Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘What?’ Garcia came back.

‘A day off. When was the last time you had one?’

Garcia looked at Hunter for help.

‘I’m not really sure,’ Hunter said. ‘A while ago. Why?’

‘Have you two looked at yourselves in the mirror? You guys could audition for The Walking Dead right now and get the part, do you understand what I’m saying? You have been on this case for about a week now, isn’t that right?’ The captain didn’t give them a chance to reply. ‘And just before that you were on that triple-homicide case, weren’t you? The one in Bixby Knolls?’

‘That’s correct,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘The father who raped and murdered his three daughters.’

‘Well, so that’s it,’ Captain Blake said, her voice as commanding as it had ever been. ‘You guys are taking the next two days off. I don’t really give a damn about what Adrian Kennedy or the FBI has to say. This is a joint operation, which means that you are still under my command. You were supposed to take a break after the Bixby Knolls murders anyway, so finish whatever it is that you are doing here today, then go home and get some sleep, and take the next two days off. From what you told me, unless this killer gives you a brand-new victim, there’s nothing else you can do, other than wait for Cyber Crime.’ She paused by the door to their office. ‘It’s not a request.’

Hunter finally left his office at around 7:30 p.m. Despite being a workaholic, he had to admit to himself that he welcomed Captain Blake’s orders with open arms. He had needed to check his diary to find out the last time he and Garcia had had a day off: twenty-three days ago. Forty-eight hours off the clock, even if he didn’t sleep that much, would certainly recharge his batteries and re-sharpen his brain. Maybe he could even spend some of that time with Tracy.

That thought made him smile.

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, as Hunter took the exit onto Soto Street in the direction of Huntington Park, a black Ford Fusion appeared on his left and cut in front of him. Hunter had to swerve hard right not to clip the Fusion’s bumper.

‘You have got to be joking.’

Hunter’s surprise came not due to the Ford’s maneuver, but to the fact that that same black Ford Fusion had pulled exactly the same move, at that exact same junction, the night before, just as Hunter drove home. Hunter had taken notice of the license plate.

‘That’s it,’ Hunter said to himself. ‘I’m pulling him over.’

But as Hunter stepped on the gas in pursuit of the Ford Fusion, his thought process did another somersault, jumping from A to Z in two seconds flat.

That was when he realized something he’d been missing.

The phone on Hunter’s desk inside their temporary office on the eighth floor of the FBI building on Wilshire Boulevard rang at exactly 7:56 p.m. There was no one there except Agent Fisher, who had been working on a report for the past few hours. She dug her heels onto the floor and kicked her legs, pushing her chair away from her desk and sending it in the direction of Hunter’s.

‘Special Agent Erica Fisher,’ she said, as she answered the phone.

A second of hesitant silence.

‘Did I dial the wrong extension?’ the female voice on the other side asked.

Agent Fisher immediately recognized who the caller was — Michelle Kelly — the head of the LA FBI Cyber Crime Division.

‘Hi, Miss Kelly,’ Agent Fisher replied. ‘No, you haven’t. This is Detective Hunter’s desk, but I’m the only one in the office right now. In fact, Detectives Hunter and Garcia prefer to work from their shoebox office back at the PAB. Is there anything I can help you with? Do you have any news for us?’

‘I do,’ Michelle replied.

Those two simple words took Agent Fisher’s heart rate from resting to one-hundred-yard dash.

‘What have you got?’

‘It took us a while longer than we expected,’ Michelle began. ‘But we’ve made some progress.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Albert Greene’s medical records were accessed via the Optum integrated information and technology platform exactly twelve days before his murder.’

‘Internally or externally?’

‘Externally,’ Michelle replied. ‘Someone hacked into the system.’

‘Can you trace it?’

‘We are working on it, but I can tell you this — whoever this guy is, he’s no amateur. He knows his way around cyberspace.’

Every hair on Agent Fisher’s body stood on end.

‘But that’s not all,’ Michelle announced. ‘Timothy Davis’s medical records were also accessed externally. Would you like to have a guess at how many days before his murder?’

‘Twelve?’ Agent Fisher’s eyes widened as she said the number.

‘Exactly, and here’s the kick — the same with Kristine Rivers’ records — accessed externally via Optum twelve days prior to her murder. Linda Parker’s records weren’t touched.’

‘The killer wouldn’t need her medical records to gather the information on her,’ Agent Fisher said.

‘Anyway,’ Michelle carried on. ‘Twelve days prior to every murder — you know what that tells us about this killer, don’t you?’

‘That he’s methodical,’ Agent Fisher replied.

‘Very,’ Michelle agreed. ‘Probably almost to the point of OCD, which would mean that he also doesn’t like to stray from routines, and that can increase our chances of tracking him down.’

‘So where are we right now with that?’

‘Crawling stages.’

‘But you’ve picked up a trail, right? I mean, finding out about the records being accessed externally and all.’

‘More like we’ve picked up a scent rather than a trail,’ Michelle clarified. ‘But yes, we do now have a starting point, and we’re going after him with everything we’ve got.’

The man had spent almost an entire week putting the final touches to his plan and making sure that everything would work exactly in the way he had schematized it. It was a complicated and bold plan. A lot more daring and complex than anything he had done so far. Every detail had to be perfect. There simply was no room for mistakes, but then again, the man never really made mistakes. He was way too smart for that.

Today, after purchasing a cheap pre-paid cellphone and an old-fashioned Polaroid camera, all the man needed to do was a couple of last-minute tweaks to the system; nothing major, just an adjustment here and there, and he’d be able to run his final test tonight. If everything went to plan, and there was no real reason why it wouldn’t, he would be hitting the road in the early hours of the morning and by tomorrow, he would have her.

Then the real fun would start.

As always, the man had already made the trip to where the girl lived. That was how he worked. Once he had identified a target, step two was always to go see them for himself. No matter where in the country they were. It gave him a much clearer idea of who the target really was and how to best approach him/her. He would, at least twice before he took them, stake them out for a period of never less than twenty-four hours each time, looking for patterns, routines, anything and everything that could make the job of taking them easier.

Only once had he deviated from this — while researching Linda Parker, whose daily schedule proved to be too elusive, too unpredictable. And so the man had decided to actually approach her beforehand.

Posing as an international photographer, he had booked a three-hour photo session with the model in a studio not that far from where she lived. It had been a risky move, the man knew that, but he also knew how to cover his tracks, and there was no way anyone would be able to track him through that photo-session booking.