‘Yeah, but we’re talking about a highly intelligent and skillful killer here,’ Michelle came back. ‘You still need to be careful.’
‘I always am. But I’m not the priority here.’ Hunter showed everyone the photograph of the young blonde woman again. ‘She is. She would’ve been the next victim on his list whether we had his identity or not, not me.’
‘How do you know that?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘Because he would’ve wanted me to be last,’ Hunter explained. ‘It’s part of his revenge exercise. He wants me to watch all the victims die in real time, without being able to help them. Just like I watched his son die, without being able to save him.’
‘But that wasn’t your fault,’ Captain Blake said.
‘To Graham Fisher, it was. In his mind, I could’ve saved his son. I could’ve done more. But all that doesn’t matter. What matters is finding who this woman is.’ Hunter indicated the photograph once again. ‘She’s no doubt somehow linked to Graham’s son’s suicide, or the aftermath of it, like all the previous victims.’
‘Another reporter?’ Garcia suggested. ‘Or maybe the webmaster of that shock-video website where the video of Brandon Fisher’s suicide appeared?’
‘Maybe,’ Hunter agreed with a firm head nod. ‘Let’s get some people looking into that.’
Garcia nodded. ‘I’ll get a team on it.’
Hunter addressed Captain Blake. ‘We’ve got to get this picture over to the press together with Graham’s ASAP. We need to find out who she is, where she lives, where she works, everything. For all we know, he might already have her.’
One Hundred and Nine
Captain Blake called Hunter an hour and a half later. She had returned to the PAB with the woman’s photograph while Hunter, Garcia and Michelle stayed behind. They wanted to slowly go through every inch of Graham Fisher’s house. Five experienced police officers and two forensics agents had also joined them.
The captain told Hunter that she had handed the woman’s photograph to the LAPD Media Relations Office, with specific instructions. They had immediately flexed their muscles, contacting the city’s press and media. The woman’s photo, together with Graham’s, were to appear on all major TV channels in a special bulletin during the lunchtime news, and then again during the afternoon and evening news. The photographs would also be published in the next edition of all city newspapers, but that wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning. Radio stations had also been contacted. They were urging listeners to log onto a special web page that the LAPD IT Department had set up with both photographs. Special call-in lines were already in place. They were now just waiting for developments.
Back in Graham Fisher’s house, Hunter and Garcia started with the basement, bringing in two powerful forensics lights to do away with all the shadows. Garcia worked his way through everything found at the east end of the room, while Hunter meticulously examined the glass cage and the glass coffin found by the west wall.
Neither of the two torture and murder devices could tell Hunter something he didn’t already know. The craftsmanship had been exceptional, but he expected nothing less from someone like Graham Fisher. The glass sheets used to create both devices were a combination of polycarbonate, thermoplastic and layers of laminated glass, making them bulletproof and totally unbreakable by human fists. But Graham had told him that over the phone. Hunter didn’t expect him to be lying. The smell inside both glass containers was a sickening mixture of vomit, urine, feces, fear and very strong disinfectant. In the glass coffin, the dead tarantula hawks added a new, distinct, sour layer to the overall odor. Despite wearing a nose and mouth mask, Hunter felt the urge to throw up a few times, forcing him to take several breaks.
‘Do you think he already has the woman on the photo?’ Garcia asked, as Hunter joined him at the west end of the room.
Hunter took a deep breath, allowing his gaze to settle on the large tools cabinet. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally replied. He didn’t want to say it, but the truth was that Hunter had a terrible gut feeling about all this.
‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Garcia said, stirring Hunter’s attention to a specific spot on the wooden worktable. ‘Have a look at this.’
Hunter looked at the spot Garcia was pointing to, frowned, then crouched down to look at it from even closer.
‘Can you see it?’
Hunter nodded. Regular house dust had settled on the worktable, probably two days’ worth of it. At that particular spot, it had settled in an uneven pattern. Something that used to be on that table had been removed – a rectangular object of about fourteen inches by ten. Hunter moved closer still, examining a second uneven dust pattern, this one thin and long, dragging all the way to the edge of the worktable. He checked the brick wall on that side and saw that about a foot from the floor a power socket had been fitted to it.
‘A laptop computer,’ Hunter ultimately said.
Garcia nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking. And if we’re right, you know what that means, right? Graham probably kept all his plans, drawings, names, timetables, sketches . . . whatever in the laptop that used to be here, not in the desktop computer upstairs.’
Michelle Kelly had taken charge of searching through the desktop computer inside Graham’s office upstairs. Not surprisingly, the computer was password protected, but not by the simple, relatively easy-to-break, original operating system password application, but by a custom-made one, no doubt developed by Graham himself. Trying to breach that protection right there and then, without some of the tools and gadgets she had back at the FBI Cybercrime Division, was an impossible task. Hunter gave her the go-ahead to take the computer back to the FBI headquarters and proceed from there. She would contact them with news as soon as she had any. So far, nothing.
Hunter nodded his agreement to Garcia’s suggestion. ‘Let’s hope we’re wrong. If there’s anything in that desktop computer, even if it’s only a residue of something, I’m sure Michelle will find it.’
They finally moved from the basement, and both detectives unashamedly breathed a sigh of relief.
The officers who were tasked with the door-to-door around Graham’s street, and some of the neighboring ones, came back with no news. Not every neighbor was home, but the few who were could shine no light on the identity of the woman in the photograph they found inside Graham’s basement, or on where Graham might’ve gone. One thing was consistent, though. They had all said that since his son’s death, Graham had become a different man – withdrawn, isolated, uncommunicative. Since his wife passed away, he had become a ghost, barely seen by anyone.
Hunter and Garcia spent almost two hours going through every scrap of paper, every book, every magazine, every note they found inside Graham’s office upstairs. None of it gave them anything to work with.
By mid-afternoon Hunter received a call from Detective Perez. He explained that after the lunchtime news the call-in lines had already received several tips about the woman’s identity. Detectives and officers were checking the veracity of those tips, and he would get back to Hunter as soon as they had something more solid.
Another hour and a half came and went without a single new piece of development. Garcia had gone back to the PAB to help Detective Perez with the call-in lines.
Hunter was sitting alone inside Graham’s son’s bedroom when his cellphone beeped, announcing a new text message. He checked the display window – unknown number.