One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) - Страница 59
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Two minutes later he and Garcia were downstairs talking to the senior sergeant in charge of searching City Hall Park and the streets immediately surrounding the PAB.
‘So far, we’ve got trash,’ the sergeant announced, clearly annoyed with the ‘garbage hunt’ task he was given. He’d been on front-desk duty all day and had no idea what had happened less than fifty minutes ago. ‘Wrappers, all kinds of it,’ he continued, his tone a step away from being sarcastic. ‘Burgers, sandwiches, candy bars, Twinkies – you name it, we’ve got it. We also have truckloads of cans, bottles and paper coffee cups.’
Hunter was listening to the sergeant, but his eyes were roaming around the park, the streets and all the buildings surrounding it. He was positive the killer would still be nearby. This killer took too much pride in what he did to simply walk away without savoring the result to such an audacious trick, like making the call from just outside the Police Administration Building, and maybe, leaving something behind for the LAPD to find. Psychopath or not, it would appeal to his sense of satisfaction. It follows the same principle as when a person surprises someone else with a present that he/she spent a long time creating, or choosing. The real satisfaction comes from observing that someone’s reaction as he/she unwraps the gift.
Yes, Hunter thought, this killer will be observing. He’ll be close by. No doubt about it. But where?
Hunter’s eyes kept searching, but rush hour had just begun. Crowds of people were leaving work and making their way back home. There were too many people on the streets and in the park, too many public buildings surrounding the area, too many places where someone could easily observe the park from, without looking suspicious or being noticed. In downtown Los Angeles the killer wouldn’t have found a better place than City Hall Park for what he had in mind. It being located just across the road from the PAB was just the perfect bonus.
The sergeant pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed it over his sweaty forehead. ‘We’re bagging every little piece of trash into evidence bags, and you know why?’ He was in no mood to wait for an answer. ‘Because no one told us what the hell we’re supposed to be looking for out here, and if that one thing so happens to be a bubble gum wrapper and we miss it, it’s my ass, and I’m not losing my retirement pension over this bullshit. You guys want it, you can sort through it in your own time. Good luck with it.’
The radio clipped to the belt around the sergeant’s thick waistline crackled loudly before a thin voice came through.
‘Um . . . Sergeant, I think I’ve . . .’ HISS, HISS. ‘. . . here.’
The sergeant unclipped the radio from his belt, clicking the ‘talk’ button. ‘That’s a negative, officer. Ten-one. You gonna have to repeat that.’
Both detectives knew that 10-1 was police ten-code for ‘poor reception’.
More radio crackles.
The sergeant moved around to the other side of Hunter and Garcia.
‘I said that I think I’ve got something here, Sergeant,’ the officer came back. This time the reception was much clearer.
Reflexively the sergeant looked back at both detectives to check if they’d heard the message.
They had.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the sergeant replied. ‘What have you got?’
‘Not quite sure, Sergeant.’
‘OK, then. Where are you?’
‘Northeast corner of the park, by the trashcan.’
Hunter, Garcia and the sergeant turned and looked in that general direction. They’d been standing by the Frank Putman water feature, right at the center of the park, not that far from the northeast corner. They could see a young officer standing by a trashcan waving at them. They quickly walked over.
The officer was in his early twenties and looked to be fresh out of the police academy. He had bright blue eyes, red, acne-riddled cheeks and a pencil-tip nose. He was wearing a pair of latex gloves and holding a compact, black camcorder in his hands. He greeted everyone with a single head nod.
‘I found this in there, Sergeant.’ He pointed to the trash-can to his left. ‘It was inside a regular brown-paper sandwich bag.’ He handed the camera to his sergeant, who barely looked at it before passing it over to Hunter.
‘This is your show,’ he said, looking very uninterested.
Hunter gloved up and took the camera. The letters and numbers on one side of it read Sony Handycam CX250 HD. The camera was one of those with a flip-out screen on the side.
‘I’m not really sure what we’re looking for out here, sir,’ the officer explained. ‘But that’s a brand-new digital camera, worth at least a few hundred bucks. It’s got no business being in the trash.’
‘Where’s the sandwich bag the camera was in?’ Hunter asked the officer, who promptly produced a clear plastic evidence bag.
‘All bagged up and ready to go, sir,’ he said. ‘I figured somebody would want this separate from the rest of the garbage.’
Garcia acknowledged the officer’s good work before quickly checking the sandwich bag.
Nothing. No marks, no stains, nothing written anywhere.
He and Hunter returned their attention to the camcorder.
‘Did you try turning this on?’ Hunter asked the officer.
He shook his head. ‘Not my place, sir. I found it and called it in straightaway.’
Hunter nodded his agreement. For an instant he considered if he should take the camera straight to forensics, but the reality of the matter was that there was no clear evidence that that camcorder had indeed been left behind by the killer.
Hunter flipped open the viewer screen and froze. He didn’t need to turn the camera on to know. Staring back at him was all the confirmation he needed.
Eighty
The man stood at the crowded bus stop by the northwest corner of City Hall Park, calmly observing the events unfold on the South Lawn. He had to admit that he was surprised.
He had considered using a thick blood-red marker pen to write Detective Robert Hunter – LAPD on the sandwich bag he’d left inside the trashcan at the northeast corner of the park less than an hour ago. By doing so, he would make sure that if anyone else came across the bag, like a garbage collector (homeless trashcan scavengers tended to stay away from the park due to its proximity to the Police Administration Building), chances were they’d drop it in at the PAB. But in the end the man had decided against it. He’d read a lot about Detective Robert Hunter in the past few months. Hunter was supposed to be ‘a class above’, according to some of the articles he’d read. Well, how good could he really be, if he wasn’t even able to figure out that there was bound to be a hidden reason behind the fact that the LAPD was allowed to trace his last call? A reason other than the pure fun factor of being just outside their front door while tormenting them.
But the man had to admit that he was a little bit surprised because things had happened fast. Faster than what he had foreseen. Very shortly after the Internet voting had ended, a team of five uniformed officers exited the PAB and purposefully crossed the road in the direction of the park. One of them, an officer with red acned cheeks and a thin-tip nose, had almost bumped into him. The team was being coordinated by an overweight senior officer, probably a sergeant, now too old and too fat for any kind of more physically demanding job, the man concluded. The four young officers under his command had clearly been instructed to search the park, not to stop and interview people.
The man’s lips stretched into a skewed, wry smile. Maybe Detective Hunter’s reputation is true after all. The man was sure that the order to solely search the park, instead of wasting time interviewing passersby, had come from Detective Hunter’s office. Which meant that he had very quickly made a connection between the triangulated location of the incoming call and the possibility of a clue or a teaser being left behind.
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