Chris Carter - I Am Death

He checked his cellphone again. Still nothing.

He pushed his chair away from his desk, leaned back and rubbed his face with both hands. He felt tired, hungry and drained. Garcia was right. There was nothing else they could do. Maybe it was time to go home, but as that thought entered his mind he remembered something he’d forgotten about — the 911 call. The killer had been the one who had called it in, using Alison Atkins’ phone.

Hunter needed to listen to that recording.

He quickly pulled his chair back to his desk and began typing commands and navigating through folders and locations. It took him just over a minute to find it. He cranked up the volume on his computer speakers and double-clicked on the sound file.

As he listened to the recording and to how calm and collected the killer sounded, Hunter could feel his heartrate doubling because he knew that Mat Hade had just eviscerated Alison Atkins prior to making that call. As he’d spoken to the 911 operator he had probably been standing in a pool of her blood, treading over her gutted intestines and staring at her lifeless face.

How could anyone be that cold, that senseless?

Once the recording had played, Hunter rewound it and played it again. Then again. Then again. That was when something struck him as odd.

‘Wait a second,’ Hunter whispered to himself as he played the call one more time.

‘Why?’ he said out loud, mulling over something specific the killer had said to the operator. ‘Why would he do this? It makes no sense.’

Hunter got up, approached the picture board and reread the note the killer had pushed under his door.

Something began moving the gears inside his head.

He stepped back and stared at the whole board for a minute. Then his eyes began moving from victim to victim to victim. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

He read the note one more time. The gears in his head were now moving at full speed.

‘That is one dumb idea, Robert,’ he said, shaking his head to try to ban a new thought.

It didn’t work.

He looked at the wall clock — 10:48 p.m. ‘Fuck!’ he said as he sat back at his computer. ‘Here goes nothing.’ He began searching.

Whatever result it was that Hunter had first imagined he’d get from his search, it sure as hell wasn’t what appeared on his screen. As pages and pages of material began loading, he leaned forward, placed both elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his knuckles.

Hunter was a fast reader. Actually, he was a very fast reader and as soon as he began devouring the chunks and chunks of information he knew he had stumbled upon a complete minefield.

And then the first bomb went off.

He reread the paragraph twice over before he was certain he had it right. And it staggered him.

The second bomb followed almost immediately.

Hunter had to pause and take a deep breath. He could practically hear adrenalin dripping into his veins — and then he found the images. They came at him like an angry heavyweight champion and hidden among them was the knockout punch.

As the final image loaded on to his screen, he felt a sickening shiver kiss the nape of his neck.

‘This can’t be.’

And then that was it.

No more information.

With the same speed with which it had all appeared, it all stopped.

Hunter tried something else. Being a Special LAPD Detective had its perks but the words that came up on his screen made him jerk back.

RESTRICTED ACCESS.

‘What the fuck?’

He tried again.

RESTRICTED ACCESS.

One more time.

RESTRICTED ACCESS.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

He backtracked and reread some of the information he’d gotten from his initial search.

And then it dawned on him.

Just like the killer’s note to Mayor Bailey, the information had mentioned the FBI.

Hunter checked his watch — 11:58 p.m. In Virginia it would be 02:58 a.m. It didn’t matter.

Hunter reached for his phone.

Adrian Kennedy was the head of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and its Behavioral Analysis Unit. He was also a good friend of Hunter’s.

Despite the late hour, Kennedy didn’t even blink when his cellphone rang inside his jacket pocket. As the head of the NCAVC he was used to getting calls at godforsaken hours. Sleep was a luxury that didn’t come as part of his job description.

He reached for the phone and was very surprised to see Hunter’s name on the display screen.

‘Robert?’ he answered it, still sounding a little unsure.

‘Hello, Adrian.’

‘Well, this is a surprise.’ His naturally hoarse voice, made worse by over thirty years of smoking, sounded tired but relaxed. ‘Are you back in LA?’

‘I am.’

Kennedy checked his watch. ‘What time is it there? About midnight?’

‘That’s about right, yes.’

‘So I guess you’re not calling for a chitchat.’ Adrian coughed a laugh. ‘What can I do for you, old friend?’

‘Are you in your office?’

‘Well, I’m sure as hell not home in bed where I should be.’

‘I need to ask you for a favor,’ Hunter said.

Kennedy’s interest grew. If there was one thing he knew about Robert Hunter, it was that he wasn’t a man who asked many people for favors.

‘What do you need?’ Kennedy leaned back in his leather chair.

Without going into too much detail, Hunter told him.

Kennedy sat forward. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘Not even a little bit.’

‘There’s no way, Robert.’ Kennedy’s voice turned morbidly serious. ‘That kind of information is as restricted as it gets. It’s under the same sort of lock and key as our witness protection program.’

‘To someone like me, yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘But not to the head of the NCAVC.’

‘Still, Robert. We have protocols and rules here.’

‘Yeah, I have an egg.’

Kennedy frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I thought that we were just mentioning things that we can easily break.’

‘Oh, that’s cute.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘Listen, Robert, I can’t just go accessing that sort of information without leaving a log trail as long as Route Sixty-Six.’

‘So? Leave a trail.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘What difference would that make to you, Adrian? All you’ll be accessing is information and that’s what your job demands, isn’t it? Acquiring it, processing it and understanding it. No one will care.’

‘I will. I’ll still be breaking protocol to access extremely restricted information to then pass it on.’

‘To a fellow law enforcement officer, Adrian. What do you think I’m going to do with it, sell it to the press? And, after all, you owe me.’

Kennedy did owe Hunter. He also knew the LAPD detective well enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for anything unless it was absolutely imperative. He breathed out.

‘This is more than I owe you, old friend.’

Hunter remained quiet.

‘OK. Fuck it,’ Kennedy finally said. ‘Give me about half an hour.’

Hunter spent the next twenty-two minutes rereading everything he had found, and for him it only served to underline something he already knew — that reality was much, much more perverted than fiction. The problem was, if he were right in his hunch, reality was just about to get a lot more twisted.

He recalled all the photographs he had found with his initial search less than an hour ago and studied them again, this time a lot more carefully. The last photograph was the one that had triggered an avalanche of thoughts inside Hunter’s head. The one that had made him call Adrian Kennedy.