Chapter Thirty-One

‘How old is this Joseph kid today?' Captain Blake asked, her eyes fixed on the picnic photo of Joseph and his mother.

They were all back inside the UVC Unit's office, standing in front of the picture board. Hunter and Garcia had just run her through the photos that they'd found inside Terry Wilford's apartment and what that could possibly mean for their investigation.

‘Twenty-one,' Garcia replied, grabbing a freshly printed photograph from the printer tray and pinning it to the board. The printout was the most recent photo of Joseph Thomas Wilford that Garcia had pinched from his Facebook page. In the photo, Joseph was standing in front of a videogames shop called Fallout Games. He wore a black T-shirt, with another unreadable metal band name across its front, and faded blue jeans. This time, unlike most of the pictures in the photo album they'd found in his father's apartment, Joseph's smile didn't seem fake. From the last picture that Hunter and Garcia had seen of him – the picnic one – Joseph had grown at least another foot and he had clearly lost weight. Maybe too much weight, as he looked to be a little on the skinny side, but his skin had gained a bit of color and his brown curly hair, now dyed raven-black, had grown to just a fraction above his narrow shoulders.

‘Quite a change from his teenage years,' the captain said, studying the new photo. ‘And has any of this been confirmed yet? Was he really being abused by his father… mother… whoever?'

‘We don't know yet,' Hunter explained. ‘I tried calling Joseph from his father's apartment, but the call went straight to his voicemail. I left him as compelling a message as I could, but Joseph might not call back.'

‘Yesterday we heard a recording that Missing Persons had made during a call between Detective Cohen and Joseph,' Garcia jumped in. ‘There's no doubt that this kid hated his dad.' He nodded at the board. ‘This might be the reason why. Joseph doesn't care about his father. He made that very clear in his conversation with Detective Cohen. He only called Missing Persons back to ask them to stop bothering him.'

‘Joseph works at a carwash called Quick Clean in Chandler,' Hunter said. ‘There's no registered phone number for the carwash. His cell number is all we've got.'

‘We'll keep on trying, but…' Garcia shrugged.

‘No other way that we can confirm if this kid was really physically abused or not?' Captain Blake asked. ‘Can Research help?'

‘Unlikely,' Garcia replied. ‘Who could they ask?'

Captain Blake knew that Garcia was right. Parental violence, especially against younger kids, was something that was always kept tightly under wraps for obvious reasons, where the injuries were always kept hidden from everyone at all costs – no doctors, no hospitals, no pharmacies, no hanging out with friends, no going out without a parent… nothing.

Garcia looked away for a second, his eyes lost, as a forgotten memory suddenly popped back into his head.

‘When I was in seventh grade,' he said, ‘there was this girl in my class, skinny and shy as hell. Never really talked to anyone much and she always had this terribly sad look on her face, you know?' He paused, pressed his lips together, then shook his head. ‘Damn… I can't remember her name. Anyway, she would miss full weeks of school at a time, always with some really bad excuse, but she managed to finish seventh grade all right. After summer vacation, we started eighth grade and it was just a repeat of the previous year – sad, shy, skinny, quiet, missed classes all the time.' Another sad shake of the head. ‘She never finished eighth grade. Never graduated from middle school. She died at home. An "accident", they said. Months later, as we were starting our freshman year, we heard that her parents had been arrested. I think her autopsy revealed the extent of the violence that she had been suffering at home, and none of us ever knew.' He breathed out in frustration. ‘Damn, I can't believe that I can't remember her name.'

The captain's gaze moved to the aftermath photos of Terry's alleged suicide, taken at the scene, before skipping to the pictures from his post-mortem. The list of injuries that he had suffered during his torture phase was also pinned to the board.

‘OK,' she finally said, without breaking eye contact with the board. ‘So let's say that you got this right. Let's say that it confirms that this kid was being beaten up by his father when younger. What's the theory on these murders then? Because unless we got this all wrong from the beginning, I know that it can't be this Joseph kid. He can't be the one doing all this out of revenge.' She indicated the first half of the board, occupied by Shaun Daniels's photos. ‘If that was the case, then how does the first victim fit into any of it? Why was Shaun Daniels taken, tortured and killed? And why was he taken first, even before the kid's father?' Captain Blake turned to face Hunter and Garcia. ‘It just doesn't make sense. Then there's the fact that we've already agreed that if these murders are linked – if we're really talking about the same perp here – then this can't be the beginning. He must've been doing this for years because this simply cannot be the work of an inexperienced killer. It's too elaborate, too well planned… too knowledgeable.' She indicated Joseph's Facebook printout on the board. ‘How does this child fit that profile? He's twenty-one years old.'

‘He doesn't,' Hunter agreed, but before he could say anything else, the phone on his desk rang. The blinking light at the bottom-right edge of the receiver indicated that the call was coming from the Police Administration switchboard.

‘Just a second, Captain.' Hunter pressed the blinking button.

‘Detective Hunter,'the female operator's voice came through the tiny intercom speaker. ‘I've got a Joe Thomas Suarez on line two for you.'

Hunter's eyes moved first to Captain Blake then to Garcia.

‘I'll be damned,' Garcia said, his eyebrows arching at Hunter. ‘What sort of compelling message did you leave him?'

Hunter shrugged and pressed down on the intercom button. ‘Please put him through.'