The Night Stalker

Sixty-One

Hunter snapped his fingers at his partner to get his attention. He didn’t have to; Garcia had already noticed the change in Hunter’s expression.

‘Start a trace?’ Hunter said to Tracy.

‘We’re all set here, Detective.’

Hunter nodded to himself. ‘OK, put him through.’

There was a click on the line followed by a second of static.

Hunter waited.

So did the person on the other end of the line.

‘This is Detective Robert Hunter.’ Hunter eventually broke the silence. He was in no mood for games.

‘Why are you after me?’ The sentence was delivered in a calm, unrushed tone. The voice was like a muffled whisper, as if his phone’s mouthpiece had been wrapped in several layers of cloth.

‘James Smith?’

There was a short pause. ‘Why are you after me?’ he repeated in the same cool tone.

‘You know why we’re after you.’ Hunter’s calm voice matched Smith’s. ‘That’s why you ran, isn’t it?’

‘The newspapers all across town have my picture in them. They say the police want to speak to me in relation to an ongoing investigation, but no other details are given. So I want you to tell me: why are you after me? How am I related to any ongoing investigation?’

‘Why don’t you come in, James? We can sit down and talk. I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.’

A bitter chuckle. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that just now, Detective.’

‘Right now that’s your best option. What else can you do? You can’t run or hide forever. As you said, your photograph is all over the papers. And it’s going to stay there. Sooner or later someone will recognize you — on the streets, in a shop, driving around. You know you’re not invisible. Come in and let’s talk.’

‘The picture in the papers is crap and you know it — grainy, out of focus and partially obscured. It’s a desperate attempt. I had trouble recognizing myself. The newspapers won’t carry on publishing that picture forever, ’specially if you get no results from it. In a week’s time I could dance naked on Sunset Strip and no one would recognize me.’

Hunter didn’t reply. He knew it was only too true.

‘So I’m gonna ask you one more time, Detective. Why are you after me? And how am I related to a major ongoing investigation?’

‘If you don’t know why we’re after you, how do you know we’re running a major investigation? None of the papers mentions it.’

‘I’m not that stupid, Detective. If the LAPD got the papers to publish a snapshot of every person they’d like to talk to, there wouldn’t be enough paper in California for all the pictures. The few that do get published are always related to a major investigation. Something big is going on, and somehow you think I’m involved.’

Smith was right, Hunter thought, he wasn’t stupid.

‘So you’re telling me that you figured all that out by yourself, but you have no idea why we came to your door?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’

Something in Smith’s tone intrigued Hunter. ‘So why don’t you come in, and we can clear everything up?’

‘Goodbye, Detective.’

‘Wait.’ Hunter stopped Smith before he was able to disconnect. ‘Do you know which section of the LAPD I’m with?’

Garcia looked at his partner and frowned.

Smith hesitated for a second.

‘Fraud?’

Garcia’s brow creased even further.

The pause that followed stretched for several seconds.

‘No, I’m not with the fraud squad.’

Silence.

‘James? You still there?’

‘Which section?’

Hunter noticed a different tension in Smith’s voice.

‘Homicide.’

‘Homicide? Look, I don’t like going through switchboards. Give me a number where I can contact you directly.’ The tension in his voice had morphed into anxiety.

‘Why don’t you give me your number?’

‘If you wanna play games, suit yourself. Goodbye, Detective.’

‘OK.’ Hunter stopped him again. ‘We’ll play it your way.’ He gave Smith his number and the line went dead. Hunter quickly pressed a button on his cell phone and got the Special Operations switchboard again. ‘Tracy, are you there?’

‘I’m here, Detective.’

‘Tell me you’ve got something.’

‘Sorry, Detective, whoever this guy is, he really ain’t stupid. He’s using a pre-paid cell phone. Either a very cheap one with no GPS chip, or he knows how to deactivate them.’

Hunter knew the logic of how GPS chip phones worked. They emitted a locator beacon every fifteen or so seconds, similar to the ones used by airplanes. GPS satellites could then very quickly pin the phone location down to the nearest fifteen to twenty feet. It was obvious James Smith knew that too.

‘How about triangulation?’ Hunter asked.

‘As I said before, this guy ain’t dumb, Detective. He was on the move during the call. And I mean he was moving fast. The phone was immediately switched off once he disconnected.’

‘Shit!’ Hunter ran a hand through his hair. He knew that triangulation is the most accurate method of locating a cell phone that doesn’t send out a position signal. A live cell phone is in continual relay with surrounding cell phone towers to ensure they get the best signal available. Triangulation works by identifying the three towers receiving the strongest signal from the phone and drawing their coverage radius. At the point where the three orbits intersect, that’s where the phone is located. Its accuracy depends on how close together the three signal receiving towers are. In a city like Los Angeles, where there are simply hundreds and hundreds of cell phone towers, the accuracy can be almost as precise as with a GPS chip. And that’s where the being on the move problem comes from. In Los Angeles, cell phone towers are relatively close together. The process of triangulating can take as long as ten to fifteen minutes. If during that process the cell phone in question moves out of range of one of the three triangulating towers and into the range of a new one, the whole process fails and it has to start again from the beginning. If James Smith was calling from a moving car or even a bus, his signal would be constantly jumping from tower to tower in the space of minutes. Triangulation would be virtually impossible. Tracy was right. James Smith was no first-timer.

‘OK, Tracy, here’s what I want you to do. .’