Hunter reached for the phone on his desk once again. This time, he did talk to Shannon in Research.
Forty-Four
The task that Hunter had given Shannon and the Research team wasn’t exactly a difficult one, but it was certainly laborious. Backtracking a person’s life could easily be done from behind a computer keyboard, especially if the researcher had access to information that was restricted to the general public, like police files, traffic accident documentation, school records and so on, but for a thorough backtracking job, the researcher would also need to spend time on the phone – talking to doctors, teachers, relatives… whoever they needed to, depending on the case, to get the kind of personal history they were looking for. And what Shannon and her team were looking for in this particular instance were ‘no red flags’.
There were twenty-five names on the initial list that Hunter had given Research, and that would no doubt take time, but Hunter and Garcia didn’t need all the information at once. Research could trickle it through, a name at a time, and the two names right at the top of that list were Keri Liftridge and Roberto De Souza. Both of them were career therapists, and both of them ran two of the eleven domestic violence support groups that catered specifically to help those perpetrating the violence. And their support groups met on Tuesday evenings – Terry Wilford’s only night off during the week.
It took Research almost a full day to backtrack Keri Liftridge’slife to a ‘no red flags’ status. They were able to track back on her personal history all the way to her birth. Her parents were still alive and living in Connecticut. Shannon herself had spoken to both of them on the phone.
Due to the fact that Roberto De Souza’s family was all back in Puerto Rico, his backtracking was taking a little longer than the team expected, but all indications were that he would also make the ‘no red flags’ list.
‘So what do you want to do?’ Garcia asked, as he walked back into the UVC Unit’s office, holding an unopened can of Dr. Pepper in his right hand. ‘It’s Thursday today, neither Keri Liftridge’s or Roberto De Souza’s support group meet until Tuesday, but we don’t need to wait until then to go talk to either of them.’ He cracked open the can. ‘Though Mrs. Liftridge’s support group meets in Monterey Park, her regular consulting office is in North Hollywood.’
‘Yeah,’ Hunter replied. ‘I saw that.’
‘Roberto De Souza doesn’t have a private office,’ Garcia continued. ‘During the day he’s a school psychologist at Morningside High School in Inglewood.’
Hunter checked his watch – 4:20 p.m. ‘Well, school is out. So just turning up at Morningside High could turn out to be a wasted journey.’
Garcia knew that, whenever possible, Hunter preferred to turn up unannounced. It gave them the upper hand.
‘School might be out, but we can still drop by Keri Liftridge’s office in North Hollywood. It’ll take us less than half an hour to get there.’
‘We can,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But I don’t want to do that together.’
‘Why not? She’s a “no red flags”.’
‘Still,’ Hunter explained. ‘Regardless of finding out if any of our victims had attended any of these support groups, we’ll still have to sit in on all of them.’
Garcia nodded, picking up on what Hunter had meant. ‘And it’s better if they don’t know that there’s a cop sitting in on their session.’
‘Much better,’ Hunter agreed.
‘So with the groups that you talk to the leader, I sit in on their sessions.’
‘And vice-versa,’ Hunter agreed.
‘So who’s going to drop in on Keri Liftridge today?’
‘I can do it,’ Hunter said, already reaching for his jacket. ‘You can take the sessions.’
‘Fair enough. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Roberto De Souza and you’ll take the sessions.’
Hunter smiled. It seemed like they finally had a workable plan of action.
Forty-Five
Loud, heavy, screaming metal music blasted through the ceiling speakers once again, sending Jennifer’s body into another sudden-awake jolt, and immediately bringing back the final boss of headaches. Her terrified and already full-of-tears eyes shot open in a fright. Nothing made sense anymore. Her brain was too tired, her body too weak for her to be able to keep her grip on reality. Time had become nothing but a blur… an unreadable smudge on the fabric of her life, or whatever was left of it.
Jennifer had no real idea of how long it had been since Russell had drugged her that night at the restaurant before taking her captive. At first, she tried to keep track of time by relying on her body clock, which she knew was as precise as it could be. That precision came courtesy of sixteen years behind bars, when every single day was regimented down to the minute, forcing her body to grow so used to routine, it became an addiction.
Jennifer knew that no matter what, she would get hungry three times a day, because for sixteen years, she was only fed three times a day, and at the exact same time every single day, with very few exceptions. That meant that her stomach would first signal hunger at 6:30 a.m., then again at midday, and one last time at 6:30 p.m. – never before, never after. Those were three different internal alarms that seemed to have embedded themselves into her DNA. The fourth and final alarm came at ten o’clock atnight – lights out – that was when her eyelids would show the first signs of becoming heavy.
What that all meant was that in normal circumstances, Jennifer didn’t need a clock to be able to tell the time. Her body would give her a pretty good idea of what time of the day it was, but these weren’t normal circumstances… far from it… because since she’d been taken, her body and mind had been deprived of four of the most important elements for survival.
Light – darkness surrounded Jennifer twenty-four hours a day, except when Russell was in the room with her. Every time that happened, Russell would use a different light intensity – from candlelight shadows to retina-melting bright – tricking and disorienting her visual cortex.
Food and water – both came at her captor’s own discretion – sometimes once a day, sometimes not at all – causing havoc with her metabolism and keeping her energy levels at a bare minimum.
