‘Damn!’ he whispered to himself, reaching into his pocket for his car keys. ‘And now I’m horny.’
Inside his pocket, his fingertips brushed against the small cellophane bag filled with cocaine that he and Sabrina had shared moments earlier.
‘Umm…’ Terry bit his bottom lip while he thought about it for an instant.
On the weekends, instead of going straight home after his shifts, Terry would sometimes go to an underground club – the kind that stayed open until the break of dawn… the kind where he could easily get his kicks – and in LA, the weekend started on Wednesday.
Terry crossed the road and turned the corner to get to where his car was parked. The street was almost empty, with the exception of his blue Chevy Cruze and a dark-colored pickup truck that was parked to its left. Leaning against the side of the truck, facing the opposite direction, a tall man was smoking a cigarette. It was only when Terry got to about five feet from his car that he recognized who the man was.
‘Liam?’ Terry frowned, pausing by his driver’s door.
Liam turned on the balls of his feet. ‘Hey, Terry.’ He nodded before flicking what was still left of his cigarette over the truck to the other side. ‘Just finished work?’
‘Umm… yeah.’ Terry subtly shook his head, as if trying to wake up from a quick nap. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘I was smoking a cigarette.’
Terry frowned again. A little harder this time. ‘No… I mean… I thought you’d be home by now. You left about an hour ago.’
‘I did,’ Liam agreed, rounding the truck to get a little closer to Terry. ‘I needed to get some fresh air.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Terry said, sounding impressed. ‘You managed to down two of those Amnesia cocktails. Those puppies were strong, man. I know. I mixed them.’
Liam dismissed the feat with a careless shrug. Once the bar got busier, it had been easy for him to keep on tipping some of his drink into glasses left at the bar without anyone noticing it.
‘Is this your truck?’ Terry asked.
Liam nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive? Do you want me to call you a cab?’
‘No, I’m good,’ Liam replied, tucking his left hand deep into his jacket pocket. ‘But I wanted to show you something that is a bit shocking, if you don’t mind.’ He took two steps forward to be within an arm’s reach of Terry.
‘Shocking.’ Terry craned his neck forward. ‘What is it?’
Liam smiled, and in one very fast move pulled a Taser out of his pocket and brought it to Terry’s neck. One effortless click of the trigger and fifty thousand volts were discharged throughout the bartender’s body, immediately causing neuromuscular incapacitation. Terry’s eyes disappeared into his head, while his whole body shook uncontrollably for about three seconds before his legs gave way and he collapsed. Liam was ready for it and grabbed Terry before his head hit the ground.
‘I wanted to show you something that’s a bit shocking,’ Liam chuckled to himself, as he dropped the tailgate on his truck and dragged an unconscious Terry into the truck’s cargo bed. ‘What a fantastic joke.’
Nine
In the morning, Hunter and Garcia had been at their desks for less than half an hour when Captain Blake appeared at their door.
‘So what happened yesterday?’ she asked. Captain Blake wasn’t one to beat around the bush. ‘What do we have?’
Garcia indicated the picture board pushed up against their office’s south wall. On it, he and Hunter had already pinned the few photos they had taken inside Shaun Daniels’s apartment and of his station wagon, together with the autopsy shots.
‘Not a lot,’ he replied, with a shake of the head. ‘Except for us confirming what we already knew.’
‘That he wasn’t killed in a pedestrian/vehicle traffic accident,’ Captain Blake said, stepping closer to the board.
‘No chance of that,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘The accident was staged.’ He had just begun explaining what he and Hunter had found out from Dr. Hove the day before, when the captain paused him with a hand gesture.
‘Whoa! Hold on just a second.’ Her stare was fixed on a particular photo on the board. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘Once we made it to his apartment,’ Hunter said, getting up from his desk. ‘We were able to check his mail, including his last cellphone bill. From it, we have reason to believe that Mr. Daniels had been missing for almost thirty days before his body was discovered five days ago.’
Captain Blake turned to face him. ‘Thirty days? Has there been a Missing Persons Report?’
