Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

The man lifted both hands in the air in surrender and stood up.

‘I’ll be right over there.’ He pointed to the corner. ‘Take your time.’

‘Why do you need the Internet all of a sudden?’ Garcia asked, taking a seat next to Hunter.

‘Give me a sec.’ He was busy Googling something. A web page loaded and he scanned it as fast as he could.

‘Fuck.’

Hunter grabbed his phone and watched the video again, frowning at it.

‘Damn.’

He Googled something else. A new page loaded and he scanned it again. ‘Oh shit,’ he whispered, checking his watch. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, standing up.

‘Go where?’

‘Santa Clarita.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I know where the captain is being held.’

Aided by Garcia’s car’s lights and siren, they were eating ground fast. They hooked onto Interstate 405 and Garcia hit the fast lane doing eighty-five miles an hour.

‘OK, how do you know where the captain is being held?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter played the video again and showed his partner. ‘Because she told me.’

‘Huh?’

‘Pay attention to her lips.’

Garcia’s attention diverted from the road for just a second, enough for him to notice the captain’s lips moving ever so slightly.

‘I’ll be damned.’

‘The captain knew there was only one reason Andrew was shooting this video. She knew we would watch it.’

‘More to the point,’ Garcia added, ‘she knew you would watch it. So what did she say?’

‘St Michael’s Hospice.’

‘What?’

‘That’s why I needed the Internet. I thought she’d said St Michael’s Hospital. But there isn’t one, there never was. So I watched the video again and realized she’d said hospice, not hospital. St Michael’s Hospice in Santa Clarita closed down nine years ago, after a fire destroyed most of the building.’ Hunter typed the address into Garcia’s GPS navigational system. ‘There it is.’

‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘Out towards the hills. Completely isolated.’

Hunter nodded.

‘So if we suspect that’s where the captain is being held, why are we going there without a SWAT team?’

‘Because Andrew said that how long the captain lived depended on our actions. He’s somehow monitoring what we do.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, Carlos. But he called me just minutes after I landed. I’d been away less than a day. How the hell did he know I’d gone to Healdsburg this morning?’

Garcia had no answer.

‘SWAT teams are great, but they aren’t exactly subtle. If Andrew gets a sniff that we might know where he is, he’ll get to Captain Blake a lot faster than we or any SWAT team can get to him. And then it’s game over.’

‘So what are we gonna do?’

‘Everything we can. We might be able to surprise him. He doesn’t know that we know. The surprise factor is on our side. If we do this right, we can end this – now.’

Garcia stepped on the gas.

Hunter started flipping through the magazines and printouts Garcia had brought with him. He started reading the interview with Jessica Black again from the start when he suddenly paused and frowned. He reached for the next magazine, the one with Laura Mitchell’s interview.

Adrenalin rushed through his veins. ‘You’re shitting me,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Garcia asked.

‘Wait up.’ He grabbed the computer printout – Kelly Jensen’s interview. ‘We’ve been fucking blind.’

‘For Chrissakes, what have you found, Robert?’

‘Did you know that these three magazines belong to the same corporation?’

‘No.’ Garcia shrugged.

‘Well, they do.’

‘OK, so…?’

‘Did you check the name of the reporter who conducted the interviews?’

‘No.’ Garcia started to look worried.

‘It’s the same guy.’

‘No way.’

Hunter lifted one of the magazines and pointed to the credits, indicating the reporter’s name.

Hunter was already on the phone to Special Operations. He told them to send units out to the reporter’s home and work address. If he were sighted, he was to be stopped and taken in immediately. An APB was also put out on his registered car.

In Santa Clarita they drove up Sand Canyon Way in the direction of the hills and turned right into a small narrow road that ran another five hundred yards towards the entrance to the old St Michael’s Hospice.

‘We better come off-road somewhere around here and walk the rest of the way,’ Hunter said as they got within two hundred yards of the entrance. ‘I don’t wanna alert him that we’re coming.’

Garcia nodded and found a hidden place behind some tall trees to leave the car.

They quickly walked the rest of the way through the high vegetation and found a covered position about seventy-five yards from the derelict St Michael’s Hospice building.

It was a two-story rectangular structure covering around one thousand square feet. Most of the outside shell had crumbled, the majority of the roof had caved into the top floor, and there were clues everywhere that a large fire had taken place some time ago. At certain spots they could see right through the building. Debris was scattered all around the grounds.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Garcia asked. ‘There seems to be nothing here.’

Hunter pointed to the ground around what used to be the building’s main entrance – a series of fresh tire tracks.

‘Someone has been here recently.’

The tracks led away from the front of the building and disappeared around and towards the back – the only place where the walls seemed intact. Hunter and Garcia spent a few minutes observing from a distance, looking for surveillance cameras or any other signs of security or life. Nothing.

‘Let’s get closer,’ Hunter said.

The tire tracks stopped by a large staircase and wheelchair ramp that led down into the building’s underground floor. There were several footprints on the steps, going in both directions. They all seemed to belong to the same person.

‘Whatever’s happening here, it’s down there.’ Garcia nodded at the stairs.

Hunter pulled out his gun.

‘Only one way to find out. Are you ready for this?’

Garcia grabbed his weapon. ‘No, but let’s do it anyway.’

Surprisingly, the double swing doors at the bottom of the staircase weren’t locked. Hunter and Garcia pushed them open and stepped inside.

The first room was an old-style reception lobby. A battered semicircular counter was fixed to the wall on the left. Broken furniture was scattered around everywhere, covered in dust and old rags. Beyond the reception counter there was another set of swing doors.

‘I don’t like this one bit,’ Garcia whispered. ‘There’s something just not right about this place.’

Hunter looked around slowly. He still could see no surveillance cameras or any other type of security against intruders. He nodded at Garcia and they both carefully approached the new set of doors.

Hunter tried the handles – unlocked. They moved through.

The doors led them into a wide corridor, stretching for about thirty-five feet. One single dim light bulb kept it from plunging into total darkness. From where they were standing they could see only one door, halfway down the corridor.

‘OK, I’m not one to believe in vibes, or auras, or crap like that,’ Garcia said, ‘but there’s definitely something fucked-up about this place. I can feel it in my soul.’

They kept moving stealthily forward until they reached the lonely door on their left. Again – unlocked. They moved inside.