‘It’s understandable, though,’ Hunter said, rubbing his eyes. ‘You come home to find your wife hanging upside down in your bathroom, her head submerged in water, what do you do?’
Garcia’s eyes saddened, and Hunter knew he was thinking of Anna.
‘Most people would do what Jonathan did. They’d go to her and hug her . . . and cry . . . and ask why. Preserving the crime scene didn’t even enter his mind.’
Garcia let out a deep, heartfelt sigh, and the room went silent for a short moment. ‘Check the autopsy report again,’ he said. ‘At the bottom of the first page.’
Hunter glanced at it. ‘She was pregnant.’
Garcia used his index finger to rub between his eyebrows. ‘Three weeks,’ he confirmed.
‘Has the lab tested her blood against the one used to draw the number three on Father Fabian’s chest?’
‘No. This was two weeks ago, and though the investigation is still ongoing, Jonathan Hale, with the support of the DA’s office, did everything he could to get the body released. She was cremated two days ago.’
‘Fantastic,’ Hunter said, running his fingers through his hair.
‘It doesn’t matter, Robert. She was pregnant just as you said the second victim would be,’ Garcia said in a more animated tone. ‘Her picture was left in Amanda Reilly’s crime scene by the killer, who drew the number two on the back of it. I don’t think there’s much doubt Debbie Howard was a victim of this same lunatic.’
‘It’s dismissive to think this killer is a lunatic. Don’t make that mistake, Carlos.’
Garcia picked up a new sheet of paper from his desk. ‘In a later interview, Jonathan Hale said Debbie was petrified of water. I mean, going into deep water. We live in a tropical weather city where the sun shines almost throughout the year. They were a very well-off family. Their house is massive, but it’s the only one in their street without a swimming pool. The reason for it is because Debbie never wanted one. She wouldn’t even go close to pools or the beach or anything. Apparently, she came this close to drowning when she was young.’ He brought his thumb and index finger close together. ‘Just like the other victims, Robert, she was killed in the way that scared her the most. As you said, this guy goes after their fears.’
Hunter thought about it for a second. ‘He cut her down,’ he whispered. ‘That’s why no one found the number two on her body.’ He stood up, approached the nonmagnetic marker board and started drawing on it.
‘Debbie is hanging upside down over her bathtub.’ He used a stickman to represent her. ‘Her husband comes in and finds her this way. He panics and cuts her down, but the bathtub is still full of water.’
Garcia took a step closer. ‘Jonathan allowed her body to splash into the tub.’
‘If there was a number drawn on her body, it got washed off.’
‘But why not just force her head into the tub and hold it there like we see it in the movies? Why take the time to hang her upside down and all? The drowning effect would’ve been the same.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Hunter disagreed. ‘We have no pictures, but the report says that only her head and shoulders were submerged.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘If this killer goes after his victims’ fears, how would he exploit the fact that Debbie Howard was petrified of water? How could he really terrify her?’
Garcia rubbed his face as he stared at the crude stickman drawing. ‘Christ . . .’ He turned to face Hunter as he realized. ‘The tub was empty when he strung Debbie from the wooden beam on the ceiling.’
Hunter nodded. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Shit. Debbie knew her head was way past the bathtub’s edge. She could see the water creeping up slowly. She felt it as it wet her hair and forehead and it just kept coming. She had to watch her worst nightmare slowly becoming a reality.’
‘The killer could’ve tortured her even more by stopping the water just as it reached the top of her nose—’ Hunter took over again ‘—forcing her to breathe only through her mouth for a while. But even a calm person in an upright position would’ve found that hard to do, never mind a terrified woman hanging upside down knowing she was about to die. Her drowning was slow and very painful.’
‘That’s fucking creepy,’ Garcia said, screwing up his face.
‘It’s what the killer does,’ Hunter continued. ‘He sat and watched Amanda Reilly cook to death for two days. He slowly and patiently extracted two and a half liters of blood from Darnell Douglas, ten millileters at a time, before stabbing the syringes into his body. I’m sure he watched Debbie Howard drown, and he’d want to make it last. He wanted the torture.’
Garcia shuddered. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t a bully when I was in school. You never know what kind of freaks people may grow up to be.’
Hunter flipped through the autopsy photographs again but stopped halfway through the pile. ‘She had a venipuncture mark on her right arm,’ he announced, lifting one of the pictures to show Garcia and checking the coroner’s notes. ‘Probably acquired on the same day of her death.’
Garcia nodded. ‘The killer needed her blood.’
‘Exactly. Debbie drowned. No spillage of blood for the killer to collect. And he needed blood to draw the number on his next victim – Father Fabian. We need to talk to Jonathan Hale.’
‘Well, that’s gonna be a problem,’ Garcia admitted.
‘Why?’
‘He’s spending Christmas at his parents’ house far away from here.’
‘How far away?’
‘Tennessee.’
‘Damn.’
A knock came to the door.
‘Come in,’ Garcia called.
Hopkins stepped into the room with his usual blue folder under his arm.
‘I found him.’
‘Who did you find?’ Hunter asked. His and Garcia’s stare locked on Hopkins, who frowned as his eyes rested on the stickman drawings on the board.
‘You guys playing hangman?’
‘Never mind the drawings, Ian,’ Hunter answered. ‘Who did you find?’
Hopkins smiled. ‘Victim number one. Just after you called me at the morgue, I came across the file. White male, six-three, two hundred pounds. Only person we found who had an LA Lakers commemorative NBA final champion’s watch. The body was taken in three weeks ago.’ He shook his head. ‘Not a pretty sight. And you won’t believe how he died.’
‘Let me guess,’ Hunter cut him short. ‘Wasp stings.’
Hopkins and Garcia stared at Hunter. ‘How the hell did you know that?’
Hunter explained about Peter Elder identifying Strutter, him being the leader of their street gang and the fact that he was allergic to wasps’ venom and very scared of them.
‘Well, the killer did a great job. This is what he looked like when they found him chained to a wall in his own basement in Culver City.’
Hopkins handed Hunter a photograph, and he cringed as he stared at it.
Seated on the floor, naked, with his back against a brick wall, his arms chained by the wrists and extended high above his head, was the badly deformed body of a man. His face had puffed up grotesquely, with both of his eyes swollen shut. His lips had inflamed so severely they’d cracked where the skin could stretch no more. His nose was an undistinguishable red ball, so large the nostrils had sealed. The brutal swelling extended to his arms and the rest of his body where small, pinprick-like black dots were visible just about everywhere. He looked like an over-inflated rubber doll. His right ankle had been broken, the bone protruding through the skin. Three nails had been hammered into his right knee. On his chest, a long, vertical splash of blood.
‘There’s our number one,’ Hunter said, showing Garcia the photo.
‘No wonder no one recognized it as important,’ Garcia commented. ‘It looks more like the victim hemorrhaged from the mouth and it dripped onto his chest.’
‘The autopsy report says the subject had a systemic reaction and died from anaphylactic shock induced by his severe allergy to wasps’ venom,’ Hopkins explained. ‘The killer chained him to the wall and locked him in his basement, but not before retrieving a large wasps’ nest from a wooden box and exploding it on the floor next to him. He was stung over five hundred times. They found wasps in his mouth, down his throat and even in his stomach.’
Garcia rubbed his face as if in agony. ‘I hate wasps.’
‘Do we have a name?’
Hopkins nodded. ‘Gregory Carlson. I just found him, so I haven’t had time to gather a file on him, but I don’t think it’ll take me long,’ he announced before Hunter asked.
‘Good. Find whatever you can as soon as you can.’
‘I need to know,’ Hopkins said curiously. ‘What are the stick-man drawings for?’
Garcia quickly explained how they figured out why no one had found the number two drawn on Debbie Howard’s body.
‘It makes sense,’ Hopkins agreed and flipped a page in his notebook. ‘I’m trying, but I still haven’t found the two remaining girls from that Gardena High picture—’
‘We can probably put them on the back burner for now,’ Hunter interrupted him. ‘The killer won’t be going after them.’
‘Why not?’
Hunter told them how his bluff with Peter Elder had almost turned sour.
‘So they weren’t part of the gang?’
‘Out of that picture, only Amanda and Debbie. And unfortunately we’re too late for them.’
‘Yeah, but that confirms your theory,’ Hopkins said excitedly. ‘The killer is definitely going after the members of this street gang.’
‘It looks that way. And that leaves us with three remaining members. Peter Elder, who’s in CCI and a very hard target to get to.’
‘He got life,’ Hopkins said. ‘The killer doesn’t have to get to him. His fate is already sealed.’
‘We also have a Caucasian male they used to call JayJay,’ Hunter continued. ‘And a Puerto Rican woman they called Lipz.’
Garcia stretched his body. ‘If that’s all we have on them, they’ll be hard to find. Even if they’re still on the streets, their nicknames are too common.’
‘I understand,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But we’ve got something else to go on.’ He handed Hopkins the Compton High yearbook. ‘This is why I needed you back here. Peter Elder has highlighted a few pictures in there. Those were the students they bullied the most. The ones bullied by their gang.’
Hopkins started flipping through the pages.
‘I want you to scan all the pictures Elder’s highlighted. Let’s find out who those people are, what they’ve been doing since they left school and, most important, where they’ve been for the past three weeks. Get everybody you can on it. If you need more help, let me know and I’ll talk to Captain Blake. We don’t have much time left.’
‘No problem. I’ll get right . . .’ Hopkins stopped flipping the pages and squinted at something in the book. ‘Have you looked through these pictures?’
‘Not yet. I came straight out of CCI, got in the car and drove here. I can multitask but not
that
well. Why?’
Hopkins turned the opened yearbook towards Hunter and Garcia. There were three highlighted pictures on the two displayed pages.
‘The second picture,’ he said. ‘Read the name under it.’
‘No fucking way,’ Garcia said, running his hand through his hair.
He took a deep breath before studying the photographs taped to the brick wall inside the candlelit basement room. The faces that stared back at him each had their own different history – told their own different story. A wave of excitement rushed through his body at the thought of what he’d already accomplished and what was still to come.
‘
It won’t be long now
.’ He smiled before running his tongue over his cracked lips. ‘
Five are gone; only two more to go
.’ He consulted the large calendar hanging from a rusty nail. ‘
Plenty of time to achieve it
.’
His eyes rested on the sketches and plans on the oversized metal table and he laughed. He’d decided to leave the best for last. He knew exactly what scared them to death – one was petrified of spiders and the other of rats. That knowledge filled him with a mind-boggling feeling of power. What he had in store for them was a masterpiece – a whole new dimension of panic and pain. He couldn’t wait to be face to face with them. To see the fear in their eyes. To taste their blood. To make them suffer. But he knew the importance of being patient.
He opened the miniature fridge at the corner of the room, and carefully ran his fingers over the small glass vial of blood he’d extracted from his last victim.
So far everything had gone to plan, but something unexpected had come into play. He glared at the photograph on the front page of the
LA Times
. This was something he could’ve never foreseen. But this was also something he could easily deal with. Nothing and nobody would keep him from achieving his goal.
‘Motherfucker! He lied to us,’ Garcia whispered, staring at the picture Hopkins had showed them.
‘I asked you to run a check on him. Did you find anything out?’ Hunter asked Hopkins.