One by One (23 page)

‘Now, here’s a surprising fact,’ she said. ‘The killer preserved the body after she died, by cooling it down.’

Hunter wasn’t so surprised. He had had his suspicions.

‘We all know that she died five days ago, on Friday evening,’ the doctor explained, ‘but her body was only discovered on Monday morning, that’s almost seventy-two hours later. The average temperature in Los Angeles in the past week was around eighty-three degrees. After three days, the body should’ve been bloated and discharging fluids from just about everywhere. The inflamed lumps from the wasps’ stings should’ve subsided considerably, large blisters substituting them, caused by body gases. Rigor mortis should’ve come and gone two days ago. The body was still in the late stages of it by last night. The perp preserved the body.’

Refrigeration slowed decomposition in the same way it delayed cold cuts from spoiling, and preserved fruits and vegetables from going bad too quickly.

Both Hunter and Garcia knew that in most cases, when the perpetrator preserved the
whole
body after the murder, a very strong emotion was involved. The three most common ones were hate, love and lust.

In the case of love, the perp generally avoided disfiguring the victim, keeping the body as close to its original state as possible, for as long as possible. Disposing of the body wasn’t something the perp was prepared to do so easily.

In the case of hate, the perp kept physically punishing the victim over and over again, to soothe the anger inside. Disfigurement was inevitable.

And in the case of lust, the victim was usually raped several times prior to the murder. After death, necrophilia was also often committed.

‘Was she raped?’ Hunter asked. ‘Prior to or after the murder?’

‘No, she wasn’t.’ The doctor shook her head. ‘As I’ve said before, because she was wearing a pair of panties, her groin area wasn’t as exposed to the wasps’ stings as the rest of her body. I found no indication of forced penetration. No abrasions to the skin surrounding her vagina. No semen left inside her, or on her skin. No lubricant residue in her vaginal walls either, which could indicate that the perp did rape her but used a prophylactic. The lab will tell us if they find any semen on her underwear, but I don’t think they will. I don’t think this killer was after sex. I don’t think he was in love with her either. Which theoretically leaves you with two alternatives.’

‘Hate, or pure homicidal mania,’ Hunter said.

Doctor Hove agreed.

‘Maybe he was unable to dispose of the body straightaway and didn’t want it to start rotting and smelling up the place,’ Garcia suggested.

‘The killer probably used a medium-sized chest freezer to preserve the body,’ she said. ‘From skin folds and blood pooling marks, I can tell you that she was most certainly preserved in a fetus position.’

Doctor Hove waited a few seconds before pulling a white sheet over the body. ‘Unfortunately there isn’t much else I can tell you. Her death wasn’t a mystery. We all saw what happened to her. Toxicology will be a few days.’

Hunter and Garcia nodded and made for the door as if they were schoolkids who’d heard the final bell before summer vacation.

‘Keep us posted if anything new comes out of any of the tests, will you, Doc?’ Hunter said.

‘Always do.’

They were both already halfway down the corridor by the time she looked up.

Fifty-Four

Dennis Baxter had managed to break through the simple four-digit security password in the smartphone Hunter had handed him last night – Christina Stevenson’s cellphone. With the phone active, he had no problems accessing all the information on the SIM card.

Baxter quickly found out that the phone’s battery had died sometime on Sunday morning, two days after the killer’s broadcast. In between Thursday night, the night Christina was abducted, and Sunday morning, the smart-phone’s voicemail picked up twenty-six messages. There were also forty-two new text messages. A quick check through the smartphone’s applications and memory revealed several photo albums, a few videos, four voice memos and sixteen pages of notes. It didn’t look like Christina had ever used her cellphone’s calendar application, but she sure as hell used her email one. Adding up the contents of her inbox, sent and deleted folders, there were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of emails.

When Hunter and Garcia got back to the PAB, Baxter quickly gave them a summary of everything he’d found, and handed over the phone. He was certainly glad it wasn’t his job to read through that mountain of emails.

Hunter and Garcia began by listening to Christina Stevenson’s cellphone’s voicemails, checking her memos, reading her text messages and notes, and looking through all the photo albums and videos she had saved in the phone’s memory and SIM card. It took them almost two hours to get through everything.

Most of the voicemail messages were left on Sunday morning. They came mainly from other reporters and press-related people – all congratulating her on her article. Some even sounded a little jealous. But one person, who had called three times since Sunday and sent Christina two text messages, sounded more like a friend. Her name was Pamela Hays. Hunter found out that Pamela was actually Christina’s editor at the
LA Times’
entertainment desk.

It took Hunter just over half an hour to map every caller who had left Christina a message to an entry in her smart-phone’s address book, and that meant that every caller was known to her. No strangers.

None of the voicemail, text messages, notes or voice memos were interesting enough to raise any suspicions, but what Christina’s phone had given them was a long list of people they could talk to. Kevin Lee Parker’s name wasn’t in her address book.

‘Now that this story is out there,’ Hunter said, pushing himself away from his desk. ‘I’d like to take a trip down to the
LA Times
building and have a chat with this Pamela Hays woman, Christina Stevenson’s editor.’

Garcia rubbed his eyes. ‘OK, I’ll get started on these emails.’ He pointed to Christina’s phone on the desk. ‘I’ll call Dennis and see if there’s a way we can connect the phone to a computer monitor or something. Reading all these emails on a 3.5-inch screen is just not an option.’

Hunter agreed with a head gesture. ‘I’m sure Dennis will be able to sort something out. But it might be an idea to ask him if he can batch-copy or download all the emails to a hard drive. What you have there is a live connection to her inbox at the
LA Times.
If their IT department cancels her password, or shuts her account down, we’re locked out.’

‘Yeah, I thought of that too.’ Garcia got up to stretch his body. ‘And I would still like to have a look at that film,
The Devil Inside
, just to scratch that itch, you know what I mean? I can watch it on my computer, here. I don’t want to do it at home in front of Anna.’

Another nod from Hunter. ‘I haven’t forgotten about that.’ He checked his watch and reached for his jacket. ‘Let me know if you come across anything.’

‘You too.’

Fifty-Five

Hunter didn’t call the
LA Times
to request an appointment with Pamela Hays. He much preferred turning up unannounced. He’d dealt with too many reporters in the past to know that they loved asking questions but hated answering them.

Hunter didn’t know how much of a friend Pamela Hays was to Christina Stevenson. Maybe Hunter had misinterpreted her concerned tone in the voicemail messages she’d left Christina. If that had been the case, Hunter knew that if he called in advance to try to arrange an appointment, chances were that Pamela Hays would’ve given him some sort of lame excuse, like being in a meeting all day. Turning up unexpectedly put the element of surprise on Hunter’s side, catching the person being interviewed unprepared. In Hunter’s experience, that was always an advantage.

The
LA Times
headquarters was an odd complex of four different constructions grouped together to form one massive building. From one side it looked like a courthouse, from another like a multistory car park, and if you approached it from West 2nd Street, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were walking into a branch of some European bank.

The tall, tinted-glass double doors set deep inside the plush brown-granite entrance led to a wide, pleasantly lit and comfortably air-conditioned lobby. The place was active with people. Some coming and going. Some sitting patiently in the waiting area to the right. Some waiting not so patiently. The entire floor was tiled in marble, which amplified the sound of every footstep, making the whole entrance area sound like a beehive.

Hunter was making his way up to the large reception counter at the back when a slim woman of about five foot five caught his eye as she walked across the busy lobby. She was walking slowly, her head low, her demeanor sad and drained. He immediately recognized her from a picture on the
LA Times
website – Pamela Hays.

Hunter caught up with her just as she was approaching one of the four elevator doors in the empty corridor to the left and past the reception counter.

Pamela pressed the button, took a step back and waited. Her head still low.

‘Ms. Hays?’ Hunter said.

It took her a moment to look up. Her eyes moved to Hunter’s face, but they lacked focus. She was wearing a well-fitted dark suit that almost made her fade into the black and gray granite walls around her.

Hunter waited a couple of seconds, and as her stare intensified he saw the moment her absent mind reentered reality. Her eyes were steel blue, her hair caramel blonde, worn just off her shoulders. There was an angular quality to her jaw, cheekbones and nose that made her look as though she was concentrating very hard. Pamela smiled for an instant, but it did nothing to soften her.

‘Ms. Hays,’ Hunter said again, this time displaying his credentials. ‘I’m Detective Robert Hunter with the LAPD Homicide Division. I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes of your time?’

Pamela Hays didn’t reply. Things were still slotting into place inside her head.

‘Ms. Hays, I could really use your help . . . and so could Christina Stevenson.’

Fifty-Six

Pamela guided Hunter back out onto West 1st Street and around the corner to The Edison Lounge, just across the road from the Police Administration Building. She didn’t feel like sitting in a conference room, or anywhere else inside the
LA Times
headquarters at the moment.

The Edison was an elegant and sophisticated bar located in the basement of the famous Higgins Building in downtown LA. At the beginning of the twentieth century, that same basement housed the city’s first privately owned power plant. As homage to the plant’s place in history, The Edison retained many of its original architectural and mechanical artifacts.

In an area to the left of the main bar, they found two high-backed leather armchairs, arranged around a knee-high, varnished, marble-effect coffee table. The dim lights and soft 1930s music, together with the period features and detailed decoration, created such a nostalgic atmosphere that could almost take you back in time.

Hunter waited for Pamela to have a seat before he took his.

She gave him another weak smile, acknowledging the gesture.

‘Before you start asking questions,’ Pamela said. ‘Please answer me this: has Christina’s body been found?’

It wasn’t hard for Hunter to read Pamela’s thoughts. Right at that moment she wasn’t being a reporter. She wasn’t asking questions because she wanted information for a possible story. Right at that moment she was still holding onto a sliver of hope that all of what she’d seen had been some crazy hoax – some big misunderstanding.

Hunter had been in this position countless times. And it only got harder.

His stomach tightened.

‘Yes.’

He saw a light turn off inside her eyes. Something he’d seen many times before. Not like a parent who’d just lost a son or a daughter, but like someone who’d not just lost a close friend, but now also realizes that danger and evil are closer than what they had once believed. If it had happened to someone like Christina, it could happen to her. It could happen to her family. It could happen to anyone.

Pamela took a deep breath as tears welled up in her eyes.

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Where?’

‘Not far from her house.’

A waitress, who could easily have run for Miss California, approached them.

‘Hello, and welcome to The Edison,’ she said with the same smile Hunter was sure she gave every guest. ‘Would you like to see our cocktail menu?’

‘Um . . . no, that’s OK,’ Pamela said, shaking her head. ‘Can I just have a vodka martini, please?’

‘Absolutely.’ The waitress looked at Hunter, ready for his order.

‘I’ll just have a black coffee, please.’

‘Coming right up.’ The waitress turned and walked away.

‘Who is capable of something like that?’ Pamela asked. Her voice had gone dry, as if she had something stuck in her throat. She took a moment and swallowed down her tears. ‘We were able to find some snippets of the original Internet broadcast. Did you see it?’

Hunter held her gaze for an instant before nodding once.

‘What the hell was that she was in? A handmade glass coffin?’

Hunter didn’t reply.

‘And those buttons on the Internet. People were voting on how Christina was going to die?’

Still no reply.

‘They did, didn’t they?’ Pamela looked disgusted. ‘People actually
voted.
Why? They didn’t even know who she was. Did they think it was funny? Did they think it was some kind of game? Or did they simply believe that because the word GUILTY was written at the bottom of the screen, she was actually guilty of something?’

This time the intensity in Pamela’s eyes demanded an answer.

‘I can’t tell you what people were thinking when they clicked one of those two buttons, Ms. Hays,’ Hunter said, his voice even. ‘But all the reasons you’ve just put forward are valid. People could’ve believed that it was some sort of game, that it wasn’t real . . . or maybe they believed the GUILTY headline.’