One by One Read online

  About the author

  Born in Brazil of Italian origin, Chris Carter studied psychology and criminal behaviour at the University of Michigan. As a member of the Michigan State District Attorney’s Criminal Psychology team, he interviewed and studied many criminals, including serial and multiple homicide offenders with life-imprisonment convictions.

  Having departed for Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Chris spent ten years as a guitarist for numerous rock bands before leaving the music business to write full-time. He now lives in London and is a Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author.

  Visit www.chriscarterbooks.com or find him on Facebook.

  Also by Chris Carter

  The Crucifix Killer

  The Executioner

  The Night Stalker

  The Death Sculptor

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013

  A CBS Company

  Copyright © Chris Carter, 2013

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Chris Carter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN 978-0-85720-305-2

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-85720-306-9

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-85720-309-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Seventy-Nine

  Eighty

  Eighty-One

  Eighty-Two

  Eighty-Three

  Eighty-Four

  Eighty-Five

  Eighty-Six

  Eighty-Seven

  Eighty-Eight

  Eighty-Nine

  Ninety

  Ninety-One

  Ninety-Two

  Ninety-Three

  Ninety-Four

  Ninety-Five

  Ninety-Six

  Ninety-Seven

  Ninety-Eight

  Ninety-Nine

  One Hundred

  One Hundred and One

  One Hundred and Two

  One Hundred and Three

  One Hundred and Four

  One Hundred and Five

  One Hundred and Six

  One Hundred and Seven

  One Hundred and Eight

  One Hundred and Nine

  One Hundred and Ten

  One Hundred and Eleven

  One Hundred and Twelve

  One Hundred and Thirteen

  One Hundred and Fourteen

  One Hundred and Fifteen

  One Hundred and Sixteen

  One Hundred and Seventeen

  One Hundred and Eighteen

  One

  A single shot to the back of the head, execution style. Many people consider it a very violent way to die. But the truth is – it isn’t. At least not for the victim.

  A 9mm bullet will enter someone’s skull and exit at the other side in three ten-thousandths of a second. It will shatter the cranium and rupture through the subject’s brain matter so fast the nervous system has no time to register any pain. If the angle in which the bullet enters the head is correct, the bullet should splice the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, even the thalamus in such a way that the brain will cease functioning, resulting in instant death. If the angle of the shot is wrong, the victim might survive, but not without extensive brain damage. The entry wound should be no larger than a small grape, but the exit wound could be as large as a tennis ball, depending on the type of bullet used.

  The male victim on the photograph Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division was looking at had died instantly. The bullet had transversed his entire skull, rupturing the cerebellum together with the temporal and the frontal lobes, causing fatal brain damage in three ten-thousandths of a second. Less than a full second later he was dead on the ground.

  The case wasn’t Hunter’s; it belonged to Detective Terry Radley in the main detectives’ floor, but the investigation photos had ended up on Hunter’s desk by mistake. As he returned the photograph to the case file, the phone on his desk rang.

  ‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special,’ he answered, half expecting it to be Detective Radley after the photo file.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Detective Robert Hunter?’ The raspy voice on the other end was male, the tone calm.

  ‘Yes, this is Detective Robert Hunter. Can I help you?’

  Hunter heard the caller breathe out.

  ‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Detective.’

  Hunter frowned.

  ‘I’m going to need your full attention for the next few minutes.’

  Hunter cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your na—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up and listen, Detective,’ the caller interrupted him. His voice was still calm. ‘This is not a conversation.’

  Hunter went silent. The LAPD received tens, sometimes hundreds, of crazy calls a day – drunks, drug users on a high, gang
members trying to look ‘badass’, psychics, people wanting to report a government conspiracy or an alien invasion, even people who claim to have seen Elvis down at the local diner. But there was something in the caller’s tone of voice, something in the way he spoke that told Hunter that dismissing the call as a prank would be a mistake. He decided to play along for the time being.

  Hunter’s partner, Detective Carlos Garcia, was sitting at his desk, which faced Hunter’s, inside their small office on the fifth floor of the Police Administration Building in downtown Los Angeles. His longish dark brown hair was tied back in a slick ponytail. Garcia was reading something on his computer screen, unaware of his partner’s conversation. He had pushed himself away from his desk and leisurely interlaced his fingers behind his head.

  Hunter snapped his fingers to catch Garcia’s attention, pointed to the receiver at his ear and made a circular motion with his index finger, indicating he needed that call recorded and traced.

  Garcia instantly reached for the phone on his desk, punched the internal code that connected him to Operations and got everything rolling in less than five seconds. He signaled Hunter, who signaled back telling him to listen in. Garcia tapped into the line.

  ‘I’m assuming you have a computer on your desk, Detective,’ the caller said. ‘And that that computer is connected to the Internet?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  An uneasy pause.

  ‘OK. I want you to type the address I’m about to give you into your address bar . . . Are you ready?’

  Hunter hesitated.

  ‘Trust me, Detective, you will want to see this.’

  Hunter leaned forward over his keyboard and brought up his Internet browser. Garcia did the same.

  ‘OK, I’m ready,’ Hunter replied in a calm tone.

  The caller gave Hunter an internet address made up only of numbers and dots, no letters.

  Hunter and Garcia both typed the sequence into their address bars and pressed ‘enter’. Their computer screens flickered a couple of times before the web page loaded.

  Both detectives went still, as a morbid silence took hold of the room.

  The caller chuckled. ‘I guess I have your full attention now.’

  Two

  The FBI headquarters is located at number 935 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, just a few blocks away from the White House and directly across the road from the US Attorney General. Aside from the headquarters, the FBI has fifty-six field offices scattered around the fifty American states. Most of those offices also control a number of satellite cells known as ‘resident agencies’.

  The Los Angeles office in Wilshire Boulevard is one of the largest FBI field offices in the whole American territory. It controls ten resident agencies. It is also one of the few with a specific Cybercrime Division.

  The FBI Cybercrime Division’s priority is to investigate high-tech crimes, including cyber-based terrorism, computer intrusions, online sexual exploitation and major cyber frauds. In the United States, in the past five years alone, cybercrime has increased ten-fold. The US government and its networks receive over a billion attacks each and every day, coming from multiple sources all around the world.

  In 2011 a report was submitted to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, estimating that internal cybercrime was bringing in illicit revenues of approximately US$800 million a year, making it the most lucrative illegal business in the USA, exceeding drug trafficking.

  Thousands of the FBI’s ‘web crawlers’, also known as ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’, search the net endlessly, looking for anything suspicious concerning any type of high-tech crime, inside and outside the United States. It’s a mammoth job, and the FBI understands that what the crawlers find is merely a drop of water in a cybercrime ocean. For every threat they find, thousands go unnoticed. And that was why on that autumn morning at the end of September, no FBI web crawler came across the web page Detective Hunter and his partner were looking at back at the Police Administration Building.

  Three

  Hunter and Garcia’s eyes were glued to their computer screens, trying to take in the surreal images. They showed a large, see-through, square container. It looked like it was made of glass, but it could’ve been Perspex or other similar material. Hunter guessed each side to be approximately 1.5 meters wide, and at least 1.8 meters tall. The container was open-top – no lid – and it seemed to have been handmade. Metal frames and thick white sealant connected the four walls. The whole thing looked just like a reinforced shower enclosure. Inside the enclosure, two metal pipes of about three inches in diameter, one on the left and one on the right, ran from the floor all the way up and out the top. The pipes were sprinkled with holes, none wider than the diameter of a regular pencil. But two things worried Hunter. One was the fact that the images seemed to be streaming live. Two was what was at the center of the container, directly between the two metal pipes.

  Sitting there, tied to a heavy metal chair, was a white male who looked to be in his mid to late twenties. His hair was light brown and cut short. The only piece of clothing he had on was a striped pair of boxers. He was a chubby man, with a round face, plump cheeks and chunky arms. He was sweating profusely, and though he didn’t look hurt there was no doubt about the expression on his face – pure fear. His eyes were wide open, and he was taking in quick gulps of air through the cloth gag in his mouth. Hunter could tell by the fast ‘up-and-down’ movement of his belly that he was almost hyperventilating. The man was shivering and looking around himself like a confused and frightened mouse.

  The entire image had a green tint to it, indicating that the camera was using night-vision mode and lenses. Whoever that man was, he was sitting in a dark room.

  ‘Is this for real?’ Garcia whispered to Hunter, covering his mouthpiece.

  Hunter shrugged without taking his eyes off the screen.

  As if on cue, the caller broke his silence. ‘If you are wondering if this is live, Detective, let me show you.’

  The camera panned right to a nondescript brick wall where a regular, round wall clock was mounted. It read 2:57 p.m. Hunter and Garcia checked their watches – 2:57 p.m. The camera then panned down and focused on the newspaper that had been placed at the foot of the wall, before zooming in on its front page and the date. It was a copy of this morning’s LA Times.

  ‘Satisfied?’ The caller chuckled.

  The camera refocused on the man inside the box. His nose had started running and tears were streaming down his face.

  ‘The container you’re looking at is made of reinforced glass, strong enough to withstand a bullet,’ the caller explained in a chilling voice. ‘The door has a very secure locking mechanism, with an airtight seal. It only opens from the outside. In short, the man you can see on your screen is trapped inside. There’s no way out of there.’

  The frightened man on the screen looked straight at the camera. Hunter quickly pressed the ‘print screen’ key on his keyboard, saving a snapshot of his entire desktop to the computer’s clipboard. He now had what he hoped would be an identifiable shot of the man’s face.

  ‘Now, the reason why I’m calling you, Detective, is because I need your help.’

  On the screen, the man started panting heavily. Fearful sweat covered his entire body. He was on the brink of a panic attack.

  ‘OK, let’s take it easy,’ Hunter replied, being certain to keep his voice calm but authoritative. ‘Tell me how I can help you?’

  Silence.

  Hunter knew the caller was still on the line. ‘I’ll do everything I can to help you. Just tell me how.’

  ‘Well . . .’ the caller responded. ‘You can decide how he’s going to die.’

  Four

  Hunter and Garcia exchanged uneasy glances. Garcia immediately clicked off the call and quickly punched the internal code to be connected to Operations again.

  ‘Please tell me you’ve got a location for this creep,’ Garcia said as the phone was answered at the other e
nd.

  ‘Not yet, Detective,’ the woman replied. ‘We need another minute or so. Keep him talking.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk anymore.’

  ‘We’re getting there, but we need a little more time.’

  ‘Shit!’ He shook his head at Hunter and signaled him to keep the caller talking. ‘Let me know the second you get something.’ He disconnected and tapped back into Hunter’s call.

  ‘Fire or water, Detective?’ the caller said.

  Hunter frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Fire or water?’ the caller repeated in an amused tone. ‘The pipes inside the glass enclosure you can see on your screen are capable of spitting out fire or filling the enclosure with water.’

  Hunter’s heart stuttered.

  ‘So pick, Detective Hunter. Would you like to watch him die by fire or water? Shall we drown him or burn him alive?’ It didn’t sound like a joke.

  Garcia shifted in his chair.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Hunter said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I know I don’t, but I want to. It should be fun, don’t you think?’ The indifference in the caller’s voice was mesmerizing.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ Garcia urged between clenched teeth, staring at the line lights on his phone. Still nothing from Operations.

  ‘Choose, Detective,’ the caller ordered. ‘I want you to decide how he’s going to die.’

  Hunter kept silent.

  ‘I suggest you pick one, Detective, because I promise you that the alternative is much worse.’

  ‘You know I can’t make that decision . . .’

  ‘CHOOSE,’ the caller shouted down the line.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter’s voice remained calm. ‘I choose neither of the two.’

  ‘That’s not an option.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Let’s talk about this for a minute.’

  The caller laughed angrily. ‘Let’s not. Talking time is over. It’s decision time now, Detective. If you don’t pick . . . I will. Either way, he dies.’

  A red light started flashing on Garcia’s phone. He quickly swapped calls. ‘Tell me you’ve got him.’

  ‘We’ve got him, Detective.’ Excitement colored the woman’s voice. ‘He’s in . . .’ She paused for a moment. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘What?’ Garcia pushed. ‘Where is he?’