The Night Stalker (28 page)

‘So you read my life story,’ Hunter finally said. ‘It must’ve been a pretty boring few minutes.’

‘On the contrary. I thought it was very colorful.’ Myers smiled again. ‘Though there’s a strange gap. For a couple of years it seems you just disappeared off the face of the earth. Not a scrap of information on you anywhere. And my research team is the best there is.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘I have to ask you this: why the hell did you become a cop? With a résumé like that you could be with the FBI, NSA, CIA, take your pick.’

‘Do you have an obsession with getting me a new job?’

She smiled.

The waitress brought Hunter his shrimp platter. As she walked away, Hunter’s eyes moved from his glass to Myers. ‘I ordered orange juice.’

‘I know,’ she replied casually. ‘But you would’ve ordered Scotch anyway. I was just saving you some time.’ She paused. ‘You must be hungry. Look at the size of that platter.’

‘Would you like some?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thanks. Knock yourself out.’

Hunter dipped a jumbo shrimp into the pot of hot sauce and took a bite.

Myers waited a few seconds. ‘If you’re as good as your file says you are, then you’ve also checked me out, and by now you will know I lied.’

Hunter nodded. ‘There’s no ex-boyfriend.’

Myers studied Hunter’s face for a moment. ‘But you already knew that yesterday, right?’

He nodded again.

‘If you knew I was lying, why didn’t you take me in?’

‘No point. You used to be a cop. You knew there was really nothing we could do to force you to tell us who your client really is. If you didn’t want to co-operate, we would’ve just wasted a lot of time. And time is something I don’t have. Call it a little professional courtesy.’

Myers smiled. ‘Bullshit. You thought you could find out whom I was working for on your own. But it wasn’t quite so easy, was it?’

They regarded each other for a moment.

‘The reason I was in Kelly Jensen’s apartment last night was because I wanted to follow a hunch,’ Myers finally admitted, taking a sip of her drink.

‘And that hunch was . . . ?’

‘That Kelly’s disappearance and the disappearance of the woman I’m looking for were connected.’

Hunter put his fork down.

‘I didn’t find anything in her apartment to confirm that hunch. She wasn’t taken from there. But there are other similarities that are hard to ignore.’

‘What other similarities?’

‘How many victims?’ Myers countered. ‘How many victims have you got so far? And I’m seriously not fucking around this time. If you wanna know what I know, you’ve gotta talk to me.’

Hunter sat back and used a paper napkin to wipe his mouth. ‘Kelly Jensen was the second victim.’

Myers nodded and placed a photograph of an attractive brunette on the table. ‘Was this the first victim?’ She held her breath.

Hunter’s eyes moved to the picture. On looks, the woman in it could’ve been Laura or Kelly’s sister. He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not her . . . Who is this?’

Myers breathed out. ‘She’s not on any Missing Persons list,’ she continued. ‘Her father tried to report her as missing but MP ran her through their regular six-point checklist. She met only one condition, so they weren’t immediately prepared to allocate time to her.’

‘Who is she?’ Hunter repeated.

Myers sat back. ‘Her name is Katia Kudrov. She’s the principal violinist concertmistress with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.’

‘A musician?’

‘That’s right.’ Myers paused. ‘The first victim, was her name Laura Mitchell?’

Hunter sat back in his chair. It was obvious that Myers had done her homework where missing persons were concerned.

Myers waited.

‘Yes, Laura Mitchell was the first victim we found.’

The tips of Myers’ fingers moved straight to her upper lip. ‘She was also a painter. This killer is after artists.’

‘Wait up, it’s too soon to get to that conclusion. And
artist
is too vast a field. If we’re gonna go down that path then we’d have to include dancers, actresses, sculptors, magicians, jugglers . . . the list goes on and on. So far, he’s kidnapped and killed two painters, and that’s all we have to go on. The fact that Katia’s profession falls into the
vast
category of being an artist is a simple coincidence at this point.’ Hunter tapped the picture on the table. ‘When did she go missing?’

‘Four days ago. Laura went missing about a week after Kelly, right?’

‘You’re good with names and dates.’

‘Yes, I’m
very
good with names and dates. So we have no specific time signature between kidnapping and murder?’

‘
We
?’

Myers glared at Hunter. ‘Katia Kudrov is still my
private
case. At the moment she’s a missing person, not a homicide victim. I spent most of today checking Katia’s background against Kelly’s.’ She placed a folder on the table. ‘Other than being the same age and sharing some physical characteristics, they’ve got absolutely nothing else in common. No substantial link.’

Hunter went silent again.

Myers leaned forward. ‘Trust me, Robert, the last thing I wanna do is work with the LAPD. But the only way we’ll be able to get a better idea if your psycho has really kidnapped Katia without wasting precious time is if we share what we know.’ She tapped the folder she’d just placed on the table. ‘And the optimum word here is
share.
So if I tell you what I know, you tell me what you know. And don’t even think about giving me the classified information excuse bullshit. I’m not a reporter. I have as much to lose as you do if any of the information about this case leaks. We want the same thing here – to catch this fucker. Your victims are already dead. Katia may still be alive. Do you really wanna waste time?’

After reading the file on Whitney Myers that Jenkins had sent him, Hunter wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t prepared to give him any information on her investigation for free.

For a long while they simply stared at each other in silence. Myers was trying hard to read Hunter’s expression. But she certainly wasn’t expecting his next question.

‘Did
you
kill them?’

The uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Neither Hunter nor Myers moved. Neither of them broke eye contact. But Myers’ stare lost all its warmth.

Hunter had read all the information Jenkins had sent him on Myers’ last ever case with the LAPD.

Myers had been called to try and resolve a situation that had developed in a tower block in Culver City a few years ago. A 10-year-old boy had managed to gain access to the roof of an apartment block and was sitting on the ledge, eighteen floors off the ground. The boy, who everyone knew by the name of Billy, wasn’t responding to anyone, and understandably, no one wanted to approach him. His parents had died in a car crash when he was only five, and since then he’d been living with his aunt and uncle, who’d become his legal guardians. They’d gone out for the afternoon and left Billy alone in the apartment.

Billy had no history of mental illness, but the few neighbors who knew him said that he was always very sad, never smiled, and never played with any of the other kids.

Myers saw no other way other than to break protocol and go up to the roof without waiting for the proper backup team.

The report Hunter had read had said that Myers had spent only ten minutes trying to talk Billy down when he simply got up and jumped.

Myers was so distraught that she’d had to take time off work, but she’d refused to see the police shrink. Two days after the incident, Billy’s uncle and aunt jumped from the same spot Billy did. Their wrists were tied together by a zip-tie handcuff. A suicide pact from two grief-stricken guardians would’ve been the conclusion, if not for the fact that three neighbors had seen a woman who fitted Myers’ description leaving the building minutes after Angela and Peter hit the ground.

‘Peter and Angela Fairfax,’ Hunter clarified.

‘Yes, I know who you’re referring to.’ Her tone was firm.

‘Did you push them off that roof?’

‘What the fuck does that have to do with this?’

Hunter finally had a sip of his whiskey. ‘You just asked me to share information from an ongoing investigation with someone I only just met. You used to be a cop, so you know that’s against protocol. But I don’t mind breaking it, if it means I’ll get a step closer to catching this guy. The problem is: the file I read on you says there’s a big chance that you handcuffed two innocent people together and then threw them off the top of an eighteen-story-high building. If you’re a real loose cannon, then this conversation ends here.’ He retrieved Myers’ private investigator’s ID from his pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. She didn’t reach for it. Her gaze could’ve burned a hole in Hunter’s face.

‘What do you think?’

Hunter’s left eyebrow lifted slightly.

‘The file
I
read says that you’re a good judge of character. So, I wanna know: do you think I could’ve pushed two innocent people off a rooftop?’

‘I’m not here to judge you. But I wanna hear the truth – from you, not from a file written by an Internal Affairs investigator and some police shrink.’

‘And I wanna hear your opinion.’ Her voice was defiant. ‘Do you think I pushed two innocent people off a building?’

Myers’ credentials before the rooftop incident were impeccable. She’d worked very hard to make detective and she took pride in being one. She was good at it, one of the best. Her track record proved it. Even after leaving the force and becoming a private investigator, her success rate was impressive. Hunter knew that people like her didn’t just flip, didn’t just lose their mind out of the blue. He considered her a moment longer and then leaned forward.

‘I think you allowed yourself to get personally involved with that case,’ Hunter said in a steady voice. ‘But you were an experienced detective, so it must’ve been something that rocked you pretty badly. My guess is that you suspected something really bad was happening in that family. To Billy in particular. But you didn’t have enough evidence to substantiate it. I think that maybe you went back to try and get an explanation from Billy’s guardians, but things went badly wrong.’

No reaction from Myers.

‘If I’m right . . . then I would’ve probably done the same thing.’

Myers sipped her drink slowly, her eyes still on Hunter’s face. She placed the glass back down on the table. Hunter held her stare without flinching.

‘She jumped,’ Myers said calmly. ‘Angela Fairfax jumped.’

Hunter waited.

‘That day I was the first to reply to a potential jumper,’ she began. ‘I made it there in two minutes flat, and started breaking protocol straight away. I had no choice. I just didn’t have the time to wait for backup. My intelligence on the boy was almost none. When I got to the rooftop, I found this kid sitting with his legs dangling from the edge of the building. He was just sitting there with his teddy bear, drawing onto a pad of paper. Billy was tiny. He looked so fragile . . . so scared. And that’s why I couldn’t wait for backup. A strong gust of wind and he would’ve taken off like a kite.’

She tucked a strand of loose hair behind her left ear.

‘He was crying,’ she continued. ‘I asked him what he was doing sitting on the edge of that building. He said he was drawing.’ She had another sip of her drink, a long one. ‘I told him that wasn’t a very safe place to sit and draw. Do you know what he said?’

Hunter said nothing.

‘He said that it was safer than being in his apartment when his uncle was home. He said that he missed his mom and dad so much. That it was unfair that they had to die in a car crash and not him. That they didn’t hurt him like his uncle Peter did.’

Hunter felt something catch in his throat.

‘I could see the boy was hurting,’ Myers proceeded, ‘but my priority was to get him away from that ledge. I kept on talking to him, all the while taking small steps forward, getting closer and closer in case I needed to reach for him. I asked him what he was drawing. He ripped the sheet of paper from the pad and showed it to me.’ For the first time her eyes moved away from Hunter’s face to a blank spot on the tabletop. ‘The drawing was of his bedroom. Very simple, sketched using lines and stickman figures with skewed faces. There was a bed with a little stickboy in it.’ Myers paused and swallowed dry. ‘A bigger stickman was lying on top of him.’

Hunter listened.

‘And here comes the sucker punch from hell: standing right next to the bed was a stickwoman.’

‘His aunt knew.’ It wasn’t a question.

Myers nodded and her eyes became glassy. ‘They were his guardians. They were supposed to protect him. Instead, they were raping his soul.’ She finished her whiskey in one gulp. ‘Right there and then I promised him that if he came with me, if he got off that ledge, his uncle would never hurt him again. He didn’t believe me. He asked me to cross my heart and hope to die. So I did.’ A heartfelt pause. ‘That was all that was needed. He said he believed me then because I was a police officer, and police officers weren’t supposed to lie, they were supposed to help people. Billy got up and turned towards me. I offered him my hand and he extended his tiny little arm to take it. That’s when he slipped.’