The Night Stalker

Thirteen

Captain Blake leaned against the edge of Garcia’s desk and folded her arms. ‘You’ve lost me, Robert.’

‘Have a look at that printout again, Captain,’ Hunter said. ‘The killer wrote “It’s inside you” not “It’s inside her”. He wasn’t communicating with us.’

‘Why would the killer try to communicate with a dead body?’

‘Because she wasn’t dead when he left her.’

The captain ran a finger over her right eyebrow and pulled a face. ‘You lost me even more now.’

Hunter walked up to the pictures board. ‘There were several things that were bothering me about the crime-scene photos. That’s why I wanted to have a look at the butcher’s shop again myself.’ He pointed to one of the pictures. ‘Look at the position the body was found in, the arms in particular. One is hanging down from the side of the counter and the other is resting awkwardly on her chest. The fingers on her right hand are spread apart and half bent, as if she was trying to dig at something. I don’t think the killer left her in this particular position.’

‘The body might’ve been interfered with, Robert,’ the captain countered. ‘It was an anonymous phone call that gave us the body’s location, remember?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, and I listened to the 911 recording. It’s a girl’s voice. Not older than sixteen or seventeen, and she sounded hysterical. The reason why she didn’t wanna give us her name is probably because she was going into that room to shoot up.’

‘OK, so the girl didn’t touch the body,’ the captain said, accepting his theory. ‘But maybe you’re reading too much into this message. Maybe the killer didn’t put a great deal of thought into it. So he wrote you instead of her, no big deal.’

It was Garcia’s turn to disagree. ‘That would suggest that the writing on the ceiling was a spur-of-the-moment thing, Captain.’ He rubbed the lump on his nose. ‘We’re talking about someone who put together his own explosive device and probably engineered the trigger mechanism himself. He then placed it all inside the victim in some way that it wouldn’t be triggered until found and extracted. All of that while she was still alive.’ He shook his head and faced the pictures board. ‘Whatever this killer did, Captain, nothing was on the spur of the moment. He thought it all through. And that’s what makes him so dangerous.’