Chris Carter - The Executioner

‘That’s fucking creepy,’ Garcia said, screwing up his face.

‘It’s what the killer does,’ Hunter continued. ‘He sat and watched Amanda Reilly cook to death for two days. He slowly and patiently extracted two and a half liters of blood from Darnell Douglas, ten millileters at a time, before stabbing the syringes into his body. I’m sure he watched Debbie Howard drown, and he’d want to make it last. He wanted the torture.’

Garcia shuddered. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t a bully when I was in school. You never know what kind of freaks people may grow up to be.’

Hunter flipped through the autopsy photographs again but stopped halfway through the pile. ‘She had a venipuncture mark on her right arm,’ he announced, lifting one of the pictures to show Garcia and checking the coroner’s notes. ‘Probably acquired on the same day of her death.’

Garcia nodded. ‘The killer needed her blood.’

‘Exactly. Debbie drowned. No spillage of blood for the killer to collect. And he needed blood to draw the number on his next victim – Father Fabian. We need to talk to Jonathan Hale.’

‘Well, that’s gonna be a problem,’ Garcia admitted.

‘Why?’

‘He’s spending Christmas at his parents’ house far away from here.’

‘How far away?’

‘Tennessee.’

‘Damn.’

A knock came to the door.

‘Come in,’ Garcia called.

Hopkins stepped into the room with his usual blue folder under his arm.

‘I found him.’

‘Who did you find?’ Hunter asked. His and Garcia’s stare locked on Hopkins, who frowned as his eyes rested on the stickman drawings on the board.

‘You guys playing hangman?’

‘Never mind the drawings, Ian,’ Hunter answered. ‘Who did you find?’

Hopkins smiled. ‘Victim number one. Just after you called me at the morgue, I came across the file. White male, six-three, two hundred pounds. Only person we found who had an LA Lakers commemorative NBA final champion’s watch. The body was taken in three weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘Not a pretty sight. And you won’t believe how he died.’

‘Let me guess,’ Hunter cut him short. ‘Wasp stings.’

Hopkins and Garcia stared at Hunter. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

Hunter explained about Peter Elder identifying Strutter, him being the leader of their street gang and the fact that he was allergic to wasps’ venom and very scared of them.

‘Well, the killer did a great job. This is what he looked like when they found him chained to a wall in his own basement in Culver City.’

Hopkins handed Hunter a photograph, and he cringed as he stared at it.

Seated on the floor, naked, with his back against a brick wall, his arms chained by the wrists and extended high above his head, was the badly deformed body of a man. His face had puffed up grotesquely, with both of his eyes swollen shut. His lips had inflamed so severely they’d cracked where the skin could stretch no more. His nose was an undistinguishable red ball, so large the nostrils had sealed. The brutal swelling extended to his arms and the rest of his body where small, pinprick-like black dots were visible just about everywhere. He looked like an over-inflated rubber doll. His right ankle had been broken, the bone protruding through the skin. Three nails had been hammered into his right knee. On his chest, a long, vertical splash of blood.

‘There’s our number one,’ Hunter said, showing Garcia the photo.

‘No wonder no one recognized it as important,’ Garcia commented. ‘It looks more like the victim hemorrhaged from the mouth and it dripped onto his chest.’

‘The autopsy report says the subject had a systemic reaction and died from anaphylactic shock induced by his severe allergy to wasps’ venom,’ Hopkins explained. ‘The killer chained him to the wall and locked him in his basement, but not before retrieving a large wasps’ nest from a wooden box and exploding it on the floor next to him. He was stung over five hundred times. They found wasps in his mouth, down his throat and even in his stomach.’

Garcia rubbed his face as if in agony. ‘I hate wasps.’

‘Do we have a name?’

Hopkins nodded. ‘Gregory Carlson. I just found him, so I haven’t had time to gather a file on him, but I don’t think it’ll take me long,’ he announced before Hunter asked.

‘Good. Find whatever you can as soon as you can.’

‘I need to know,’ Hopkins said curiously. ‘What are the stick-man drawings for?’

Garcia quickly explained how they figured out why no one had found the number two drawn on Debbie Howard’s body.

‘It makes sense,’ Hopkins agreed and flipped a page in his notebook. ‘I’m trying, but I still haven’t found the two remaining girls from that Gardena High picture-’

‘We can probably put them on the back burner for now,’ Hunter interrupted him. ‘The killer won’t be going after them.’

‘Why not?’

Hunter told them how his bluff with Peter Elder had almost turned sour.

‘So they weren’t part of the gang?’

‘Out of that picture, only Amanda and Debbie. And unfortunately we’re too late for them.’

‘Yeah, but that confirms your theory,’ Hopkins said excitedly. ‘The killer is definitely going after the members of this street gang.’

‘It looks that way. And that leaves us with three remaining members. Peter Elder, who’s in CCI and a very hard target to get to.’

‘He got life,’ Hopkins said. ‘The killer doesn’t have to get to him. His fate is already sealed.’

‘We also have a Caucasian male they used to call JayJay,’ Hunter continued. ‘And a Puerto Rican woman they called Lipz.’

Garcia stretched his body. ‘If that’s all we have on them, they’ll be hard to find. Even if they’re still on the streets, their nicknames are too common.’

‘I understand,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But we’ve got something else to go on.’ He handed Hopkins the Compton High yearbook. ‘This is why I needed you back here. Peter Elder has highlighted a few pictures in there. Those were the students they bullied the most. The ones bullied by their gang.’

Hopkins started flipping through the pages.

‘I want you to scan all the pictures Elder’s highlighted. Let’s find out who those people are, what they’ve been doing since they left school and, most important, where they’ve been for the past three weeks. Get everybody you can on it. If you need more help, let me know and I’ll talk to Captain Blake. We don’t have much time left.’

‘No problem. I’ll get right…’ Hopkins stopped flipping the pages and squinted at something in the book. ‘Have you looked through these pictures?’

‘Not yet. I came straight out of CCI, got in the car and drove here. I can multitask but not that well. Why?’

Hopkins turned the opened yearbook towards Hunter and Garcia. There were three highlighted pictures on the two displayed pages.

‘The second picture,’ he said. ‘Read the name under it.’

‘No fucking way,’ Garcia said, running his hand through his hair.

He took a deep breath before studying the photographs taped to the brick wall inside the candlelit basement room. The faces that stared back at him each had their own different history – told their own different story. A wave of excitement rushed through his body at the thought of what he’d already accomplished and what was still to come.

‘ It won’t be long now .’ He smiled before running his tongue over his cracked lips. ‘ Five are gone; only two more to go .’ He consulted the large calendar hanging from a rusty nail. ‘ Plenty of time to achieve it .’