Garcia nodded. ‘Seventeen years they’ve been locked down here.’
It took Hunter a couple of seconds to process that.
‘It looks like they were kept separate from each other,’ Hunter continued, his chin jerking in the direction of the door that led back into the cellar of horrors. ‘Each in their own cell, where I’m guessing they were either kept shackled to the walls at all times,or heavily sedated, so that they wouldn’t end their own lives.’ He turned to look at James on the floor. ‘This was the first opportunity they got… and they took it.’
‘Fuck you,’ James seethed, before spitting up at Hunter. It hit Hunter’s trousers.
Hunter didn’t move. His eyes stayed on James, but he addressed Garcia. ‘I have a feeling that what he said just before pulling the trigger – “watch this” – wasn’t meant for us.’
Garcia shook his head confidently. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ But before he could explain the meaning of that command, they all heard a new noise coming from the door to the room.
In a flash, Hunter pulled out his semi-automatic pistol and aimed forward. A split second later, Officer Emiliano Esqueda appeared behind the dead couple, weapon in hand… eyes wide.
‘LAPD,’ he shouted, and was immediately cut off by Hunter and Garcia.
‘Easy… easy,’ they both shouted in unison.
‘It’s us,’ Hunter called out. ‘It’s just us. Take a deep breath and put down the gun, Emiliano. It’s just us.’
The kid was visibly shaking, his breathing heavy, his eyes full of fear.
‘What… the fuck?’
Emiliano gulped in air. He was still holding his weapon in a double grip, aiming forward, but his stare was all over the place, clearly trying to understand what it was that he had just walked in on.
‘What the fuck happened here?’ he asked again. ‘What is this fucking place? Who are all these people?’
That was when it dawned on Garcia.
He turned to face Hunter.
‘He’s the cavalry?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing to slits.
Hunter looked back at him. ‘What?’
‘The cavalry,’ Garcia repeated it. ‘You said that this wasn’ta Hollywood movie and that after you found the trapdoor in the kitchen, you called the cavalry.’ Garcia tilted his head in Emiliano’s direction, while arching his eyebrows at Hunter. ‘He is it? The cavalry?’
Hunter shrugged. ‘He was willing to help.’
Garcia breathed out despair.
Seventy
Two days later
Police Administration Building – 4:00 p.m.
‘Sixty-three victims?’ Captain Blake asked, as she entered Hunter and Garcia’s office, carrying the report that she’d just read. ‘Twelve years and sixty-three victims?’ Her gaze bounced between her detectives. ‘Do we have any proof of this?’
‘Not yet,’ Garcia replied, with a shake of the head. He was sitting at his desk, his shirt unbuttoned halfway, staring down at the huge bandage job on his chest. ‘Forensics is still at the house, Captain,’ he explained. ‘And with that cellar, they’ll probably still be there a week from now – probably longer – but so far they’ve come across no records: no box full of drivers’ licenses, no photographs of bodies or victims captive in those cells, no video recordings, no schematics or drawn-out plans on how to take any of his victims, no list of names, no victim trophy chest… nothing. If James Richard Whitely has a list of all the victims he took over the past twelve years, we haven’t found it yet.’
‘They won’t find anything like that,’ Hunter informed them.
‘How can you be so sure?’ the captain asked.
Hunter shrugged before clarifying. ‘Because James Whitely is amadepsychopath, Captain – not a born one. His desire to torture and kill didn’t come from some inexplicable urge deepwithin him. It came from a sense of duty. He believed that he was doing the right thing, and that was – punishing parents who had been violent toward their kids. He had no desire to keep records of his victims. He’s not the type of killer who, after the murder act, would keep going back to images or mementos so that he could relive the whole act again. On the contrary, what he wanted to do was get rid of them. There was no narcissistic side to his murders… no posing of the bodies to show them off… no attention-calling to any aspect of what he did. He didn’t even have a “signature” per se, except for the fact that he disguised his murders as accidents, and that was done to protect himself. He had no preferred way of killing either. He simply did to them what they did to others.’ Hunter shook his head confidently. ‘He won’t have a list of names, or a treasure chest, or mementos, or anything. His victims weren’t trophies… they were his job.’
‘So that number,’ Captain Blake said, putting the report down on Hunter’s desk, ‘is purely based on his mother’s account. A woman who was kept locked down in a cellar, chained to the walls, for seventeen years. A woman whose brain was probably already mush before her husband blew it off her skull.’
