Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

A moment later Garcia saw it and his whole body tensed. ‘Well, I’ll be dipped in shit.’

Hidden amongst the colors and shapes, a line of small spray-painted black letters seemed out of place. It read: IT’S INSIDE YOU.

Before Garcia could ask anything further, Captain Blake entered the room without knocking.

Barbara Blake had taken over the Los Angeles Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership after the retirement of its long-standing captain, William Bolter, two years earlier. Her name had been put forward for captaincy by Bolter himself, upsetting a long list of candidates. She was an intriguing woman – elegant, attractive, with long black hair and mysterious dark eyes that never gave anything away. Despite reservations by some at the division, she had quickly gained a reputation for being a no-nonsense, iron-fist captain. She wasn’t easily intimidated, took shit from no one, and she didn’t mind upsetting high-powered politicians or government officials if it meant sticking to what she believed was right. In just a few months she had earned the trust and respect of every detective under her command.

Captain Blake and Doctor Winston’s friendship went back a long way – over twenty years. The news of his death had hit her like a sucker punch to the gut, and she wanted answers.

As she stepped into the room, she instantly picked up on the tension coming from Garcia. Her eyebrows rose. ‘What happened? Have we got something already?’

Garcia handed her the printout. ‘From the butcher’s shop.’

Just like Garcia, she didn’t see it at first. ‘What the hell am I looking at?’

Garcia pointed at the letters.

The captain’s eyes shot in Hunter’s direction. ‘This was on the wall in the shop?’

‘On the ceiling. Directly above where the victim was left.’

‘But the ceiling is covered in graffiti. Why do you think these words have anything to do with our victim?’

‘Two reasons. One, that’s not graffiti like the rest of the ceiling, that’s a handwritten message. Two, the paint was more vivid than the rest of the graffiti, too fresh.’

The captain’s eyes returned to the printout.

Hunter paused and all of a sudden started searching his desk.

‘What are you looking for?’ the captain asked.

‘The DVD with the video file we got from the morgue yesterday. I want to check something.’ He found it and popped it into his computer’s disk drive.

Garcia and Captain Blake joined Hunter by his desk.

As the video started playing, Hunter fast-forwarded it to the scene where Doctor Winston retrieved the bomb from inside the stitched victim. The player application in Hunter’s computer didn’t have a frame-by-frame function. He had to keep on clicking the play/pause button to slowly advance it to the exact spot he wanted. He watched a small segment a couple of times before turning to face Garcia and the captain.

‘His back is towards the camera, so we have to guess the correct moment,’ Hunter said, ‘but look at Doctor Winston’s arm movement right here.’

All eyes were glued to the screen.

Hunter rewound and played the sequence twice over.

‘There’s a small jerk.’ Garcia nodded. ‘As if his hand came unstuck.’

‘Exactly,’ Hunter agreed. ‘Do you have a stopwatch?’

Garcia pulled his sleeve up to reveal his wristwatch. ‘Sure.’

‘Time it. Ready? Go.’ Hunter clicked the play button. Exactly ten seconds later, the screen was filled with static.

‘A ten-second delay trigger mechanism?’ the captain said, looking at Hunter. ‘Like a grenade?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Most grenades’ trigger mechanisms have to be manually activated,’ Garcia said. ‘Who activated that one?’

Hunter rubbed his face. ‘That’s the question that’s been knocking around in my head. Whoever placed the bomb inside the victim couldn’t be sure of the exact moment of extraction. That means that the bomb couldn’t have been on a timer or have been remotely activated.’

Garcia nodded.

‘So what if in this case the trigger was held in place not by a pin like most grenades, but by the confined space where the bomb was placed?’ Hunter suggested. ‘A spring trigger of some sort, held tight by the victim’s own body.’

Garcia and Captain Blake exchanged glances as they considered it for a moment.

‘So extracting the bomb from the victim would’ve released the trigger,’ Garcia said, scratching his forehead. ‘It’s possible – and very creative.’

‘Fantastic,’ the captain said, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘To the killer this is all just a game.’ She showed Hunter the printout again. ‘He even told us it was inside her.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘The killer wasn’t informing us, Captain.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The killer was informing the victim .’

Captain Blake leaned against the edge of Garcia’s desk and folded her arms. ‘You’ve lost me, Robert.’

‘Have a look at that printout again, Captain,’ Hunter said. ‘The killer wrote “It’s inside you ” not “It’s inside her ”. He wasn’t communicating with us.’

‘Why would the killer try to communicate with a dead body?’

‘Because she wasn’t dead when he left her.’

The captain ran a finger over her right eyebrow and pulled a face. ‘You lost me even more now.’

Hunter walked up to the pictures board. ‘There were several things that were bothering me about the crime-scene photos. That’s why I wanted to have a look at the butcher’s shop again myself.’ He pointed to one of the pictures. ‘Look at the position the body was found in, the arms in particular. One is hanging down from the side of the counter and the other is resting awkwardly on her chest. The fingers on her right hand are spread apart and half bent, as if she was trying to dig at something. I don’t think the killer left her in this particular position.’

‘The body might’ve been interfered with, Robert,’ the captain countered. ‘It was an anonymous phone call that gave us the body’s location, remember?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, and I listened to the 911 recording. It’s a girl’s voice. Not older than sixteen or seventeen, and she sounded hysterical. The reason why she didn’t wanna give us her name is probably because she was going into that room to shoot up.’

‘OK, so the girl didn’t touch the body,’ the captain said, accepting his theory. ‘But maybe you’re reading too much into this message. Maybe the killer didn’t put a great deal of thought into it. So he wrote you instead of her , no big deal.’

It was Garcia’s turn to disagree. ‘That would suggest that the writing on the ceiling was a spur-of-the-moment thing, Captain.’ He rubbed the lump on his nose. ‘We’re talking about someone who put together his own explosive device and probably engineered the trigger mechanism himself. He then placed it all inside the victim in some way that it wouldn’t be triggered until found and extracted. All of that while she was still alive.’ He shook his head and faced the pictures board. ‘Whatever this killer did, Captain, nothing was on the spur of the moment. He thought it all through. And that’s what makes him so dangerous.’

Captain Blake let out a frustrated breath and started pacing the room. Her high heels clicked against the wooden floor.

‘It doesn’t make any sense. If the victim was still alive when she was left in that butcher’s shop, and the message on the ceiling was meant for her, how come she was dead when we found her? Who killed her, the rats?’ She pulled a photograph from the board and studied it for a moment. ‘Independently of whatever happened to the victim, the fact still remains that someone placed a bomb inside her and stitched her shut. The only way of getting that bomb out was to cut through the stitches and pull it out.’ She paused and allowed her eyes to move from one detective to the other. ‘Don’t tell me you think the killer expected the victim to do that by herself?’