The Night Stalker Read Online Free PDF

wrong number.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ The man chuckled. ‘I’ve been dialing this number every day for the past two months.’
    Katia breathed out, relieved. ‘See, now I’m sure you’ve got the wrong number. I’ve been away for a little while. I actually just got back.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘It’s no big deal, it happens,’ Katia said kindly. ‘Look, I’m gonna put the phone down so you can redial.’
    ‘Don’t put the phone down,’ the man said calmly. ‘I haven’t dialed the wrong number. Have you checked your answering machine yet, Katia?’
    The only phone in Katia’s apartment with an answering machine was the one at the far end of the worktop in the kitchen. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and quickly made her way towards it. She hadn’t noticed the blinking red light until then. Sixty messages.
    Katia gasped. ‘Who are you? How did you get this number?’
    Another chuckle. ‘I’m . . .’ there was a click on the line again, ‘. . . a fan, I guess.’
    ‘A fan?’
    ‘A fan with resources. The kind of resources that make information very easy to come by.’
    ‘Information?’
    ‘I know you are a fantastic musician. You love your Lorenzo Guadagnini violin more than anything in this world. You live in a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood. You’re allergic to peanuts. Your favorite composer is Tchaikovsky and you love driving that torch red, convertible Mustang of yours.’ He paused. ‘And you’re having lunch with your father tomorrow at one o’clock at Mastro’s Steak House in Beverly Hills. Your favorite color is pink, just like the bathrobe you’re wearing now, and you were just about to open a bottle of white wine.’
    Katia froze.
    ‘So how dedicated a fan am I, Katia?’
    Instinctively, Katia’s eyes shot towards her kitchen window, but she knew she was too high up for anyone in one of the neighboring buildings to be able to spy on her.
    ‘Oh, I’m not peeping on you through the window,’ the man said with a sneer.
    The light in the kitchen went out and the next voice Katia heard didn’t come from her phone.
    ‘I’m standing right behind you.’

 
Ten
     
    On any given night Hunter’s insomnia would rob him of at least four hours of sleep. Last night, it had kept him awake for almost six.
    It was after cancer took his mother from him when he was just seven years old that his sleeping problems started. Alone in his room, missing her, he would lie awake at night, too sad to fall asleep, too scared to close his eyes, too proud to cry. Hunter grew up as an only child in an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His father made the decision never to remarry, and even with two jobs, he struggled to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.
    To banish the bad dreams, Hunter kept his mind occupied in a different way – he read ferociously, devouring books as if they empowered him.
    Hunter had always been different. Even as a child, his brain seemed to work through problems faster than anyone else’s. At the age of twelve, after a battery of exams and tests suggested by the principal of his school in Compton, he was accepted into the Mirman School for the Gifted on Mulholland Drive as an eighth-grader.
    But even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress down.
    By the age of fifteen, Hunter had glided through Mirman, condensing four years of high school into two, and amazing all of his teachers. With recommendations from everyone, he was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford on its Psychology School Program.
    In college, his advancement was just as impressive, and Hunter received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology at the age of twenty-three. And that was when his world was shattered for a second time. His father, who at the time was working as a security guard for a branch of the Bank of America in downtown Los Angeles, was shot dead during a robbery gone wrong.