The Night Stalker

‘It was the 4th March, at 4:30 p.m. I used a payphone and called her on her cell. She was on her way to her studio. We talked for a while and she asked me to call her back just before the weekend. She said that maybe we could go out for a drink or even dinner. She practically asked me out.’ Smith’s eyes moved from Hunter’s face to the far wall for a long moment. When they moved back to Hunter, a liquid sheen had formed over them. ‘You’re a detective. Do you really think that after all I’ve done, after so many years trying to get her attention, trying to get her to notice me, to talk to me. . when she finally does, I’d hurt her in any way?’

‘Why did you run when we knocked on your door?’

‘I panicked,’ Smith replied with no hesitation. ‘I knew that I had broken the law by living under a false identity. I know that I could be locked away for several years for it. Suddenly the police were at my door. I did what most people in my shoes would do, I didn’t think, I just ran. Before I had time to consider, my picture was in every paper in town. I knew then that something was definitely not right. That’s when I called you.’

Hunter remained silent. His stare locked on Smith’s face. He’d said all that without flinching, without vacillating and without breaking eye contact with Hunter. If he was lying, Hunter decided, he was a master at it.

‘She approached me that night,’ Smith said again. ‘She smiled at me. She flirted with me. She gave me her number and asked me to call her. She wanted to have dinner with me. . to go out on a date with me.’ Smith faced the two-way mirror. ‘I’d been dreaming about the day she’d finally noticed me for years. My dream had just come true. Why in the name of God would I hurt her?’

Eighty-Three

Hunter splashed some cold water over his face and stared at his tired reflection in the mirror. James Smith had requested an attorney. No matter what happened, without actual proof of any involvement between Smith and Laura Mitchell, the LAPD could only hold him without charge for a maximum of forty-eight hours. Captain Blake was already talking to the DA’s office about charging Smith with fraud and impersonation. That way, they could keep him off the streets for longer, at least until they had more information on him, his story and his whereabouts on the nights of all three murders.

After leaving the interrogation room, Hunter had finally managed to get in touch with Mark Stratton, Jessica Black’s boyfriend. Experience counted for nothing in these situations. There was no easy way to tell someone that their life had just been wrecked. That the person they loved the most had been taken away from them by a brutal killer. People dealt with loss and pain in their own way, but it was never easy.

Hunter didn’t disclose every detail over the phone. He kept the information down to the bare minimum. Not surprisingly, Stratton thought the call was a prank at first, a very bad joke from one of his buddies. Many of them were notorious for their dark and distasteful sense of humor. Hunter knew denial is the most common initial shock reaction to sad news. When realization finally set in, Stratton broke down the way most people did. The same way Hunter had broken down years ago when a RHD detective knocked on his door to tell him his father had been shot in the chest by a bank robber.

Hunter splashed some more water on his face and wet his hair. The darkness inside him was lurking around again, murky and deep.

Stratton told Hunter that he’d be making his way back to LA as soon as possible — sometime today, and that he’d call Hunter as soon as he got back. Jessica Black’s body still had to be positively identified.

Garcia was reading something on his computer screen when Hunter got back to his desk. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. He understood exactly how difficult making those calls was.

Hunter nodded. ‘I’m fine. Just needed to cool down, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look fine.’

Hunter approached the pictures board and studied the photographs of all three victims again.

‘Robert,’ Garcia called, his voice just a few decibels louder.

Hunter turned and faced him. ‘His interval between kidnapping and murdering his victims is shortening.’

‘Yeah, I noticed that,’ Garcia agreed. ‘Kelly Jensen was the first to be kidnapped. She was killed almost three weeks later. Laura Mitchell was taken about a week after Kelly, but she was the first to die. We still don’t know for sure, but it looks like Jessica Black went missing no longer than five days ago, and she turned up dead yesterday. It went from weeks to days. So either Jessica Black lost no time in breaking his spell, or he’s simply losing patience.’

Hunter said nothing.

Garcia sat back in his chair and pinched his chin. ‘I was just checking the results from your national search on brunette victims with any sort of stitching to their mouths, sexual organs or both.’

‘And. .?’

‘Not a goddamn thing. It seems like most of the files only date back fourteen to fifteen years. Beyond that, we’ve got almost nothing.’

Hunter thought about it for a moment. ‘Damn.’

‘What. .?’

‘Police records only started to be properly digitized. . what? Maybe ten, twelve years ago at a stretch?’

‘Something like that.’

‘The problem is that the amount of everyday cases is so huge, most police departments around the country don’t have the budget or the personnel to deal with the backlog. Most cases older than maybe fifteen years are probably just sitting inside boxes, getting dusty, down in basement storage rooms. Database searches will never get to them.’

‘Great. So even if we’re right, but it happened over fifteen years ago, we’ll never know?’

Hunter was already typing away on his computer. ‘Police files and databases might not be properly backlogged yet, but. .’

Garcia waited but nothing else was forthcoming. ‘But what?’

‘But newspaper ones certainly are. I was stupid, I should’ve thought of that at first and searched the national news archives as well as the police ones.’

Hunter and Garcia searched the net and specific newspaper databases for hours, scanning through any piece that flagged up according to their search criteria. Three and a half hours later Garcia started reading a 20-year-old local newspaper article and felt a shiver run down his spine.

‘Robert,’ he called, placing both elbows on his desk, clasping his hands together and squinting at his screen. ‘I think I might have something here.’

Eighty-Four

Los Angeles was a trendy nightclub Mecca full of see-and-be-seen clubs, which made the existence of a local bar like the Alibi Room a blessing. It dated back to the days of smoke-filled interiors and drunken games of pool. The place was really just one room with some vintage carpet, a line of locals bellied up to the bar, a single pool table with iffy geometrics and dead rails, a decent jukebox packed with rock albums and the best dive bar attraction of all time: cheap booze.

Whitney Myers spotted Xavier Nunez as soon as she walked through the door. He was sitting at one of the few low oak tables next to a window to the left of the bar. Two bottles of beer and a basket of corn tortillas were on the table in front of him.

Nunez was an odd-looking man. In his mid-thirties, he had a shaved head, long pointy face, large dark eyes, bowl ears, small crooked nose, pitted skin and lips so thin they looked like they’d been drawn using a marker pen. The slogan on his shirt read — Tell your tits to stop staring at me.