Chapter Six

Shaun Daniels lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a two-story building, right on the corner of Eshelman Avenue and 250th Street, in Lomita – part of the Metropolitan Area of Los Angeles. The building itself was nothing more than a dilapidated, rectangular structure, painted avocado green, with a front yard that was in much need of some attention. Two concrete staircases – one at each end of the building – led to the exposed upper deck, with a rusty, vertical, iron-bar rail running the length of the whole deck. In all honesty, the building looked more like one of those cheap, old, side-of-the-road motels than a residential building.

At 6:31 p.m., the street wasn't exactly busy, which allowed Garcia to park directly across the road.

Three kids, none of them older than twelve, were hanging out on the sidewalk by the street corner. Two of them watched, while the third one was trying hard, and failing, to do a kickflip on a battered skateboard.

As he and Hunter stepped out of the car, Garcia indicated a baby-blue door on the upper deck. The first door if they took the staircase at the left end of the building. ‘Apartment twenty-one.'

‘Yeah, I see it.' Hunter nodded.

They crossed the road and took the stairs up to the second floor. The curtains on both windows to the right of the door were drawn shut. Both detectives gloved up before Hunter used the keys he'd found in Shaun's car – first on the metal security grill gate, then on the actual apartment door, which opened with some resistance, not much, and a high-pitched squeak at the hinges.

As Hunter pushed the door ajar, he and Garcia were met by a heavy breath of warm and stale air. Not really surprising, given that the building faced west, therefore getting the sun pounding on the apartment's front door and windows for the entire afternoon. What was disconcerting was the scent that accompanied that warm breath. It was as if the smell that they had gotten from Shaun's car had acquired a new overpowering kind of punch-to-the-gut that brought tears to the eyes.

‘Jesus!' Garcia said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving two teal-colored surgical masks. ‘After the storage garage, I had a feeling that we'd be needing these.'

Hunter took the mask from Garcia and put it on before pushing the door fully open.

Despite the sun still being high in the sky, the apartment looked somberly dark. Hunter reached for the light switch on the wall to the left and flicked it on.

The front door opened directly into Shaun's living room/kitchen space, which was a restrained and sparsely decorated room. The living room area had an old sofa, a mismatching armchair, and a wooden TV module pushed up against one of the walls. The kitchen area, which was accessible via a large opening on the wall to the right, had an old fridge, a stove unit, a microwave that sat on the counter and a small Formica table at its south corner. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes.

The air inside the apartment was saturated with the smell of mold and food gone bad. It was so heavy that, even with their masks on, Hunter and Garcia cringed as they stepped into the apartment.

Hunter checked behind the door. The reason for the subtle resistance was a small pile of unopened mail.

‘It looks like he hasn't been home for a lot longer than just four or five days,' Hunter said, as he picked up the mail from the floor.

Garcia walked past him to look around the living room.

On the floor, next to the armchair, there were several empty bottles of beer, a few mugs and three plates with food leftovers that had long hardened onto the porcelain. A few flies were hard at work, trying to feed on the leftovers, but even they seemed to be struggling with it. On the Formica table, there was a small mountain of empty microwavable dinner boxes and takeout food containers – mainly Chinese and pizza – with even more flies buzzing around everything.

‘How can someone be such a slob?' Garcia asked, staying well away from the table. ‘I'm actually scared of opening that fridge and that trashcan.' He gestured toward the kitchen.

Hunter was still looking through the mail.

‘He obviously wasn't married,' Garcia continued. ‘Or had a girlfriend, a partner… whatever. At least not a live-in one.'

‘According to the file we have,' Hunter asked, ‘his body was discovered four days ago, right – June 16th?'

‘That's correct,' Garcia confirmed, turning to face Hunter. ‘Why? What have you got?'

‘Just bills and junk mail,' Hunter explained. ‘Nothing of any real interest, but the earliest of these, according to the postal stamp, is the electricity bill. It's dated May 18th.'

Garcia frowned. ‘It's June 20th today. So he's been missing for almost a month?'

‘Something like that,' Hunter confirmed. ‘It's been over four weeks since this bill was delivered. Gas and electricity bills are usually delivered the day after they've been posted. He could've been missing for longer than that.' He chose one of the envelopes and ripped it open.

‘What's that?' Garcia asked.

‘His cellphone bill.' Hunter quickly checked the front of the envelope. ‘It was posted to him at the end of last month – May 31st.'

‘And?'

‘And his last communication using his cellphone was also made on May 18th.' Hunter met Garcia's stare. ‘That's it. Absolutely nothing after that – no calls, no texts.'

‘So he has been missing for about a month.'

‘It looks that way, yes,' Hunter agreed.

‘And no one has reported him missing?' Garcia's head tilted to one side. ‘A friend? His boss? The neighbor? No one?'

‘I don't think he's got a boss,' Hunter said, flipping back through the pile of envelopes in his hands. ‘A few of these are addressed to "Daniels Plumbing Ltd". He worked for himself.' His eyebrows lifted at Garcia. ‘But we don't know if he was reported missing or not. We haven't checked yet.'

‘Say no more,' Garcia said, reaching for his cellphone and stepping outside the apartment for a moment.

Hunter returned the pile of envelopes to the floor and took a moment to look around the rest of the living room.

‘Nope,' Garcia informed Hunter, as he re-entered the apartment. ‘Shaun Daniels was never reported missing.'

‘Yeah,' Hunter said back, his eyes circling the room. ‘I'm not exactly surprised. He was a loner. Probably not that in touch with his family either.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Look around,' Hunter replied. ‘There's not a photo frame or photo in sight. Nothing here in the living room, though there are plenty of spaces on the TV module…' He gestured toward the kitchen area. ‘And nothing stuck to the fridge either. I haven't checked the rest of the apartment yet, but I'm willing to bet that we won't find any kind of photos – not of him alone, not of him with his parents, or family, or partner… or anything. He lived alone. He worked alone.' He indicated the takeout and microwavable dinner boxes on the table. ‘He ate alone. He probably went out alone too.'

‘Well, you don't really have any photos displayed in your apartment,' Garcia volleyed back. ‘Except for that one of you and your dad.'

Hunter looked back at him with a look that simply said: ‘Think about it.'

‘OK.' Garcia lifted his hands in surrender. ‘Point taken. You are a loner, but you've got good, solid friends – me, Anna, Captain Blake.' He shrugged. ‘You wouldn't go missing for more than a couple of days before one of us reported you missing.'

‘All of the close, solid friends you've mentioned, I've acquired because of my job, which is not a lonely job.' Hunter shook his head. ‘This isn't the case with Shaun Daniels. He was a plumber, working for himself. My guess is that he tended to take on smaller, one-man jobs most of the time. I'm sure he had friends… maybe even family around, but it doesn't seem that he was close to anyone.'

Garcia checked the drawers on the TV module – nothing but a few local takeout menus, a tax-invoice book registered to Daniels Plumbing Ltd, a lighter and a bunch of old receipts. ‘This is just so fucked up, Robert.'

‘What is?'

‘The fact that he's been missing for almost a month,' Garcia replied, pausing to look back at his partner. ‘Because if we use logic, we have to assume the most probable sequence of events here, which is that he was taken around May 18th – when all of his cellphone communications ceased, right?'

Hunter nodded.

‘But according to Dr. Hove,' Garcia continued, ‘he only died of hypothermia at least six to eight hours before he was found, which only happened four days ago, in the very early hours of Sunday, June 16th – meaning that he died on Saturday. Logical conclusion is that he was probably tortured for almost a month, Robert.' He broadly gestured at the entire living room. ‘Look at this place. It's a mess. The guy was a slob. He was a plumber. Not a drug dealer, not a millionaire, not a spy, not a scientist on the verge of some magnificent discovery… and I'm pretty sure that he wasn't the keeper of some major government secret – so why torture him like that? What did he do?'

‘I really don't know, Carlos.' Hunter let go of a worried breath. ‘But it tells us something very specific about our perp.'

Garcia massaged the back of his neck. ‘That he might not be a serial killer, but he's definitely a psychopath – someone capable of not only imprisoning another human being for about thirty days, but also capable of purposely inflicting tremendous pain on his victim… day, after day, after day.'

‘Which indicates rage toward Mr. Daniels,' Hunter added. ‘A lot of it.'

‘So we're talking about someone he knew,' Garcia concluded. ‘This wasn't someone who he might've had some silly altercation with in a bar or something… someone he met on the night. This was someone who truly hated him.'

Another nod from Hunter, who entered the kitchen, where the stench of rancid food gained a new, moldy dimension.

Garcia followed him.

‘Wow!' he said, grimacing as he cupped a hand over his nose mask. ‘Something is definitely very funky in here. Probably that bread.' He indicated a loaf of bread at the far end of the counter that had molded days ago. ‘That thing's got a beard now.' He hung back, while Hunter had a quick look around.

The wall cabinets were mostly empty, with the exception of a few plates, cups and mugs, and a small variety of canned food. The ones under the sink housed a few cleaning products, together with a bucket, some pans, and not much else. In the drawers, Hunter found some sparse cutlery, some matches, a few local takeout menus and several leaflets advertising Shaun's plumbing business. His tagline was: No job too small.

As Hunter reached for the fridge handle, Garcia took another step back.

‘Careful,' he said. ‘Something might jump out from in there.'

Hunter pulled the door open.

Nothing jumped out, mainly because there was barely anything in the fridge – a few bottles of beer, a tub of butter, a half-empty water container, four eggs and an opened milk carton. Hunter didn't have to check to know that the milk had curdled.

In the living room, directly across from the apartment front door, a very short corridor led first to the bathroom, on the right. It was small and tiled all in white. Inside the mirror cabinet, other than razors and shaving cream, Hunter and Garcia found a half-full bottle of Percocet – one of the brand names that the combination of the opioid oxycodone with paracetamol was sold under. It was used to treat moderate to severe pain.

Garcia twisted his lips to one side, while his stare moved to Hunter.

Hunter shook his head. ‘No. No one gets into a life-threatening debt over Percocet.'

They exited the bathroom and reached the end of the short corridor. As Hunter pushed open the door to the only bedroom in the apartment, the smell that came from inside hit them like a baseball swing to the head, making both detectives bring a hand up, as if to defend their faces.

‘Damn!' Garcia cringed. The smell was so strong it made his left eye water a little. ‘This can't be good.'

Hunter hit the lights.

Nothing.

He flipped the switch off then on again. This time, the lights flickered once before bathing the room in celluloid orange.

Hunter and Garcia both saw it at the exact same time.

‘Oh fffffuck!'