One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) - Страница 58

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Everyone inside Hunter’s office was transfixed.

As the blinking word and number faded out, the images of the man tied to the wooden table faded back in. This time there were no other distractions on the screen – no buttons, or words, or numbers – nothing.

The camera had zoomed out, once again enabling all viewers to see the man’s entire stretched-out body, together with all four leather straps and a portion of the chains.

Captain Blake brought both hands to her face, cupping them over her nose and mouth, as if about to say a prayer, but no words left her lips.

Suddenly a metal grinding mechanical noise exploded through the computer speakers on both detectives’ desks, sending a horror wave across the room. The rollers had been activated.

‘What the hell?’ the captain blurted out.

‘He enabled the camera’s microphone,’ Hunter said, feeling his heart rate pick up speed inside his chest. ‘He wants us to hear him die.’

The tension in the room was pierced by the man’s first agonizing scream, muffled only by the tight gag around his mouth. It sent shivers down everyone’s spine.

‘There are over a quarter of a million viewers watching this,’ Michelle, who was still on the phone, announced. Her voice was cloaked by an angry sadness.

‘Isn’t there any way you can scramble this broadcast?’ Captain Blake asked her.

‘I wish there was,’ a defeated Michelle replied.

The man screamed again, this time trying to form words, but the gag and the excruciating pain he was going through made whatever he was trying to say indecipherable. Spit and blood flew out of the corners of his mouth, producing a thin red mist, only to splash back down again onto his face, neck and chest.

Reflexively the man stretched his neck as far as it would go, as if that would give his arms and legs an extra centimeter or two and ease his agony, even if just for a brief moment. It didn’t work. Pain had now reached every fiber of every muscle in his body. Soon those fibers would be stretched beyond human endurance, which would cause them to lose their ability to contract, rendering them completely ineffective. After that, the fibers would start to slowly tear, ripping his muscles in a multitude of ways and locations, and drowning his body in unimaginable pain.

The man’s eyes rolled back into his head and his eyelids flickered like butterfly wings over them for a second or two. It looked like he was about to pass out, but instead he coughed violently a couple of times before throwing his head to one side and vomiting.

Captain Blake looked away.

Hunter clenched his fists.

The next noise the man made wasn’t so much a scream but a guttural shriek that stabbed at everyone’s eardrums.

Garcia anxiously brought a hand to his face, half rubbing his forehead, half shielding his eyes. His subconscious mind was once again playing with him.

POP! POP!

Two distinct popping noises followed in quick succession.

Hunter’s jaw tightened and he softly closed his eyes for just an instant. He knew those popping noises were the sound of snapping cartilage, ligaments and maybe even tendons. Pretty soon they would hear the tormenting sound of bones fracturing.

The man’s eyes came back from his head, but they had no more focus in them, wandering deliriously, as if he’d been drugged.

The leather straps were now cutting deep into the man’s skin and flesh – blood was dripping from his wrists, drawing thin red veins on his forearms. His feet were also covered in blood from where the straps had dug into his ankles.

The next sound they heard were bone breaks.

‘Oh my God! No.’ They all heard Michelle plead through the phone.

The skin around the man’s armpits was starting to rupture.

Captain Blake kept her eyes on the screen but placed her hands over her ears. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

As the mechanical rollers started working harder to overcome the resistance posed by skin and muscle, their grinding sound became louder, more piercing, like an office shredder fighting to chew through too many sheets of paper.

The man made as if he was about to scream again, but he had no more strength left in him, no more air in his lungs, no more voice in his vocal cords . . . no more life to give. His head slumped to one side and his eyes disappeared back into his head a millisecond before his eyelids closed over them. His body convulsed a couple of times, and that was when blood really started dripping from his armpits, as the man-made rack finally started to rip his arms away from his body.

It would now be just a matter of seconds before the pressure applied by the rollers snapped the brachial artery, the major blood vessel in the upper arms, producing massive blood loss.

They all watched it happen.

Blood gushed out from the man’s torso, where the arms had once been, with incredible speed and pressure.

The armless man writhed and twitched several times, but each one less erratic than the previous, until he lay motionless.

Three seconds later the website went offline.

Seventy-Eight

It had been almost an hour since pickadeath.com had gone offline. Captain Blake was back in her office. She had spent most of that time on the phone to the mayor of Los Angeles, the Chief of Police and the governor of California. Everybody wanted answers, but all she had were more questions.

Not surprisingly, the press was already bombarding the LAPD Media Relations Office with hundreds of questions and interview requests. Captain Blake was still refusing to schedule a press conference because she knew exactly what would happen. Questions and comments would be lobbed at them from all corners of the room – some defiant, some angry, but all of them derisive of what the LAPD and the Homicide Special Section had accomplished so far. The captain knew that they wouldn’t be able to supply answers to anything, not yet, and that would simply fuel the press to criticize their efforts and sensationalize the story even more. No, for now, still no questions.

Instead, the LAPD Media Relations Office would issue a new statement to the press. The statement would reveal nothing at all about the progress of the investigation. The true purpose behind it was to ask the press and the media for their cooperation in launching an appeal for the identity of the latest victim. The statement would be accompanied by a portrait photograph of the victim, captured from the early part of the broadcast, asking every paper to print it out, and every TV station to broadcast it as soon as possible. Somebody out there had to know who he was.

Seventy-Nine

Immediately after the broadcast ended, Garcia called Anna at work. She was doing fine. She knew nothing about what had just happened, but he knew she would find out soon enough. There was nothing he could do about that. He just wanted to make sure she was OK. After he disconnected from the call to his wife, Garcia went to the bathroom, locked himself inside a cubicle and silently threw up.

Hunter sat at his desk, trying his best to gather his thoughts together while his gut fought waves of nausea and an almost incontrollable desire to be sick. He knew he needed to watch the entire broadcast recording again, probably several times over, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it quite yet. Right now, what he really needed was to get out of that office.

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