The Night Stalker (29 page)

‘So he never jumped as the report said?’

Myers shook her head.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

The waitress returned to the table and frowned as she saw Hunter’s uneaten platter. ‘Something wrong with the food?’

‘What?’ Hunter shook his head. ‘Oh no, no. It’s fantastic. I haven’t finished it yet. Just give me a few more minutes.’

‘I’ll have one more of these.’ Myers pointed to her empty glass. ‘Balvenie, 12-year-old.’

The waitress nodded and went on her way.

‘I lunged towards him,’ Myers continued. ‘My fingers brushed his tiny hand. But I just couldn’t grip it. He was so fragile that his body almost disintegrated when he hit the ground.’

Hunter ran his hand through his hair.

‘It took me two days to build up the courage to go back to Billy’s building.’ She paused to find her words. ‘Actually, I think what built up inside me wasn’t courage – it was pure hate. I didn’t want a confession. I wanted to teach them a lesson. I wanted them to feel at least a fraction of the fear Billy felt.’ Her voice was suddenly coated with anger. ‘He was a 10-year-old boy, so hurt and so scared that he’d rather jump off the top of a building than go back to the family that was supposed to love him. You’re a psychologist. You know that 10-year-old boys aren’t supposed to commit suicide. They shouldn’t even understand the concept.’

The waitress returned with Myers’ drink and placed it on the table.

‘I got to their apartment and confronted them. Angela started crying, but Peter was as cold as ice. He couldn’t have cared less. Something took over me right there and then. So I forced them to cuff themselves to each other, and took them to the rooftop. To the same spot Billy had fallen from. And that’s when it happened.’

Hunter leaned forward but said nothing, allowing Myers to continue at her own pace.

‘Angela started crying uncontrollably, but not because she was scared. The guilt inside her just exploded and she let everything out. She said that she was so ashamed of herself, but she had been terrified of what Peter would do to her and Billy if she told anyone. Peter also used to rape and beat her up too. She said that she thought about taking Billy and running away, but she had nowhere to go. She had no money, no friends and her family didn’t care for her. That’s when Peter lost it up there. He told her to shut the fuck up and slapped her across the face. I almost shot him for that.’

Myers paused for another sip.

‘But Angela beat me to it. The slap didn’t faze her. She said she was tired of being afraid. She was tired of being helpless against him, but not any more. She looked at me and her eyes burned with determination. She said, “Thank you for finally giving me the chance to do something. I’m so sorry about Billy.” Then, without any warning, she threw herself off the rooftop. Still cuffed to Peter.’

Hunter was studying Myers, searching for signs of dissembling – rapid facial movements, fluttering of the eyes. She displayed only a sorrowful calm.

‘Angela was a heavy-built woman. Peter was tall and skinny. He wasn’t expecting it. Her weight pulled at him like a crane, but he managed to hold her for a few seconds. Long enough for his frightened eyes to look at me. Long enough for him to ask for my help.’ A pause. ‘I just turned and walked away.’

They sat in silence for a while as Hunter digested the story.

‘So what do you have to say? Do you think I’m lying?’ Myers finally asked.

That was why Myers had never recounted those events to anyone investigating her case years ago. Hunter knew no Internal Affairs investigator would have believed her. On the contrary, they’d crucify her for seeking revenge.

‘As I said,’ Hunter said, ‘I would’ve done the same thing.’

Hunter and Myers talked for over an hour more. They shared information. She told him how the evidence she’d collected suggested that Katia Kudrov had been taken from inside her apartment in West Hollywood. She told him about the sixty messages on Katia’s answer machine, and how they were all exactly twelve seconds long. She told him about the sound analyses on the last message, the deciphering of the hoarse whispering voice – ‘YOU TAKE MY BREATH AWAY . . . WELCOME HOME, KATIA. I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU. I GUESS IT’S FINALLY TIME WE MET.’ – and why they believed the kidnapper had made the last call from inside her bedroom, probably while watching her shower.

Myers handed Hunter a copy of all the recordings, including the deciphered last one, together with several files. Her research was as good as she had said it was.

Hunter kept his side of the bargain, but he told Myers only what she really needed to know. He told her about the stitches to the victims’ mouths, but not to their lower bodies. He never mentioned that the killer left any devices inside his victims. He also didn’t say anything about the bomb, the spray-painted messages. He said the killer had used a knife and simply left it at that.

Hunter finally finished his shrimp platter before leaving Uncle Kelome’s. His headache wasn’t gone, but it was now bearable. Hunter contacted Operations and asked them to get started straight away on a file on Katia Kudrov.

Back in his apartment, he sat in his living room, nursing a new glass of single malt. He didn’t even bother with the lights. Darkness suited him just fine. His brain kept going over everything Myers had told him. There was no concrete evidence that the same person who’d taken Laura Mitchell and Kelly Jensen had also abducted Katia Kudrov, but Hunter’s mind had already started finding links in the method of their disappearance.

Katia had been abducted from inside her own apartment. That was consistent with the way in which Laura Mitchell, the first victim, had been kidnapped. Despite his suspicions, Hunter had yet to find out from where Kelly Jensen had been taken.

The phone messages left on Katia Kudrov’s answering machine also bothered him. The fact that they were all twelve seconds long was evidence enough that they’d been left by the same person. One message a day, over sixty days. That again implied that they were dealing with someone patient and self-disciplined. A person who didn’t mind waiting. It was almost like a game he played with his victims. But why twelve seconds? It wouldn’t have been a random choice, he was sure.

Hunter played through the copy of the recordings Myers had given him. He heard the kidnapper’s hoarse whisper, first as a mass of static sound, then as the deciphered voice. He rewound it and played it again. Over and over.

Hunter sat back in his beaten-up black leather sofa and rested his head against the backrest. He needed to watch the CCTV footage from Kelly’s studio parking lot, but he was exhausted. His eyelids were starting to feel heavy. And when sleep came Hunter’s way, he always grabbed it with both hands.

He fell asleep right there in his living room. Five consecutive and dreamless hours, something that very rarely happened. When he woke up, he had a stiff neck, and the taste in his mouth was as if he had eaten from a garbage can, but he felt rested and his headache was mercifully gone. He had a long shower, allowing the warmth and strong jet of water to massage his neck muscles. He shaved with an old razorblade that seemed to rip the hairs from his face instead of cutting them. He cursed. He had to go the grocery store sometime soon.

After making himself a strong cup of black coffee, Hunter returned to his living room and to the laptop he’d brought home with him.

Mr. Wang’s hidden parking lot camera was set to record twenty-four hours a day, but Hunter had a feeling he’d only need to watch the night footage. This killer didn’t strike him as someone who’d risk hanging around an abduction scene in the middle of the day, in plain view of everyone. If Kelly Jensen had really been taken from her studio location, chances were, it would’ve been done at night.

Because the parking lot was secluded and mainly used by shop owners, the movement of cars and people was minimal. Anything out of the ordinary would stand out. There was no need for Hunter to watch every minute of the fifty-six hours of night footage he had. After a quick test, he found out that he could speed up playback to six times its original playing speed and still be able to spot anything suspicious. That meant it would take him just over an hour to go through a whole eight hours. Hunter checked his watch – 6:22 a.m. He had enough time to skim through the first recorded night before making his way to Parker Center.

He didn’t need to watch it for long.

The timestamp at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen read 8:36 p.m. when an old Ford Fiesta entered the parking lot and stopped directly behind Kelly’s Trans-Am. Hunter sat up and slowed the footage down to normal playing speed. A few seconds later someone stepped out of the car – male, tall, well built. He leaned against the driver’s door and nervously looked around the lot as if checking if anyone else was around. He looked uncomfortable as he lit up a cigarette. Hunter paused the picture and enhanced it by zooming in, but the quality he got from the laptop’s imaging application wasn’t great – too pixilated and grainy – so he couldn’t properly make the man’s face. He was sure the LAPD computer guys would be able to clean it up. Hunter pressed play again. Thirty seconds later, the passenger’s door opened and a leggy blonde stepped out. She moved around to where the nervous male was standing, kneeled down in front of him, undid his belt, pulled down his trousers and took him in her mouth.

Hunter smiled and rubbed his chin. Just a couple of thrill seekers. He sped up the footage again. The couple moved from oral to full-blown sex – over the hood and against the driver’s door. They were there for thirty-eight minutes.

Hunter moved on. At 9:49 p.m. Mr. Wang jumped into his pickup truck and left, leaving only Kelly’s car in the parking lot. At 10:26 p.m. Hunter slowed the footage down once again.

‘What the hell?’

He leaned closer to the screen and watched the events that unfolded in the next minute as his jaw dropped.

‘Sonofabitch.’

In complete darkness she sat shivering, curled up into a tight ball. She felt lightheaded, nauseous and every muscle in her body ached with feverish intensity. Her throat scratched as if she’d swallowed a ball of barbed wire.

She had no real idea of how long she’d been locked up in that cell. She guessed a few days. There was no way she could be sure. The room had no windows and the weak light bulb inside the metal mesh box on the ceiling only came on for a few minutes at a time. The intervals were uneven. Sometimes four, sometimes five times a day. But the light always came on just before she was given food. It was like training a lab rat.

She was given four meals a day, slid to her on a plastic tray through a special hatch at the bottom of the cell’s heavy wooden door. The cell was small, ten paces long by eight wide, with bare brick walls, concrete floors, a metal-framed bed and a bucket on the corner, which was emptied once a day.

She moved her head and felt the room spin around again. The dizziness seemed to never go away. She wasn’t even sure if she was awake or asleep. It felt as if she was caught somewhere between the two states. The only thing she was sure of was that she was scared – really scared.

He watched her bring her hands to her face and wipe away the tears that never seemed to stop. He wondered how much more scared she’d be if he made a noise. If he made her realize that she wasn’t really alone. If she knew he was right there, hiding in the darkness, just three paces from her. How would she react if he extended his hand and touched her skin, her hair? How terrified would she be if he whispered something in her ear?

He smiled as he watched her shiver one more time. Maybe it was time she found out.

Between pausing and fast-forwarding, Hunter spent another half an hour studying the CCTV camera footage from Kelly Jensen’s studio parking lot. There were three main sections that interested him. The first was timestamped between 10:26 and 10:31 p.m. The second from 11:07 to 11:09 p.m. And the last one from 11:11 to 11:14 p.m.

The drive from Hunter’s apartment in Huntingdon Park to Parker Center took him twenty-five minutes. He went straight into the IT Division, but at that time in the morning there was no one there except a new eager-to-impress recruit to the team. He was wearing a freshly ironed white shirt and a conservative gray tie. His matching suit jacket was resting on the back of his chair. No one in IT ever wore a shirt and tie, never mind a suit.

The young recruit told Hunter that Brian Doyle would probably come in late. He’d gone out celebrating the night before. The long-standing investigation he’d been personally involved in had finally come to an end. They’d successfully apprehended a serial pedophile after a sting operation that had lasted the whole day.

‘The guy they caught . . .’ the recruit told Hunter, ‘he’s married with two kids – one is ten, the other is twelve years old. Those are exactly the ages of the kids he used to groom online.’ He shook his head as if the entire world had lost its logic. ‘Is there anything I can help you with, Detective?’ the recruit asked, jerking his head towards the laptop under Hunter’s arm.

‘What’s your name, kid?’

‘Garry, sir.’ He offered his hand. ‘Garry Cameron.’

Hunter shook it. ‘I’m Robert, and if you call me
sir
one more time, I’ll arrest you for defamation.’