door opened as if he’d used a key.
‘You don’t look like a CATS, Detective,’ Cameron said, referring to the Commercial Auto Theft Section of the LAPD without diverting his attention from the screen.
‘I’m not.’
On the screen, the man bent down, put his hand inside the car and popped the hood.
Cameron frowned.
The man quickly rechecked the lot’s entrance — no one was coming. Without ever facing east he moved to the front of the car and lifted the hood before bending over the engine and reaching for something in the main block. There was no way they could see exactly what he was doing, but whatever it was, it only took him three seconds. He closed the hood and returned to the driver’s side. One more look around before opening the door and disappearing inside and into the back seat.
‘Strange,’ Cameron commented. ‘What’s this about?’
‘You’ll see.’
The video application jumped straight to the next section Hunter had queued up. Cameron checked the timestamp clock at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and noticed that the footage had jumped forward thirty-six minutes.
‘I take it that our mysterious man is still inside the car?’ Cameron asked.
‘Never moved.’
They carried on watching. This time a slender brunette appeared, coming in from the same direction the man did earlier — Kelly Jensen. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing blue jeans, flat shoes and a faded brown leather jacket.
‘Oh shit,’ Cameron murmured, already guessing what was about to happen.
Kelly approached the car and searched her handbag for her car keys. Oblivious to the fact that someone was already inside waiting for her, she opened the door and got into the driver’s seat. The darkness, the position of the car, and the angle in which Mr. Wang’s camera was set, made it impossible for Hunter and Cameron to see through the windscreen. Zooming in on the picture didn’t help either.
Cameron pulled his glasses from his face and rubbed his eyes.
Nothing happened for the next two minutes. When the timestamp at the bottom of the screen read 11:11 p.m. the passenger’s door opened and the man stepped out of the car. He paused and looked around slowly, checking he was still alone. Satisfied, he made his way to the other side, opened the driver’s door and retrieved the keys from the ignition before opening the trunk. As if lifting nothing heavier than a shopping bag, he picked Kelly up with both arms. She was knocked out cold, but it was easy to tell she was still alive.
The man carefully placed her in the trunk and stood still for a long while, looking down at her as if admiring her. He finally returned to the front of the car, opened the hood and tweaked something in the engine block again. Moments later he got into the driver’s seat and took off.
‘Shit,’ Cameron said, looking at Hunter, his complexion paler than minutes ago. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘I’ve looked at this footage several times,’ Hunter said. ‘That guy doesn’t face the camera once, but he looks around a few times, checking his ground.’
Cameron nodded. ‘Yeah, I noticed that.’
‘OK, so I was wondering — if we slowed this thing down completely, and then moved it frame by frame, we might be lucky enough to get at least a partial face shot in there somewhere.’
‘It’s possible,’ Cameron said, checking his watch. ‘I can start working on it right away. I’ll have to transfer the footage to my computer and then analyze it again using professional software, but it shouldn’t take me more than an hour, two at the most.’
Hunter placed a card on the desk. ‘Call me the moment you get anything.’
As he turned to leave, Cameron stopped him.
‘Detective, is there a chance she’s still alive?’
Hunter didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
Seventy
‘Sonofabitch!’
Garcia exclaimed as he watched a copy of the footage Hunter had left with Cameron in ITD. The timestamp on the screen showed that Kelly Jensen had been taken on the 24th February. Their suspicion was that Laura Mitchell, the first victim, had been abducted between the 2nd and the 5th of March.
‘So he abducts Kelly first, but murders her second,’ Garcia said.
Hunter nodded.
‘Why?’
‘If we’re right about the killer projecting the image of the person he wanted them to be onto his victims, then it’s just a matter of time before they do or say something that’d break that spell. Something that’d make him see them for who they really are.’
‘Laura broke the spell first.’
‘It looks that way, yes.’
Garcia returned his attention to the footage Hunter had retrieved from Mr. Wang’s shop. ‘Do we have a facial shot?’
‘No yet, but ITD are working on it.’
Garcia’s eyes returned to his computer screen and the footage. ‘You were right when you said that we were dealing with someone who is patient.’
‘Not only patient,’ Hunter replied. ‘He’s calm, collected and confident. He staked out Kelly’s studio location for several nights no doubt, before making his move. And when he did, he was precise. No time wasted, no struggle, no chance for her to react. This guy is different, Carlos. He takes his victims from places where they are supposed to feel safe; their homes. . their work studios. . their cars. .’
Garcia nodded. ‘Judging from that footage, what would you say he is. .? Six two, six three. .? Weighs around two hundred pounds. .?’
‘That sounds about right. And that is consistent with the perpetrator’s height theory from the skullcap fibers retrieved from the brick wall in Laura’s studio. I’ve called Forensics and told them to pick Kelly’s Trans-Am up from Santa Monica and go through every inch of that cockpit and boot.’
Garcia watched the footage one more time in silence.
Hunter had also gotten in touch with the bureaus’ Traffic Divisions. The killer had driven Kelly’s car out of her studio parking lot and onto Los Angeles’ streets, and there were thousands of traffic and CCTV cameras spread across town. Kelly’s Trans-Am was an easy car to spot, so the killer would’ve wanted to swap vehicles as soon as possible. He probably had a van waiting and ready to go someplace close, but he was clever, he didn’t just dump her car and leave. A classic Trans-Am abandoned on a side street somewhere would’ve raised too many eyebrows. It would’ve alerted the police to start looking for Kelly almost immediately. The killer also knew not to return her car to the studio’s parking lot. From his surveillance, he would’ve known that Kelly never left it there overnight. He wouldn’t want to risk one of the shop owners noticing it and calling the cops. Instead, he’d driven it back to Santa Monica and parked it in the same spot she always did — right in front of her apartment block. Rule one of being a criminal: raise as little suspicion as possible. This guy seemed to have written that rule.
Hunter was hoping that a traffic camera somewhere had picked up some of that journey. It was a long shot, but right now, any shot was worth taking.
‘Anything from Operations on any stitched victims? Anything anywhere in the country?’ Garcia asked.
Hunter had asked the Office of Operations to start a nationwide search — any deaths where a brunette female victim had been found with stitches to her mouth, sexual organ, or both. If the killer was really transferring his feelings and projecting the image of the person he once loved onto his victims, there was a good chance that that person had died in a similar way.
