dying.’
‘Only
‘That’s right.’
Hunter nodded to himself. ‘OK, Doc. Call me if anything else comes up.’ He put the phone down and stared at his own fingernails for a moment. ‘A weapon,’ he whispered.
‘A what?’ Garcia asked, rolling his chair away from his desk.
‘A weapon. That’s why her fingernails were so claw-like.’ Hunter stood up and approached the pictures board. ‘Look at the crime-scene pictures of our first victim.’ He pointed to the ones of Laura Mitchell’s hands. There was nothing strange about her fingernails.
‘No filing,’ Garcia agreed.
‘Having pointy fingernails didn’t come from the killer, as the doctor suggested. Kelly used a brick wall to sharpen them herself. I think she wanted to attack her captor. In an empty cell, it was the only weapon she could think of.’
Garcia pinched his bottom lip. ‘But nothing else was found under her nails except brick dust and her own skin. So she never got the chance to use them.’
‘That’s right.’ Hunter had returned to his desk and was flipping through his notebook. ‘The doctor said that Kelly’s organs showed mild symptoms of dehydration and malnutrition, right? I think she starved herself.’
Garcia frowned.
‘Mexitil. Kelly had no needle marks on her, remember?’
‘He was feeding it to her through her food.’
Hunter leaned against his desk. ‘Most probably, and she figured out the food was drugged.’
‘So she stopped eating to get rid of the dizziness.’ Garcia picked up Hunter’s train of thought. ‘But wouldn’t that make her too weak to fight back?’
‘It would if she’d gone without food for a few days, but that wasn’t the case.’
‘One day only. That’s what Doctor Hove said, right?’
Hunter nodded. ‘Mexitil isn’t a proper sedative. Kelly would’ve only needed to be off it for a few hours.’
‘Enough to get rid of the dizziness, but not enough to take all of her strength away. But how would she know that?’
‘She didn’t. She gambled.’
‘So she filed her nails into the only weapon she could think of.’ Garcia ran a hand through his hair while exhaling. ‘She wanted out of there. She was trying to do something herself because she knew she was running out of time, and she’d run out of hope. She got tired of waiting for us to save her.’
Hunter’s cell phone started ringing.
‘Detective Hunter,’ he said, bringing the clamshell phone to his ear.
‘Detective, this is Tracy from the Special Operations switchboard. I’m managing the information line on the suspect you’re looking for, James Smith.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got someone on the line who claims to be him.’
Hunter pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well, we’ve had about fifty of those so far. Just take his—’
‘Detective,’ Tracy interrupted, ‘I think you should take this call.’
Sixty-One
Hunter snapped his fingers at his partner to get his attention. He didn’t have to; Garcia had already noticed the change in Hunter’s expression.
‘Start a trace?’ Hunter said to Tracy.
‘We’re all set here, Detective.’
Hunter nodded to himself. ‘OK, put him through.’
There was a click on the line followed by a second of static.
Hunter waited.
So did the person on the other end of the line.
‘This is Detective Robert Hunter.’ Hunter eventually broke the silence. He was in no mood for games.
‘Why are you after me?’ The sentence was delivered in a calm, unrushed tone. The voice was like a muffled whisper, as if his phone’s mouthpiece had been wrapped in several layers of cloth.
‘James Smith?’
There was a short pause. ‘Why are you after me?’ he repeated in the same cool tone.
‘You know why we’re after you.’ Hunter’s calm voice matched Smith’s. ‘That’s why you ran, isn’t it?’
‘The newspapers all across town have my picture in them. They say the police want to speak to me in relation to an ongoing investigation, but no other details are given. So I want you to tell me: why are you after me? How am I related to any ongoing investigation?’
‘Why don’t you come in, James? We can sit down and talk. I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.’
A bitter chuckle. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that just now, Detective.’
‘Right now that’s your best option. What else can you do? You can’t run or hide forever. As you said, your photograph is all over the papers. And it’s going to stay there. Sooner or later someone will recognize you — on the streets, in a shop, driving around. You know you’re not invisible. Come in and let’s talk.’
‘The picture in the papers is crap and you know it — grainy, out of focus and partially obscured. It’s a desperate attempt. I had trouble recognizing myself. The newspapers won’t carry on publishing that picture forever, ’specially if you get no results from it. In a week’s time I could dance naked on Sunset Strip and no one would recognize me.’
Hunter didn’t reply. He knew it was only too true.
‘So I’m gonna ask you one more time, Detective. Why are you after me? And how am I related to a major ongoing investigation?’
‘If you don’t know why we’re after you, how do you know we’re running a
‘I’m not that stupid, Detective. If the LAPD got the papers to publish a snapshot of every person they’d like to talk to, there wouldn’t be enough paper in California for all the pictures. The few that do get published are always related to a major investigation. Something big is going on, and somehow you think I’m involved.’
Smith was right, Hunter thought, he wasn’t stupid.
‘So you’re telling me that you figured all that out by yourself, but you have no idea why we came to your door?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’
Something in Smith’s tone intrigued Hunter. ‘So why don’t you come in, and we can clear everything up?’
‘Goodbye, Detective.’
‘Wait.’ Hunter stopped Smith before he was able to disconnect. ‘Do you know which section of the LAPD I’m with?’
Garcia looked at his partner and frowned.
Smith hesitated for a second.
‘Fraud?’
Garcia’s brow creased even further.
The pause that followed stretched for several seconds.
‘No, I’m not with the fraud squad.’
Silence.
‘James? You still there?’
‘Which section?’
Hunter noticed a different tension in Smith’s voice.
‘Homicide.’
