The Night Stalker

One Hundred and Seven

Aided by Garcia’s car’s lights and siren, they were eating ground fast. They hooked onto Interstate 405 and Garcia hit the fast lane doing eighty-five miles an hour.

‘OK, how do you know where the captain is being held?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter played the video again and showed his partner. ‘Because she told me.’

‘Huh?’

‘Pay attention to her lips.’

Garcia’s attention diverted from the road for just a second, enough for him to notice the captain’s lips moving ever so slightly.

‘I’ll be damned.’

‘The captain knew there was only one reason Andrew was shooting this video. She knew we would watch it.’

‘More to the point,’ Garcia added, ‘she knew you would watch it. So what did she say?’

‘St Michael’s Hospice.’

‘What?’

‘That’s why I needed the Internet. I thought she’d said St Michael’s Hospital. But there isn’t one, there never was. So I watched the video again and realized she’d said hospice, not hospital. St Michael’s Hospice in Santa Clarita closed down nine years ago, after a fire destroyed most of the building.’ Hunter typed the address into Garcia’s GPS navigational system. ‘There it is.’

‘Shit,’ Garcia said. ‘Out towards the hills. Completely isolated.’

Hunter nodded.

‘So if we suspect that’s where the captain is being held, why are we going there without a SWAT team?’

‘Because Andrew said that how long the captain lived depended on our actions. He’s somehow monitoring what we do.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, Carlos. But he called me just minutes after I landed. I’d been away less than a day. How the hell did he know I’d gone to Healdsburg this morning?’

Garcia had no answer.

‘SWAT teams are great, but they aren’t exactly subtle. If Andrew gets a sniff that we might know where he is, he’ll get to Captain Blake a lot faster than we or any SWAT team can get to him. And then it’s game over.’

‘So what are we gonna do?’

‘Everything we can. We might be able to surprise him. He doesn’t know that we know. The surprise factor is on our side. If we do this right, we can end this — now.’

Garcia stepped on the gas.

Hunter started flipping through the magazines and printouts Garcia had brought with him. He started reading the interview with Jessica Black again from the start when he suddenly paused and frowned. He reached for the next magazine, the one with Laura Mitchell’s interview.

Adrenalin rushed through his veins. ‘You’re shitting me,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Garcia asked.

‘Wait up.’ He grabbed the computer printout — Kelly Jensen’s interview. ‘We’ve been fucking blind.’

‘For Chrissakes, what have you found, Robert?’

‘Did you know that these three magazines belong to the same corporation?’

‘No.’ Garcia shrugged.

‘Well, they do.’

‘OK, so. .?’

‘Did you check the name of the reporter who conducted the interviews?’

‘No.’ Garcia started to look worried.

‘It’s the same guy.’

‘No way.’

Hunter lifted one of the magazines and pointed to the credits, indicating the reporter’s name.