Chapter 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't come 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.'

‘Theoretically, yes.' Hunter, this time. ‘There's no real way of knowing.'

‘How is this even possible?'

‘Because whoever is doing this,' Hunter explained, ‘isn't stupid, Captain. He figured out a loophole that would've kept him unnoticed for years.' He shrugged. ‘With a bit of luck… for ever.'

‘A loophole?' Captain Blake queried. ‘Explain, Robert.'

Hunter broadly gestured at the board. ‘When a body is brought into the LA morgue, with a clear, seemingly "apparent" cause of death – hit-and-runs, suicides, car crashes and so on – unless there's some sort of request from a law enforcement agency, that body goes straight to the back of the autopsy pile. Their priority is as low as it gets. If that body goes unclaimed for more than just one to two weeks and a post-mortem examination still hasn't been performed, that body will inevitably end up being donated to estate universities for medical studies. Out of those, only a small number end up with the pathology department. Out of that small number, only some end up getting a full autopsy examination instead of being dissected for other purposes, and those post-mortems are performed by students, not senior doctors.'

‘Are pathology students that clueless that they won't pick up on these types of inconsistencies?' the captain asked.

‘That's not it, Captain,' Hunter came back. ‘There are two main factors that you need to consider here. One: with these bodies, the cause of death is already as evident as it can be. The exercise is usually to simply confirm it, not go on a fishing expedition around the body to try to disprove the apparent COD.'

‘Don't forget that the students are also on a clock,' Garcia added. ‘Few will be willing to waste time going off on a tangent when their grades are at stake.'

Hunter nodded before continuing. ‘And two: the sort of inconsistencies that we're talking about here, Captain, can easily be overlooked, even by career pathologists, because they very closely match injuries that could occur had the faked deaths been real – fractured bones, punctured lungs, dislocated joints and what-have-you – those do happen when someone jumps from a bridge, or is run over by a truck.'

‘If Dr. Hove hadn't been the one who had discovered the inconsistencies with Shaun Daniels's hit-and-run death less than a month ago,' Garcia pointed out, ‘she would've discarded her student's findings as overthinking – just a student trying to impress her teacher. Something that happens in every class.'

‘And at first,' Hunter took over again, ‘that's exactly what she did – discarded the findings as overthinking – until her student told her that Terry Wilford couldn't have jumped off the 7th Street Bridge that night because he was already dead way before he got there. That kind of coincidence was too much for Dr. Hove to ignore – two victims who were apparently dead before being dead in the space of just a few weeks?' Hunter shook his head.

‘In short,' Garcia again, ‘we were lucky, Captain. The minor inconsistencies with Terry Wilford's jumping suicide could've easily been overlooked. But fortunately, like Robert explained – this Kay Sixtree girl is pretty stubborn…' He smiled to himself. ‘And smart.'

There was a silent moment before Captain Blake spoke again. ‘So what's the theory here?' Her gaze settled on Hunter. ‘Do we think that this killer could be a medical professional in some capacity? Or was? Maybe even a medical student? How does one figure out a loophole like this one?'

‘Of course there's that possibility,' Hunter confirmed. ‘But to be honest, Captain, none of that information is really hard to come by. All it takes is a bit of research over the Internet and maybe a couple of phone calls, that's all.'

‘But even if he is,' Garcia interjected, ‘or was a medical professional, a student or whatever… we have absolutely no way of finding out who he is simply because he figured out a way to operate under the radar. All that the loophole really tells us, Captain, is that he's very clever.'

Hunter glanced at the board. ‘Maybe that's not all it can tell us.'

All eyes moved to him.

‘I think we might be poking at the wrong end of the loophole here.'