The Night Stalker Page 13

  ‘That’s not unusual, Captain,’ Hunter said, walking over to the window in the captain’s office. ‘Very few people have the mental strength to become a killer overnight. The vast majority of serial killers, or people who have shown tendency to becoming one, have fantasized about their actions for months, years, sometimes decades. For most, the fantasy alone is enough to satisfy them. Some will go as far as doing all the preparation, the research, the stalking, the surveillance, collecting intel, maybe even capturing the victim, but bottle out right at the last minute. Maybe it took James all these years to gather the courage to finally act out his fantasy.’

  ‘And we know our killer doesn’t mind waiting,’ Garcia said.

  The phone on Captain Blake’s desk rang. She answered it on the third bell.

  ‘What?’ she barked.

  As she listened her eyes darted towards Hunter.

  ‘Shit! Seal the entire place and keep everyone else away from that building, do you hear me? And I mean everyone. We’re on our way.’

  Forty-One

  The abandoned preschool was located in Glassell Park, Northeast Los Angeles. Cracked walls, broken windows, subsiding floors, cobwebs, and crumbling wooden doorframes was all that was left of the once bustling single-story building. Instead of cartoon characters, gang graffiti now decorated the walls both outside and inside. Several police vehicles and a forensic crime-scene van took over the parking lot to the right of the school. The press had parked all over the place. Reporters and photographers, together with an ever growing crowd of onlookers were being held back at the twenty-five-yard perimeter line created by yellow crime-scene tape and numerous officers.

  Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake got out of the car, sidestepped the crowd and quickly stooped under the tape, approaching the two police officers standing by the main building’s entrance. They were both silent.

  ‘Sorry, sir, but I got orders from high up not to let anyone in there for now,’ the most senior of the two officers said, acknowledging both detectives’ badges.

  ‘I gave that order,’ Captain Blake replied firmly, displaying her credentials.

  Both officers immediately stood to attention.

  ‘Captain,’ a short, overweight male reporter with thick glasses and a terribly disguised bald patch called from the pack. ‘What’s going on? Who is the victim? Why are you here? Care to give the people of Los Angeles some information?’ His questions ignited an onslaught of frantic shouts from everyone.

  All Los Angeles crime beat reporters knew that LAPD captains didn’t usually attend crime scenes, no matter what division or bureau they were from. When they did, there was always a reason. And it was never good news. When the captain of the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division turned up at a crime scene, something was definitely wrong.

  Captain Blake ignored the questions and returned her attention to the officer. ‘Were you first response?’

  He nodded but avoided her eyes.

  ‘C’mon, Captain, give us something. Why are you here? What’s going on in there?’ The bald reporter insisted.

  Captain Blake still paid no attention. ‘Who else other than Forensics has seen the body?’

  ‘Only me and my partner, ma’am, Officer Gutierrez.’ He tilted his head in the direction of the building behind him. ‘He’s inside, guarding the entrance to the basement.’

  ‘No one else?’ she pressed.

  ‘No one else, ma’am. We got a call from dispatch earlier to come down here and investigate a 911 call – someone claiming to have found a body. We radioed Homicide and Forensics as soon as we walked into that room. We got our orders back almost immediately – not to let anyone else in. Forensics are the only ones we’ve allowed through.’

  ‘The body is in the basement?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Yes, at the end of the corridor turn left and you’ll be in the old kitchen. At the back of it you’ll see a few steps that’ll take you down to a storage room. The body is in there.’ His next words came out no louder than a whisper. ‘What in God’s earth . . . ?’

  Minutes later, Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake found Officer Gutierrez at the back of the old kitchen, guarding the steps to the storage room just like his partner had said. His youthful face couldn’t hide the shock of what he’d seen down in that room.

  The cement staircase going down to the basement was worn out, narrow and steep, illuminated by a single light bulb that hung from the water-infiltrated ceiling above the landing at the top. With each step they took, the smell of disinfectant grew stronger. Brilliant forensic light seeped through the rusty metal door at the bottom. As they approached it, Hunter felt his blood rush and warm his skin as if he’d just stepped out into the baking sun. He opened the door, and all he saw was blood.

  Forty-Two

  Doctor Hove was standing by the far wall talking to her lead Forensics agent, Mike Brindle. They were both wearing white Tyvek coveralls. A stainless steel table occupied the center of the large room. The concrete floor was covered in sticky, coagulated blood. Not splashes and sprinkles, but thick, vampiric pools of it. A few small and delicate bloody handprints traced a short trajectory from the table to the ghostly pale, naked body of a brunette woman lying on her back just a few steps from the door. Her arms had been carefully placed by her side, her legs stretched out.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Captain Blake murmured, bringing a hand to her mouth as she felt her stomach churn.

  The woman’s lips had been stitched shut, and though her torso and legs were caked in blood, the black, thorn-like stitches to her lower body were clearly visible.

  Doctor Hove approached them in silence and Hunter shot her a questioning look.

  The doctor nodded in confirmation. ‘Judging by what we have in this room, I’d say it’s the same killer,’ she said in a hushed voice.

  Hunter and Garcia did their best to avoid stepping into the pools of blood and approached the body on the floor. Captain Blake stayed by the door. Hunter crouched down and examined what he could of the woman without touching her. Garcia did the same but his eyes kept returning to her once attractive face, as if something was bothering him. A few seconds later he frowned at Hunter. ‘Jesus, she’s a carbon copy of Laura Mitchell. They could’ve been sisters.’

  Hunter nodded. He’d noticed the uncanny resemblance from the door.

  Captain Blake pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew exactly what that meant.

  Hunter turned to Doctor Hove. ‘Is this how you found the body?’

  ‘No,’ Mike Brindle replied, stepping closer. ‘We photographed everything and then turned her over. Her body was facing down; right cheek against the floor, facing left towards the wall. Her left arm was extended as if she was reaching for something. Her position gave us the impression that she was probably crawling towards the door, but lacked the strength to get there.’

  Hunter’s eyes wandered the room again, taking in more of the scene. ‘The handprints?’

  ‘They’re hers,’ Brindle confirmed. ‘The few bloody sneaker shoeprints you saw on the floor outside and on the steps going up haven’t been confirmed yet. But judging by the runaway smear pattern in some of them, I’d say they belong to the scared teenager who dialed 911 – anonymously, he left no name and no address.’ He paused and his stare returned to the woman on the floor. ‘Rigor mortis started not long ago, but the heat and humidity in this room could have delayed it for up to five hours, maybe a little more.’

  ‘So she definitely died today?’ the captain asked.

  Brindle nodded.

  Garcia’s attention went from the body to the large distribution of blood on the floor. ‘She’s got no wounds I can see other than her stitches. Where did all this blood come from?’

  Doctor Hove and Mike Brindle exchanged an uneasy glance. ‘I’ll have proper confirmation with the autopsy,’ the doctor replied, ‘but right now, all this indicates some sort of internal hemorrhage.’

  Captain Blake’s eyes widened.


  ‘All this blood . . .’ the doctor shook her head as if she was struggling to find the right words, ‘ . . . dripped out of her through the stitches.’

  ‘Holy shit.’ Garcia rubbed his face with his right hand.

  ‘She’s also got tiny abrasions on both of her hands and knees,’ Doctor Hove continued. ‘We think she came off that table and collapsed to the ground. Maybe because she was dizzy or in tremendous pain, but she was still alive. The abrasions were probably caused by the fall and her crawling towards the door. Her prints are on that table, so we concluded that she was left there by the killer, but there isn’t a speck of blood on it. She didn’t start bleeding until she was on the ground.’

  ‘And then there’s this,’ Brindle said, walking over to where Captain Blake was standing. ‘Excuse me, Captain.’

  She frowned and took a step to her right.

  Brindle pointed to the wall directly behind where the captain was standing. Only then did they see the set of small spray-painted black letters – IT’S INSIDE YOU.

  Forty-Three

  Captain Blake’s lips parted in disbelief. They were exactly the same words Hunter had found spray-painted on the ceiling in the butcher’s shop where Laura Mitchell’s body had been found. Her stare refocused onto the body on the floor for a moment before moving back to Doctor Hove.

  ‘OK, I thought what we had here was just suspicion and conjecture. I was obviously wrong. But if you knew this was the same killer, given that he placed a bomb inside his first victim that took the lives of two other people inside one of your autopsy rooms . . .’ she pointed to the letters on the wall, ‘ . . . and again he’s telling us he did the same here, what the hell are we doing in this room? Where’s the bomb squad? And why did you risk turning the body over?’

  ‘Because whatever it was the killer placed inside her this time,’ Hunter replied, gently rubbing between his eyebrows, ‘it’s already gone off inside her.’

  ‘Judging by where she bled from,’ the doctor added, ‘that’s exactly what we think. As we said, it all points to an internal hemorrhage, but not one we’ve ever seen before.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Captain Blake asked.

  ‘Internal hemorrhages usually occur from traumatic injuries, blood vessel rupture or certain specific diseases, carcinoma being one of them. But the blood accumulates inside the body, hence the term internal. And the amount is just a fraction of what you see here. This woman bled as if she had been mutilated. Whatever it was that caused it, it was inside her.’

  No one said anything for a moment.

  ‘There was nothing else in this room other than what you can see,’ Brindle took over. ‘The body, those old shelves on the walls and that stainless steel table.’ He gestured towards it. ‘There are no chains, no ropes or any sort of restraints anywhere. A closer look at the victim’s wrists and ankles shows no abrasions or marks. She wasn’t tied down. She also couldn’t have been locked in here because there’s no lock on that door.’ He shook his head as he considered it. ‘The truth is: we can’t find anything that suggests why she wasn’t allowed to just walk out of here. So far there are no indications that anyone else was in here with her when she died. It looks like the killer simply dumped her on that table and left. And as we said, she wasn’t bleeding then. But the killer somehow knew she would never get out of this room alive.’

  Hunter had already noticed that the table in the room had been raised higher off the ground than normal. ‘Does this look strange to anyone?’ He pointed to the wooden blocks under each of the four table legs.

  Everyone frowned.

  ‘The first victim, Laura Mitchell,’ he continued, ‘was left on a stainless steel counter inside a butcher’s shop in East LA. That counter had also been raised higher off the ground by bricks. First I thought that maybe the old butcher there had been some sort of a giant, but no, I checked. He was five foot eight.’

  ‘So you think the killer did this deliberately?’ the captain asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  They all paused as they heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. A couple of seconds later a crime lab agent also dressed in white Tyvek coveralls pulled the door open. He brought with him a large, black plastic flight case.

  ‘It’s OK, Tom,’ Brindle said, reaching for the case. ‘I know how to set it up.’

  The agent left the case with Brindle and exited the room.

  ‘This is why we had to turn her body over,’ Doctor Hove explained as Brindle undid the locks to the case and started unpacking its contents. ‘That’s a portable tactical X-ray unit. It’s mainly used for the investigation of small- to medium-sized objects like parcels, boxes and luggage. The picture it produces is not of the same quality as you’d get from a proper hospital X-ray machine, but it’ll serve our purposes here. We’re pretty confident that whatever was placed inside her has, as Robert said, gone off, and that’s what killed her. But we all know what this killer is capable of.’ She looked at Captain Blake. ‘I don’t wanna move her before I have an idea of what we’re dealing with.’

  They all watched as Brindle set up the equipment. ‘Since we don’t have a tripod,’ he said, ‘can somebody hold the camera over her?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Garcia said, returning to the body and once again carefully avoiding the pools of blood. He took the small digital camera from Brindle.

  ‘Just keep it directed at her stomach. Two to three feet away will do,’ Brindle explained before approaching the laptop he’d set up on top of the black plastic flight case. ‘That’s all there is to it. The camera connects wirelessly to the computer and produces an X-ray image. You can press the on button now, Carlos.’

  He did, and all eyes reverted to the laptop screen as the image materialized.

  Brindle and Doctor Hove’s eyes widened in amazement and confusion, and they both craned their necks a little closer.

  Hunter squinted, trying to understand what he was looking at.

  Captain Blake’s jaw dropped and her mouth went instantly dry, but she was the only one who managed to ask the question in everyone’s mind.

  ‘In the name of God, what . . . the hell . . . is that . . . inside her . . . ?’

  Forty-Four

  Hunter knew that with everything his brain was trying to process, sleep just wouldn’t come. And he’d have to wait until morning for any sort of answer. Forensics were still processing the basement room in the old preschool, though he didn’t hold out any great hopes about what they’d find. Doctor Hove would expedite the body’s autopsy, but that’d only be at first light.

  He collected some files from his office before making his way back to his place and then onto Jay’s Rock Bar, a joint just two blocks away from his apartment. It was one of his favorite drinking spots. Great Scotch, fantastic rock music and friendly staff. He ordered a double dose of Glenturett 1997 with a single cube of ice and sat at a small table towards the back.

  Hunter sipped his drink slowly for a minute, allowing its strong flavor to take over his palate. In front of him, spread out on the table, were all the photographs they’d received from Missing Persons. He scanned through them carefully, and despite the disfigurement to the new victim’s face caused by the rough stitches, he knew she wasn’t among them.

  He needed to search the MPU database again, go back four, maybe five weeks, but as before, with the stitches and swelling, the face recognition software wouldn’t work. Doing it manually again would take too long. Hunter would have to wait until the end of the autopsy and use the new face close-ups once the stitches have been removed from the victim’s mouth.

  He finished his drink and debated if he should have another one. His eyes rested on the wall closest to him and all its paintings and decorations. He observed them for a moment. That’s when a new thought entered his mind.

  ‘It can’t be . . .’ he whispered as he shook his head.

  Hunter gathered all his files together and rushed back to his apartment.

/>   Sitting at the table in his living room, he fired up his computer and accessed the MPU database. He knew the criteria he used for the new search would reduce the output result considerably. He wasn’t expecting any more than three, maybe five matches.

  He was wrong.

  Seconds later the screen flickered and the displayed table showed that his search had produced a single match. Hunter double-clicked it and waited for the file to upload.

  As the new photograph materialized on his screen, Hunter let out a heavy breath.

  Forty-Five

  Special autopsy room one was located down a different corridor, separate from all the other chambers. It was usually used for postmortem examinations of bodies that could still pose some sort of contamination threat – highly contagious viral diseases, exposure to radioactive materials and so on. The room, with its own cold storage facility and separate database system, was sometimes used during high-profile serial killer cases, like the Crucifix Killer investigation a few years ago – a security precaution to better contain sensitive information.

  The image they got from the portable tactical X-ray unit in the basement of the disused preschool in Glassell Park didn’t reveal much, but whatever it was that the killer had placed inside his second victim, it sure as hell wasn’t a bomb, Doctor Hove had no doubt of that. The picture showed a solid, triangular shape with a rounded base. Something that resembled a large but very thin slice of pizza. She’d never seen anything like it, and the only way she could find out any more about it was by extracting it from the body.

  Doctor Hove had had almost no sleep, and turned up at the LACDC even before the crack of dawn. She just wanted to get on with things. At that time in the morning she had to perform the autopsy of the new victim on her own, no assistant. It would take longer than usual.