One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2). Страница 13

Christina wasn’t married, and though she’d had plenty of affairs and flings, she wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. She thought about it for a second longer and decided that right now there was no one she would’ve wanted to share that bottle of champagne with anyway. She reached for it, undid the wire seal and popped the bottle open.

Christina had been told plenty of times that good wines needed to breathe. She had no idea if the same applied to champagne, but she didn’t care either. She poured herself a glass and had a large sip – heaven. Her headache was already starting to fade.

Kicking off her shoes, Christina crossed the living room and took the corridor that led deeper into the house, and to her bedroom at the end. Her room was large and a lot more girly than she would like most people to know. Pale peach walls were complemented by a light pink ceiling skirting. Long floral curtains covered the glass sliding doors that led to her backyard and swimming pool. A pink dresser, complete with a mirror and dressing room-style lights, sat in the corner of the room. Her king-size bed, pushed up against the north wall, was overflowing with cushions and stuffed toys.

Christina placed her glass and the champagne bottle on the bedside table, attached her MP3 player to the portable stereo on the dresser and started dancing to the sound of Lady Gaga while undressing. Off came the shirt, followed by her jeans. She returned to her champagne and poured herself another glass, drinking half of it down before pausing in front of the mirrored wardrobe doors. The champagne was starting to have the desired effect, and she began dancing again while undoing her bra and slipping off her purple panties. Naked, she ran her hands over her breasts, pulled a sexy pose and blew herself a kiss in the mirror before bursting into laughter.

She unclipped the clasp on her diamond Tag Heuer watch, a present from an old lover, and as she pulled it off her wrist it dropped to the floor, hit her foot and slid under her bed.

‘Damn, that hurt,’ she said, bending over to massage her right foot. Without looking, she quickly swept a hand under the bed. Her fingers found nothing. ‘Shit.’

Christina got down on her hands and knees and brought her face about an inch from the floor.

‘There you are.’

The watch had slid toward the wall against the headboard. To reach it, she had to slide halfway under the bed. As she did, for no reason at all, her gaze wandered across the floor to the other side, and all the way to the glass sliding doors and the bottom edge of her long floral curtains. And that was when she saw them.

A black pair of male shoes with their heels pushed tight against the glass door.

Shock and fear caused her eyes to slowly glide up the curtains, and she noticed that at that exact spot the folds didn’t sit right. For Christina, the next few seconds passed in slow motion. Her gaze moved up a little more before stopping dead.

From inside her room, through the break in the curtains, someone was staring straight back at her.

Sixteen

After managing four and a half consecutive hours of sleep, fantastic by his standards, Hunter got to his office at 8:10 a.m. Garcia was already at his desk reading through all the overnight emails – nothing interesting.

Hunter had taken off his jacket and powered up his computer when the phone on his desk rang.

‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special.’

‘Robert, it’s Mike Brindle. I’ve got the result from that partial tire print we got in the alleyway.’

‘Anything good?’

‘Well, we’ve got a match.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘The print came from a Goodyear Wrangler ATS tire. Specifically, a P265/70R17.’

‘And that means . . .?’

‘That we’ve got a common pickup truck tire,’ Brindle explained. ‘The ATS range is used by several truck manufacturers as the original equipment tire on new vehicles. The one in question has been used by Ford for their F-150 and F-250 trucks for the past four years, and by Chevrolet for their Silverado for the past three.’

‘Damn!’

‘Yep, I’ve asked someone to check. Even with the recession, in the whole of the USA Ford sold about 120,000 F-150 and F-250 trucks in the past year alone. Chevrolet sold around 140,000 Silverados. What percentage of those is dark in color, or has been purchased in California, is something you and your team will have to find out.’

‘We’ll get on to it,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m guessing that those tires aren’t very hard to come by either.’

‘That’s problem number two,’ Brindle told him. ‘They’re readily available, which means that anybody with an older or even a different brand of truck could drive into a shop and equip their trucks with those specific tires. But they’re an expensive option, so chances are most people would go for a cheaper make if they are buying new tires for an older truck.’

Hunter nodded in silence.

‘Now, as you will remember, the back alley was a blacktop,’ Brindle carried on. ‘Which makes finding things like footprints a lot harder, but with the help of some special lighting we managed to find a few. They belong to at least eight different people.’

‘Not surprising,’ Hunter thought, given that that alleyway serviced several different shops.

‘But a couple of them were very interesting.’

‘In what way?’ Hunter asked.

‘They were found just by the space between the third and fourth dumpster, where the body was found. The prints came from a size eleven shoe. Keon Lewis, the only other person we know who had walked around that same area, is a size thirteen. The left shoeprint seems to be more prominent than the right shoe one. That could indicate that the person walked with a slight abnormality, like a limp, depositing more of his weight onto his left leg.’

‘Or that he was carrying something heavy,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

‘Probably over his left shoulder. Not in his arms.’

‘Precisely,’ Brindle agreed. ‘He gets the body out of the car, throws it over his left shoulder and carries it to the space between the dumpsters.’ Brindle breathed out. ‘Now, the victim was quite a large man.’

‘216 pounds,’ Hunter said.

‘Well, carrying 216 pounds over one of your shoulders isn’t for just anyone, Robert,’ Brindle said. ‘The guy you’re looking for is big and strong.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘In the alleyway he was also very careful,’ Brindle continued. ‘Though we found footprints, we got nothing from the sole. No kind of imprint whatsoever.’

‘He covered his shoe,’ Hunter concluded.

‘Yep. Probably with a plastic bag. I’ve also got toxicology for you.’

‘Wow, that was fast.’

‘Nothing but the best, my friend.’

‘Was the victim drugged?’

‘Anesthetized,’ Brindle said. ‘Traces of an intravenous anesthetic – phenoperidine – were found. It’s a strong opioid, and with a little research you would find several illegal drugstores willing to sell it to you over the Internet.’

‘The wonders of the modern age,’ Hunter thought. ‘You said traces?’ he queried.

‘Yep, almost negligible. If I had to guess, I’d say the killer used it only to subdue the victim for a short period of time. Probably during the abduction process. After the killer had the victim in a safe location, the anesthetic wasn’t re-administered.’

He scribbled something down on a notepad.

‘We’ve also got the results from the voice analysis done on your telephone conversation with the killer,’ Brindle said, moving on. ‘It seems that he was filtering and refiltering his voice several times over, only slightly altering the pitch each time. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. That’s why, even with the electronic variation, the voice still sounds so normal, so human, but nevertheless unrecognizable if you were to unknowingly have a conversation with him out on the streets.’