Chris Carter - The Caller

Holden hadn’t noticed it, but Hunter had already repositioned his feet. Both of them were now slightly facing left, with his right heel about an inch off the ground, ready for the explosive movement. In the blink of an eye, his right leg pushed forward with all its strength and Hunter’s body shot left; but instead of running, he threw himself on to the floor and rolled away as fast as he could.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Inside a confined space like Holden’s basement, a three fifty-seven Magnum sounded like an amplified cannon, the defining sound reverberating off the walls in all directions, but Hunter had read the odds like a pro. Revisiting the accident in the way Holden had just done had overwhelmed him with emotions. Tears had indeed come to his eyes, blurring his vision. To compensate for the weight of his gun and to release some of the muscle tension, his weapon arm and his trigger finger had also relaxed a couple of notches. The result had been an attention-lacking, poorly aimed first shot. By the time Holden’s mind got back to business and he squeezed the second round, Hunter had almost disappeared behind the shelving unit.

The second bullet missed Hunter by just a fraction, exploding against the concrete floor and sending dust and cement pieces flying up in the air.

As Hunter made it to the temporary safety of the shelving unit, he immediately got to his feet; but, as he looked up, desolation hit him. All he seemed to have done was delay the inevitable. Without being able to turn his head to have a proper look, Hunter’s assessment of his escape route had been limited by what he could see from rotating his eyeballs as far left as they would go. Now that he could see clearly, there was no escape route.

Hunter had thrown himself into a makeshift corridor. To one side he had a brick wall, to the other, solid shelving units with no break in between them. The only way Hunter could get out of that corridor was if he ran all the way to the end of it and ducked behind the last unit again, but that was way too far. There was no way he could make it there before Holden rounded the first unit and fired another shot at him, and this time, Hunter wasn’t so sure Holden would miss.

Think, damnit, think.

Hunter did the only thing he could do. He played the odds again.

Holden had done exactly what Hunter had expected him to do — he had run forward, towards the shelving unit that Hunter had ducked behind, gun poised, ready to blast another shot at him. Hunter, on the other hand, didn’t do the expected. He didn’t run down the makeshift corridor towards the last unit. He did the exact opposite. He ran back to where he had just come from.

Hunter’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As Holden began rounding the shelving unit, expecting Hunter to be running scared towards the other end of the room, Hunter collided with Holden’s six-foot-one frame with maximum force. The difference was, Holden wasn’t expecting it — Hunter was.

Hunter had thrown himself forward headfirst, which hit Holden square in the chest. Reflexively, Holden’s finger squeezed the trigger on his weapon, but the impact had been so brutal that he was hurled back several feet. His gun hand moved up and the shot went astray, hitting the ceiling. As he fell backwards, he lost his grip on his gun, which hit the floor and disappeared under a shelving unit. Gasping for air and with pain already burning through his ribs, Holden landed on his back awkwardly, crashing hard against the concrete floor. At that exact moment, Hunter and Holden’s eyes met and for a heartbeat everything switched to slow motion. Hunter saw the ugly scar on Holden’s chin contort out of shape and he paused. He hadn’t seen it before. How could he never have seen it before? The thick scar traversed Holden’s entire chin, from the left edge of his lip, across his jaw and cheek, disappearing just under his right ear.

It was then that Hunter realized why the image of Holden’s eyes had come back to him so vividly back in his office — Hunter had never seen Nicholas Holden’s face in full. They had only met a few times, all of them at crime scenes. With a nose mask always covering the bottom half of his face and the hood of his Tyvek coverall always pulled tight over his head, all Hunter had ever seen of Holden’s face were his eyes.

By the time Holden realized what had happened, it was too late... for him at least.

With one giant step, Hunter was already over him. All it took was one well-placed hit to Holden’s left temple.

Lights out.

Twelve hours later

Police Administration Building

Hunter and Garcia were both at their desks, filling in paperwork, when Captain Blake stepped into their office.

‘OK,’ she said in a half surprised, half confused tone. ‘How did this happen? Somebody please explain it to me.’

Both detectives paused and looked back at her.

‘Yesterday when I left my office,’ the captain began. ‘We had two victims and nothing else. No clues, no links between victims, no suspects, nothing. Our press office was getting ready to release a short, but expertly bullshit-filled statement.’

Garcia curbed a smile.

‘Don’t you start,’ the captain said, pointing a finger at him.

‘I didn’t say anything.’ Garcia surrendered with his hands up.

‘That was yesterday,’ Captain Blake continued. ‘I get in here today and I find out that not only did we have a brand new victim overnight, but the whole case has been wrapped up. Done and dusted. The “video-call killer” is sitting in a goddamn cell downstairs. And, as I understand it, he was one of the forensic agents who had been working the scenes?’ Her eyebrows lifted as the palms of her hands flipped upwards. ‘How did we move from “nothing” to “done” in just a few hours? What the hell happened overnight?’

Garcia pointed at Hunter. ‘Robert happened, Captain. What else? I was still wrapping things up at the crime scene.’ The look he gave Hunter could silence a small crowd. ‘He didn’t even give me a courtesy call to let me know what was going on. And I’m his partner .’

‘I didn’t really know what was going on.’ Hunter’s gaze moved first to Garcia then to Captain Blake. He then proceeded to tell her how the events of last night had unfolded. He showed her the screenshot Erica Barnes had captured on her cellphone and the upside-down heart-shaped blood clot in the killer’s left eye. He told her how he was certain he had seen that same blood clot before, but he just couldn’t remember where, or in whose eyes, until he knocked a file from his desk on to the floor. As he picked up the scattered pieces of paper, his eyes settled on a fingerprint sheet.

Fingerprints... fingerprints... fingerprints.

That was when his brain finally engaged. Nicholas Holden was a forensic fingerprint expert.

Hunter told Captain Blake about pulling Holden’s file, finding out about the accident, then pulling the report from the LAPD Collision Investigation Unit.

‘So the blood clot in his left eye had been a consequence of the accident,’ Captain Blake said. ‘That’s why you didn’t see it in his file picture.’

‘That’s right,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Scar tissue left from the trauma and hemorrhage in his eye. The photo in his file was taken a few years before that.’

‘So how long had he been a forensic agent for?’

‘Seven years. The accident happened three and a half years into his career. He spent about five months in hospital and almost a year in counseling therapy, before he asked to be allowed back into work.’

‘Seven years? And you’ve never met him before?’ The captain’s stare bounced between both detectives.