Chapter Twenty-Five

Captain Blake hadn't exaggerated when she had told Hunter and Garcia that she had just come back from another ridiculously long and equally pointless budget meeting. She was exhausted, she couldn't wait to get home, and she desperately needed a large glass of wine. What she definitely didn't need was to try to decipher another one of Hunter's riddles.

‘We might be poking at the wrong end of the loophole?' she asked Hunter, dipping her chin and using her right hand to slide her glasses to the tip of her nose.

Garcia also looked back at him a little uncertainly.

‘We've only been talking about the medical side of the loophole,' Hunter began, indicating several photos as he spoke. ‘The fact that the kind of injuries that this killer inflicts onto his victims prior to death can easily be mistaken for the sort of injuries that would've occurred had the accidents not been faked.'

‘Yeah, well, you brought it up,' Captain Blake said.

‘I did,' Hunter agreed. ‘But like I said – that kind of information isn't too hard to come by.'

‘So what are you talking about, Robert?' the captain asked, checking her watch. ‘Which side should we be "poking" at?'

‘The "unclaimed body" side of the loophole.' The answer came from Garcia. His gaze skipped over to Hunter, who nodded.

‘Look,' Captain Blake said, as she used her thumb and forefinger to slightly lift up her glasses so that she could pinch the bridge of her nose. She tried her best to keep her voice steady. ‘It really has been a bitch of a long day. I'm tired. I want to go home. And I need a glass of wine like a baby needs a nipple, so can we all stop with the fucking conundrum and just get to the point here.' She allowed her glasses to slide back onto her nose before her piercing, magnified eyes looked back at Hunter and Garcia.

‘This killer knows that if a body goes unclaimed for more than just one to two weeks…' Garcia got there before Hunter. ‘The body is donated to medical studies, where only a small number of them end up in the hands of pathology students, and an even smaller number end up getting a full autopsy exam.'

Another nod from Hunter. ‘No autopsy, no chance of finding out the inconsistencies.'

Captain Blake paused, her brain too tired to fully engage. ‘So what does that actually mean?'

‘It means that his victim selection isn't a random process, Captain,' Hunter replied. ‘He doesn't pick just anyone off the streets… any passer-by. His victims are carefully selected.'

The captain took a step back, allowing her attention to return to the board for a long moment. ‘So then his criteria would be what? That they're all loners? That they have no one who will claim their bodies once they're gone?'

‘Bingo,' Garcia said, turning to face Hunter. ‘Unless you've found out something very different from what I did.'

Hunter shook his head. ‘It doesn't sound like I did.'

‘You guys just lost me again,' Captain Blake said, sounding like she was about to give up.

Garcia quickly explained what he and Hunter had spent the afternoon doing.

‘I had just got back from The Varnish when you popped up at the door, Captain,' he told her. ‘We haven't had the chance to compare findings yet.'

‘So what did you find out?' the captain asked.

‘Not much.' Garcia went first. ‘And exactly that – that Terry Wilford seemed to have been a bigger loner than we initially thought.' He walked over to his desk and grabbed his notepad. ‘It's Tuesday, not the busiest of evenings for a cocktail bar, but I did talk to everyone who was at The Varnish tonight – the bartender, the waitresses, the owner, and the few customers who dripped through the door just as they opened.'

‘Sabrina Davis?' Hunter asked.

‘Yep,' Garcia confirmed. ‘Talked to her the longest. She really was the only one who seemed to have known Terry Wilford on some sort of personal level, but even so, she knew very little about him.'

‘Who's Sabrina Davis?' Captain Blake asked.

Once again, Garcia quickly explained. ‘Honestly,' he said, flipping a page on the notepad, ‘I could barely expand on what she'd already told Detective Cohen from MP. She'd only known Terry Wilford for eight months. That was when she started working at The Varnish. Her personal relationship with him started four months after that and it was – and I'm fully quoting her here – "Purely sexual, not romantic. We simply enjoyed each other's company and some nights, especially after some of the crazy shifts here at The Varn, we ended up in bed together. It was a great way of releasing stress. That was all. We were no Romeo and Juliet."?' Garcia put down the notepad. ‘She also told me that most of the time, they tended to use her place, instead of his.'

‘Well, I'm no expert,' Captain Blake commented. ‘But even a "purely sexual" relationship has got to have some sort of dialogue, doesn't it? They've got to talk about something before and after sex, don't they?'

‘That was the same exact point that I put forward to Miss Davis,' Garcia confirmed. ‘She said that yeah, they talked about stuff, just nothing serious, or too personal. He didn't ask about her life and she didn't ask about his.' He shrugged. ‘To quote her again: "We just enjoyed fucking. We both knew that nothing serious would ever come from what we had."?'

‘How about everyone else at The Varnish?' Hunter asked.

‘Exactly what we read in the Missing Persons file earlier today,' Garcia said, giving Hunter a very subtle headshake. ‘According to everyone I spoke to, Terry Wilford was a polite and friendly person… hard worker, never complained about his shifts, and he kept himself to himself.'

‘I got the same at my end,' Hunter said.

‘So did the people at Bar Chloe actually remember him?' Garcia sounded genuinely surprised.

‘The bar manager.' Hunter nodded. ‘He's been managing the place for nine years.'

‘Terry Wilford worked at Bar Chloe in Santa Monica when he first moved to LA, five years ago,' Garcia explained, for the captain's benefit.

‘I got pretty much a carbon copy of what you did,' Hunter clarified. ‘Friendly, hard-working, polite… and private.'

‘So just like with the first victim,' Captain Blake asked, her head tilting in the direction of the board. ‘We've got nothing to go on again?'

‘Not exactly,' Hunter said, as he addressed Garcia. ‘What did Luis Toledo have to say?'

‘Nothing that could really help us,' Garcia replied, quickly retrieving his notepad from his desk once again. ‘On Monday, July 1st, at around midnight, he and Randy Douglas were about halfway through cleaning wastewater discharged from the LA River canal, between the 7th Street Bridge and the 6th Street Viaduct, when they saw Terry Wilford up on the 7th Street Bridge, just about to jump.'

Captain Blake's eyes widened at her detective. ‘Hold the fuck on. There were witnesses?'

Garcia nodded before continuing. ‘He said that it all happened way too fast – just a matter of seconds, really. They saw him up on the bridge… they realized that he was about to jump… and that was it – he jumped. No hesitation. Mr. Toledo said that he tried. He ran as fast as he could, he yelled as loud as he could… but they were too far away from the bridge. Terry Wilford never even noticed them down there.'

‘Did he say anything about Randy Douglas seeing something a little different from what he saw?' Hunter asked.

Garcia paused, his brow creasing. ‘What do you mean?'

Hunter leaned against the edge of his desk. ‘The first version of events I got from Mr. Douglas was quite similar to the one you got from Luis Toledo.'

‘First version?' The question came from Captain Blake. ‘How many versions did you get?'

‘Two,' Hunter replied. ‘In the first one, Mr. Douglas gave me a very similar run of events: it was just past midnight, they were about halfway through cleaning wastewater discharged from the canal and so on… when they spotted Terry Wilford up on the bridge. What I thought was intriguing was – why did only Luis Toledo run in the direction of the bridge and the jumper?'

‘What?' Garcia, this time.

‘Mr. Douglas told me that when he and Mr. Toledo realized that the guy on the bridge was about to jump,' Hunter clarified, ‘Mr. Toledo took off like a bullet, waving his arms, yelling at the top of his voice… all to try to stop Terry Wilford from jumping. So I asked Randy Douglas – what did he do? If Mr. Toledo ran toward the bridge to try to stop the jumper, why didn't he do the same? What did he do instead? Was he in shock? Scared? What happened? That was when Mr. Douglas broke eye contact with me, looking quite uncomfortable.'

‘The whole story was a lie?' Captain Blake asked the same question that Garcia was just about to.

‘No,' Hunter replied. ‘I don't think so. I think that that was exactly what happened that night. Luis Toledo realized that Terry Wilford was about to jump and he tried to do all he could to stop him from allegedly killing himself.' He lifted his left hand at Garcia and Captain Blake. ‘Now, there is a reason why Randy Douglas didn't do the same. As Terry Wilford leaped to his death, Mr. Douglas stood perfectly still because something else, up on the bridge, caught his eye.'

‘Of course,' Garcia said, anticipating Hunter's explanation. ‘There was someone else up there because Terry was already dead.'

Hunter drew in a deep breath as he nodded. ‘Mr. Douglas could swear that Terry Wilford didn't jump from that bridge. He was thrown.'