‘I guess we’re just about to find out.’
One Hundred and Six
Hunter immediately pressed the yes button accepting the request. Garcia moved closer and craned his neck. Their eyes were glued to the small progress bar on Hunter’s cell phone screen as it filled itself up very slowly. Time seemed to drag.
The phone finally beeped again – Download complete. Watch it now?
Hunter pressed yes again.
The picture was grainy, the quality substandard. It had obviously been recorded using a cheap cell phone camera, but there was no doubt who they were looking at.
‘What the fuck?’ Garcia moved even closer.
Tied to a metal chair in the center of an empty room was a woman. Her head was slumped forward, her dark hair falling over her face covering her features. But neither Hunter nor Garcia needed to see her face to know who she was.
‘Am I going crazy?’ Garcia asked, wide-eyed, the color draining from his face.
No words left Hunter’s lips.
‘How the fuck did he get Captain Blake?’ Garcia’s eyes were still cemented to the screen.
Still silence from Hunter.
The video played on.
Captain Blake slowly lifted her head and Hunter felt something close tight around his heart. She was bleeding from the nose and mouth and her left eye had almost swollen shut. She didn’t look drugged, just in severe pain. The picture focused on her face for just a few more seconds before fading to black.
‘This is crazy,’ Garcia said, fidgeting like a kid.
Hunter’s phone rang again. He answered it immediately.
‘If you’re wondering,’ the whispering voice said, ‘she’s still alive. So I’d be very careful of your next move. ’Cause how long she stays that way depends on it. Back off.’
The line disconnected.
‘What did he say?’
Hunter told him.
‘Shit. This is so messed up. Why take the captain? And why send us a video? That’s completely contrary to his MO. He hasn’t done that with any of the previous victims.’
‘Because Captain Blake isn’t like any of the previous victims, Carlos. She doesn’t remind him of his mother. He didn’t take her for that reason. She’s security . . . a bargaining tool.’
‘What?’
‘On the phone he said, “Be very careful of your next move. ’Cause how long she stays alive depends on it. Back off.” He’s using her as a guarantee.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause we’re getting close, and he wasn’t expecting it. We know who he is . . . or used to be. He knows it’s just a matter of hours before we catch up with him.’
Garcia bit his bottom lip. ‘He’s panicking.’
‘Yes. That’s why the video. And when they panic and deviate from their original plan, they make mistakes.’
‘We don’t have time to wait for him to make a mistake, Robert. He’s got the captain.’
‘He’s already made the mistake.’
‘What? What mistake?’
Hunter pointed to his phone. ‘He sent us a video. We need Internet access.’
‘Internet?’ Garcia frowned. ‘Can we trace it?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s not that stupid.’
‘So why do we need the Internet?’
Hunter looked around and saw a thirty-something man sitting at a table in the corner. He was typing into his laptop.
‘Excuse me, are you online?’
The man looked up, his gaze quickly jumping from Hunter to Garcia, who was right behind his partner. The man nodded skeptically. ‘Yeah.’
‘We need to borrow your computer very quickly,’ Hunter said, having a seat and pulling the laptop towards him.
The man was about to say something when Garcia placed a hand on his shoulder, showing him his badge.
‘Los Angeles Homicide Division, this is important.’
The man lifted both hands in the air in surrender and stood up.
‘I’ll be right over there.’ He pointed to the corner. ‘Take your time.’
‘Why do you need the Internet all of a sudden?’ Garcia asked, taking a seat next to Hunter.
‘Give me a sec.’ He was busy Googling something. A web page loaded and he scanned it as fast as he could.
‘Fuck.’
Hunter grabbed his phone and watched the video again, frowning at it.
‘Damn.’
He Googled something else. A new page loaded and he scanned it again. ‘Oh shit,’ he whispered, checking his watch. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, standing up.
‘Go where?’
‘Santa Clarita.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because I know where the captain is being held.’
One Hundred and Seven
Aided by Garcia’s car’s lights and siren, they were eating ground fast. They hooked onto Interstate 405 and Garcia hit the fast lane doing eighty-five miles an hour.
‘OK, how do you know where the captain is being held?’ Garcia asked.
Hunter played the video again and showed his partner. ‘Because she told me.’
‘Huh?’
‘Pay attention to her lips.’
Garcia’s attention diverted from the road for just a second, enough for him to notice the captain’s lips moving ever so slightly.
‘I’ll be damned.’
‘The captain knew there was only one reason Andrew was shooting this video. She knew we would watch it.’
‘More to the point,’ Garcia added, ‘she knew you would watch it. So what did she say?’
‘St Michael’s Hospice.’
‘What?’
‘That’s why I needed the Internet. I thought she’d said St Michael’s Hospital. But there isn’t one, there never was. So I watched the video again and realized she’d said hospice, not hospital. St Michael’s Hospice in Santa Clarita closed down nine years ago, after a fire destroyed most of the building.’ Hunter typed the address into Garcia’s GPS navigational system. ‘There it is.’
‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘Out towards the hills. Completely isolated.’
Hunter nodded.
‘So if we suspect that’s where the captain is being held, why are we going there without a SWAT team?’
‘Because Andrew said that how long the captain lived depended on our actions. He’s somehow monitoring what we do.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, Carlos. But he called me just minutes after I landed. I’d been away less than a day. How the hell did he know I’d gone to Healdsburg this morning?’
Garcia had no answer.
‘SWAT teams are great, but they aren’t exactly subtle. If Andrew gets a sniff that we might know where he is, he’ll get to Captain Blake a lot faster than we or any SWAT team can get to him. And then it’s game over.’
‘So what are we gonna do?’
‘Everything we can. We might be able to surprise him. He doesn’t know that we know. The surprise factor is on our side. If we do this right, we can end this – now.’
Garcia stepped on the gas.
Hunter started flipping through the magazines and printouts Garcia had brought with him. He started reading the interview with Jessica Black again from the start when he suddenly paused and frowned. He reached for the next magazine, the one with Laura Mitchell’s interview.