Forty-five minutes after leaving Sylmar, Hunter arrived back at the UVC Unit office. Garcia was already at his desk, his gaze locked onto his computer screen, his expression somber.
‘If this isn’t total madness,’ he said, his concerned eyes moving to Hunter, ‘then I don’t know what is.’
‘I’m assuming you’re talking about the video,’ Hunter replied.
On his way to the PAB, Hunter had forwarded the video clip that the killer had sent Troy to Garcia and to the Cyber Forensics Lab.
‘This is so fucked up,’ Garcia commented, cringing, as his attention switched back to his computer screen. ‘This goes way beyond grotesque, and sadistic, and vile, and sickening, and monstrous, and whatever other words you can think of.’
‘I know.’ Hunter replied, his tone hopeless.
‘And you were right there?’
Hunter nodded. ‘A few yards and a couple of walls away from him.’
Garcia sat back on his chair. ‘Do you think he knew? Do you think the killer knew that you were in the house?’
Hunter shrugged and took a seat at his desk. ‘Possibly. That depends on how long he’d been waiting outside before sending Troy the video. I’d been in the house for about ten, maybe fifteen minutes tops when the message came through. From then on, my timekeeping got a little blurred,’ Hunter admitted. ‘I’m not quite sure how long it was between Troy getting the message and Shannon calling me back with the location, but I don’t think that it was any longer than three or four minutes. By then he was gone.’
‘Do you think that he’s fucking with us?’
Hunter looked back at him, cautiously.
‘The reason I ask,’ Garcia said, ‘is because…’
Hunter read the question in his partner’s eyes. ‘Because he left the GPS on this time.’
‘Exactly. The killer sent Janet a similar message yesterday. No GPS. Then today he sends Troy one and, what? He forgot the GPS was on? I don’t buy it. Not for a second. He wanted us to know that he was right there, which means I think he knew you were in the house, Robert.’
‘Shannon told me that the phone was turned off straight after the message was sent.’
‘I don’t know, Robert, but I think this killer’s compulsion might go beyond his sadism. Maybe he wants the challenge. Another freak for the “catch me if you can” game. God knows we’ve met plenty of those. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of a sudden this killer started contacting us directly just for the fun of it.’
‘Me neither,’ Hunter admitted. ‘I’ve already contacted the Traffic Division in Sylmar, inquiring about traffic cameras near Mrs. Foster’s house.’ A shake of the head. ‘We’ll give it a try. I’ll ask Research to have a look at the footage, but I don’t think that we’ll get anything. The closest cameras aren’t close enough – Hubbard Street and Foothill Freeway, both of them about three blocks due east and north from Mrs. Foster’s house. Too many different routes out of there that would’ve escaped them both. That’s problem one. Problem two is that we don’t even know which vehicle to search for.’
Garcia raised his eyebrows at Hunter.
‘Yes,’ Hunter accepted, ‘we do know that the killer used an identical or very similar pickup truck to Troy’s when he took Kirsten on Monday night, but this guy is clever. Probably a lot more than we think. The chances of him having stolen, rented, or even acquired a similar truck just so he could use it exclusively on that night are very real. Today, in Sylmar, he could’ve been on a motorbike, for all we know.’
‘Yeah, that’s another piece of bad luck for us,’ Garcia said, returning to his computer and opening another file on his screen. ‘With that same thought in mind, I’ve also started checking stolen auto reports, vehicle rental companies, and used car dealers.’
‘OK?’
‘Well, Troy drives a Ford F-150 pickup truck, 2014 Model.’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘So come have a look at this.’ Garcia gestured his partner closer.
Hunter rounded his desk to get to Garcia’s.
‘That’s the Ford F-150 pickup truck, 2014 model,’ Garcia explained, indicating the photo on his screen.
‘Alright.’
‘Front view,’ Garcia said before clicking onto the next photo. ‘And rear view.’
Hunter could already guess what was coming.
‘Now check this out.’ Garcia clicked again. New photo. ‘That’s a 2014 Chevy Silverado 1500. Front view and…’ Another click. ‘Rear view.’
Hunter sighed. The Ford F-150 and the Chevy Silverado 1500 looked extremely similar from both angles.
Another click from Garcia.
‘This is 2014 GMC Sierra 1500. Front view… rear view.’
Also eerily similar.
Another click.
‘This is a 2014 Ram 1500 – front-view… rear-view.’
Click.
‘2014 Toyota Tundra – front-view… rear-view.’
One last click.
‘And finally a 2014 Nissan Titan – front-view… rear-view.’
Hunter’s face was one of defeat. All five pickup trucks were similar enough from both angles to confuse most people, unless you were a pickup truck aficionado.
‘The killer could’ve used any of these on the night he took Kirsten,’ Garcia continued. ‘And any neighbor, either walking by or looking out their window, like Mr. Hennessey, would’ve fully believed that they were looking at Troy’s Ford F-150, especially at night. And I’m sure that the killer knew that.’
Hunter nodded slowly. ‘Like I said, this guy is clever.’
‘Very,’ Garcia agreed, as he walked over to the coffee machine on the corner. ‘The video is another example of that – five extremely short segments, filmed at very tight angles and under shitty light conditions. You can barely see the road under her. We have two chances of identifying that location – zero and none, unless Cyber Forensics performs a miracle.’
Hunter wasn’t sure that that would happen either.
‘Coffee?’ Garcia offered.
‘Please.’
Garcia poured two large mugs and handed one to Hunter. He then turned to face the picture board. ‘If we thought that the clip that this killer had sent Janet yesterday was a mind-fuck…’ He chuckled humorlessly. ‘This video hits that ball clear out of the park. I can’t even imagine how Troy…’
‘He didn’t watch the full clip,’ Hunter interrupted him, before explaining what had happened.
‘So he never saw the written message at the end of it?’ Garcia asked.
‘Not while I was there.’
Garcia frowned at his partner. ‘But you just told me that you saw him delete the video.’
‘I did.’
‘So it’s gone, or do you think that the killer is going to send him another one?’
Hunter told him about the feature that automatically saved message attachments to a phone’s memory.
Even though Garcia had that exact feature on his phone, he had forgotten it existed.
‘Troy told me that that feature was disabled on his phone.’
Garcia sipped his coffee and studied Hunter for a second. ‘You think he was lying?’
He knew that Hunter was levels above everyone else when it came to picking apart body language, words, micro-expressions, gestures, eye-movements, skin-flushing, voice fluctuation… anything and everything that could give away if someone was lying or not.
‘Perhaps not,’ Hunter replied.
‘So that’s a good thing, right? It means that he won’t get to see that message – because that is the final boss of mind-fucks.’
Hunter nodded, but he knew that there was a false dichotomy there, one that led most people to make a dangerous assumption – just because someone wasn’t lying, it didn’t mean that they were telling the truth.
But despite how good he was at it, Hunter hadn’t been able to properly read Troy for a very obvious reason: everything about him – his body language, his voice fluctuation, his eye movements… everything had been completely unreliable as a telltale sign because all of it had been altered by grief, pain and the shock of the images he’d just seen.
‘You have the video on the big screen?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yeah,’ Garcia replied, as he pointed at the computer monitor on his desk. ‘Be my guest. I don’t think I can watch that again. Hands down, one of the sickest and saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life.’
Hunter couldn’t disagree.
‘How did you get along with the cab driver?’ he asked, as he moved over to Garcia’s desk. ‘Anything?’ He pressed the space bar on Garcia’s keyboard and the video played from the beginning. Watching it on a twenty-seven-inch screen seemed to give new depths to the sadism depicted on those images, especially during the third segment, when the footage zoomed in on Kirsten’s eyes. On the big screen, Hunter could clearly see the light of hope disappearing from them. She knew that that was the end.
Garcia waited until the video had played through before answering his partner.
‘Nothing from the driver,’ he said, having another sip of his coffee.
‘Really? He couldn’t give us anything?’
‘She,’ Garcia replied, putting down his coffee and picking up a notepad from his desk. ‘Linda Evans. Very sweet woman. Forty-five years of age. She did remember picking Melissa up from the Freehand Hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning. Her records showed that the pick-up occurred at 1:29 a.m.’
‘Yeah, that’s also what we have,’ Hunter agreed, returning to his desk.
‘The drive from the hotel to Melissa’s house in Leimert Park,’ Garcia continued, ‘lasted just short of half an hour. Drop-off was at 1:58 a.m.’ He flipped a page on his notepad. ‘Mrs. Evans said that Melissa was quite drunk. She exited the cab and couldn’t even close the door properly – even after a couple of tries. Because she seemed so drunk, Mrs. Evans waited until Melissa had gotten into her house before driving off.’
‘That was nice of her,’ Hunter commented.
‘She has a teenage daughter. She told me that she’d heard too many stories of single women being attacked as they arrive home, especially after they’ve been drinking. Every time she drops off a woman by herself… drunk or not… night time or not… she waits until they get in before leaving, just in case.’
‘We need more people like her in this city.’
‘Since she waited until Melissa go in before driving off,’ Garcia carried on, ‘I asked her if she had noticed if Melissa had forgotten to close the front door.’
‘Did she?’
‘No, she said that as soon as she saw Melissa disappear into the house, she drove off. But we’ve been to the house. It’s set back from the street, remember? From inside a car parked on the road, at night, if Melissa left the door just ajar instead of wide open, you would’ve needed the eyes of a hawk to see it.’
‘True,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But the killer never said that Melissa forgot to close her front door. He said that she forgot to lock it. She might’ve closed it and simply forgot to turn the key, which brings me to the next question.’
Garcia guessed it. ‘Did Mrs. Evans notice anyone close, or around Melissa’s house at that time?’ It was his turn to give Hunter a defeated headshake. ‘She said that as far as she could remember, the street was quiet. I also asked her if she had noticed any cars following them from the Freehand Hotel. She said that there was no one. The whole time that she was parked in front of Melissa’s house – between Melissa managing to get out of her cab, struggling with closing the door, stumbling to her house and finally getting inside – we’re talking nearly five minutes. That whole time, Mrs. Evans told me that she couldn’t remember a single car driving up or down the road. She would’ve seen the headlights.’ Garcia returned the notepad to his desk. ‘Which means that we’ve got nothing so far.’ He finished his coffee and slumped himself onto his chair again.
‘I know,’ Hunter said, before trying to reassure him. ‘But there’s still a lot of people to talk to. The possibility that this killer has had some sort of romantic contact with both victims is still very real. We’re going to have to plough through both of their lives and see if we can find a link between them because there’s no way that they’ve been victims of chance.’
Garcia agreed, pulling himself closer to his desk again. ‘I was just about to start sieving through their social media looking for—’ he threw his hands in the air ‘—I don’t know, anything that could connect them, really, when I got your message forwarding the video.’ He massaged the back of his neck. ‘I’m not going to lie, Robert. It has unbalanced me. This level of brutality is just disturbing… even for people with our experience. I know that we believe that there’s some sort of meaning to everything that this killer does, but seriously?’ He nodded at his monitor. ‘What kind of meaning could be behind this other than “I’m fucked in the head and I want to hurt people like no one has before”?’
Hunter had to agree. As the LAPD UVC Unit, he and Garcia had chased murderers whose cruelty didn’t seem to belong to this world.
This killer was surpassing them all.