One by One (32 page)

The man made as if he was about to scream again, but he had no more strength left in him, no more air in his lungs, no more voice in his vocal cords . . . no more life to give. His head slumped to one side and his eyes disappeared back into his head a millisecond before his eyelids closed over them. His body convulsed a couple of times, and that was when blood really started dripping from his armpits, as the man-made rack finally started to rip his arms away from his body.

It would now be just a matter of seconds before the pressure applied by the rollers snapped the brachial artery, the major blood vessel in the upper arms, producing massive blood loss.

They all watched it happen.

Blood gushed out from the man’s torso, where the arms had once been, with incredible speed and pressure.

The armless man writhed and twitched several times, but each one less erratic than the previous, until he lay motionless.

Three seconds later the website went offline.

Seventy-Eight

It had been almost an hour since
pickadeath.com
had gone offline. Captain Blake was back in her office. She had spent most of that time on the phone to the mayor of Los Angeles, the Chief of Police and the governor of California. Everybody wanted answers, but all she had were more questions.

Not surprisingly, the press was already bombarding the LAPD Media Relations Office with hundreds of questions and interview requests. Captain Blake was still refusing to schedule a press conference because she knew exactly what would happen. Questions and comments would be lobbed at them from all corners of the room – some defiant, some angry, but all of them derisive of what the LAPD and the Homicide Special Section had accomplished so far. The captain knew that they wouldn’t be able to supply answers to anything, not yet, and that would simply fuel the press to criticize their efforts and sensationalize the story even more. No, for now, still no questions.

Instead, the LAPD Media Relations Office would issue a new statement to the press. The statement would reveal nothing at all about the progress of the investigation. The true purpose behind it was to ask the press and the media for their cooperation in launching an appeal for the identity of the latest victim. The statement would be accompanied by a portrait photograph of the victim, captured from the early part of the broadcast, asking every paper to print it out, and every TV station to broadcast it as soon as possible. Somebody out there had to know who he was.

Seventy-Nine

Immediately after the broadcast ended, Garcia called Anna at work. She was doing fine. She knew nothing about what had just happened, but he knew she would find out soon enough. There was nothing he could do about that. He just wanted to make sure she was OK. After he disconnected from the call to his wife, Garcia went to the bathroom, locked himself inside a cubicle and silently threw up.

Hunter sat at his desk, trying his best to gather his thoughts together while his gut fought waves of nausea and an almost incontrollable desire to be sick. He knew he needed to watch the entire broadcast recording again, probably several times over, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it quite yet. Right now, what he really needed was to get out of that office.

Two minutes later he and Garcia were downstairs talking to the senior sergeant in charge of searching City Hall Park and the streets immediately surrounding the PAB.

‘So far, we’ve got trash,’ the sergeant announced, clearly annoyed with the ‘garbage hunt’ task he was given. He’d been on front-desk duty all day and had no idea what had happened less than fifty minutes ago. ‘Wrappers, all kinds of it,’ he continued, his tone a step away from being sarcastic. ‘Burgers, sandwiches, candy bars, Twinkies – you name it, we’ve got it. We also have truckloads of cans, bottles and paper coffee cups.’

Hunter was listening to the sergeant, but his eyes were roaming around the park, the streets and all the buildings surrounding it. He was positive the killer would still be nearby. This killer took too much pride in what he did to simply walk away without savoring the result to such an audacious trick, like making the call from just outside the Police Administration Building, and maybe, leaving something behind for the LAPD to find. Psychopath or not, it would appeal to his sense of satisfaction. It follows the same principle as when a person surprises someone else with a present that he/she spent a long time creating, or choosing. The real satisfaction comes from observing that someone’s reaction as he/she unwraps the gift.

Yes
, Hunter thought,
this killer will be observing. He’ll be close by. No doubt about it. But where?

Hunter’s eyes kept searching, but rush hour had just begun. Crowds of people were leaving work and making their way back home. There were too many people on the streets and in the park, too many public buildings surrounding the area, too many places where someone could easily observe the park from, without looking suspicious or being noticed. In downtown Los Angeles the killer wouldn’t have found a better place than City Hall Park for what he had in mind. It being located just across the road from the PAB was just the perfect bonus.

The sergeant pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed it over his sweaty forehead. ‘We’re bagging every little piece of trash into evidence bags, and you know why?’ He was in no mood to wait for an answer. ‘Because no one told us what the hell we’re supposed to be looking for out here, and if that one thing so happens to be a bubble gum wrapper and we miss it, it’s
my
ass, and I’m not losing my retirement pension over this bullshit. You guys want it, you can sort through it in your own time. Good luck with it.’

The radio clipped to the belt around the sergeant’s thick waistline crackled loudly before a thin voice came through.

‘Um . . . Sergeant, I think I’ve . . .’ HISS, HISS. ‘. . . here.’

The sergeant unclipped the radio from his belt, clicking the ‘talk’ button. ‘That’s a negative, officer. Ten-one. You gonna have to repeat that.’

Both detectives knew that 10-1 was police ten-code for ‘poor reception’.

More radio crackles.

The sergeant moved around to the other side of Hunter and Garcia.

‘I said that I think I’ve got something here, Sergeant,’
the officer came back. This time the reception was much clearer.

Reflexively the sergeant looked back at both detectives to check if they’d heard the message.

They had.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the sergeant replied. ‘What have you got?’

‘Not quite sure, Sergeant.’

‘OK, then. Where are you?’

‘Northeast corner of the park, by the trashcan.’

Hunter, Garcia and the sergeant turned and looked in that general direction. They’d been standing by the Frank Putman water feature, right at the center of the park, not that far from the northeast corner. They could see a young officer standing by a trashcan waving at them. They quickly walked over.

The officer was in his early twenties and looked to be fresh out of the police academy. He had bright blue eyes, red, acne-riddled cheeks and a pencil-tip nose. He was wearing a pair of latex gloves and holding a compact, black camcorder in his hands. He greeted everyone with a single head nod.

‘I found this in there, Sergeant.’ He pointed to the trash-can to his left. ‘It was inside a regular brown-paper sandwich bag.’ He handed the camera to his sergeant, who barely looked at it before passing it over to Hunter.

‘This is your show,’ he said, looking very uninterested.

Hunter gloved up and took the camera. The letters and numbers on one side of it read Sony Handycam CX250 HD. The camera was one of those with a flip-out screen on the side.

‘I’m not really sure what we’re looking for out here, sir,’ the officer explained. ‘But that’s a brand-new digital camera, worth at least a few hundred bucks. It’s got no business being in the trash.’

‘Where’s the sandwich bag the camera was in?’ Hunter asked the officer, who promptly produced a clear plastic evidence bag.

‘All bagged up and ready to go, sir,’ he said. ‘I figured somebody would want this separate from the rest of the garbage.’

Garcia acknowledged the officer’s good work before quickly checking the sandwich bag.

Nothing. No marks, no stains, nothing written anywhere.

He and Hunter returned their attention to the camcorder.

‘Did you try turning this on?’ Hunter asked the officer.

He shook his head. ‘Not my place, sir. I found it and called it in straightaway.’

Hunter nodded his agreement. For an instant he considered if he should take the camera straight to forensics, but the reality of the matter was that there was no clear evidence that that camcorder had indeed been left behind by the killer.

Hunter flipped open the viewer screen and froze. He didn’t need to turn the camera on to know. Staring back at him was all the confirmation he needed.

Eighty

The man stood at the crowded bus stop by the northwest corner of City Hall Park, calmly observing the events unfold on the South Lawn. He had to admit that he was surprised.

He had considered using a thick blood-red marker pen to write Detective Robert Hunter – LAPD on the sandwich bag he’d left inside the trashcan at the northeast corner of the park less than an hour ago. By doing so, he would make sure that if anyone else came across the bag, like a garbage collector (homeless trashcan scavengers tended to stay away from the park due to its proximity to the Police Administration Building), chances were they’d drop it in at the PAB. But in the end the man had decided against it. He’d read a lot about Detective Robert Hunter in the past few months. Hunter was supposed to be ‘a class above’, according to some of the articles he’d read. Well, how good could he really be, if he wasn’t even able to figure out that there was bound to be a hidden reason behind the fact that the LAPD was
allowed
to trace his last call? A reason other than the pure fun factor of being just outside their front door while tormenting them.

But the man had to admit that he was a little bit surprised because things had happened fast. Faster than what he had foreseen. Very shortly after the Internet voting had ended, a team of five uniformed officers exited the PAB and purposefully crossed the road in the direction of the park. One of them, an officer with red acned cheeks and a thin-tip nose, had almost bumped into him. The team was being coordinated by an overweight senior officer, probably a sergeant, now too old and too fat for any kind of more physically demanding job, the man concluded. The four young officers under his command had clearly been instructed to search the park, not to stop and interview people.

The man’s lips stretched into a skewed, wry smile.
Maybe Detective Hunter’s reputation is true after all.
The man was sure that the order to solely search the park, instead of wasting time interviewing passersby, had come from Detective Hunter’s office. Which meant that he had very quickly made a connection between the triangulated location of the incoming call and the possibility of a clue or a teaser being left behind.

‘Not bad, Detective Hunter,’ the man said under his breath. ‘Not bad at all.’

His smile widened a fraction as he saw Detective Hunter himself, followed by Detective Garcia, exit the PAB and make their way toward the park. The look on their faces told its own story, and it spoke of frustration, defeat, unrelenting concern and maybe even fear. It was the same look the man had had etched on his face for many years. But not anymore.

The man’s left leg started hurting again, and as he began rubbing his knee with the palm of his hand he saw the young officer who was searching the northeast corner of the park wave at both detectives and the sergeant.

The man’s smile grew wider still, and he felt a wave of excitement surge inside him.

The officer had found it.

As the number 70 bus to El Monte pulled in at the bus stop, the man saw Detective Hunter flip open the camcorder’s view screen. The look on his face made the man want to throw his head back and laugh loudly, but instead he quietly turned around, boarded the bus and took a seat toward the back.

It was almost time to finish this whole thing off.

Eighty-One

The sergeant and the pencil-tip-nosed officer both craned their necks awkwardly to have a better look at the camcorder’s view screen before intense frowns simultaneously shadowed their faces.

They saw the same thing Hunter and Garcia did. They just didn’t understand it.

‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia murmured, his breath catching in his throat.

Hunter said nothing, but his eyes left the camcorder and quickly returned to searching the park. That was the event this killer wouldn’t want to miss. What he had waited around for – the moment they came across his little gift. Hunter was sure this killer would want to be looking straight at them so he was able to see the surprise on their faces. To the killer, it would be the perfect punch line.

But with the rush hour picking up momentum, the streets and the park had gotten busier. People were cutting across it in a multitude of directions, all in a hurry to get somewhere fast. Hunter’s eyes moved as quickly as they could. He understood that this killer needed only a second, maybe two, to completely savor the moment and laugh at their frustration. After that, satisfied, he would just fade back into anonymity.
Just another honest living person trying to make his way back home.
There was no need for the killer to allow his gaze to linger on their group for longer than a brief instant and risk being spotted.

Maybe if Hunter had looked west first, he would’ve noticed the man standing at the bus stop by the northwest corner of the park, staring straight at them. The smirk on his face was insolent, arrogant . . . proud, even. But Hunter had instinctively looked up from the camcorder in his hands and forward. He was facing east. By the time his gaze reached the bus stop, the man had his back to them, waiting patiently at the end of the line, ready to board the bus –
just another commuter facing rush hour.