Chris Carter - I Am Death

Feeling cheated and lost, Alison quickly pondered what to do. She could go to the police, but she was certain that there wasn’t much they would do. Lorena, one of the other waitresses at Donny’s, had also been pickpocketed inside a bus on a different route a couple of months back. She’d gone to the police. They’d taken down all her details, and the pep talk they’d then given her about how she should be more careful and more attentive when in a crowded space had made her feel like it all had been her fault.

Alison decided that the best thing she could do was to get home as quickly as possible.

Hanging on tightly to her bag, she began walking south as fast as she could.

She’d been walking for almost forty-five minutes when she reached the underpass. She’d been through it plenty of times before, just never this late at night. But the good news was that the underpass was just a five-minute walk from her place.

Alison began walking faster, but as she did so she heard something else other than her own footsteps echo behind her. She looked around wildly for a moment. She could see no one behind or in front of her, but due to the shadows created by the poor lighting, she just couldn’t be sure.

Definitely a B-movie horror scene, she thought.

Alison exhaled slowly, as if blowing out hot air would carry with it the ripples of fear that had iced over her heart a moment earlier. The echoes faded around her and she listened to the raspy sound of her own breath.

Seconds later she began walking again, and again she could swear that she heard something else behind her other than the echoes of her own footsteps, but this time she was also overwhelmed by a sense of narrowing. It was as if the walls around her had closed in ever so slightly.

Alison shook her head, hoping that by force of vigorous motion she could cleanse the sensation from within her.

It didn’t work. Instead, the sensation grew stronger, moving to plain and simple fear.

She swung her body around to look behind her one more time.

That was when she saw him.

The middle-aged man who had stepped off the bus with her. He had been following her since she’d left the diner. When she’d missed her stop, he’d sat tight. He jumped off when she did, and followed her from a distance.

In the underpass now, he was no more than four steps behind her.

Where the hell had he come from? How was he able to move so fast?

Three steps.

His hand came out of his jacket pocket.

Two.

He was holding something.

One.

Oh my God, is that a syrin—

Too late. The needle had already been plunged into her neck.

When Hunter got to their office, Garcia was standing by his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for something. His attention, though, was on the several printouts neatly arranged on his desktop.

‘What’s all that?’ Hunter asked, pressing the ‘space’ bar on his keyboard to wake up his computer.

‘Forensic lab reports,’ Garcia replied, his gaze not moving from the paper. ‘They all came in less than ten minutes ago. I just printed them out.’ He grabbed one of the files and passed it over to Hunter. ‘The toxicology on our first victim, Nicole Wilson, came back negative,’ he announced. ‘The killer kept her completely sober for six to seven days while raping and torturing her. We’re still waiting on the results from Sharon Barnard.’

He turned to face his partner.

Hunter nodded while he scanned the report.

Garcia leaned back against the edge of his desk. ‘If this was any other killer, I would’ve said that toxicology on the second victim would mimic the first, but with this guy... ’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Expect the unexpected. He doesn’t even have an MO. It wouldn’t really surprise me if we found out that, unlike Nicole Wilson, Sharon Barnard had been drugged to her eyeballs.’

Hunter couldn’t argue with Garcia’s logic.

Garcia reached for a couple more sheets of paper from his desk, passing them to Hunter.

‘OK, moving on,’ he said. ‘Forensics checked the telephone pole on Allenwood Road. They found no finger-prints, but what they did find were two tiny screw holes that didn’t seem to belong. They were high off the ground, just past the first set of telephone cables. They checked them against all the other poles on that road.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘No other pole had them. AT&T confirmed that the holes shouldn’t be there.’

‘Camera holder?’

‘That’s also my opinion,’ Garcia agreed. ‘According to IT forensics, it could’ve been easily done. The camera could’ve either stored the recorded images to some sort of hard drive, or streamed them live over the Internet.’

Hunter seemed unsure. ‘Storing it to a hard drive would have meant using a camera bulkier than the killer would’ve wanted, or having a separate hard drive connected to it. Forensics found only one set of screw holes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So no separate hard drive. A bulkier camera would’ve also been easier to spot from the road. I don’t think he would’ve gone for that option.’

‘Neither do I. Live streaming would’ve been the best option by far. IT forensics said that a camera with a wireless Wi-Fi connectivity could’ve piggybacked the Wi-Fi connection from any of the neighboring houses and no one would’ve known. Some of those cameras are as small and as light as a credit card.’

‘So our killer could’ve staked out the street from the comfort of his living room, miles away,’ Hunter said. ‘No suspicious characters or vehicles on the road. Risk of being spotted — zero.’

Garcia nodded again. ‘As if we didn’t know, this guy is clever.’ He pushed one document aside and picked up a new one. ‘Forensics also managed to identify the type of pen the killer used to write the note that was sent to Mayor Bailey.’

‘So what have we got?’

‘The killer used a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.’ Garcia lifted his right index finger as he said the word ‘large’ to stress the emphasis. ‘BIC Cristals are probably the most popular ballpoint pens in the whole of America,’ he explained. ‘They are inexpensive and can easily be purchased from just about anywhere — corner shops, supermarkets, minimarkets, stationery stores, post offices, you name it. But the interesting thing here is; the most popular BIC Cristals are the medium ballpoints, not the large ones. Those are a little rarer.’

Hunter peered at the copies of the killer’s notes pinned on to the picture board before his attention returned to Garcia.

‘But still,’ Garcia added. ‘Even though the large ballpoints aren’t as popular, they’re still popular enough.’

Hunter could’ve guessed that would be the case.

Garcia moved on to a new batch of documents. ‘We still have nothing relevant from Nicole Wilson’s laptop,’ he said. ‘Nothing from her emails either, but IT forensics have now managed to break through the security on Sharon Barnard’s tablet computer and cellphone. I already have someone going over the computer files. So far, nothing of any significance.’ Garcia’s eyebrows lifted promisingly, as if he had left the best for last. ‘But we did get something very interesting from her cellphone.’

Hunter, who was still going over the numbers on the last report Garcia had handed him, lifted his eyes to look at his partner.

Garcia searched through the printouts on his desk, then passed two new sheets over to Hunter before explaining: ‘These are the transcripts of the very last text message conversation Sharon Barnard had.’ He paused and his demeanor changed to something more somber. ‘That conversation was between Sharon and the killer.’