The Night Stalker

Sixty

The phone on Hunter’s desk rang almost the second he entered his office. It was Doctor Hove.

‘Robert, I’m about to send you some lab results on Jensen. I got my team to fast-track whatever they could.’

‘Thanks, Doc. What do we have?’ He gestured for Garcia, who’d just come in, to grab his phone and listen in.

‘OK, as we expected, the victim was sedated. We found traces of a drug called Estazolam in her blood. It’s a sleeping agent.’

‘Usually prescribed for short-term treatment of insomnia, right?’ Hunter confirmed.

Doctor Hove had forgotten that Hunter knew more about insomnia than most doctors.

‘That’s right. Now, given its relatively high concentration, we figured that’s what the killer used to sedate her on the day she died. Before dumping her in that basement. He didn’t overdo it, though. He used just enough to knock her out for a couple of hours or so.’

Hunter leaned back in his chair.

‘But the interesting thing is: we also found faint traces of another drug. Something called Mexitil. It’s an anti-arrhythmic drug.’

‘Anti-what?’ Garcia blurted.

‘A common drug used to treat a heart condition called ventricular arrhythmia.’

Hunter started leafing through sheets of paper on his desk.

‘If you’re looking for her medical records, Robert, don’t bother,’ the doctor said, recognizing the sound of pages turning. ‘Her heart was as strong as a racing horse’s. She didn’t have the condition.’

Hunter stopped and thought for a split second. ‘What are the side effects of this Mexitil, Doc?’

‘Very good, Robert. Mexitil is pharmacologically similar to Lidocaine, which as you know is a local anesthetic. Its major side effect is light drowsiness and confusion. But if taken by someone who doesn’t suffer from ventricular arrhythmia, that light drowsiness can become moderate to severe. And you don’t even need high doses of the drug to cause it. But that’s about all it does. It won’t knock you out. It won’t even make you doze off.’

Hunter considered it. It made sense. That was probably why neither of the victims had any restraint marks. If the killer kept them in a constant state of confusion and drowsiness, he didn’t need to immobilize them.

‘Would there be any other reason why the killer chose to use Mexitil?’ Hunter asked. ‘If he just wanted them high, he could’ve used a number of drugs.’

‘It’s an easy drug to obtain on the Internet.’

‘So are most drugs nowadays, Doc,’ Garcia countered.

‘True.’ There was a short pause. ‘There’s always the chance that he’s familiar with the drug. He might suffer from the condition himself.’

Hunter was already clicking away on his computer, searching the Internet for more information about the drug. ‘Could you check your database, Doc? Go back five. . no, ten years. Look for any case where Mexitil was found in a murder victim’s blood?’

‘No problem.’ This time the sound of pages turning came from Doctor Hove’s side. ‘I’ve also got a result on the dark copper-colored dust retrieved from under the victim’s fingernails. It’s brick dust.’

Hunter’s eyebrows arched.

‘We might be able to identify exactly what kind of brick it is. I’ll let you know if we can.’ The doctor coughed to clear her throat. ‘At first I thought that maybe she tried to claw her way out of wherever she was kept. Somewhere with a brick wall. But as you well know, if that had been the case, she’d certainly have cracked and broken nails. . maybe even missing ones. None were even chipped. They were filed down into claws, remember? Maybe the killer has a bizarre fetish for pointy fingernails.’

Hunter’s eyes quickly moved from his computer to the pictures board. ‘Nothing else was found under her nails?’

‘Yes, bits of her own skin,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘She scraped at her mouth, her groin and the stitches before dying.’

‘Only her skin?’

‘That’s right.’

Hunter nodded to himself. ‘OK, Doc. Call me if anything else comes up.’ He put the phone down and stared at his own fingernails for a moment. ‘A weapon,’ he whispered.

‘A what?’ Garcia asked, rolling his chair away from his desk.

‘A weapon. That’s why her fingernails were so claw-like.’ Hunter stood up and approached the pictures board. ‘Look at the crime-scene pictures of our first victim.’ He pointed to the ones of Laura Mitchell’s hands. There was nothing strange about her fingernails.

‘No filing,’ Garcia agreed.

‘Having pointy fingernails didn’t come from the killer, as the doctor suggested. Kelly used a brick wall to sharpen them herself. I think she wanted to attack her captor. In an empty cell, it was the only weapon she could think of.’

Garcia pinched his bottom lip. ‘But nothing else was found under her nails except brick dust and her own skin. So she never got the chance to use them.’

‘That’s right.’ Hunter had returned to his desk and was flipping through his notebook. ‘The doctor said that Kelly’s organs showed mild symptoms of dehydration and malnutrition, right? I think she starved herself.’

Garcia frowned.

‘Mexitil. Kelly had no needle marks on her, remember?’

‘He was feeding it to her through her food.’

Hunter leaned against his desk. ‘Most probably, and she figured out the food was drugged.’

‘So she stopped eating to get rid of the dizziness.’ Garcia picked up Hunter’s train of thought. ‘But wouldn’t that make her too weak to fight back?’

‘It would if she’d gone without food for a few days, but that wasn’t the case.’

‘One day only. That’s what Doctor Hove said, right?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Mexitil isn’t a proper sedative. Kelly would’ve only needed to be off it for a few hours.’

‘Enough to get rid of the dizziness, but not enough to take all of her strength away. But how would she know that?’

‘She didn’t. She gambled.’

‘So she filed her nails into the only weapon she could think of.’ Garcia ran a hand through his hair while exhaling. ‘She wanted out of there. She was trying to do something herself because she knew she was running out of time, and she’d run out of hope. She got tired of waiting for us to save her.’

Hunter’s cell phone started ringing.

‘Detective Hunter,’ he said, bringing the clamshell phone to his ear.

‘Detective, this is Tracy from the Special Operations switchboard. I’m managing the information line on the suspect you’re looking for, James Smith.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve got someone on the line who claims to be him.’

Hunter pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well, we’ve had about fifty of those so far. Just take his—’

‘Detective,’ Tracy interrupted, ‘I think you should take this call.’