Hunter was a fast reader. Actually, he was a very fast reader and as soon as he began devouring the chunks and chunks of information he knew he had stumbled upon a complete minefield.
And then the first bomb went off.
He reread the paragraph twice over before he was certain he had it right. And it staggered him.
The second bomb followed almost immediately.
Hunter had to pause and take a deep breath. He could practically hear adrenalin dripping into his veins — and then he found the images. They came at him like an angry heavyweight champion and hidden among them was the knockout punch.
As the final image loaded on to his screen, he felt a sickening shiver kiss the nape of his neck.
‘This can’t be.’
And then that was it.
No more information.
With the same speed with which it had all appeared, it all stopped.
Hunter tried something else. Being a Special LAPD Detective had its perks but the words that came up on his screen made him jerk back.
RESTRICTED ACCESS.
‘What the fuck?’
He tried again.
RESTRICTED ACCESS.
One more time.
RESTRICTED ACCESS.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
He backtracked and reread some of the information he’d gotten from his initial search.
And then it dawned on him.
Just like the killer’s note to Mayor Bailey, the information had mentioned the FBI.
Hunter checked his watch — 11:58 p.m. In Virginia it would be 02:58 a.m. It didn’t matter.
Hunter reached for his phone.
Seventy-nine
Adrian Kennedy was the head of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and its Behavioral Analysis Unit. He was also a good friend of Hunter’s.
Despite the late hour, Kennedy didn’t even blink when his cellphone rang inside his jacket pocket. As the head of the NCAVC he was used to getting calls at godforsaken hours. Sleep was a luxury that didn’t come as part of his job description.
He reached for the phone and was very surprised to see Hunter’s name on the display screen.
‘Robert?’ he answered it, still sounding a little unsure.
‘Hello, Adrian.’
‘Well, this is a surprise.’ His naturally hoarse voice, made worse by over thirty years of smoking, sounded tired but relaxed. ‘Are you back in LA?’
‘I am.’
Kennedy checked his watch. ‘What time is it there? About midnight?’
‘That’s about right, yes.’
‘So I guess you’re not calling for a chitchat.’ Adrian coughed a laugh. ‘What can I do for you, old friend?’
‘Are you in your office?’
‘Well, I’m sure as hell not home in bed where I should be.’
‘I need to ask you for a favor,’ Hunter said.
Kennedy’s interest grew. If there was one thing he knew about Robert Hunter, it was that he wasn’t a man who asked many people for favors.
‘What do you need?’ Kennedy leaned back in his leather chair.
Without going into too much detail, Hunter told him.
Kennedy sat forward. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Not even a little bit.’
‘There’s no way, Robert.’ Kennedy’s voice turned morbidly serious. ‘That kind of information is as restricted as it gets. It’s under the same sort of lock and key as our witness protection program.’
‘To someone like me, yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘But not to the head of the NCAVC.’
‘Still, Robert. We have protocols and rules here.’
‘Yeah, I have an egg.’
Kennedy frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I thought that we were just mentioning things that we can easily break.’
‘Oh, that’s cute.’
Hunter said nothing.
‘Listen, Robert, I can’t just go accessing that sort of information without leaving a log trail as long as Route Sixty-Six.’
‘So? Leave a trail.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘What difference would that make to you, Adrian? All you’ll be accessing is information and that’s what your job demands, isn’t it? Acquiring it, processing it and understanding it. No one will care.’
‘I will. I’ll still be breaking protocol to access extremely restricted information to then pass it on.’
‘To a fellow law enforcement officer, Adrian. What do you think I’m going to do with it, sell it to the press? And, after all, you owe me.’
Kennedy did owe Hunter. He also knew the LAPD detective well enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for anything unless it was absolutely imperative. He breathed out.
‘This is more than I owe you, old friend.’
Hunter remained quiet.
‘OK. Fuck it,’ Kennedy finally said. ‘Give me about half an hour.’
Eighty
Hunter spent the next twenty-two minutes rereading everything he had found, and for him it only served to underline something he already knew — that reality was much, much more perverted than fiction. The problem was, if he were right in his hunch, reality was just about to get a lot more twisted.
He recalled all the photographs he had found with his initial search less than an hour ago and studied them again, this time a lot more carefully. The last photograph was the one that had triggered an avalanche of thoughts inside Hunter’s head. The one that had made him call Adrian Kennedy.
Despite his best efforts, that was the only photograph of that subject he could find. It had been taken years ago and from a considerable distance. The angle also didn’t help, making the subject blurry and unclear.
Hunter tried using a photo-enhancing application to enlarge it on his screen, but the bigger he made it, the more pixelated it got and the blurrier it became. Still, something about its subject made him very uneasy.
Hunter had become so absorbed by the image that he almost didn’t notice his cellphone rattling against his desktop.
The screen display told him that the caller was unknown.
Had Mat Hade been arrested?
‘Detective Robert Hunter, Robbery Homicide Division,’ he said as he brought the phone to his ear.
‘Robert, it’s Adrian.’
Hunter breathed out. ‘Did you have any luck?’
There was a heavy pause.
‘Adrian?’
‘Yes. I got the files you’re after. I’m emailing them to you right now.’
‘Thanks, Adrian. I’ll owe you for this.’
‘Yes, you will. Robert?’ Adrian called before Hunter could put the phone down.
‘Yes.’
‘Be careful, old friend.’
Hunter disconnected and opened his email application. Seconds later, Kennedy’s email arrived. The subject field was left blank. The body of the email showed only two words — Good luck — but the message came with three separate attachments. Hunter opened the first one and began reading through it. The information it contained was very similar to what he had already found out, only much more detailed.
The second attachment consisted of a single black and white photograph. A photograph of the same subject Hunter had been studying before he’d received Kennedy’s telephone call. As the picture filled Hunter’s screen, he stopped breathing for a moment. It was an old photograph, but not as old as the one Hunter had found. It had been taken inside a controlled environment, not from a considerable distance, and the subject was staring straight at the camera.
Hunter could barely believe his own eyes.
It took him more than a minute to get over the shock of what he was looking at. Once he had, he finally opened the last attachment. The most secretive of all the documents Adrian Kennedy had sent him.