Chapter Thirty-Nine

Once they left Watts, Hunter and Garcia dropped Craig off at the My Club Youth Center in Vermont – a charity shelter that offered help to abandoned children and runaway kids from abusive homes. The shelter was run by people who had suffered abuse themselves when young… people who truly understood what Craig was going through.

Back in the car, Garcia sat still for a moment.

‘I really hope that kid manages to make a life for himself in this city. He seems like a good kid.'

‘He does,' Hunter agreed, his eyes back on the large, rectangular white building that was the youth center.

He hoped for the same, but he and Garcia both knew the harsh reality of Los Angeles – to a few, that city would truly become paradise on earth, but to so many who descended on the City of Light, full of hopes and dreams, searching for a new start, the City of Angels would turn out to be the exact opposite – the City of Broken Dreams, full of lost and desperate souls… the place where innocence came to die and demons were born.

‘So what's our next step?' Garcia asked, switching on the engine. ‘Because the theory has definitely proved right, Robert – our killer is hunting down parents who were violent toward their kids and paying them back in kind and with dividends, like the captain put it, which can only mean that the killer himself suffered abuse in the form of excessive violence at the hands of his own parents, right?'

Hunter agreed with a nod. ‘Enough to completely fracture his mind and transform him from an abused kid to a murderer, waging his own crusade on other parents.'

‘So if his parents' violence is what broke him,' Garcia speculated. ‘If that is really what put him on this crazy revenge path, then chances are that they were also his very first victims, right? This guy has probably murdered his own mother and father.'

Another firm nod from Hunter. ‘He probably has. And that was the start of it all. That was the day that his mind fractured for good.' He lifted two fingers at Garcia. ‘In theory, we get two kinds of homicidal fractured minds derived from abuse – explosive and composed. Explosive would be identical to what "temporary insanity" is, except it's not temporary.'

‘So the person loses it and lashes out in a fit of rage,' Garcia said.

‘In a fit of uncontrollable rage,' Hunter corrected him. ‘The lashing out is usually exceptionally violent and very messy, and it happens suddenly – hence the term "explosive". The subject hits back and he won't stop hitting until all the bottled-up rage inside him has eased up. That's the fracture, right there, and it has the potential to completely erase the line between right and wrong from the subject's conscious mind.'

‘So I'm assuming that what you called a composed, homicidal, fractured mind is the "hit back", but served cold.'

‘Exactly,' Hunter confirmed. ‘The mind fractures in the same way, the line between right and wrong is also blurred, but there's no explosion of rage. Instead, the revenge attack is planned out and the risks are calculated. These tend to be just as violent, but a lot tidier. And it usually involves torture. They are just as dangerous as the explosive types, but a hell of a lot harder to catch.'

‘And of course,' Garcia nodded, ‘that's the type that we're after. Why wouldn't it be?'