One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) - Страница 85

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.