Chapter Forty-Two

Hunter nodded at Garcia and immediately switched the call to speakerphone.

Shannon didn't miss a beat. ‘I'm sending you an email right now with all the free and small-donations support groups we managed to find in LA. The number is actually astounding, Robert, and they cater for just about everything. Different groups also offer different types of therapies, as you will see. Not surprisingly, there's a large number of them that target excessive drinking and substance abuse – this is LA, after all. The list I'm sending you has been filtered down. It contains only the groups that deal specifically with the subjects you mentioned – alcohol and substance abuse, anger management, parenting and domestic violence. The domestic violence ones are divided into two types – abusive and abused – for people who are either perpetrating the violence, or at the receiving end it. Based on what you told me, I have flagged the "abusive" category as the most relevant. All of them meet once a week – evening time.'

‘Great job, Shannon. Thank you for this.'

‘My pleasure. Just let me know if you need anything else.'

‘Will do.'

Hunter disconnected and he and Garcia went back to their computers. Even though Shannon had filtered the list down to four main categories, the list contained 101 support groups. Of those, twenty-six dealt exclusively with anger management, and twenty-five with domestic violence – eleven catering to help perpetrators of the violence and fourteen catering to help those at the receiving end of it.

‘Wow,' Garcia said, as he scanned the list. ‘Shannon wasn't joking when she said that the number of groups was astounding, was she?'

‘I guess not,' Hunter replied, already noting a few things down.

Garcia took a minute, reading the descriptions of some of the groups. ‘So how do you want to go about this, Robert? I mean, since the killer could be anyone in the group, including the person who runs it, we can't just turn up and ask people if Terry Wilford or Shaun Daniels have ever taken part in any of their sessions. If we alert the killer that we're on his trail, he'll vanish.'

Hunter was still taking notes, but he gave Garcia a single nod.

‘So what do you suggest we do?'

Hunter finally stopped writing and angled his body to the right, so that he could see his partner past his computer screen. ‘Put ourselves in the killer's shoes.' He checked his notes for a heartbeat. ‘If you were the killer, looking for victims – parents who are, or had been, violent toward their kids – and you decided that the best way to find them would be through support groups, how would you go about doing that from the very beginning?'

Garcia gave it a moment's thought before shrugging. ‘I'd say I'd have two options. One – if I'm intelligent and patient enough, and we both know that our killer is – I'd get a certificate on anger management, counseling, therapy… whatever I needed to be able to run a group. That way I'd be sitting in on every session, meet every person who joins the group, and listen to all the stories they have to tell. That's how groups work, isn't it? People take turns telling the group their stories – things they've done… things they regret having done, and so on?'

‘The dynamics might differ from group to group,' Hunter explained. ‘But yes, that's the main gist of how group therapy works. And that's a good option. What's option two?'

Garcia tilted his head to one side. ‘If I weren't running the group, then I'd simply join one and observe. Same principle as option one. I'm just not the leader.' He paused, considering something for a couple of beats. ‘And if I'm being logical, option two would be a better call.'

Hunter didn't need to ask why. Putting himself in the killer's shoes for an instant, he would've also picked option two – just joining a group instead of running it – that way, he wouldn't need to stick with the same group all the time. He could jump around from group to group, maximizing his choices for a new victim and minimizing his exposure to the same group of eyes.

‘OK,' Hunter agreed once again. ‘But with both options, how would you choose your victim? Let's say that there are seven members in the group, including you, and for now let's say that you're running the group – so you have six possible choices for a victim. How would you pick? Or would you just take out everyone in the group over a period of time?'

‘That would probably be a bad idea,' Garcia replied. ‘Taking out every member of the group would certainly raise suspicions.'

‘Remember that you're disguising the deaths as accidental, or suicide,' Hunter reminded him. ‘People wouldn't actually know that they were being murdered.'

‘Even so,' Garcia shook his head. ‘If six members of the same support group all die from some sort of accident and/or suicide in the space of, let's say, a year, I don't think that that would go unnoticed, Robert. Unless I do it over several long years.'

‘It is very possible,' Hunter conceded. ‘Like you've said, our killer seems to be very patient, but let's forget about the timeframe for now and let me bring you back to the question of "choosing". Let's say you decide to take out only two members of the group. How would you choose them out of the six? What would your criteria be?'

Garcia sipped his coffee while he thought about it. ‘I guess I'd listen to their stories and I'd probably pick the two people who I thought had been the most violent toward their kids.'

‘So your criteria would be "level of violence"?'

Garcia paused for a millisecond. ‘For me, "level of violence" would definitely play a big part in picking my victims.'

‘Would anything else play a part?'

Garcia nodded. ‘Knowing what we already know, I'd say yes – risk management.'

‘The "loner" factor, right?'

‘For sure,' Garcia agreed. ‘I don't think that it's a coincidence that the two victims we've discovered so far were both the quiet type, Robert – no partners, lived alone, very few friends, didn't go out much, didn't socialize with the neighbors, and all that. Shaun Daniels wasn't even reported as missing because no one knew… no one cared. So yes, I think that our killer minimizes his risk by factoring in the "loner" aspect.'

Hunter pinched his bottom lip, but said nothing.

‘How would you pick?' Garcia queried.

‘If I were being rational, probably in that exact same way – violent factor followed by the "loner" aspect.'

‘If you were being rational? Why wouldn't you be?'

‘Like you pointed out,' Hunter explained, ‘our killer is clearly an intelligent person. Disguising murders as accidental deaths and/or suicide isn't an easy task and, as we know, our killer doesn't use the same method every time. That takes creativity and knowledge. But don't forget that he's also a broken person. The reason why he kills isn't because he's a born psychopath and his urge is out of control. It's because his mind has fractured as a consequence of the physical abuse he suffered when young. Fractured minds aren't always rational, Carlos.'

‘So what other ways could he choose?' Garcia asked.

‘There's no telling with a person who is that broken,' Hunter clarified. ‘It could be something that makes sense only to him… something that only he sees.'

‘Like what?' Garcia pushed.

‘Anything. For example, one of the group members could physically remind the killer of the person who used to beat him up when he was young – father, mother, uncle, stepfather… whoever. Or maybe one of the stories he heard from a group member, despite not being the most violent, is similar to the kind of abuse our killer used to suffer.' Hunter shrugged. ‘A member of the group could just dress like the person who used to perpetrate the abuse, or talk like them, or smell like them… his criteria is his own. The trigger can be something that only he understands and if that trigger is a direct reminder of the abuse he suffered, it will take precedence over everything else.'

‘I didn't think of that, but regardless of what the trigger is, we both agree that our killer needs to be in the group, right? Sitting in on sessions to be able to pick his victims. There's no other way?'

‘Absolu…' Hunter paused mid-word, his attention back on the list of support groups on his computer screen. Shannon and her team had done a great job in condensing the information on that list. It contained the name of the support group, the type of therapy or support it offered, a one-line explanation of its main mission, and the name of the person running it. It had been the name field that had caught Hunter's eyes.

‘Shit!' Hunter whispered, but not quiet enough for it not to reach his partner's ears.

‘What?' Garcia asked.

Hunter breathed out, leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk and used the tips of his fingers to massage his temples.

‘Maybe there's another way to pick the victims, Carlos. A way in which our killer doesn't even take part in the groups.'

‘What? How?'

Hunter got to his feet. ‘Let me ask you something first. Do you think that our killer could be a woman?'