Squirm, his body as rigid as a plank of wood, sat at the edge of his seat, his arms extended, his hands clasped together and tucked between his bare thighs.

As the first images filled the screen, Squirm frowned. There was no title, no opening credits, no mood-setting soundtrack. Instead, the film cut straight to a close-up of a woman’s face, who looked to be in her early twenties. Her blue eyes were full of tears, bloodshot, and puffed up from crying. Her long blonde hair was loose, falling over her shoulders.

‘Plea . . . please,’ she said, looking straight at the camera. ‘I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t hurt me.’ Her voice wavered with every word.

The shot panned out gradually to reveal the woman’s full body, and the sight made Squirm swallow dry. She had been stripped naked and tied to a chair that had been placed at the center of what looked like somebody’s living room.

‘Isn’t she pretty, Squirm?’ ‘The Monster’ asked with a smile.

The boy, transfixed by the playing images, was unable to say anything back.

‘Her name is Sharon,’ ‘The Monster’ continued. ‘I like that name, don’t you?’

No reply.

‘Say her name, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ demanded.

The boy’s attention finally moved from the screen to the man at his side. ‘What?’

‘What’s her name? Say her name back to me. I just told you what it was. Weren’t you paying attention?’

‘Yes, sir, I was.’ Squirm’s words sounded almost as frightened as the woman’s.

‘So say her name. And you’d better not get it wrong.’

‘Sh . . . Sharon. Her name is Sharon.’

‘The Monster’ held the boy’s gaze for a long while, his face a blank mask.

‘Isn’t that right, sir?’ Squirm asked in a pleading voice.

At last, the man’s lips parted into a smile and he sounded happy again. ‘Yes, that’s exactly right. But don’t look at me, Squirm. Look at the screen. It gets much better.’

Squirm did as he was told.

‘Whizzzzzzz.’ From the speaker, a loud, mechanical sound filled the room, startling Squirm and making him jump in his seat. On the screen, Sharon screamed in petrified terror and turned her face away as she began sobbing uncontrollably.

‘Please . . . no, no, no.’

Using whatever strength she had left, she ferociously wiggled her body on the chair, trying desperately to break free, but to no use.

Suddenly, from Sharon’s left someone else entered the shot. It took Squirm a few seconds to realize that the person now on-screen was the man sitting by his side – ‘The Monster’. He was dressed in some strange outfit, covered from head to toe in what looked to be a handmade, seethrough plastic jumpsuit. In his hands he carried a small machine, which was the source of the loud whizzing noise.

‘Do you know what that is, Squirm?’ ‘The Monster’ asked, indicating the machine.

Squirm shook his head.

‘It’s an electric sander. Fantastic little machine. Very powerful.’

Squirm looked back at ‘The Monster’ with shocked eyes, as he felt a new shudder run up and down his spine.

‘The Monster’ smiled at him. ‘That’s right, Squirm, you’ve got it. I’m going to sand off her face. Just look.’ He pointed at the screen.

The boy didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

‘Look,’ ‘The Monster’ ordered, grabbing the boy’s chin, and forcing his face in the direction of the screen again.

Panic had completely consumed Sharon, who was now frantically screaming and jerking her body in the chair, but her efforts didn’t seem to bother ‘The Monster’. On the contrary, they seemed to excite him more. He stepped closer and brought the sander to within just a couple of inches of her face. Feeling the wind and the heat produced by the 420-watt rotating disk, her panic went through the roof and she wet herself.

The boy just couldn’t look anymore. Instinctively, he closed his eyes and turned his head away.

SLAP.

‘The Monster’ hit him across the face so hard it sent Squirm flying off the sofa and on to the floor. The boy’s vision was immediately flooded by sparkles of light.

‘The Monster’ pressed the ‘pause’ button.

The boy brought a hand to his tender cheek. Tears began rolling down his face. Blood began dripping from the corner of his mouth.

‘Open your eyes, and sit back here, Squirm. If you even think about closing them again, or looking away, then you’ll really understand how painful an electric sander can be because I will sand all the skin off your back. Do you understand?’

Squirm sucked in a ragged breath. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’ On weak legs, the boy got back to his feet and returned to the sofa.

‘Good boy.’

His captor pressed ‘play’ again. On the screen, Sharon had stopped moving. Her fear was so intense it had paralyzed her. It seemed like all she could do was hope for a miracle, but that miracle didn’t come.

As the machine touched her face, blood and skin began spitting from the sander in all directions, creating a rain of red mist. The scream she let out was so guttural and full of pain, it blocked out the bone-chilling grinding noise from the machine.

Squirm could feel he was about to be sick, but he knew that if he looked away or closed his eyes, ‘The Monster’ would hurt him like he’d never been hurt before. Out of options, the boy did the only thing he could think of so he wouldn’t close his eyes – he brought his hands to his face and, using both of his thumbs and index fingers, he forced his eyelids open and continued to stare at the screen.

Thirty-Six

‘Detective Garcia, Homicide Special,’ Garcia said into the mouthpiece of his cellphone, answering the call after the second ring. He and Hunter had just got back to the Police Administration Building after spending most of their morning and afternoon at the crime scene in Venice.

‘Detective, this is Officer Woods.’

Officer Garry Woods was in charge of the new door-to-door that was being conducted in Hollywood Hills. With the events of that morning, Garcia had forgotten about it.

‘Sir, you asked me to inform you directly if anything came up.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well, I think that we might’ve come across some new information for you here.’

‘OK. We’re on our way.’

Through late afternoon stop-and-start traffic, the drive from South Central back to Upper Laurel Canyon in Hollywood Hills took Hunter and Garcia close to an hour and ten minutes. Once they finally got there, they found Officer Woods and his partner waiting for them inside their black and white unit, which was parked directly in front of house number 8420, ten doors away from the Bennetts.

‘Detectives,’ Woods said, stepping out of his car and greeting Hunter and Garcia. He was about forty-five years old, with straight, rust-colored hair, full lips, longish, bushy eyebrows, and deep-brown, almost black eyes. He looked like a pensive wolf in a police uniform. His partner, who looked like he was counting the minutes until the end of his shift, stayed inside the unit.

Hunter and Garcia returned the greeting.

‘OK,’ Woods began. ‘Just as we were instructed to, we knocked on every door from the top of this road, all the way down to Laurel Pass Avenue, including the houses on Carmar Drive.’ He pointed to the street they could see branching out of Allenwood Road on the right. ‘That’s sixty-nine properties in total. We spoke to everyone who was available this time, including minors.’ He allowed his gaze to bounce from Hunter to Garcia, then back to Hunter. ‘I must admit; in this neighborhood, it all sounded like a wild goose chase at first. As expected, just as the previous door-to-door showed, nobody could remember seeing anything or anyone out of the ordinary, mainly because there’s no such thing as ordinary up on these hills, if you know what I mean. But about halfway through the search, we came across something that sounded at least interesting.’ He paused and gave both detectives a shrug. ‘It could also be nothing at all, but that’s not my decision to make. I’m just reporting it as instructed.’