The Caller

Ninety

Hunter stood before a large organizational board divided into twelve columns. Each column started with a photograph of the person it represented. There were eight women and four men. Underneath each image, a printed sheet carried all sorts of information about the subject on the picture — name, address, age, phone number and so on. The very last item on every sheet read: ‘Question to be asked’. A red ‘X’ had been drawn over the faces of three of the twelve subjects. Three faces which were now very familiar to Hunter, but the twist was, they didn’t belong to the three victims of the ‘video-call killer’.

As Hunter’s eyes studied the subject pictures, he felt sick, his stomach twisting inside of him, because he had been right.

The photographs on the board had all been downloaded from social media websites. They were the exact same photographs Hunter had been looking at back in his office.

‘How could I have failed to notice this before?’

Click.

The sound of a round being chambered into a semi-automatic pistol came from just a few feet behind Hunter.

‘If I were you, I’d put that gun down, Detective.’

As Hunter recognized the male voice, his muscles tensed and his finger curved itself firmly over the trigger of his H&K Mark 23.

‘Do you really think you’re fast enough?’ the killer asked, as if reading Hunter’s thoughts.

Hunter was a great marksman and a very fast mover, he knew that, but being able to spin around and squeeze a shot before the killer’s bullet got to him first was a trick he didn’t think he could pull off.

‘Drop the gun, Detective,’ the killer said one more time, his voice unaltered, ‘or I’ll blow your head off, and since the weapon I’m holding is a three fifty-seven Magnum, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, it will blow your head clean off your shoulders. The only way that they will be able to identify you, after scooping your brains off that wall, will be through fingerprints or DNA.’

‘You should know that well enough, Nick,’ Hunter replied. ‘After all, that’s where your expertise lies, isn’t it? Fingerprints.’

Nicholas Holden, the fingerprint expert forensic agent from Dr. Slater’s team, smiled. ‘Well, since you are in my basement uninvited, it’s obvious that you figured out who I was. I’m intrigued by how you did it, because I know I’ve made no mistakes, but we’ll get to that soon enough. Now, drop your weapon, or this conversation is about to end very badly, at least for you.’

Hunter closed his eyes and cursed himself. Walking into that basement alone had been a mistake. He should’ve trusted the tingling sensation he’d got moments earlier. He should’ve called for backup. There were too many shelving units down in that basement. Too many places one could hide behind. There was no way that he could’ve secured that whole area single-handed. What he should’ve done was have a SWAT team with him.

All a little too late now.

‘Arms wide open, Detective. Weapon dangling from your left index finger.’

Too many shelving units down in that basement. Too many places one could hide behind — that worked both ways. If Holden could hide behind them, so could Hunter... or so he thought.

Without turning his head, Hunter’s eyes quickly moved left then right. The closest shelving unit to him was on the left, but it was about seven feet away — way too far for him to get to before a bullet either blew his head off or added a hole the size of a grapefruit to his back.

‘Still wondering if you’re quick enough, Detective?’ Holden asked. ‘Why don’t you give it a go and we’ll find out. My money is on me. Want to take that bet?’

No reply.

‘Arms wide open, Detective,’ Holden repeated. ‘Weapon dangling from your left index finger. Do it now.’

Hunter knew he had no other option but to comply. He took a deep breath and did as he was told.

‘Now, toss it to your left. Don’t drop it, toss it, and make me believe you mean it.’

Hunter didn’t move.

‘Now, Detective.’

Angering a man holding a three fifty-seven Magnum was a mistake in any imaginable scenario. Angering a serial killer holding a three fifty-seven Magnum was just plain stupid.

Hunter flicked his wrist firmly and his weapon flew across the room. As it hit the floor several feet away, it slid up to a cardboard box by a shelving unit. Hunter followed it with his eyes.

‘Keep your arms wide open, Detective,’ Holden said. ‘They come down, you go down, minus a head, is that clear?’

‘Crystal.’

There was a long silent pause and Hunter couldn’t help but wonder if he was about to get shot in the back anyway. What did the killer have to lose? He’d already killed three people, and according to his ‘death board’, there were nine more still to come. Adding Hunter to that list wouldn’t make a difference.

‘Admit it, Detective...’ Holden finally broke the silence. Hunter could tell he had moved a little to his left. ‘You’re impressed by my work, aren’t you?’

Hunter hadn’t seen it, but Holden had nodded at the board.

‘I’m not sure “impressed” is the word I’d use, Nick.’ Despite how fast Hunter’s heart was beating, he still managed to keep his voice composed and its pace steady. ‘More like... sickened by it.’

The new pause that followed felt heavy and Hunter wondered if he had just sealed his fate with his poor choice of words.

‘That’s because you don’t understand it, Detective.’

This time Hunter put more thought into his reply. ‘What is there to understand, Nick?’

Hunter kept using Holden’s first name for a very simple reason — he was trying to insert a subliminal message into his sentences. Trying to make Holden’s subconscious mind perceive him as a friend, not an enemy. As he spoke, Hunter’s eyes stayed on the board in front of him. The more he looked at it, the more dots he connected.

‘You were... punishing innocent people by killing someone they were close to. Someone they loved.’

The three familiar faces with the red ‘X’ over them didn’t belong to the killer’s three victims. They belonged to the people who the killer had called — Tanya Kaitlin, John Jenkinson and Erica Barnes. They had been the real targets of the ‘video-call killer’.

‘Innocent?’ Holden asked, his tone almost sarcastic. ‘Have you looked at the pictures at the top of each column?’

‘I have,’ Hunter confessed.

‘And can’t you see what they’re doing?’ Holden’s voice was still calm, but Hunter could tell that anger was starting to creep into it.

‘Yes, I can.’

The accident Hunter had read about back in his office was the connecting link between Holden and his targets... his victims. It was the reason behind all his torturing. The reason behind all his murders.

The accident had happened three and a half years ago in Lancaster, Northern Los Angeles. At around two in the morning, on Sierra Highway — a single-carriageway road that links Los Angeles to Mojave — a blue Ford Fusion driving south crossed over on to the north-heading traffic and collided head-on with a white Saturn S. Both occupants of the Ford Fusion, a couple in their early twenties, died instantly. The Saturn S was carrying a family of four: Nicholas Holden; his wife of ten years, Dora; and both of their daughters, nine-year-old Julie and Megan, seven and a half. Nicholas Holden was the only survivor of that tragic collision.

Back in his office, Hunter had had no trouble accessing the report by the Collision Investigation Unit. The conclusion reached by the investigating detective had been that the accident took place because the driver of the Ford Fusion had diverted her attention off the road. The reason for that, as witnessed by the driver of another car, was that she had been using her cellphone to take a selfie with her boyfriend while the vehicle was moving at speed.

That was the recurring theme on all the photographs on Holden’s board — a selfie taken with either friends or family while the subject was driving.

In Tanya Kaitlin’s photo, which was the same photo Hunter had come across back in his office, she and Karen Ward had big bright smiles on their faces while Tanya held her cellphone at arm’s length. The motion blur that could be seen through the passenger’s window left no doubt that the car was moving.

A similar photo had been taken by Mr. J. His wife Cassandra was sitting on the passenger seat, smiling. Their son Patrick was giving them both bunny ears with his fingers from the back seat.

Erica Barnes and her sister, Dr. Gwen Barnes, were both making silly faces at the camera while Erica, the driver, took the shot.

‘Did you know that one in every four traffic accidents in the USA is caused as a consequence of a driver using a cellphone?’ Holden’s voice got angrier. ‘One in every four, Detective.’

Hunter knew the statistic, but he remained silent. His arms were starting to tire.

‘I lost my entire family that night,’ Holden continued. ‘My wife, who was thirty-six, and my two daughters. The oldest was nine years old. The youngest, seven. They all died because some stupid woman decided to snap a selfie while driving down a highway, so she could upload it to her goddamn Facebook page. Now is that fair?’

Another piece of the puzzle just slotted into place — social-media websites. That was the reason he searched them.

‘I too lost my life that night, Detective,’ Holden said. The anger was gone from his voice. ‘One moment I had everything to live for — a beautiful wife and two gorgeous daughters — the next... all gone. My life was left without meaning. My heart had nothing to beat for anymore.’

Another heavy pause.

‘After the accident,’ Holden continued, ‘I spent six months in hospital then another year just... existing... vegetating in this world, really. Everything I did, I did robotically, without any meaning. For me, life became nothing more than a vacuum.’

Hunter noticed that Holden’s voice had moved again. This time, slightly to the right.

‘Despite all the counseling I was given, nothing seemed able to stop the destructive thoughts that tormented me almost daily. Not towards others, but towards myself. Without my family, it didn’t seem like I belonged in this world anymore. But isn’t life ironic, Detective? When I was finally about to succumb to those destructive thoughts, when I had finally decided that I just couldn’t vegetate any longer, I witnessed something that changed my life. As I was sitting at a coffee shop, wondering about the best way to go, I saw a car take out a mother holding a child at a crosswalk. The accident happened because the driver was distracted. Want to have a guess why?’

Hunter didn’t need to reply.

‘That’s right. He was on his fucking cellphone.’

Holden delivered his last sentence with so much anger, Hunter thought he was about to pull the trigger.

‘The mother survived. The child didn’t. The driver never stopped to help.’

The pause that followed was long.

‘What I saw that day, the way it made me feel, ignited something new inside of me.’ Holden’s voice was back to sounding emotionless. ‘That was when it dawned on me that I indeed needed to stop vegetating. Not because I needed to end it all, but because I needed to start living again and I had finally found something to live for.’

‘So you started planning,’ Hunter said, filling in the blanks.

‘So I started planning,’ Holden confirmed. ‘Getting back to work was easy. My counselor had been pushing me to do it for months. As she had always said — the best thing for me would be to keep busy, to keep my brain occupied. Sitting at home all day would undoubtedly force my mind to wander and, in the state I was in, that wasn’t a good thing. I’d probably be digging through memories of the accident or, even worse, harvesting destructive thoughts, which, without her knowledge, I’d been doing since my family’s funeral. So when I finally agreed, saying that she was right, that keeping busy and returning to work would be good for me, she signed on to the idea with a wide smile. After that, the real work started.’

‘Finding your victims,’ Hunter said, his eyes still on the board in front of him.

‘That’s right. I began browsing through social-media sites, looking for anyone who had, at any time, posted a selfie taken inside a moving vehicle.’ Holden laughed. ‘You’d be surprised by what people post on their pages, Detective, by the pictures they upload. You can find out all sorts of personal information on them, on their friends, on their families, you name it. You can find out about their likes, dislikes, their preferences, where they’re going to be on a certain day and at what time, what they know, what they don’t know, what they should know, but don’t.’ Another animated laugh. ‘Social media sites are like a free market of information on people. Information that they, themselves, freely put out there for others to find.’

‘So your real target was the person taking the selfie,’ Hunter said. ‘The people you called, not the people you killed.’

‘Of course,’ Holden admitted. ‘Killing them would’ve been too easy. That wasn’t the point of the exercise.’

An exercise, Hunter thought. Was that how Holden saw his murders?

‘You know, Detective, I really wish I had died in that car crash, but instead, I got trapped. Did you know that?’

Hunter didn’t. It wasn’t mentioned in any of the reports he’d read.

‘I couldn’t free myself from my seat.’ Holden paused again, long and heavy. When he spoke, his voice was full of grief. ‘My wife and my older daughter didn’t die instantly. It took them almost five minutes to go. I had to watch them die right in front of my eyes without being able to do a thing. I was right there, so close, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t reach them.’

Hunter breathed in another piece of the puzzle. That had been the reason for the video-calls. Holden wanted his targets to watch the ones they cared for suffer. He wanted them to watch them die, just like he had to watch his family die. He wanted them to feel powerless, just like he had felt that night.

‘I hear my daughter’s voice every night, Detective: “Please help me, Daddy... Please help Mommy.” ’ Holden’s voice croaked. ‘I see their faces every time I close my eyes. Do you understand what sort of destructive feeling comes from being so helpless, Detective?’

Silence.

‘DO YOU?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Guilt.’

One more piece of the puzzle — the reason for the question game. Holden didn’t only want to make his targets watch their loved ones suffer in pain before dying, like he’d had to watch his wife and daughter. He also wanted to give them the false sense of power, the belief that they could save their lives, just so they could experience helplessness in the same way he had. That was where the real pain, the real soul destruction, came from — guilt. It came from the knowledge that they could’ve made all the difference, if only they’d known the answer to a simple question — an answer that they should’ve known. Holden wanted guilt to be a constant part of his targets’ lives, just like it was in his.

Hunter wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to keep his arms up. The pain in his shoulders was starting to blind him. He needed a plan. He needed to think of something and he needed to do it fast.

‘Would you like to know how they died, Detective?’ Holden asked. ‘My family?’

Keep him talking, Hunter thought. Keep him talking.

‘How?’

‘Julie,’ Holden said, ‘my older daughter, was sitting behind my wife. With the impact, she was catapulted forward like a bullet and, despite being strapped in, her head smashed against the passenger’s seat in front of her.’ There was a short pause. ‘Do you know what a splinter fracture is, Detective?’

Hunter closed his eyes as the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Holden’s killing methods.

‘Yes... I do.’

‘Her little tiny skull was riddled with them. Her brain got punctured thirteen times.’ Holden coughed as if he had something lodged in his throat.

Hunter’s attention sharpened.

‘Megan,’ Holden continued, ‘my youngest, who was sitting directly behind me, had her face and skull crushed by my seat — like a vise. The crash impact was so violent, my seat broke off its rails and flew back into her. She never had a chance.’

Hunter’s shoulder muscles were now in complete agony, too fatigued to keep his arms up for much longer, but logic told him that if his arms were tired, so were Holden’s.

They’d been talking for around eight minutes now. A three fifty-seven Magnum semi-automatic pistol weighed around two and a half pounds, which, after eight minutes, would add considerably to the effort his arm muscles had to go through to keep Hunter under aim.

‘My wife, Dora, she suffered the worst.’ Holden paused again, as if he had to breathe in the strength to explain it. ‘The impact caused the windshield to explode into the car and on to the two of us, but because my seat broke off its rails and flew back, she took the bulk of the impact. Her face was completely lacerated by glass. It took her around five minutes to bleed to death. All I could do was look at her... and scream... and cry... but I couldn’t get to her. I just couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t get to my babies.’

Holden’s last few words were delivered with a lot of pain and in an almost strangled voice. Hunter couldn’t see it, but he had no doubt that tears had come to his eyes.

Teary eyes, tired arms. It was now or never.