One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) (читать книги бесплатно полные версии txt) 📗
The man had to admit that there was a tiny part somewhere inside of him that wished that she had taken his offer and used the garden scissors to butcher her own hand. He would really have let her go if she had done it. But the truth was he knew that there were very few people on this earth who were mentally and emotionally strong enough. Very few people on this earth who were capable of that sort of self-mutilation, even if it was to save their own life. And ‘that bitch’ wasn’t one of them.
No matter, he thought. What he had in store for her was infinitely better than chopping her fingers off, and it would produce another fantastic Internet spectacle, of that he was sure. That thought brought a grin to his face.
He tightened up the last screw, connecting his device to the electricity supply. It was time to test it.
The man got up from the chair he’d been sitting on for the past two hours, removed his working glasses and gently rubbed his gritty eyes with his thumb and forefinger for a long while. The sensation was soothing. He drank a glass of iced water before reaching inside the groceries bag he had with him, retrieving a large watermelon he had bought that morning.
He’d smiled when the short and round lady at the grocery store told him that the two particular watermelons he was looking at weren’t ripe enough yet.
‘It’ll be at least three days before those are good enough to eat,’ the groceries lady had said. ‘I have better ones right here, look. Nice and juicy, perfectly ripe, good for today.’
The man simply shook his head. ‘These ones will do fine. It’s the size I’m more interested in.’
Approaching his newly finished gadget, the man placed the large fruit on the correct spot before grabbing the remote control from the worktable. He stood back several paces, took a deep breath, readied his stopwatch and finally clicked the red button on the control.
A muffled mechanical grinding noise came from the device, as the many sprockets started turning, bringing his new monstrous creation to life.
The man watched transfixed, as every part worked just as he had designed, but there was one tiny problem. It all happened way too fast. The watermelon lasted exactly 39.8 seconds. True, the human body was much more resistant than any watermelon, but, still, he wanted this to drag on for as long as possible. He wanted his Internet audience to enjoy it, be disgusted and terrified by it, feel pity or anger, laugh at it, comment on it, joke and gossip about it, whatever, but most of all he wanted ‘that bitch’ to suffer.
He cleaned the device from the mess the watermelon had made and spent the next forty-five minutes tightening and loosening screws, adjusting the tension on different joints and springs, and calibrating pressured parts until he was satisfied. When he figured he had done enough, he reached for the second watermelon from his groceries bag and ran his device test again.
When, at the end of it, he clicked his stopwatch and checked the time, he smiled.
‘Perfect.’
One Hundred and One
For a quick instant it felt as if Garcia’s words were too surreal to make any sense.
‘What?’ Hunter and Captain Blake asked him at the exact same time.
‘What do you mean – you know him?’ Michelle tagged.
Garcia’s eyes were still fixed on Graham Fisher’s photograph that was being projected onto the screen at the front of the room.
‘I mean.’ He barely mumbled the words, clearly running something over inside his head. ‘I know I’ve seen him before, but I just can’t remember where.’
Hunter looked back at the screen. ‘You’ve seen this face before?’
Garcia nodded slowly. ‘I’m positive I have.’
‘Recently?’
Another slow nod.
A brief tense moment of hesitation went by.
‘Maybe it was at one of the crime scenes?’ a SWAT agent suggested. ‘As we all know, there are always curious people hanging around at the edge of the perimeter. Some killers love to hang back, mingle with the crowd and watch the police work. Some of them get off on that kind of shit.’
Garcia closed his eyes, urging the images to come back to him. What he got was a roller coaster of mental pictures shuffled out of order. The first memory that flashed at him was of his wife, Anna, and her friend, Patricia, in Tujunga Village, just after the killer had privately broadcast the two of them. Garcia tried to remember all the faces he’d seen that day – maybe in the coffee shop where Anna had been waiting for them, or across the road, or maybe even looking out through a shop window.
Nothing.
Tujunga Village wasn’t where he had seen Graham Fisher before.
Garcia then mentally revisited the alleyway in Mission Hills where the body of Kevin Lee Parker, the killer’s first victim, had been found. It had been before dawn, in a hidden-away back street. There were no curious onlookers hanging around that morning. No one except the homeless man who had found the body. Garcia quickly discarded those images as well and moved on.
Next came City Hall Park and the discovery of the camcorder. He and Hunter knew the killer was close by that day. He would’ve wanted to watch the police’s reaction to his little joke. Garcia tried his best to remember everyone he saw around the park.
Rush hour – way too many people.
He pushed himself, concentrating harder. Graham Fisher’s face wasn’t among the ones he could remember.
The second dump scene came next – Dewey Street in Santa Monica. Christina Stevenson’s body had been left by a dumpster in the small parking lot at the back of a two-story office building. Garcia could clearly recall a crowd hanging around the perimeter. Then he remembered the man who had caught his eye that day – tall, lean and spare, dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and dark blue jeans. Garcia tried to picture his face, and that was when all the memories, except one, vanished from his mind and he finally remembered.
‘Oh my God!’ he whispered, his eyes reopening and instantly widening. ‘The doctor.’
‘What?’ Hunter queried. ‘What doctor?’
‘The one in the park,’ Garcia replied, almost numbed by the memory. ‘I told you about it.’ He addressed Hunter, before turning and looking at Captain Blake and Michelle. ‘Anna and I went for a run in the park close to our apartment a couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday morning,’ he explained. ‘It was my day off. We were on our last lap of the park when some guy, who was riding a bike, had a heart attack right there and then. He was just behind us. Despite a bunch of people gathering around to have a look at what was happening, I was the only one who rushed to help. At least at first. I was just about to start CPR when this other guy turned up, weaving his way through the crowd. He’d also been jogging in the park that morning. I know because I saw him. Well, he said he was a doctor and took complete control of the situation until the paramedics got there. I helped him administer CPR. He wasn’t kidding, or faking it. He really tried to save that man’s life.’
‘And that guy was Graham Fisher?’ the captain asked.
Garcia nodded again, looking back at the photograph on the screen. ‘It was him. No doubt about it.’
A new uncomfortable silence descended onto the room.
‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘He was stalking Anna and me because he was already planning on going after her. That incident happened only a couple of days before he pulled that sick stunt of broadcasting Anna and her friend as they were out shopping.’ Anger coated Garcia’s words now. ‘Fuck! I talked to him. I stood next to him. He shook my hand . . . He shook Anna’s hand . . .’
