Chapter Twelve

Hunter sat quietly at his desk, eyes closed, mind plowing through the little they had so far, trying hard to understand what sequence of events could've led to Shaun Daniels being tortured for days before being murdered, but there were too many missing pieces… too many unanswered questions for any sort of workable image to materialize.

Back at O'Hearn's Bar and Grill, Hunter had asked the bartender if he'd ever asked Shaun what he'd really meant when he mentioned that he had fucked up in life. Conor said that he never did. From experience, he said, he knew that comments like Shaun's were better left alone. The more you prodded, the more it stunk.

Hunter couldn't really argue with that logic. Conor wasn't exactly Shaun Daniels's best friend, or his analyst. He was just a bartender in Shaun's local bar. There was no reason for him to go snooping around in Shaun's personal life.

Right then, a ‘ping' came from the computer on Hunter's desk, announcing the arrival of a new email. His eyes blinked open and his attention moved to his screen. The email was from Dr. Slater and it contained some of the forensics results from the analysis her team had conducted on Shaun's car. The report wasn't very long. The team had managed to retrieve several full and a few partial fingerprints from the external and internal door handles on all four doors, the steering wheel, the dashboard and the car's trunk lid. They had also recovered a few strands of hair from the driver and passenger seats.

No luck.

All lifted fingerprints, together with all recovered hair strands, belonged either to Shaun Daniels himself, or to one of the car handlers at the police parking garage in San Fernando Valley.

That result didn't really surprise Hunter. In fact, it stood to reason. If somebody had gone through the trouble of abducting, torturing and freezing Shaun Daniels to death, before trying to cover it all up by staging a fake hit-and-run accident, that someone wouldn't be the one to make a silly mistake like forgetting to wear gloves and some sort of hairnet while driving Shaun's car.

Hunter finished reading the report before getting to his feet and approaching the picture board, but his attention didn't go to any of the photographs. It moved to the map of the Sierra Pelona Mountains that he had pinned to the top right-hand corner of the board.

‘Looking for anything in particular?' Garcia asked. He too had just finished reading the vehicle forensics report.

‘Not exactly,' Hunter replied. ‘Just having a look at the routes to and from the mountains.'

Garcia joined Hunter by the board. ‘How did Shaun's car get there, right?' He indicated a photo on the board.

Hunter nodded.

‘I was wondering the exact same thing,' Garcia began, pointing to the area on the map where Shaun's body was discovered. ‘And the options are – the killer either had help, or he did a hell of a round trip, because to stage a hit-and-run accident, he needed two cars up there.'

Another nod from Hunter. ‘Shaun's station wagon, parked down the dirt track to add authenticity to the fake hit-and-run, and the pickup truck that had supposedly run Shaun over. The same pickup truck that created the brake marks on the road.'

‘Exactly,' Garcia agreed. ‘With help, that's an easy trip – the killer drives one car and the help drives the other. They park Shaun's station wagon down the dirt road, stage the fake hit-and-run, then they both jump back into the truck and hasta lasagna, amigos.' Garcia gave Hunter a sarcastic salute.

Hunter carried on studying the map.

‘But if the killer acted alone,' Garcia continued, his head shaking at his partner, ‘then we're talking at least a couple of trips up and down those mountains.'

‘First car up,' Hunter said in agreement, indicating on the map. ‘Parks, then back down, picks up the second car – presumably the one that carried the body – back up the mountain, stages the hit-and-run, and finally back down again.'

‘Easily doable,' Garcia said. ‘But damn risky, not to mention time-consuming. And…' He lifted a finger at Hunter. ‘How do you think that he got back down after driving the first car up?' He indicated on the map. ‘That must be at least two, two-and-a-half miles, down to the bottom of Lake Hughes Road. And that is assuming that the second car was parked somewhere there, which it probably wasn't. So what did he do? Walked all the way back to where the second car was parked? Called a cab? Waited for the bus? What?'

Hunter's attention stayed on the map for a couple more seconds. ‘What would you have done?'

Garcia shrugged. ‘Picked a different location to dump the body. That's what I would've done.'

‘Maybe,' Hunter agreed. ‘But that's not an option. This is what we have.' His chin jerked in the direction of the map. ‘So if you had to do this two-vehicle up-and-down, up-and-down trip all by yourself, how would you have done it?'

‘Do I need to consider least amount of time possible, or what?' Garcia asked.

‘I don't think it matters, but the day that the trip was done does.'

The answer surprised Garcia.

It took an instant for the penny to drop.

‘His body was discovered in the early hours of a Sunday morning,' he said, sure that he had picked up on Hunter's line of thought. ‘In an area that's packed full of fishing spots and picnic areas.'

Hunter nodded.

‘Clever fuck,' Garcia said with a chuckle. ‘A lot of people who go fishing tend to camp overnight. They'll spend the whole weekend up there. The killer could've driven Shaun's station wagon up the mountains the day before, on Saturday.'

‘At any time,' Hunter agreed. ‘He could've parked there in the morning, had a picnic, and then taken his time to make his way back down. He could've walked down, taken the bus, hitched a ride… it doesn't matter because he wouldn't care if he were seen or not. He wasn't doing anything wrong.'

Garcia ran the palms of both hands over his pulled-back hair before retightening his ponytail. ‘That answers the question, doesn't it? Why was the body dumped in such an awkward location?'

‘At first,' Hunter explained. ‘I thought that it was simply due to how isolated that spot on Lake Hughes Road was.' Once again, he indicated on the map. ‘No cameras anywhere around this whole area, and that's why it's a very popular location with young couples and whoever else might be looking for some privacy in their cars. Lots of trees and dirt tracks, loads of little hideout places… but if we're talking about the killer acting alone, then I don't think that was the real reason why that spot was picked. It was chosen because it gave the killer the entire weekend to roll out his plan. No need to rush. No need to worry about anyone spotting the first car parked up there overnight. No need to worry about anyone spotting him either. It's the perfect location.'

Garcia puffed his cheeks before breathing out slowly.

‘But we're not discarding any possibilities just yet,' Hunter was quick to add. ‘The likelihood that this killer had help is still very high on the list.'

‘Fine,' Garcia said, leaning back against the edge of his desk and folding his arms in front of his chest. ‘Maybe we've figured out why the odd location, but what keeps on bothering me is the victim, Robert. Let's stick with the "one-killer" theory for now, OK? Let's say that he had no help. Let's say that he did drive the first car up that mountain sometime on Saturday before returning in the early hours of Sunday morning to stage the hit-and-run.'

Hunter could already tell where his partner was going. ‘Why go through all that effort, right?'

Garcia agreed with a shrug. ‘To disguise the murder of someone who, so far, seems to be no one special. He was just a plumber, Robert. That doesn't make sense. I accept, we still haven't checked his financial records. Who knows? Maybe all his money is tucked away in the Bahamas.' The sentence was delivered with an over-sarcastic look. ‘But we've seen his car, we've been to his apartment… if Shaun Daniels was laundering money – or involved in any sort of illicit financial transaction where he was supposed to be taking a cut – he was being conned. That man did not live a life of luxury. It doesn't even look like he had a stable financial life.'

‘No, it doesn't,' Hunter agreed.

‘So this cannot have been about money, Robert. We both have seen it many times before. If this was about Shaun Daniels ripping someone off in any sort of way, he would've just been shot in the face, or chopped to pieces and that would be that. There'd be none of this hit-and-run staging crap. Loan sharks, gangsters, gang bangers, drug pushers, whoever… they won't torture a person for dimes, you know that. They'd have to have been ripped off big time, and even when they do torture somebody…' Garcia gave Hunter a despondent headshake. ‘They do it to set an example… to send out a message. They'd want others to know that they did it, so no one else would be getting any more funny ideas. They wouldn't have tried to cover anything up with a fake accident.'

Hunter said nothing back because he got the exact same feeling – whatever Shaun Daniels had meant when he told the bartender at O'Hearn's that he had fucked up, it couldn't have been about money.