The Executioner

something to do with the girl. But by the time she collected her coat and made it outside Hunter had gone. Not wanting to waste any time, Claire jumped into a cab and made her way back to the same old and squalid hotel in Lynwood where she’d followed the girl after her coffee shop meeting with Hunter and Garcia. But she was also gone. The tall, bald landlord at reception told Claire he hadn’t seen the girl he called Monica since the previous night.

‘You her friend?’ he asked in an unrecognizable foreign accent. His breath stunk of booze. ‘If you good friend you pay me the money she owes, huh? She no pay no rent for three weeks.’ He lifted three long, bony fingers. Their nails crusted with dirt.

‘I’m not that good a friend,’ Claire replied, subtly covering her nose with her right hand. ‘But I’ll tell you what Mr . . .?’

‘Petrosky. Pat Petrosky.’

‘I’ll tell you what, Pat.’ She scribbled her name and number on a piece of paper and placed it on the counter. ‘If you call me as soon as you see her again, and I mean the very same second, you can make yourself a hundred bucks. How does that sound?’

Pat read the note without picking it up. When he looked up, his eyes stopped at Claire’s cleavage. ‘OK, Claire. You got deal.’

Claire still hadn’t heard a word from ‘smelly-man’. She sat staring at her laptop screen, tapping a ballpoint pen against her teeth. She still had one trump card to play. By chance, she’d managed to track down one of Mollie’s friends. A twenty-three-year-old waitress named Susan who used to work with her.

Claire’s cell phone vibrated on the desk. She snatched it up.

‘Claire Anderson here.’

It was the newspaper’s phone operator. Claire didn’t have a direct line. Reporters on trial periods never did, so any calls that came into the LA Times main switchboard asking for her were diverted to her cell phone.

‘Miss Anderson, I’ve got someone on the phone for you,’ the operator said.

‘Someone, who?’

‘He doesn’t wanna give me his name. He called several times yesterday and a few this morning. I recognize the voice.’

‘OK, put him through.’ She heard a click. ‘This is Claire Anderson.’

‘The reporter?’

‘Yes,’ she chuckled, ‘the reporter. What shall I call you?’

‘You can call me friend.’

Claire squeezed her eyes and shook her head slowly as the term ‘crackpot’ entered her head. ‘How can I help you, Mr. Friend?’

‘I was wondering if we could meet. Maybe we can help each other.’

‘And what would you like to meet about?’

No reply, only heavy breathing.

‘Hello . . .? Are you still there?’

‘I’m here.’

‘So what would you like to meet about?’

‘Someone who in your article you called “the psychic girl”.’

Claire straightened her body and sat up. Something in his voice made her shiver.

‘She’s not who you think she is.’

Ninety-Nine

No one spoke for an entire minute. Captain Blake shifted from foot to foot. Garcia’s suggestion that Darnell Douglas was scared of needles struck a chord on her. She didn’t like them either.

‘If he was scared of needles, what the hell is that tube coming out of his mouth?’ Captain Blake finally asked pointing at Darnell. ‘Did the killer force-feed him something?’

Doctor Winston rubbed his face, taking his time. ‘I won’t know for sure until I get the victim into my autopsy room, but I don’t think so. This is an intubation tube.’

A new shiver kissed the back of the captain’s neck. ‘The killer intubated the victim? Why?’

‘Look closely. What’s missing?’ The doctor’s keen eyes challenged them.

Their stare moved back to the grotesque image of a man adorned with two hundred and fifty blood-filled syringes.

‘I give up and I’m in no mood to play games, Jonathan,’ the captain said firmly. ‘What is missing?’

‘Restraints,’ Hunter said, moving closer. ‘The victim ain’t tied to the chair. He’s just sitting there as if of his own free will.’

‘Bingo.’ Doctor Winston acknowledged it. ‘Restraints wouldn’t serve the purpose of this murder.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Captain Blake shook her head. ‘What do restraints have to do with the victim being intubated?’

‘A tied-down victim wouldn’t be able to move, but he’d certainly be able to wiggle his body about,’ the doctor explained.

‘Yeah, well, that ain’t much of a fight, is it?’ the captain countered, still looking puzzled.

‘It is if you’re trying to prick a vein,’ Hunter offered.

‘Correct again,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘All Mr. Douglas would’ve needed was a quick body wiggle and the killer’s plan to catch a venipuncture site with a needle would’ve been fumbled. Knocking the victim unconscious would’ve given the killer no satisfaction either. He wanted the victim to be awake.’

‘So the killer would’ve needed to completely immobilize the victim?’ Garcia asked.

Doctor Winston took a deep breath. ‘The killer would’ve needed to paralyze the victim.’

‘Drugged?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘Most probably,’ the doctor agreed. ‘I’ll need the lab results to confirm it, though.’

‘A paralyzing agent that would’ve kept the subject conscious?’ Hunter glanced at the doctor meaningfully.

‘Not only conscious. I’m sure the killer wanted the victim to also retain feeling.’

‘Oh man!’ Garcia folded his arms tightly, as if the doctor’s words had intensified the cold inside the room. ‘Is there such a drug? A paralyzing agent that allows the subject to still feel everything?’

‘Oh yes.’ A quick nod. ‘Quite a few, actually. And with the internet and the hundreds of clandestine drug sites, very easy to obtain.’

‘Still—’ Captain Blake cut in, shaking her head ‘—why intu-bate him?’

‘Because whatever the killer used probably also paralyzed his diaphragm,’ Hunter deducted. ‘He would’ve suffocated because he wouldn’t have been able to breathe. The killer needed him alive.’

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ Doctor Winston concurred. ‘The tube fed him oxygen and kept him alive while the killer inflicted as much pain as anybody could possibly take.’

Captain Blake’s cell phone rang and they all tensed. She moved to a corner of the room, and her conversation didn’t last longer than a few seconds.

‘You’re in,’ she said to Hunter as she rejoined the group. ‘Clayton pulled a few strings and got you a prisoner’s interview with Peter Elder in CCI first thing tomorrow morning, seven o’clock.’ Her gaze returned to Darnell Douglas’s body. ‘We’ve gotta find the motherfucker who did this, and fast.’

After spending most of the night at the new crime scene with Doctor Winston, Hunter left for the California Correctional Institution State Prison in Tehachapi at 4:30 a.m. Garcia, on the other hand, had headed back to Parker Center at around 10:00 p.m. Hunter had asked him to come up with everything he could on Darnell Douglas, their new victim.

The information Garcia had gathered was patchy, but good enough to supply Hunter with what he was