No new messages, no new calls.
Out of the blue, a yellow cab pulled up right in front of him and rolled down its window.
‘You Robert Hunter?’ the driver asked.
Hunter nodded with a quizzical look on his face.
‘Here’s your phone, dude,’ the driver said, offering Hunter an old, brick-like cellphone with a hands-free earpiece already plugged into it.
‘What?’
The driver shrugged. ‘Look, man, a guy paid me two hundred bucks to bring this phone to this exact location, at this exact time, and give it to some dude called Robert Hunter. That’s you, right? So here’s your phone.’
The phone the driver had offered Hunter started ringing, startling the driver.
‘Shit, man.’ The driver jumped in his seat before extending his arm again. ‘It ain’t gonna be for me.’
Hunter quickly took the phone and answered it, placing the earpiece in his ear.
‘Great,’ the caller said. ‘You made it. Now hand your phone over to the cab driver.’ The caller’s voice sounded a little different from all the previous calls. Hunter knew that was because he wasn’t using any electronic device to disguise it anymore. There was no longer a need for it.
‘What?’ Hunter replied.
‘You heard me. Take this phone and hand your phone over to the cab driver. You won’t need it anymore. Do it now or she dies.’
Hunter knew exactly what Graham was doing – getting rid of Hunter’s police phone GPS, and any other tricks and warning signals Hunter might’ve had set up at the touch of a button.
He did as he was told.
The cab driver rolled his window back up and quickly drove away.
‘Now, you have exactly sixty minutes to get to the address I’m going to give you. Don’t use your car. Don’t use a police car. Don’t take a taxi. Improvise. If you don’t, the killing begins. If you don’t get here in sixty minutes, the killing begins. If you disconnect from this call during the next sixty minutes, the killing begins. Am I clear?’
‘Yes.’
The caller gave Hunter the address.
‘Go. The clock starts . . . now.’
One Hundred and Eleven
Hunter looked around himself, quickly evaluating what his next move should be. Directly across the road from him was a convenience store with its own small private parking lot at the back. At that exact moment, an overweight man exited the store, carrying a large bag under his arm and happily chewing on a Twinkie. Hunter got to him as he unlocked the door to his Chevrolet Malibu.
‘Sorry, sir, I need to take your car,’ Hunter said in a hurried voice, displaying his badge and police credentials.
‘What?’ the man said with a mouthful of Twinkie, eyeing Hunter’s documents and badge, before looking straight into his eyes.
‘This is a police emergency and I need to take your car, sir.’
The man swallowed down whatever was left inside his mouth with a gulping noise. ‘Are you fucking with me right now? You’re commandeering my car? That kind of shit only happens in the movies.’
‘Well, that kind of shit just got real, sir.’
‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.’ The man looked around, as if expecting to see a camera crew hiding somewhere. ‘Am I being punked right now?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did my ex-bitch-of-a-wife put you up to this?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know your ex-bitch-of-a-wife, sir, and I don’t have time to argue. I really need to take your car.’
‘No freaking way. Are you for real? Is that badge real? Let me see that again.’
‘It’s real, sir. I assure you. And so is this.’ Hunter opened his jacket, allowing the man to see his gun.
‘Yup,’ the man said, taking a step back. ‘That looks pretty damn real.’
‘Can I please have the keys now, sir,’ Hunter said.
‘Goddammit,’ the man said, before handing the keys to Hunter. ‘How the hell am I supposed get home now?’
Hunter wasn’t listening anymore. He jumped into the car, started the engine and took off with the tires screeching.
Out of the parking lot, he immediately veered left onto East 4th Street, heading toward the Golden State Freeway.
‘Great improvisation, Detective,’ Hunter heard the caller say through his earpiece.
‘Graham,’ Hunter said. ‘Listen to me. You don’t have to do this anymore.’
‘Is that so, Detective Hunter?’
‘Yes,’ Hunter replied with conviction. ‘We all understand you’re angry and hurt. We understand that all the people you sought – Kevin Lee Parker, Christina Stevenson and Ethan Walsh . . .’ Hunter used their names in a futile effort to humanize the victims in Graham Fisher’s eyes. ‘They have all, in one way or another, made the already terrible pain of dealing with your son’s death even harder, but revenge will not make the pain go away.’
‘Harder . . .?’ Graham cut Hunter short with a sneer. ‘They bastardized it. They gave every freak out there a chance to turn my son’s life struggle, and his death, into a joke. A chance for them to make fun of him, even after he was gone. Society has turned into something unrecognizable, Detective. A monster without respect or care for anyone’s life. A monster whose values have been turned upside down. Haven’t I proven it to you, Detective? Didn’t you witness people voting on how to kill another human being, a complete stranger who they knew nothing of, as if it were a game? We’re talking
real people
wanting to watch
real people
die live on their screens for pure entertainment. How messed up is that, Detective Hunter?’
‘Graham, I understand.’
‘No, no, no,’ Graham interrupted Hunter again, his voice now lifting with anger. ‘Don’t tell me you understand, because you don’t. And do not insult me by trying to psychobullshit your way through this. It will
not
work. I assure you. My mind is much stronger than yours, Detective Hunter.’ There was a short pause, but before Hunter could say anything Graham spoke again, his tone back to being calm and serene. ‘But look at the bright side of all this. Once you get here, this will all end . . . For both of us. You’ve got fifty-three minutes, Detective. And in the next fifty-three minutes I do not want to hear a word from you. If I do, every word I hear means she loses a finger. If I run out of fingers . . . well . . . I’ll have to start cutting something else. Is that understood?’
Silence.
‘Is that understood, Detective Hunter?’
‘Yes.’
The next silent fifty-three minutes felt like forever. Hunter’s mind kept churning possibility after possibility of what would happen once he got to his destination. None of them ended well.
Graham had calculated the trip, taking into account the obstacle that LA traffic posed at that time of day, with the precision of a rocket scientist, because Hunter reached the secluded destination in Sylmar, the northernmost neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, in exactly fifty-two minutes. Hunter wasn’t surprised by Graham’s precision. No matter how tough he sounded, Graham didn’t want Hunter to fail, because his revenge plan would never be completed without the last name on his victims’ list – Robert Hunter.
By the time Hunter got to Sylmar, the day was disappearing over the Hollywood hills, with the sky taking an almost crippled brownish hue.
The address Graham gave him took Hunter to an isolated road near the Equestrian Arena in Sylmar, by the foot of the Angeles National Forest hills. There wasn’t much there, except two small warehouses and an old, disused stable. Graham had told Hunter to drive to the back of the main stable building, where he would find a second, high-roofed construction.
‘I see you have arrived.’ Graham broke the oppressing phone silence, just as Hunter parked the car. ‘The door is unlocked. Come right in, Detective Hunter. We have all been waiting for you. But unfortunately we couldn’t wait. The show has already started. The clock is already ticking. And you don’t have much time left.’
One Hundred and Twelve
Exactly five minutes before Hunter was due to arrive, Graham set the phone he was on to Hunter to mute and placed a new call to a different number, using a different phone.
Back at the PAB, Garcia was just about to call Hunter with some news when the phone on his desk rang. Captain Blake was in the office with him.
‘Detective Garcia, Homicide Special,’ he answered it.
‘Detective,’ the caller said. ‘I have a very special show for you today. The last in the series. Something you might like to call – the grand finale.’
Garcia paused for a split, hesitant second. His gaze found Captain Blake’s, and something in it made her shiver.
‘Graham?’ Garcia said, switching the call to loudspeaker.
‘That’s correct, Detective. And now that we have been properly introduced, would you care to log onto pickadeath.com? I’m sure you will enjoy this last show.’
Garcia quickly got to his computer and typed the web address onto his browser’s address bar.
Captain Blake joined him behind his desk in a hurry.
This time there was no green tint indicating night-vision lenses. The image was bright and clear. It showed the same woman they’d been searching for all day. The one on the photograph they’d found inside Graham Fisher’s basement – the next victim. She had been gagged and securely strapped to a heavy metal chair, similar to the one they found bolted to the concrete floor inside the glass enclosure they’d discovered that morning. But this time there was no glass enclosure. Instead, the chair had been placed inside a large metal-bar cage, like the ones used to hold animals in a zoo. The woman’s eyes were wide with fear and blood-red from crying. She had been completely stripped of all her clothes. Despite all that, she did not appear to be injured. But what frightened the hell out of Garcia and Captain Blake was the strangely shaped wire-mesh panel that had been placed directly in front of her face. It looked like some sort of odd, medieval, torturing metal mask.
‘Oh my God. He already had her,’ Captain Blake whispered.
‘Do you see her?’ Graham asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Keep watching.’
As in the previous broadcasts, the word GUILTY appeared in big letters, centered at the bottom of the screen.
‘Where is Robert?’ Captain Blake mouthed the words at Garcia.
He gave her a subtle headshake, while at the same time pressing a speed dial button on his cellphone. A second later there was a barely audible beep, followed by Hunter’s ‘unavailable’ message. Garcia frowned. That meant Hunter’s cellphone was switched off. Hunter never switched his phone off.
‘I decided to change the rules yet again,’ Graham calmly said. ‘This time there will be only one death method, not a choice of two. You see, Detective, I want to test how benevolent the people of California are. If they care enough, she lives. If they don’t, she dies. It’s that simple.’
About halfway down the right-hand edge of the screen, the word SAVE appeared followed by the number zero and a green button. Directly underneath it, the word EXECUTE appeared, also followed by the number zero and a second green button.
‘This will be a simple race to the finish line, Detective. Ten minutes, at the end of which we count the votes. SAVE – she lives. EXECUTE – she dies. Does that sound fair?’
No reply.
‘All she needs is for the people of this great state we live in to care enough.’ Graham laughed out loud. ‘So what do you think, Detective Garcia? In the days of today, are people more inclined to give a complete stranger the benefit of the doubt, or condemn her to die simply because they see the word GUILTY on the screen? Can people really be that gullible?’
No reply.
‘I guess we’ll find out in ten minutes. But there’s something else I want you to do. Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘Exactly two minutes before time is up, I want you to use a different computer and log onto the following IP address.’ Graham dictated the address to Garcia. ‘Two minutes from time up, not a second before. If you log onto it anytime before two minutes, I’ll know it, and the deal is off. I will kill her no matter what, and I will kill her slowly. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
The line went dead.
The digital clock at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen started counting down – 9:59, 9:58, 9:57 . . .
One Hundred and Thirteen
Still with the hands-free earpiece securely in his ear, Hunter exited the car, unholstered his weapon and cautiously moved toward the door of the high-roofed building at the back of the disused stable. It was a medium-sized, unremarkable brick and cement construction, where unequal patches of green mold covered the walls outside. Old debris and garden weed surrounded the entire property. The only two windows Hunter could see from where he was had been boarded up, but the heavy wooden door he’d just approached on the east wall looked new. So did the two deadbolt locks on it.
Hunter moved closer and placed his right ear against the door. It was too thick and too solid for him to be able to hear anything coming from the other side.
‘It’s not a trick, Detective Hunter,’ Graham’s voice came through the hands-free once again, taking Hunter by surprise. ‘I am not going to shoot you as you walk through the door. That’s a promise. I really want you to see what’s inside. Just push the door. It’s open. And let me remind you – the clock is already ticking.’
Hunter had no other option but to trust Graham. He took a deep breath, cocked his gun and slowly pushed the door open.
The space inside was large and bare, like an empty family house stripped of all the walls. There was an odd smell in the air, a combination of disinfectant with something sweet and sickly, like dried-up old vomit. The light was uneven, coming from the north end of the room. Instinctively Hunter’s eyes moved in that direction, and a suffocating knot immediately formed in his throat.
Pushed up against the wall was a large, solid, metal-bar cage. The bars were at least one inch in diameter. Sitting at the center of it, naked and firmly strapped to a metal chair, was the woman he saw on the photograph he’d found earlier in Graham’s basement. She looked absolutely terrified. As her blurry, full-of-tears gaze found Hunter’s, her whole being was filled with hope, electrifying her entire body. She tried screaming, but her weak voice, made even weaker by her tired and wasted vocal cords, made no impression through the thick gag in her mouth. She used whatever strength she had left in her to try to swing her body from side to side and rock it forward, away from the chair’s backrest, but the straps that held her tight were too strong. Her eyes, though, communicated with Hunter in a clear voice.