Chris Carter - The Caller

Zippers free, he flipped the suitcase top open and frowned. Inside it he found a second bag — this one a military-style, thick canvas duffle bag. Its zipper was secured shut by a high-grade, enclosed shackle padlock. There was no way Mr. J was breaching that lock with a pocketknife, but it was still only a zipper on a canvas bag, and that, a pocketknife could rip open in no time.

‘OK,’ Mr. J said to himself. ‘I’m done playing games.’ He stabbed the knife through the zipper, forced its jaws open, and looked inside.

‘Motherfucker.’

In seeing what Garcia had achieved from searching the social-media sites, an idea came to Hunter. He returned to his computer and called up his browser before reaching for the phone on his desk and dialing an internal extension.

‘Dennis Baxter, Computer Crimes Unit.’ A tired-sounding voice answered after the third ring.

‘Dennis, it’s Robert from the UVC Unit.’

Baxter coughed to clear his throat. He knew that when Hunter called him on his work line, something serious was either going down, or about to. ‘Hey, man, what’s up?’

‘Listen,’ Hunter said, ‘does the LAPD have some kind of bogus social media account? Something I can use without having to create a whole bunch of accounts myself?’

Garcia’s brow creased as he leaned sideways on his chair to look at Hunter past their computer screens.

‘You mean a bogus personal account,’ Baxter questioned back. ‘Not a business one. Something with which you could send out friend requests, and messages, and join conversations and all that?’

‘Exactly,’ Hunter replied. ‘Does the LAPD have anything like that?’

‘Yeah, we’ve got a few of those. Why? Do you need one?’

‘By yesterday.’

‘Sure. No problem. What do you need, Facebook?’

‘I need everything you can get — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — whatever it is that people are using the most these days.’

‘OK. Do you need the same email account to be the primary account across the board here? For legitimacy?’

‘Not really necessary,’ Hunter answered. ‘All I want to be able to do is browse through a few pages, but I understand that I can’t really do that without an account.’

‘Yes, that’s right. So you mean to tell me that you don’t have a Facebook or a Twitter account?’

‘I don’t have any social media accounts.’

‘You’re a caveman,’ Baxter laughed. ‘OK, any particular look or gender you’d rather have or be? I can give you any sort of profile you need — hot chick, super nerd, naive little girl, badass motherfucker, old, young, black, white — when it comes to cyberspace profiles, I provide a God service.’

Hunter thought about it for a second or two. ‘Can I get two identities? One male, one female. Just average people will do.’

‘Sure,’ Baxter replied. ‘Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll email you back.’

‘What’s going on, Robert?’ Garcia asked once Hunter had put his phone down. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘I’m not really sure, myself. But it looks like our killer spends a lot of time on social media sites. That could be how he got his insight into his victims’ lives. If that really is how he does it, then I need to do the same.’

The phone on Hunter’s desk rang twice before Hunter picked it up.

‘Sending the email with your new identities to you now,’ Baxter said.

Hunter called up his email application and his eyebrows arched — lolitasmokinghot@gruntmail.com and pipethepiper@gruntmail.com? ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Swift.’

‘Wait until you see their profile pictures I gave you,’ Baxter said. ‘The passwords to the accounts are in the email.’

‘Thanks, Dennis.’

‘No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.’

‘Will do.’

Hunter ended the call and used his new cyber-identities to log into several different social media sites at the same time.

‘OK,’ he said to himself. ‘Let’s start digging.’

Without knocking, Captain Blake pulled open the door to Hunter and Garcia’s office and stepped inside. They were both sitting at their desks.

‘OK,’ she said in an already irritated tone, her eyes bouncing from one detective to the other. ‘What have you guys got for me on this? And you better tell me you’ve got something good, because with this second victim, Cassandra Jenkinson, those freaks from the media have caught the smell of blood, and when it comes to anything that could possibly turn out to be a serial homicide story, they all become ravenous vampires. And the colony is starving.’

Hunter was amused by the comparison.

‘Word on this killer broadcasting his murders live over a video-call hasn’t got out yet,’ the captain continued. ‘But that’s just a matter of time, we all know that. Since the new murder last night, the phones in our press office have been ringing off the hook. Right now, everyone is looking for some sort of statement from us.’

Both detectives knew that that was coming.

‘Has one been issued yet?’ Garcia asked.

‘What?’ Captain Blake glared at him. ‘Is that a joke, Carlos? How the hell could we issue anything if no one, other than the two of you, knows what’s really going on with this case?’

Garcia sat back and clasped his hands together over his stomach. ‘I thought bullshitting was our press office’s specialty.’

‘Oh, we’ve got jokes now, is that it?’ Captain Blake said, her eyes about to flash fire. ‘Because this seems like the ideal moment to crack one.’

‘What would you like to know, Captain?’ Hunter asked in a serene tone, bringing her attention to him.

‘ Everything , Robert,’ she replied, checking her watch. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Chief Bracco in two hours, and he’ll be expecting to be fully briefed. Unless you’d like to go in my place?’

‘No, I’m good. Thanks, Captain.’

‘Yeah, I didn’t think so.’ The captain took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘So, the last time I left this office we had one victim and the speculation seemed to be moving in the direction of a stalker. Is that still the case?’

‘You better make yourself comfortable, Captain,’ Garcia said.

Captain Blake grabbed a fold-up chair that was resting against a metal cabinet by the office door. Once she had a seat, Hunter and Garcia took turns explaining everything that had happened since her last update, including their new Internet discovery just moments ago.

‘Wait a second,’ the captain said, lifting a finger to pause Hunter as he explained the results to Cassandra Jenkinson’s autopsy exam. He’d been detailing the bizarre way in which she’d been murdered. ‘It says here, and I quote.’ She read from the copy of the postmortem report they’d handed her: ‘ “With a forceful traumatic impact, the skull bone depresses in the shape of the striking instrument” — I take it that that means any striking instrument?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So to create a pyramid splinter fracture, the killer didn’t have to use a pointy chisel?’

‘Nope,’ Hunter replied. ‘He didn’t even have to use a chisel at all, Captain. The hammer on its own would’ve been more than capable of doing that.’

‘So why did he?’ she asked, looking unsure.

‘Because the problem with using any sort of blunt instrument on its own,’ Hunter clarified, ‘is that it would’ve been a lot harder to control and measure the impact, and there was no guarantee that the killer would’ve achieved the desired effect.’

‘What desired effect, Robert, death? I’m sure that a hammer to the head would’ve done the job, no problem.’