Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

‘And what did he write?’ Garcia asked.

‘He wrote the words – He’s inside you. ’

Hunter came off the phone with the Healdsburg Police Department after speaking to Anderson and went straight down to Captain Blake’s office. He caught her as she was getting ready to go home for the day.

‘I need to go up to Healdsburg first thing tomorrow morning,’ he said, letting the door close behind him. ‘I’ll be away for one, maybe two days.’

‘What?’ She looked up from her computer screen. ‘Healdsburg? Why the hell?’

Hunter ran her through everything he’d found out. Captain Blake listened to the whole story in absolute silence, her face immutable. When he was finished, she breathed out as if she’d been holding her breath for minutes.

‘When did all that happen, again?’

‘Twenty years ago.’

Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Let me guess, because that case is older than fifteen years, the files aren’t in the Unified California Police Database, nothing’s been digitized, right?’

Hunter nodded. ‘I’ve searched by date, town and victim names. There’s nothing. The records will be in paper form in the Healdsburg PD storage archives.’

‘Great. So other than the newspaper article and the reporter’s story, what do we have?’

‘I just got off the phone with Chief Suarez in Healdsburg. He wasn’t the chief back then. He was transferred and relocated from Fair Oaks nine years ago, a year after the entire Healdsburg Police Department was moved to its new location. He hadn’t even heard of the Harper case.’

Captain Blake paused and looked at Hunter sideways. ‘Wait a second. Why are you going to Healdsburg? Homicide case files would’ve been filed with the Sonoma District Attorney’s office, and that’s in…’

‘Santa Rosa,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘I’ve called them as well.’ He pointed to his watch. ‘After office hours. There was nobody there who I could talk to. But if the case files aren’t in the California Police DB, it means that either the Sonoma DA’s office don’t have them, or they’re piled up in some dusty room still waiting to be digitized. I’d like to have a look at the crime-scene pictures and the autopsy reports if I can get them, but the police and the DA case files won’t help us much. They’ll just describe what happened back then in a little more detail than Stephen did. It was a family murder/ suicide, Captain. Open and shut case. No witness accounts, no investigation records, if there even was one. They had nothing to investigate. Wife sleeps with another man, husband gets jealous, loses control… the lover and the whole family pays the ultimate price. Case closed. We have replica cases up and down the country.’

Captain Blake sat back on her chair and rested her chin on her knuckles. ‘And you wanna talk to someone who was involved in the case?’

Hunter nodded. ‘The old chief of police retired seven years ago, but he still lives in Healdsburg. Somewhere near Lake Sonoma. I don’t really wanna talk to him over the phone.’

The captain saw something shine in Hunter’s eyes. ‘OK, talk to me, Robert. What are you really after? Do you think our killer came from Healdsburg?’

Hunter finally had a seat on one of the wingback chairs in front of the captain’s desk. ‘I think our killer was there, Captain. I think he saw that crime scene.’

Captain Blake studied Hunter for a beat. ‘A trauma?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean… a shock trauma, induced by what he saw?’

‘Yes.’ Hunter ran a hand over his left arm and felt the bullet scar on his triceps. ‘The similarities between what happened in Healdsburg twenty years ago and what we have happening here today are too strong to be coincidental.’

Captain Blake said nothing.

‘The way Ray Harper killed his family… the way he killed his wife’s lover… even big city, seasoned Homicide detectives would find such a crime scene hard to deal with, never mind a small town’s police department whose idea of a tough crime is probably jaywalking.’

The captain started fidgeting with one of her earrings. ‘But hold on. If the Healdsburg Police Department did their job properly, then not many people would’ve had access to that crime scene. Presumably officers and the sheriff’s coroner, that’s all.’

Hunter nodded. ‘That’s why I need to talk to the old chief of police, and hopefully find the crime-scene logbook. We need to establish the whereabouts of everyone who had access to it that day.’

The captain’s eyes stayed on Hunter while her brain searched for answers. ‘Could a similar kind of trauma occur just by looking at the crime-scene pictures?’

Hunter considered. ‘It would depend on how mentally vulnerable the person was at the time. But yes, deeply disturbing photographs can easily initiate something inside a person’s mind.’

Captain Blake paused while she thought about it. ‘But the kills aren’t exactly the same as the one in Healdsburg. Our victims aren’t tied down. The words he uses aren’t exactly the same either.’

‘That’s not uncommon, Captain. A trauma can be like a large picture that’s flashed in front of your eyes. Not everyone will remember every single detail perfectly. Adaptation is also a major consequence of crimes derived from early traumas. That’s what he’s doing.’

Captain Blake closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

‘There’s one more thing, Captain,’ Hunter said, standing up. ‘Emily Harper, the woman that was stitched shut and killed in Healdsburg twenty years ago was a schoolteacher.’

‘Yeah, I know, you told me that. And…?’

Hunter paused by the door. ‘She taught arts and music.’

Hunter thought about driving to Healdsburg, but even with zero traffic it would’ve taken him at least seven hours to cover the four hundred and fifty miles. Spending over fifteen hours on the road was simply out of the question.

So Hunter caught the 6:30 a.m. nonstop flight from LA’s LAX to Healdsburg municipal airport. The flight was on time, and by 8:10 a.m. Hunter was driving his rental Chrysler Sebring out of the relatively empty Hertz forecourt.

Even without a map or an in-car navigation system, it took Hunter no longer than fifteen minutes to get from the airport to the Healdsburg Police Department in Center Street.

Chief Suarez was in his late fifties, stocky, intimidating, with a presence that projected itself without him having to speak. He looked like a man who had spent way too much time in the same job. As he’d told Hunter over the phone, he’d never heard of the Harper case. It had happened eleven years before he was transferred to Healdsburg. But Chief Suarez was also a very thorough and inquisitive man, and overnight he researched what he could.

‘One of the first people I met when I moved here was a guy named Ted Jenkins,’ the chief told Hunter after showing him into his office. ‘Coffee?’ he gestured towards an aluminum thermal flask on his desk.

Hunter shook his head. ‘I’m OK, Chief, thanks. I grabbed one as I was leaving the airport.’

Chief Suarez laughed. ‘Yeah, and I bet it tasted like cat piss.’

Hunter conceded. ‘Probably just a step above it.’

‘No, no. You’ve gotta try this.’ He grabbed a mug from a tray on top of the metal filing cabinet by the window and poured Hunter a cup. ‘No one makes coffee like my Louise. She’s got a gift. Like a family secret. How do you take it?’

Hunter had to admit that even from that distance, the coffee smelled incredible. ‘Black is great.’

‘I like you already. That’s how coffee is meant to be drunk.’ The chief handed Hunter the cup.