as he nodded at his partner. ‘You, my friend. Whether you like it or not, he’s bringing this fight to you.’

So far, Garcia’s assessment of the note had been right on the money with Hunter’s. Hunter wasn’t chasing this killer alone, and he was sure that the killer knew that full well.
Nevertheless, this time the killer had made every single challenge personal to Hunter, not to a task force, or the LAPD, or the FBI, or even the UV Unit. The killer had, once again, been very
careful when phrasing his written work to leave as little doubt as possible.

‘But I don’t think that this is “personal” personal.’ Garcia used his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air.

Hunter questioned by narrowing his eyes a touch.

‘What I mean is, I don’t think that this guy’s got a personal grudge against you,’ Garcia clarified. ‘I don’t think that this is someone you put away in the
past, or someone related to anyone you put away in the past. I’m even willing to bet that your paths have never crossed before, Robert.’

‘Because if that were the case,’ Hunter agreed, ‘he would’ve made it personal on the first or second note. Why wait until now? And the second note wouldn’t have
been sent to the mayor. It would’ve been sent directly to me.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia accepted. ‘The way I see it, he would’ve brought this fight to the doorstep of whoever became lead investigator in this case. We were just the unlucky
ones.’

Hunter made a face. ‘Aren’t we always?’

‘But now that he has a counterpart, he not only reiterates the challenges of the second note, he goes beyond it. He bullies.’ Once again, Garcia indicated on the note:

‘And then he threatens,’ Garcia added.

‘After the threats,’ Garcia continued, ‘he feels the need to explain the reason why he’s doing what he’s doing. Though it all sounds like bullshit
to me.’

‘Delusions of grandeur,’ Hunter commented. ‘You know how most sociopaths are blinded by them. And because some truly believe that they are better, superior to everyone else,
they also believe that whatever it is they’re doing can’t be understood by us mere human beings unless it’s explained. And even then, they still don’t expect us to fully
understand the reasons behind their actions, or the complexity of their geniuses.’ Hunter shrugged. ‘How could we, when our intellect could never measure up?’

Garcia chuckled, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. ‘So this crackpot truly believes that he’s creating history?’

‘Or, as he put it, rewriting it?’

‘Yeah, but rewriting whose history?’

Hunter turned and faced the picture board. ‘I don’t know. His own, maybe.’

‘And what the hell is this crap at the end?’ Garcia said, bringing Hunter’s attention back to the new note. ‘Is this his attempt at being funny? Let me give you a clue as
to who I am, and that clue is in the name – “DEATH”. Yeah, hilarious.’

Hunter wasn’t really sure what the killer meant by that, but he had a hunch that, whatever it was, it wasn’t meant as a joke.

The stairwell that led down to the underpass reminded Alison of one of those old, black and white B-movies. The ones that weren’t supposed to be scary, but were. Her
footsteps echoed loudly against the concrete risers and all of a sudden she was painfully aware that she was alone, in a badly lit and isolated underpass.

Alison Atkins had missed her bus stop. She had done three double shifts at Donny’s in just as many days, and when she’d boarded the bus almost an hour ago she’d felt the same
sort of exhaustion one feels after a long and debilitating illness. She’d sat alone at the back of the bus, as she usually did. Ten minutes into the forty-minute trip to where she lived,
Alison had decided to rest her head against the window, just for a moment, so she could close her tired eyes. But it was OK, because she reopened them only five minutes later – or so she
thought.

As she sat up and looked out the window, she was overcome by an uncomfortable feeling. The feeling that she was in a place she didn’t belong. She quickly rubbed the blur of tiredness from
her eyes, turned her head around and looked out the window across the aisle from where she was sitting.

No, she didn’t recognize any of it.

She craned her neck and looked at the digital display toward the front of the bus.

She had definitely missed her stop.

‘Shit!’ she said between clenched teeth, quickly getting to her feet and pressing the ‘stop’ button.

A minute later, the bus pulled up to the next stop on its route.

Three passengers jumped out with her – two women, counting Alison, and a middle-aged man. The man, who appeared to be in a hurry, quickly headed west. The other woman, who looked to be
about the same age as Alison, went north.

Alison paused and looked around. This was an ugly part of town. A part of town that she would never visit during the day, never mind at night.

She checked her watch – five minutes past one in the morning. Her bus route wasn’t part of the ‘Owl Service’ that ran 24/7 in LA – but she knew that her route ran
all the way up to two a.m. Alison crossed the road and began walking to the bus stop on the other side. She reached into her bag, but as she rummaged around for her purse, she felt a pit begin to
materialize in her stomach.

No purse.

She stopped walking, pulled her bag open with both hands and began fumbling inside it again, this time a little more desperately.

Nothing.

‘Oh no, no, no, no, no,’ Alison cried out, almost sticking her whole head inside her bag to look for it. Lipstick, foundation powder, makeup brush, loose change, cellphone, a pen and
house keys.

Her purse was gone.

‘Oh, fuck!’

She knew she’d had it with her when she boarded the bus because she kept her TAP card in it.

While she slept at the back of the bus, she’d of course never noticed the hooded eighteen-year-old kid who had first sat across the aisle from her, before stealthily moving over to her
side once he’d noticed how deeply asleep she was. When he left the bus, his pocket was a little heavier, and Alison’s bag a little lighter.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

In today’s double shift she had made a total of two hundred and twelve dollars in tips.

The pit in her stomach had now turned into a well.

She desperately needed that money to pay her bills.

Alison looked around one more time. The bus stops on both sides of the road were empty, and the streets looked almost deserted. She didn’t know the area but she didn’t like it one
bit. She felt vulnerable.

Feeling cheated and lost, Alison quickly pondered what to do. She could go to the police, but she was certain that there wasn’t much they would do. Lorena, one of the other waitresses at
Donny’s, had also been pickpocketed inside a bus on a different route a couple of months back. She’d gone to the police. They’d taken down all her details, and the pep talk
they’d then given her about how she should be more careful and more attentive when in a crowded space had made her feel like it all had been her fault.

Alison decided that the best thing she could do was to get home as quickly as possible.

Hanging on tightly to her bag, she began walking south as fast as she could.

She’d been walking for almost forty-five minutes when she reached the underpass. She’d been through it plenty of times before, just never this late at night. But the good news was
that the underpass was just a five-minute walk from her place.

Alison began walking faster, but as she did so she heard something else other than her own footsteps echo behind her. She looked around wildly for a moment. She could see no one behind or in
front of her, but due to the shadows created by the poor lighting, she just couldn’t be sure.

Definitely a B-movie horror scene,
she thought.

Alison exhaled slowly, as if blowing out hot air would carry with it the ripples of fear that had iced over her heart a moment earlier. The echoes faded around her and she listened to the raspy
sound of her own breath.

Seconds later she began walking again, and again she could swear that she heard something else behind her other than the echoes of her own footsteps, but this time she was also overwhelmed by a
sense of narrowing. It was as if the walls around her had closed in ever so slightly.

Alison shook her head, hoping that by force of vigorous motion she could cleanse the sensation from within her.

It didn’t work. Instead, the sensation grew stronger, moving to plain and simple fear.

She swung her body around to look behind her one more time.

That was when she saw him.

The middle-aged man who had stepped off the bus with her. He had been following her since she’d left the diner. When she’d missed her stop, he’d sat tight. He jumped off when
she did, and followed her from a distance.

In the underpass now, he was no more than four steps behind her.

Where the hell had he come from? How was he able to move so fast?

Three steps.

His hand came out of his jacket pocket.

Two.

He was holding something.

One.

Oh my God, is that a syrin—

Too late. The needle had already been plunged into her neck.

When Hunter got to their office, Garcia was standing by his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for something. His
attention, though, was on the several printouts neatly arranged on his desktop.

‘What’s all that?’ Hunter asked, pressing the ‘space’ bar on his keyboard to wake up his computer.

‘Forensic lab reports,’ Garcia replied, his gaze not moving from the paper. ‘They all came in less than ten minutes ago. I just printed them out.’ He grabbed one of the
files and passed it over to Hunter. ‘The toxicology on our first victim, Nicole Wilson, came back negative,’ he announced. ‘The killer kept her completely sober for six to seven
days while raping and torturing her. We’re still waiting on the results from Sharon Barnard.’

He turned to face his partner.

Hunter nodded while he scanned the report.

Garcia leaned back against the edge of his desk. ‘If this was any other killer, I would’ve said that toxicology on the second victim would mimic the first, but with this guy . .
.’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Expect the unexpected. He doesn’t even have an MO. It wouldn’t really surprise me if we found out that, unlike Nicole Wilson, Sharon Barnard had been
drugged to her eyeballs.’

Hunter couldn’t argue with Garcia’s logic.

Garcia reached for a couple more sheets of paper from his desk, passing them to Hunter.

‘OK, moving on,’ he said. ‘Forensics checked the telephone pole on Allenwood Road. They found no finger-prints, but what they did find were two tiny screw holes that
didn’t seem to belong. They were high off the ground, just past the first set of telephone cables. They checked them against all the other poles on that road.’ Garcia shook his head.
‘No other pole had them. AT&T confirmed that the holes shouldn’t be there.’

‘Camera holder?’

‘That’s also my opinion,’ Garcia agreed. ‘According to IT forensics, it could’ve been easily done. The camera could’ve either stored the recorded images to
some sort of hard drive, or streamed them live over the Internet.’

Hunter seemed unsure. ‘Storing it to a hard drive would have meant using a camera bulkier than the killer would’ve wanted, or having a separate hard drive connected to it. Forensics
found only one set of screw holes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So no separate hard drive. A bulkier camera would’ve also been easier to spot from the road. I don’t think he would’ve gone for that option.’

‘Neither do I. Live streaming would’ve been the best option by far. IT forensics said that a camera with a wireless Wi-Fi connectivity could’ve piggybacked the Wi-Fi connection
from any of the neighboring houses and no one would’ve known. Some of those cameras are as small and as light as a credit card.’