บท 94: Chapter 94: The Faceless Man
The tense atmosphere at the scene seemed to dissipate instantly. Rossi, smiling, urged the pair, "What are you waiting for? Get moving and take plenty of backup. Even if it's an abandoned zoo, it's still a large area."
Jack nodded, and he and John returned to the station to gather some gear. It was already close to 8 PM. Though the station didn't have the high-tech head-mounted night vision goggles of SWAT, they had extra high-powered flashlights, which would be sufficient.
Tim and the others were still out, busy with the case, preparing for a night raid to capture the head of the prison's underground market. Unable to bring them along, Jack and John enlisted Lucy and some officers who had been called back for overtime by Captain Grey.
A team of twelve, in six police cars, headed to the abandoned old zoo. They were expecting aerial support from a police helicopter arriving later.
The old zoo had been abandoned for over half a century. The wire fences were in disrepair, and the two gates were barely hanging on.
To avoid alarming any potential suspects inside, the officers entered through a gap in the fence.
The surroundings were pitch dark. The abandoned zoo was eerily silent, with only the occasional distant hoot of an owl in the forest, adding to the spooky atmosphere.
"This place is huge. How are we supposed to search it?" John whispered.
Jack thought for a moment, trying to use his heightened senses to scan the area but found nothing.
"We need to go inside. If the suspect has been killing here, there should be some traces left from at least six months ago."
He paused and looked at the dilapidated facilities around them, an idea forming.
"There shouldn't be any electricity here, right?"
John glanced back, "The transformer outside has been dead for ages. Even the homeless don't come here anymore."
"So the suspect would either have to use a car's generator for power or install a small generator here. Both methods would make noise. They can block out the light, but not the sound, right?"
The officers, catching on, spread out to explore the deeper parts of the zoo, listening for any noise that could indicate a running generator.
Soon, Lucy reported quietly over the radio, "Northwest direction. There's a reptile exhibit building. I hear a generator running and can see faint lights inside."
The group converged on the location, splitting up to surround the building to prevent any escape through the back door or windows. The rest prepared to enter through the front. Just as John got ready to kick the door in, Jack grabbed his arm.
Jack gently turned the rusty doorknob. The old wooden door creaked open slowly. John sheepishly tilted his head, realizing he had let the spooky atmosphere get to him.
Holding his gun in both hands, Jack took the lead, moving quietly. The building was divided into several sizable rooms, lined with rusty metal cages.
The connecting doors between rooms were long decayed. Someone had roughly tidied up, moving the rotten doors aside and hanging a few pieces of soft plastic sheeting in the doorways to serve as makeshift barriers.
Jack cautiously lifted one of the curtains. He felt more confident that their assumptions were correct. The clear curtains, though filthy and hanging for some time, were free of spider webs, indicating recent human activity.
The windows were covered in layers of advertising posters and old newspapers, intact glass beneath. Homeless people wouldn't bother with such meticulous work, suggesting they were indeed in the right place.
As they moved through three or four more rooms, a faint stench became stronger. Dim light seeped from the last room. Jack gestured silently, and Lucy slipped past him, pressing herself against the door frame and carefully lifting the plastic curtain for him.
Standing at the doorway, Jack saw a heap of cages but could make out a metal bed frame in the center of the room. A woman, naked from the waist up, lay on it, seemingly semi-conscious, emitting low moans.
A man, his back to the door, squatted by the bed, muttering unintelligibly, head bent over the woman, fiddling with something.
Jack aimed his Glock at the man and crept closer until he was confident in his range. He then shouted, "LAPD, hands up!"
The man spun around. In the dim light, Jack saw a face without features.
"Bang!"
Despite the spooky atmosphere of the abandoned zoo at night, Jack wasn't particularly tense. But the sight of the faceless man nearly made him jump out of his skin, causing him to reflexively pull the trigger.
The faceless man's head exploded, and he fell to the ground, lifeless. Only then did Jack realize the man was wearing a bag over his head, with two holes cut out for eyes.
Jack nudged the body with his foot. The man's right hand opened, revealing a bloody tattoo gun. The woman on the bed had a bleeding abdomen, partially tattooed with the letters "DOD," with the numbers yet to be completed.
Lucy quickly moved to check on the woman's condition.
"Is she okay?" Jack asked.
"She's alive. This son of a beach injected her with something—probably a sedative or a drug," Lucy replied, checking the woman's pupils with a flashlight.
Jack radioed in, "7-A-26, we need an ambulance, urgent. Clear the way and notify duty commander Grey and FBI Special Agent in Charge David Rossi. We found a victim, still alive. Suspect is down."
After finishing the call, Jack scanned the room and found the source of the foul smell. A large oil drum stood against the wall, its interior covered in bloody scratch marks, reminiscent of the damage to the fingernails on the previous victims' bodies.
"This must be the barrel the killer used to suffocate the victims."
The officers who followed John inside shuddered at the sight and the thought of the victims' suffering.
One officer kicked the suspect's body over, searching for identification, while others continued to sweep the area inside and out. A police helicopter had arrived, illuminating the scene with its spotlight. They had to be sure the suspect wasn't working alone.
Shortly, an ambulance arrived. The semi-conscious female victim was taken to the hospital, with Lucy accompanying her. Jack and John waited until the LAPD forensic team arrived to take over the scene before returning to the station. Despite it being midnight, there was still much to sort out.
When they arrived, they found everyone assembled in the briefing room. Rossi stood before a large whiteboard covered with photos and a mind map.
Seeing Jack and John enter, Rossi motioned for them to sit and continued his analysis of the case.
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