‘Did he tell you where?’
Doctor Pate shook her head. ‘Reed’s a very introvert person. A great professor, but he keeps himself to himself. He said he needed a change of scenery, at least for a few days, and I don’t blame him. Life as a university professor can be very demanding. I think he likes going to the mountains somewhere, but don’t quote me on that. I didn’t even know he was going away. The first I heard of it was yesterday.’
Garcia glanced at Hunter.
‘If you leave me your number, I’ll give you a call if I hear from him.’ This time her smile was more than friendly.
Night had already descended over LA by the time Garcia pulled up in front of James Reed’s house. The black Dodge Journey they saw parked in his driveway the day before was gone. From outside, the house looked deserted. The curtains were drawn shut and the lights were all off. They insistently rang the doorbell, knocked on the door and called his name, but after a few minutes they knew they’d be getting no reply.
‘He’s fled,’ Garcia said curtly.
‘We don’t know that yet. He might not be our guy and he’s really just off on a break to clear his head.’
‘Or the panic is already starting to set in. As you said, he knows we’re closing in on him.’
The neighbors confirmed Doctor Pate’s allegations that Reed was an introvert man who liked to keep himself to himself. The woman directly across the road from him said she was watering the flowers in her garden when she saw Reed loading his car with a backpack and what looked to be a few supplies before setting off in the middle of the afternoon.
From the car, on their way back to their office, Hunter called Hopkins and asked him to find out Reed’s license plate number and put a citywide sighting call out on the car. They had no grounds to detain him yet, but Hunter needed to know his location.
‘What if he’s left LA or crossed state lines?’ Garcia asked.
‘Then that’s a good sign,’ Hunter replied, returning his cell phone to his pocket.
‘What?’
‘Doctor Pate said he finished his last scheduled class yesterday afternoon. His neighbor said he set off today in the middle of the day. You know Los Angeles traffic. If you were setting off on an interstate trip this close to Christmas, would you leave in the middle of the afternoon?’
‘Are you kidding? If I had a choice I wouldn’t go from West Hollywood to Long Beach in the middle of the afternoon. You saw how long it took us to get here from Santa Monica. Grid-locked all the way.’
‘Reed is a computer science professor and a jigsaw puzzle aficionado. His brain is conditioned to think logically. If he had this trip planned beforehand, he would’ve been ready to leave last night or early this morning, when traffic wasn’t so busy.’
‘But he didn’t.’ Garcia smiled. ‘I’m telling you, he’s panicking.’
‘When we were in his house yesterday, did you see any signs of a person who was about to leave on a long car trip?’
Garcia shook his head. ‘And if he was, he also failed to mention it when we told him that we might need to talk to him again.’
‘Peter Elder also told me that the two remaining members of their gang, JayJay and Lipz, hated school as much as he did,’ Hunter explained. ‘They flunked out of it as well. Statistically, street kids without a high school diploma don’t move around much. I’m certain they’re still in LA. If James Reed is our man, he hasn’t left this city.’
By the time they got back to their office, Hopkins had already covered a new corkboard with photographs.
‘I scanned all the pictures Peter Elder highlighted in the Compton High yearbook and left copies on both of your desks.’ He nodded towards two piles of photographs on both detectives’ desks and chuckled at their surprise. ‘Don’t be alarmed – that’s the whole lot.’ He fumbled for his notes. ‘Out of those, three have passed away, seven aren’t US residents anymore, three are serving time, six are in the military and stationed somewhere else and five are either confined to wheelchairs or have some debilitating physical condition.’ Hopkins pointed to the new corkboard. ‘These are the ones we must concentrate on. Twenty-one in total.’
‘Fuck!’ Garcia looked surprised. ‘How many people did they bully?’
‘A hell of a lot,’ Hopkins confirmed.
The first picture on the board was of James Reed.
‘No feedback from anyone yet on Reed’s car being sighted?’ Hunter asked.
‘Not yet, but I did get more information on our first victim, Gregory Carlson, aka Strutter.’
‘I’m listening,’ Hunter said while his eyes studied the new photo board. Typical yearbook portraits – dated haircuts, fake smiles and acne-covered cheeks. All of the kids would be in their forties now.
Hopkins cleared his throat. ‘Apparently, Greg was a bona fide badass. He dropped out of high school in Rancho Dominguez before completing his freshman year and disappeared under the radar for several years. No job, no social security contribution, nothing. Quite a violent person too. Looks like he beat up every girlfriend he ever had. He was arrested several times, the charges ranging from violent assault to possession of illegal substances. Greg wasn’t a dealer, though. He never made money out of drugs. Instead, he became a technology crook, creating internet companies and conning people out of their cash. Allegedly, he was also involved in several email scams. Due to his background, the LAPD is treating his death as revenge kill. They think Greg finally conned the wrong person out of his money.’ Hopkins flipped a page on his report. ‘Strangely, it looks like he was a good father.’
‘He had a son?’ Garcia questioned.
Hopkins shook his head and faced him. ‘A daughter, Beth, whom he visited four times a week. She suffers from multiple sclerosis. Her mother left as soon as Beth started showing symptoms of the disease. Her present location is unknown.’ He handed Garcia his report.
Hunter kept his attention on the photos.
‘A preliminary list with all their names and locations is on your desk, on top of the photographs,’ Hopkins confirmed. ‘We’ve got addresses, but we haven’t had time to establish the whereabouts of these twenty-one for the past three weeks yet.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Let’s each pick seven and see what we can come up with in the next hour.’
Mollie had spent the day in a cloud of worry. Something wasn’t adding up. She kept having residual flashes, but they were getting stranger and more confusing. It looked like everything was doubling up, as if there were two killers, two sets of victims. She couldn’t make sense of anything anymore, and it was scaring her like never before.
She’d woken up in the middle of the night feeling claustrophobic. Her room was spacious enough, but the air inside felt stale. As she opened her window and allowed the cold and humid Los Angeles winter breeze to caress her face, an uncomfortable feeling made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt as if she was being watched. Craning her upper body out of the window, she allowed her eyes to scan the portion of the street she could see from her room. The street was deserted.
Mollie went back to bed, but her mind kept playing tricks on her, keeping her awake for the rest of the night. The sun rose at 6:53 a.m. and finally Mollie was able to relax a little. Nighttime was always harder. For some reason the images came stronger then – more real, more painful.
She finally left her room as the afternoon was coming to an end. Hunger was stinging at her growling stomach. Just down the road, Mollie found a sandwich shop which also sold cakes, sweets and creamed-topped coffees. She ordered a salami and cheese sandwich, a slice of apple pie with ice cream and a hot chocolate before taking a seat at a table close to the shop’s front window.
Hunter had told her that maybe tonight he’d be moving her to another location – a friend’s house, he said, but he still hadn’t called. She finished her pie and was distracted by a short and stout man standing across the road dressed in a Santa Claus outfit. He enthusiastically dangled his oversized golden bell, trying to collect money for some charity. Mollie watched him for at least five minutes. No passerby made a contribution.
‘No one seems to care these days, do they?’ A tall man sitting on the next table commented, noticing Mollie’s attention on Santa Claus.
‘Not really,’ she replied with a sad head shake.
The man was wearing a long black overcoat and a dark, old-fashioned mobster hat. ‘It’s a sad world when people have no heart for charity anymore,’ he said before running his tongue over his cracked lips.
Mollie didn’t know how to reply, so she just smiled and had a sip of her hot chocolate.
‘You’re not from LA, are you?’
She looked at him intrigued.
‘I can spot a Los Angeles smile a mile away. It has a fake edge to it, but not yours. Yours is—’ he paused, searching for the right word ‘—kind, sincere.’
‘Thank you.’ She blushed slightly.
The man noticed her uneasiness and stood up, gathering his things. ‘I hope you enjoy Los Angeles,’ he said, offering his hand.
Mollie shook it with the most delicate of touches. The man’s hand felt strong and powerful.
‘My name’s Ryan, Ryan Turner.’
A new smile blossomed on her lips. ‘I’m Monica.’
‘Enjoy LA, Monica,’ he said again before exiting the shop, approaching Santa Claus and depositing some money into his bucket.
Back at the hotel her bad night’s sleep caught up with her and Mollie kept on dozing off in front of the TV. She wasn’t sure if she was awake or asleep when the vision came, but it hit her like a knuckleduster punch to the face.
When she opened her eyes she was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, naked and bleeding.
If any of the twenty-one faces pinned onto the photograph board had any sort of a police record, their fingerprints would’ve been on file and they could’ve compared them to the partial one they had from the house in Malibu, but that wasn’t the case. Hunter, Garcia and Hopkins were staring at twenty-one all-regular, all-American model citizens. No convictions, no problems with the IRS or any government organization. No jury services or appearances in court. The worst they could come up with were two unpaid parking tickets.
Twenty-one people, whose lives on paper were as adventurous as a glass of milk. Their professions ranged from a university professor to a scriptwriter, from medical doctors to temporarily unemployed.
Their first step was to eliminate anyone under or over six foot two. That left them with twelve possible suspects. After checking with the airlines and passport control, five more names were crossed from the list.
‘We can cut Doctor Pedro Ortiz and Doctor Michael Grifton from our list too,’ Garcia said as he got off the phone. ‘They were both on night shift on the night Father Fabian was attacked.’
‘Jason Lowell was on a camping trip with his students during the weekend Debbie Howard was murdered,’ Hopkins said. ‘He’s off the list as well.’
Hunter rubbed his tired eyes. He’d been up for almost forty-eight hours, and he wasn’t sure they’d find much more from phone calls and database searches. They were looking for someone who had certainly been carrying psychological scars hidden in his subconscious for twenty-five years. Hunter had no doubt something had triggered off the killer’s rage. Something fairly recent. The ‘last straw’.
He knew that identifying what might have pushed the subject over the edge would be hard to do from behind a desk. Things like being dumped, pressure at work, losing your job, big financial difficulties would need detailed investigative work.
‘OK,’ he said, massaging his stiff shoulders. ‘We’ve only got four names left on the list. We know James Reed is missing. Let’s find out where the remaining three are.’
‘Maybe you should bring Mollie here and let her have a look at these pictures,’ Garcia suggested. ‘Maybe she’ll be able to sense something.’
Shit!
Hunter checked the time. He needed to call her. He wanted to move her to another location tonight.
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Hopkins agreed.
‘That’s not what she does,’ Hunter said calmly, looking at them both. ‘She can’t control what she sees. And she only senses pain.’
‘Don’t you think it’s worth a shot?’ Garcia insisted. ‘We’re sort of running out of options and time.’
‘No,’ Hunter responded. ‘She’s a seventeen-year-old girl who’s been through more crap than most people would face in a lifetime. She’s alone and she’s scared. And to top it all off, she sees grotesque images of unimaginable suffering.’ His eyes focused on Garcia. ‘You’ve been to three of the five crime scenes. In Malibu you had to leave the room to be sick.’
‘Really?’ Hopkins asked, surprised.
‘Don’t even go there,’ Garcia warned him.
‘We are detectives with the HSS,’ Hunter continued. ‘Special circumstances’ crimes are all we do. We’re the experts, the real tough guys. We’re supposed to be used to it, and it still turns our stomachs inside out. Imagine what being alone and seeing those images – images as real as the ones we saw with our own eyes – could do to a fragile teenage girl. There’s no way in hell I’d bring her here, show her these pictures and ask her to deliberately try to force those visions into her mind.’