Chris Carter - I Am Death

Garcia thought about it for a moment. ‘It’s... a challenge,’ he said. ‘He’s defying us to go find him. To pick him out of a crowd. To identify him. That’s the invitation to the game. As you’ve said before, he wants to play.’

‘Right again,’ Hunter said. ‘But there’s something else. Something not actually hidden. You just need to read it carefully.’

Garcia frowned and reread the paragraph a couple more times. ‘OK,’ he said, standing up straight and shrugging. ‘I’m missing it, then. What else? What am I not seeing?’

‘He’s not only challenging us to pick him out of a crowd, Carlos. He’s questioning if we’d be able to see what he has become. That’s a very powerful statement.’ Hunter had another sip of his coffee. ‘Think of what that word actually means.’

‘He’s telling us that he wasn’t always like this,’ Garcia said, looking at Hunter, his voice a touch more excited then a moment ago. ‘He wasn’t always a monster, a killer. He’s not your textbook sociopath because he wasn’t born that way. He, for the lack of a better word, became that way.’

Hunter nodded slowly.

‘Something changed him.’

The man woke up as the first rays of the morning sun seeped through the dirty curtains covering the window on the east wall of his small bedroom. Out on the streets, garbage trucks were already noisily moving around and, far off in the distance, a couple of sirens wailed like coyotes barking at the moon.

He’d finished with Sharon Barnard in the early hours of the morning, but he’d felt too tired to drive all the way back to his place, a two-storey house somewhere northeast of Los Angeles. He’d found the property many years ago, hidden away in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but empty terrain. He had paid cash for it and used false documentation, which meant that the house could never be traced back to him. Because the building had been so run down, he’d got it for an absolute bargain. After years of repairs and heavy modifications, which he did himself, he ended up with just the perfect place. No matter how much noise anyone made from inside his house, no one would ever hear it. No one would ever come for them.

The one-bedroom apartment he was in at the moment was just a crash pad somewhere in East Los Angeles. He had paid a year’s rent in advance, all in cash. He really only used it from time to time, when circumstances demanded. Just like this morning.

As soon as the man opened his eyes, he swung his feet off the single bed, sat up straight and rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. He didn’t have a watch, and there was no clock anywhere in the room, but it didn’t matter. He knew exactly what time it was.

He reached for the medicine bottle that was on the bedside table, poured two capsules into his hand and flung them into his mouth. He didn’t need any water to wash them down. He simply filled his mouth with saliva, threw his head back with a jerk, and down they went. He walked naked to the window, his feet padding across the worn-out and scratched wooden floorboards. Outside, city life was slowly trickling on to the streets.

The man crossed over to the bathroom and paused before the small mirror on the wall just above the washbasin. He could barely recognize the stranger staring back at him now. So much had changed over the years. He would never be the same again. He knew that full well but it didn’t matter. Not to him. Not anymore.

In his reflection he saw the proud glint of accomplishment deep inside his eyes, and that caused him to smile, something he didn’t do too often.

He brushed his teeth and then stood under a warm shower, washing meticulously from his head down, before using a brand new razor blade to shave off every strand of hair from his body, including his head, a ritual he repeated every morning. When he was done, he dried himself and returned to his bedroom.

From the wardrobe he retrieved the only two items that hung there — a dark suit and long-sleeved white shirt. The tie rack on the back of the wardrobe door held a single black and white striped tie. There was a solitary drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. It contained one pair of white boxers, a pair of black socks and a large plastic laundry bag. He slipped on the boxers and got dressed, then took the bed sheet, the pillowcase and the cover sheet and stuffed them into the laundry bag, together with the clothes he’d been wearing the night before.

He walked into the living room, grabbed a red pen and a loose sheet of paper from the bottom drawer of an old two-drawer cabinet, and took a seat at the wooden table that faced the window.

The man barely had to think about what he wanted to write. He’d gone through it in his head a thousand times, until he had it worded perfectly, just the way it needed to be.

Once he was done, he carefully folded the note in half and slipped it into a brown paper envelope. This time, the note wasn’t addressed to the mayor, or any other politician. He didn’t need to use the same trick again because this time he knew exactly who to address it to — Detective Robert Hunter, LAPD Robbery Homicide Division.

‘OK, Detective,’ he said in an angry voice. ‘Let’s see how good you really are.’

Despite leaving San Francisco International Airport fifteen minutes late, US Airways flight 667 landed at Los Angeles International Airport exactly on time, at 08:55 a.m.

Tom Hobbs had been the lead flight attendant on the fully booked, one hour and twenty-five minute flight, and he had struggled through every second of it. By the time the flight touched down, Tom’s brain was turning to mush.

He staggered through the airport, pulling his inflight case behind him. He felt tired, hungover and nauseated, but the worst was now behind him. Or so he thought.

Tom slipped on his sunglasses and stepped out of the building into another scorching hot summer’s day. Outside he paused for an instant, trying to decide what to do. He had driven to the airport yesterday morning. His car was parked at the Central Terminal Area parking lot, building 2A, but he was in no state to drive. He felt shivery, his headache was now so intense it could wake the dead, and he hadn’t eaten anything yet; courtesy of the cocktail of drugs he had consumed overnight. Finally, deciding to listen to reason, Tom chose to leave his car where it was and take a cab home.

The almost ten-mile trip from Los Angeles LAX to the house he shared with Sharon in Venice took the cab driver just under half an hour. Twice Tom almost asked the driver to pull up by the side of the road. The stop and start motion, due to traffic lights and road congestion, brought him to the verge of being sick, but somehow he managed to hold it all in.

‘You OK back there?’ the cab driver asked, checking Tom through the rearview mirror. He was sloshing on the backseat with his head propped against the window, his eyes closed.

Tom’s reply was barely audible.

‘Buddy, you all right? Do you need me to stop? You don’t look so good.’ The driver asked again, this time reducing his speed.

Tom forced his eyes open. ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll be all right.’ His voice sounded hoarse and fatigued. ‘I just need to get home and get some sleep.’

‘Rough night?’ The driver followed the question with a dubious smile.

Tom saw it, and didn’t like it.

‘No, just bad food. I’ll be OK once I get home and get some sleep.’

The driver didn’t make any more small talk, but stepped on it and kept checking on Tom via the rearview mirror every couple of minutes. The faster he got to Tom’s address, the better. The last thing he wanted was to have to clean up puke from his back seat.