I Am Death (13 page)

‘A miracle,’ the head nurse at the coma ward had told Sharon on her first day on the job. ‘That’s pretty much the only thing that can make most of our patients wake up
and get out of here, and trust me, you will probably see some miracles happen right in front of your eyes in this place. But they are very few and far between. What I’m trying to tell you is
– don’t get attached, don’t be too human, don’t succumb to your emotions, because it will only hurt you and compromise your professionalism. Be objective. Most of the
patients in this ward are half dead. That’s why they’re here.’

And a miracle had been exactly what Joan’s family and everyone else had hoped for. Nothing else could help. The doctors had done all they could do. But as the days started to melt into
weeks, and the weeks into months, hope began to fade, except for Sharon, who wasn’t able to follow the head nurse’s advice and had fallen in love with the little girl. Maybe it had been
because Joan reminded Sharon of her best childhood friend, who had been murdered when she was ten years old during a gang drive-by shooting, just east of MacArthur Park, where she used to live.

At first, Joan’s father, who was a single parent, would come in every day after he’d finished work and spend several hours by his daughter’s bed, holding her hand, reading her
stories, singing her songs, and combing her hair, but soon hope abandoned him too. First he started spending less and less time with his daughter every day, then the visits became less
frequent.

Sharon caught up with him one night as he was leaving, and with teary eyes begged him not to desert his daughter. Even without ever having seen one, she tried to explain to him that the sort of
miracles that happened in that ward depended as much on the families not giving up on their loved ones as it did on divine intervention. Joan’s father looked like he had aged ten years in
just a few months. He said nothing to Sharon. He simply stared at her with heavy, pain-stricken eyes for a whole minute before turning and walking away in silence.

He didn’t come back the next day.

And that was the night Joan passed.

Sharon had been unable to hide her distress after the little girl’s death, and that made her question her willingness to become a nurse. She decided to take some time off and rethink.
During her break, her old school friend, Tom Hobbs, suggested that she looked into becoming an air stewardess. Sharon decided to give it a try. She told herself that she had nothing to lose.

That had been just over a year ago, and she hadn’t looked back since.

In her bedroom, Sharon opened another window, turned on the portable stereo system on her bedside table and switched to the radio. ‘Maps’ by Maroon 5 came on and
she immediately began swinging her hips to the beat as she sang the words. It was one of her favorite songs. While doing so, she undressed and finished her bottle of beer. She thought about having
a second one, but she didn’t handle mixing drinks very well. It usually gave her a horrible headache and a zombie-like hangover, and she was really looking forward to her bottle of wine.

Sharon grabbed a freshly washed towel from the cupboard in the corridor and walked into the bathroom. She got the shower running but didn’t get under it. Instead, she took a step back,
faced the mirror above the washing basin and regarded herself for an instant – first her left profile, then the right one. After a few seconds of deliberation, she decided that she was
relatively happy with her figure, though, in her mind, there was always room for improvement.

She finally stepped under the shower, leaned forward, placed her forehead against the white tiles and allowed the strong jet of lukewarm water to sluice over her head, shoulders and back. It
felt like a dream. As soon as the water came in contact with her skin, her tense muscles began to relax.

Shower over, she wrapped herself in her towel and returned to the kitchen.

Sharon and Tom had quite a nice selection of wine, and tonight she felt like having something fruity and refreshing.

‘Perfect,’ she whispered to herself as she selected a bottle of New Zealand Gewurztraminer from the fridge, uncorked it and poured herself a glass. She had just returned the bottle
to the fridge when her cellphone rang. She had left it on the kitchen counter. She closed the fridge door before reaching for her phone and checking the display screen. She didn’t recognize
the number.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Sharon.’

The male voice didn’t sound familiar to her.

‘Umm . . . Hi. Sorry, but who’s this?’

‘Would you like to take a guess?’

Sharon frowned at the phone. She just wanted to relax and enjoy her wine. She was in no mood to play games with anyone.

‘No, I wouldn’t, actually. And if you don’t tell me who you are, this call is over.’

‘OK, how about if I tell you that I’m the one waiting at the end. Will that do?’

‘Waiting at the end? At the end of what?’

First the voice at the other end chuckled at the question. When it spoke again, the words came out slowly, and in a tone that could only be described as morbid.

‘Life, Sharon. I am the one waiting at the end of life, for I am death.’

Sharon didn’t scare easy, but there was something about this voice that sent a chill trickling down her spine.

‘You know what? That’s one horrible joke, whoever you are.’

‘Who said it was a joke?’

‘Fuck you, you sick freak. Don’t call me again.’ In a burst of anger, Sharon almost slammed her cellphone against the sideboard but she stopped herself just in time.

A few seconds later, it rang again – same number. Sharon just let it ring out.

A few more seconds after the ringing had stopped, a text message came through.

Sharon knew that she should just ignore it, but after such a long day her anger got the better of her. She quickly typed a reply.

Ping.

Just moments after Sharon had replied, a new text message arrived.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

All of a sudden, the handle on her front door twisted three times in quick succession.

‘Jesus!’ Sharon jumped back, almost dropping her cellphone. Her frightened stare shot toward the door. ‘What the fuck?’

Thankfully, she had locked the door. Ping. A new message.

She looked down at her phone again. Only then did she realize that she was trembling.

The handle on the front door moved again, this time a lot slower, and only once.

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

As Sharon began panicking, her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Ping.

The pause that followed was suddenly punctuated by desperate fear.

Oh fuck,
Sharon thought as the memory came back to her.
The window.

Despite how frightened she actually was, Sharon’s survival instincts took over and she exploded toward the living room window. She never knew her legs could move that fast. As she slammed
it shut and drew the curtains, her towel came undone and fell to the floor. She was way too scared to care.

Between heavy breaths, her terrified gaze flitted between the door and the window for a long moment. Finally, her brain, which had gone momentarily numb, re-engaged.

What the fuck are you waiting for, Sharon?
she told herself.
Call 911 now.

She quickly tapped the numbers into her cellphone and pressed the ‘call’ button.

Nothing. No dial tone.

‘What the hell?’ She looked at the display screen. She had not one signal bar. ‘How can this be?’ she yelled at her phone through clenched teeth. Just a moment ago
she’d received a new message.

What Sharon had no way of knowing was that every time the caller got off the phone, he switched on his own cellphone signal scrambler.

Instinctively, she stretched her arm out and moved it around, searching for a signal.

Nothing. Not even half a bar.

‘Shit. Shit.’

Her brain turned another rusty wheel.

‘Landline.’

She rushed toward the phone on the counter in the kitchen, but just as she was about to snatch it from its cradle, it rang.

Stunned, Sharon brought it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Let’s play a game, Sharon.’

Sharon froze.

‘And it starts like this. Lights out.’

In that instant, her entire house fell into darkness. Sharon let out another terrified scream. Her eyes circled the room but she saw nothing.

‘Oh my God, what the hell is happening?’ she said into the phone in a shaky voice. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?’

Sharon still had her cellphone in her hand. She swiped her thumb across the screen and turned on the flashlight application.

‘Do you know what your mistake was, Sharon?’ The voice came through the landline receiver once again.

Sharon could do nothing but breathe hard.

‘You went for the wrong window.’

Terror ripped through her heart as she remembered – her bedroom window.

Panicking and completely out of ideas, Sharon frantically moved her cellphone around. The weak light that came from the tiny flashbulb at the back of it cast shadows everywhere, but as those
shadows passed over the door that linked the living room to the corridor, she saw a human silhouette move across it.

The next time she heard the man’s voice, it did not come from the receiver by her ear. It came from behind her.

‘I’m already inside.’

As he finally placed his pen down on his desk, Hunter noticed that his hands were shaking. Beads of cold sweat had also formed on his forehead.

He stood up, and as he did his knees clicked noisily. He’d been sitting down for way too long. He stretched his long frame and the stiff muscles in his back and legs responded with what
felt like a thousand painful pinches. Hunter forced the stretch even more, this time bringing his neck into it. It clicked just as noisily as his knees.

Damn,
he thought, grinding his teeth.
Carlos is right.
Maybe I am getting too old for this crap.

Hunter had just spent the last three hours transcribing and re-transcribing every word from the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey that morning. He’d made twenty-five copies of it,
trying to match the killer’s handwriting as best as he could.

And he’d done a great job.

The exercise was simple. Hunter wasn’t trying to memorize the note word for word, though, after recopying it so many times, that was exactly what had happened. But no, what he was really
trying to do was to get some sort of insight, however small, into the killer’s mind, into the killer’s way of thinking. He was trying to think like the killer did, to feel what the
killer felt when he wrote those words. He was looking for hidden meanings and word tricks. Trying to read between the lines.

After three laborious hours, Hunter had come up with very little. To him, it felt as if the killer knew that the note would be scrutinized to its very last detail. Every word, every letter,
analyzed and reanalyzed – physically and psychologically – and the killer had locked every door; he had left no openings, no pathways into his psyche.

Hunter knew that carrying on any longer would bring him no better results.

He poured himself another large cup of black coffee, returned to his chair and half swiveled it around to face the old-fashioned picture board by the east wall. Despite how young their
investigation was – less than twenty-four hours old – the board was already plastered with information and photographs.

Forensics had come back with the results of the test that had been run on the blood used to write the note that had been left lodged inside the victim’s throat – I AM DEATH. As
Hunter and Garcia were expecting, the killer had used Nicole Wilson’s blood to write it, but according to the forensics report, it didn’t seem as though he had used a brush to do it.
Instead, he had used his own fingers, dipping them in his victim’s blood before carefully inscribing each letter. Not surprisingly, forensics had found no fingerprints, partial or otherwise.
The killer, no doubt, had been wearing gloves.

The second note, the one that Hunter had spent the last three hours transcribing, had been sent over to the forensics lab, together with the Polaroid photograph of the victim in captivity,
immediately after he and Garcia had left Captain Blake’s office earlier that afternoon.

Hunter was no graphologist, but he didn’t need a forensics report to tell him that the notes had been written by the same person. Despite the killer using his fingers to inscribe the first
note, and a red pen to write the second, his handwriting was impressively steady.

The killer had written both notes in cursive handwriting, and his calligraphy was firm but gracious. Despite the paper having no guiding lines, all the letters stood in perfect symmetry to one
another, and they flowed in beautifully measured strokes and shapes. This told Hunter that the person they were looking for was meticulous, organized, paid particular attention to detail, and
prided himself in everything he did, including how he murdered his victims.

The man finished tying his victim to the chair, got up and calmly walked over to the kitchen. After filling a large glass with water from the fridge, he strolled back to the
center of the room and stood directly in front of her.

Sharon Barnard was still unconscious, her ankles zip-tied to the chair’s legs, her arms firmly secured behind her back. Her head was low, her chin resting against her chest, her mouth
semi-open, her lips a little out of line, falling to one side. The man studied her for an instant – the details of her facial structure, the symmetry of her neckline, the intoxicating beauty
of her naked body. Sharon was undoubtedly a very attractive woman . . . but not for long.