One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) - Страница 60
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‘Not bad, Detective Hunter,’ the man said under his breath. ‘Not bad at all.’
His smile widened a fraction as he saw Detective Hunter himself, followed by Detective Garcia, exit the PAB and make their way toward the park. The look on their faces told its own story, and it spoke of frustration, defeat, unrelenting concern and maybe even fear. It was the same look the man had had etched on his face for many years. But not anymore.
The man’s left leg started hurting again, and as he began rubbing his knee with the palm of his hand he saw the young officer who was searching the northeast corner of the park wave at both detectives and the sergeant.
The man’s smile grew wider still, and he felt a wave of excitement surge inside him.
The officer had found it.
As the number 70 bus to El Monte pulled in at the bus stop, the man saw Detective Hunter flip open the camcorder’s view screen. The look on his face made the man want to throw his head back and laugh loudly, but instead he quietly turned around, boarded the bus and took a seat toward the back.
It was almost time to finish this whole thing off.
Eighty-One
The sergeant and the pencil-tip-nosed officer both craned their necks awkwardly to have a better look at the camcorder’s view screen before intense frowns simultaneously shadowed their faces.
They saw the same thing Hunter and Garcia did. They just didn’t understand it.
‘Sonofabitch,’ Garcia murmured, his breath catching in his throat.
Hunter said nothing, but his eyes left the camcorder and quickly returned to searching the park. That was the event this killer wouldn’t want to miss. What he had waited around for – the moment they came across his little gift. Hunter was sure this killer would want to be looking straight at them so he was able to see the surprise on their faces. To the killer, it would be the perfect punch line.
But with the rush hour picking up momentum, the streets and the park had gotten busier. People were cutting across it in a multitude of directions, all in a hurry to get somewhere fast. Hunter’s eyes moved as quickly as they could. He understood that this killer needed only a second, maybe two, to completely savor the moment and laugh at their frustration. After that, satisfied, he would just fade back into anonymity. Just another honest living person trying to make his way back home. There was no need for the killer to allow his gaze to linger on their group for longer than a brief instant and risk being spotted.
Maybe if Hunter had looked west first, he would’ve noticed the man standing at the bus stop by the northwest corner of the park, staring straight at them. The smirk on his face was insolent, arrogant . . . proud, even. But Hunter had instinctively looked up from the camcorder in his hands and forward. He was facing east. By the time his gaze reached the bus stop, the man had his back to them, waiting patiently at the end of the line, ready to board the bus – just another commuter facing rush hour.
Hunter missed him.
His attention returned to the camcorder.
Using what seemed like a special glass-writing marker pen, the killer had written the word STRETCH across the view screen.
‘Stretch?’ The sergeant wrinkled his nose. ‘Does that mean anything to you guys?’
Garcia nodded in silence and felt something tighten deep down in his gut, as his subconscious mind started spitting out random images of the broadcast.
Hunter’s forefinger hovered over the ‘on’ button, for a moment unsure and hesitant if he was ready for whatever new surprise the killer had in store for them, but the doubt vanished fast.
He pressed the switch.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
‘Battery seems to be dead,’ the pencil-tip-nosed officer offered matter-of-factly.
Despite holding no real hopes for any sort of clue to come from it, Hunter asked the sergeant to get the sandwich bag the camcorder was found in to forensics ASAP. He and Garcia rushed back to the Police Administration Building and went straight down to the LAPD Computer Crimes Unit.
Eighty-Two
Dennis Baxter told them that he had watched the entire Internet broadcast from his desk, but he had no idea the killer’s call had been traced. Hunter gave him a very quick run-through of the past few minutes.
‘And he left this inside a trashcan out in the park?’ Baxter asked, looking down at the compact camcorder Hunter had placed on his desk. The word STRETCH stared back at him from the flip-out view screen.
‘That’s right,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘It looks like he was controlling everything remotely.’
Baxter thought about that for a second.
‘How difficult would that really be to accomplish?’ Garcia asked.
‘For an average person? Quite a bit. For someone with his knowledge of computer programming and electronics, not hard at all. All he had to do was develop an application that monitored the voting process and link it to a second program that controlled the mechanics of both death methods. As soon as one of them reached a specified number, in this case ten thousand, it would activate the machinery for that specific death method. It’s the same engineering behind any regular timer, but instead of a specific time he used a count. The way the camera zoomed in and out during the broadcast could’ve easily be controlled from anywhere with a simple smartphone application.’
Someone’s personal cellphone rang a few desks away, grabbing everyone’s attention. The ringtone was the original theme tune to Star Wars.
Hunter was mulling over what Baxter had just said. The truth was that this killer could’ve done the exact same thing with all the previous broadcasts. He could’ve controlled them remotely if he wanted to. There was no real need for him to be there, and no real proof that he was.
Baxter finally retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his top drawer, slipped them on and cautiously picked the camera up from his desk.
‘It looks like the battery is dead,’ Garcia explained. ‘Do you have a power supply that will fit it?’
Baxter nodded. ‘I do.’ But instead of looking for it, he turned the camera upside down and flipped open a very small hinged lid on the underside of it. He paused and chewed on his bottom lip for a second. ‘But a power supply will make no difference here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is a CX250 Handycam,’ Baxter explained, pointing to the model number specified on the side of the camera. ‘It’s a fairly well-known camera, and the reason why it’s smaller than some of the more expensive models is because it has no hard drive. It uses something called a memory stick duo. What that means is that this camera has no storage facility built into it. Everything it records gets saved into a removable memory stick, which goes in here.’ He indicated the now opened hinged lid. The compartment was empty. ‘In this model,’ he added, ‘even after unclipping the lid you would have to press down on the memory stick so it clicks in before popping up.’ He made an ‘eject up’ movement with his index finger. ‘It’s a double safety mechanism, which means that the memory stick didn’t fall out by mistake: it was removed.’
That caused both detectives to pause momentarily.
‘I can get a power supply and plug it in if you want. It will turn the camera on, but that’s all it will do. There will be no images in it for you to see, if that was what you were expecting.’
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