Hunter and Garcia both knew that there had to be something wrong with what Randy and Luis had told the police officer who took their witness testimonies at the ‘suicide’ scene because, according to Dr. Hove, there was no suicide. So what did they actually see?
From experience, Hunter and Garcia knew that when two witnesses were interviewed together, it wasn’t uncommon for one of their testimonies to drastically overpower or influence the other. If one of the witnesses, let’s say Luis Toledo, had sounded overly confident about what he had seen, the second witness, Randy Douglas, if just a little unsure about what he had actually seen, could very easily modify his account to better match Luis’s version of events. In a court of law, this was referred to as ‘peer testimony adjustment’, and it could totally change the outcome of a trial.
‘OK,’ Garcia said, reaching for the phone on his desk. ‘Let’s give LASAN a call then, shall we?’
Twenty-Three
It took Garcia just a couple of phone calls to find out that Tuesdays were Randy Douglas’s day off and that he was spending the day with his wife and kid at home, in Green Meadows – the most densely populated neighborhood in South Los Angeles. One extra phone call and Garcia was informed that that afternoon, Luis Toledo was part of a cleaning team working the sewer system in South Gate – an incorporated city of Los Angeles County, located seven miles southeast of Downtown LA.
Since the plan was to split up the two witnesses and chance had already placed them in different parts of town, Hunter and Garcia decided to also split the workload for the rest of the day. Hunter would first visit Randy in Green Meadows before heading west to Santa Monica and trying his luck with the staff at Bar Chloe and Hotel Carmel. Garcia would start with Luis in South Gate and on his way back he would drop by The Varnish to talk to Sabrina Davis and whoever else was working that evening. If time allowed, they were to meet back at the UVC Unit’s office once they were both done.
Hunter was the first to get back.
Garcia arrived just ten minutes after his partner, bringing with him a very colorful bunch of flowers.
‘Should I ask?’ Hunter said, nodding at the bouquet.
‘It’s Tuesday, remember?’ Garcia replied, matter-of-factly, placing the flowers on his desk.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘What about Tuesday?’ The question came from Captain Blake, who was standing at the door to their office. Her head jerked back slightly, as her stare landed on the flowers. Her lips stretched into a dubious smile. ‘OK, so what have you done now?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Garcia replied.
‘Really?’ From her tone, it was clear that she wasn’t buying what her detective was selling.
Hunter gave his partner a subtle nod. ‘Tell her the story. It’s a cool story.’
‘Story?’ the captain asked, closing the door behind her.
‘It’s nothing much,’ Garcia explained. ‘Our first date, Anna and me, was on a Tuesday, May 28th – junior year in high school. On that first date, I bought her flowers and Anna, being the way Anna is, said, “I wonder if you’ll still buy me flowers after we’ve been dating for a while?”?’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Challenge accepted. Since then, I’ve bought her flowers every two weeks, without fail.’
‘Every two weeks?’ Captain Blake queried. ‘How long have you two been together?’
‘We’ve been married for seventeen years, but we dated for a year and a half prior to that.’
‘And you’ve bought her flowers every two weeks for almost nineteen years?’
This time, even Hunter nodded.
‘Without fail,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘I have an alarm set up on my phone and all. I usually get them on my way home, but right next door to The Varnish there was a florist, and I thought that this was a nice bunch.’ He nodded at the flowers.
‘It’s a beautiful bouquet,’ Captain Blake agreed. ‘And I didn’t know that we had such a romantic in our midst. Not many of those around.’ She turned to face the picture board. ‘But I didn’tcome here to talk flowers. I just got back from another ridiculously long and equally pointless budget meeting to a message from Carolyn. She came across a second body that was dead before being dead? What the hell is going on?’
‘Terry Wilford,’ Garcia confirmed, guiding the captain’s attention to Terry’s portrait on the board before quickly summarizing everything that Dr. Hove and her student had found out.
Captain Blake listened to everything without interrupting. When Garcia was done, she adjusted her glasses up the bridge of her nose and leaned against the edge of Hunter’s desk. ‘So what you are telling me here is – I seem to have some deranged psycho loose in my city, who abducts people before torturing them for days…’ Her gaze moved to Hunter. ‘Then fakes their deaths to dispose of their bodies.’
‘That seems to be the case, Captain, yes,’ Garcia agreed.
‘And we have absolutely no idea how long this has been going on for, or how many victims he’s already claimed?’
‘Not even a ballpark figure,’ Garcia said, before clarifying. ‘As you well know, we’ve only come across our first victim, Shaun Daniels, by pure chance – an autopsy that was supposed to have gone to advanced forensic pathology students ended up on Dr. Hove’s examination table. Our second victim, Terry Wilford, like I’ve explained, was a similar case. His body did go to students, but fortunately for us, it ended up on the slab of one of Dr. Hove’s most gifted and stubborn students. She was the one who recognized the inconsistencies.’
Captain Blake approached the board and took her time studying all the new photographs.
‘So in truth,’ she said, ‘this could be going back years… decades, even. We could be talking about tens of victims here.’
