‘OK.’ Garcia lifted his hands in surrender. ‘Point taken. Youarea loner, but you’ve got good, solid friends – me, Anna, Captain Blake.’ He shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t go missing for more than a couple of days before one of us reported you missing.’
‘All of the close, solid friends you’ve mentioned, I’ve acquired because of my job, which is not a lonely job.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘This isn’t the case with Shaun Daniels. He was a plumber, working for himself. My guess is that he tended to take on smaller, one-man jobs most of the time. I’m sure he had friends… maybe even family around, but it doesn’t seem that he was close to anyone.’
Garcia checked the drawers on the TV module – nothing but a few local takeout menus, a tax-invoice book registered to Daniels Plumbing Ltd, a lighter and a bunch of old receipts. ‘This is just so fucked up, Robert.’
‘What is?’
‘The fact that he’s been missing for almost a month,’ Garcia replied, pausing to look back at his partner. ‘Because if we use logic, we have to assume the most probable sequence of events here, which is that he was taken around May 18th – when all of his cellphone communications ceased, right?’
Hunter nodded.
‘But according to Dr. Hove,’ Garcia continued, ‘he only died of hypothermia at least six to eight hours before he was found,which only happened four days ago, in the very early hours of Sunday, June 16th – meaning that he died on Saturday. Logical conclusion is that he was probably tortured for almost a month, Robert.’ He broadly gestured at the entire living room. ‘Look at this place. It’s a mess. The guy was a slob. He was a plumber. Not a drug dealer, not a millionaire, not a spy, not a scientist on the verge of some magnificent discovery… and I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t the keeper of some major government secret – so why torture him like that? Whatdidhe do?’
‘I really don’t know, Carlos.’ Hunter let go of a worried breath. ‘But it tells us something very specific about our perp.’
Garcia massaged the back of his neck. ‘That he might not be a serial killer, but he’s definitely a psychopath – someone capable of not only imprisoning another human being for about thirty days, but also capable of purposely inflicting tremendous pain on his victim… day, after day, after day.’
‘Which indicates rage toward Mr. Daniels,’ Hunter added. ‘A lot of it.’
‘So we’re talking about someone he knew,’ Garcia concluded. ‘This wasn’t someone who he might’ve had some silly altercation with in a bar or something… someone he met on the night. This was someone who truly hated him.’
Another nod from Hunter, who entered the kitchen, where the stench of rancid food gained a new, moldy dimension.
Garcia followed him.
‘Wow!’ he said, grimacing as he cupped a hand over his nose mask. ‘Something is definitely very funky in here. Probably that bread.’ He indicated a loaf of bread at the far end of the counter that had molded days ago. ‘That thing’s got a beard now.’ He hung back, while Hunter had a quick look around.
The wall cabinets were mostly empty, with the exception of a few plates, cups and mugs, and a small variety of canned food. The ones under the sink housed a few cleaning products,together with a bucket, some pans, and not much else. In the drawers, Hunter found some sparse cutlery, some matches, a few local takeout menus and several leaflets advertising Shaun’s plumbing business. His tagline was:No job too small.
As Hunter reached for the fridge handle, Garcia took another step back.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Something might jump out from in there.’
Hunter pulled the door open.
Nothing jumped out, mainly because there was barely anything in the fridge – a few bottles of beer, a tub of butter, a half-empty water container, four eggs and an opened milk carton. Hunter didn’t have to check to know that the milk had curdled.
In the living room, directly across from the apartment front door, a very short corridor led first to the bathroom, on the right. It was small and tiled all in white. Inside the mirror cabinet, other than razors and shaving cream, Hunter and Garcia found a half-full bottle of Percocet – one of the brand names that the combination of the opioid oxycodone with paracetamol was sold under. It was used to treat moderate to severe pain.
Garcia twisted his lips to one side, while his stare moved to Hunter.
Hunter shook his head. ‘No. No one gets into a life-threatening debt over Percocet.’
They exited the bathroom and reached the end of the short corridor. As Hunter pushed open the door to the only bedroom in the apartment, the smell that came from inside hit them like a baseball swing to the head, making both detectives bring a hand up, as if to defend their faces.
‘Damn!’ Garcia cringed. The smell was so strong it made his left eye water a little. ‘This can’t be good.’
Hunter hit the lights.
Nothing.
He flipped the switch off then on again. This time, the lights flickered once before bathing the room in celluloid orange.
Hunter and Garcia both saw it at the exact same time.
‘Oh fffffuck!’
Seven
