Chapter Nine

In the morning, Hunter and Garcia had been at their desks for less than half an hour when Captain Blake appeared at their door.

‘So what happened yesterday?' she asked. Captain Blake wasn't one to beat around the bush. ‘What do we have?'

Garcia indicated the picture board pushed up against their office's south wall. On it, he and Hunter had already pinned the few photos they had taken inside Shaun Daniels's apartment and of his station wagon, together with the autopsy shots.

‘Not a lot,' he replied, with a shake of the head. ‘Except for us confirming what we already knew.'

‘That he wasn't killed in a pedestrian/vehicle traffic accident,' Captain Blake said, stepping closer to the board.

‘No chance of that,' Garcia confirmed. ‘The accident was staged.' He had just begun explaining what he and Hunter had found out from Dr. Hove the day before, when the captain paused him with a hand gesture.

‘Whoa! Hold on just a second.' Her stare was fixed on a particular photo on the board. ‘What the hell is this?'

‘Once we made it to his apartment,' Hunter said, getting up from his desk. ‘We were able to check his mail, including his last cellphone bill. From it, we have reason to believe that Mr. Daniels had been missing for almost thirty days before his body was discovered five days ago.'

Captain Blake turned to face him. ‘Thirty days? Has there been a Missing Persons Report?'

‘No.' Garcia, this time. ‘We've checked it. No MPR.'

‘Mr. Daniels lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Lomita,' Hunter explained. ‘No indications of a partner. Once he was gone, the apartment was left completely empty.' He indicated the same photo that Captain Blake had been looking at just moments earlier. ‘No one to attend to anything.'

‘Fuck!' the captain breathed out the word. Her attention returned to the board and to the photo that Hunter had indicated. It showed three dead birds inside a large birdcage. Their bodies were already in the very late stages of decomposition, with maggots about halfway through their morbid feasting.

‘The poor things had no food or water for a month?' she asked.

‘No, not exactly,' Hunter explained. ‘They probably only ran out of food and water just about a week ago. Give or take a day.'

The captain's eyes narrowed.

‘Birds have a very fast metabolism,' Hunter clarified. ‘Especially small birds. They store almost no fat. That's why they're constantly feeding and hydrating. If they completely run out of food and water, due to their low fat reserves, they won't last more than four or five days, if they're lucky. Once they're dead, the process is pretty identical to that of a human body – blowflies… eggs… maggots… the body gets eaten. Tiny little bodies like those,' he said, indicating the photo once again, ‘would be devoured in less than twenty-four hours. If those birds had died just after Mr. Daniels went missing, about a month ago, there'd be nothing but bones left.'

‘We were very unlucky.' Garcia took over. ‘Those birds only died about a day or two ago.'

‘So are you saying that you think somebody fed them after the victim went missing?' Captain Blake pushed.

‘There is that possibility,' Garcia replied. ‘But we found no evidence inside his apartment that anyone else had been there other than us. The most probable explanation is that Mr. Daniels left enough seeds and water to last his birds quite a few days.'

The captain thought about it for a millisecond. ‘So you think he knew that he'd be taken?'

‘I don't think he did.' The answer came from Hunter. ‘If he suspected that he was in danger, especially mortal danger, why didn't he run? You know… disappear. Birds do have a very fast metabolism, Captain, but they also don't exactly overeat or drink. Many bird owners overfill their feeders out of convenience. Mr. Daniels lived alone and ran his own one-man plumbing business, which clearly meant irregular hours. Overfilling his bird feeders might be something that he'd always done.'

‘Poor little things,' the captain commented, as her stare moved on to the next few photographs. ‘So, you were saying?' she addressed Garcia, who once again started from the beginning, explaining what they had found out from Dr. Hove. Just like both detectives had been, Captain Blake was very surprised when Garcia told her that the victim seemed to have been tortured for days.

‘Days?' she questioned, her gaze bouncing from Hunter to Garcia, then back to Hunter.

‘Dr. Hove explained that due to him being run over by a truck,' Hunter said, ‘an exact timeframe for his injuries is practically impossible, but she was positive that all of the hidden injuries she found were sustained over a period of time that spanned days, not hours.'

‘Which kind of explains why he was only found twenty-nine days after he went missing,' Garcia added. ‘The bogus hit-and-run accident was used to mask the torture injuries.'

Captain Blake spent a moment studying the injury photos on the board. ‘So who is this guy? And why would anyone want to torture him like this?'

‘That's what we've been asking ourselves since we got his file from Research earlier today,' Garcia replied, reaching for a printout on his desk. ‘Full name – Shaun Frederic Daniels, forty-six years old. Like Robert said, Mr. Daniels was a plumber, who ran his own small business out of his apartment in Lomita – Daniels Plumbing Ltd. He was born in Seattle, but moved to LA with his mother when he was nine years old, after his parents divorced. Mr. Daniels and his mother lived in El Segundo, where Mr. Daniels went to school, both primary and high school. He never went to university. After graduating from high school he began working construction, which he did for several years, before specializing in plumbing. He started his own business about nine years ago.'

‘Parents?' Captain Blake asked.

‘Both deceased.'

‘Was he married?'

‘Nope,' Garcia replied. ‘Never been married… no kids, either.'

Captain Blake faced Hunter. ‘And you said that he had no girlfriend… boyfriend… nothing?'

Hunter's head tilted sideways as he shrugged. ‘In his apartment we found no indications that he was dating anyone. Everyone we asked said that they'd never seen him with anyone.'

‘Everyone like who?'

‘The neighbors.'

‘OK.' Captain Blake nodded at Garcia. ‘Let's skip the yadda, yadda for now. Any known connections to anything that could've earned him weeks of torture? Drugs, gangs, crime… anything?'

‘Not exactly,' Garcia replied. ‘He did have a record. Been arrested three times for disorderly conduct and twice for DUI.'

‘Did he do any time?'

Garcia searched the printout. ‘No. Just a couple of fines and six months of community service.'

Captain Blake nodded before addressing Hunter. ‘You said you talked to the neighbors, right?

‘Last night,' Hunter confirmed.

‘Anybody had anything else to say other than Mr. Daniels didn't seem to be dating anyone?'

‘Well…' The reply came from Garcia. ‘Despite him residing in the same address for almost six years, no one really seemed to know Mr. Daniels well enough to be able to express an opinion on his character. Most of the neighbors said that every now and then they would see him leaving his apartment early in the morning then coming back in the evening… sometimes late evenings, but nothing really out of the ordinary. They all said that he was always polite enough every time they crossed paths – good morning, good evening, good night, that kind of polite – but that was about it. He didn't talk much and no one seemed to have ever really engaged him in a long conversation. According to everyone we spoke to, and this includes his landlord, Mr. Daniels was a good and quiet resident – no loud music, no parties, no noise… nothing. And no one remembers ever seeing any visitors coming or going from his apartment.'

‘Your perfect inconspicuous resident,' Captain Blake commented.

‘Pretty much,' Garcia agreed. ‘Which in itself makes him conspicuous.'

‘The lady who lives in the apartment directly under his,' Hunter added, ‘Mrs. Cross, said that Mr. Daniels was a kind man.'

‘Kind as in?'

‘He fixed a couple of leaks in her bathroom and sorted out her kitchen plumbing free of charge.'

‘That's nice of him,' Captain Blake commented. ‘Were they sleeping together, maybe? Could that have been a factor?'

‘No.' Hunter and Garcia shook their heads at the same time.

‘Mrs. Cross is eighty-one years old,' Hunter clarified. ‘She said that he told her that she reminded him of his mother.'

Captain Blake raised both of her hands to halt her detectives. ‘So, according to his file – no drugs, no theft, no gambling… nothing except a few fights here and there and driving under the influence?'

Garcia nodded.

‘How about any gang affiliations? Maybe something from earlier in his life?'

‘Nothing in the file,' Hunter replied.

Captain Blake faced the picture board once again. ‘Any chance of him being a low-maintenance gambler, or an occasional drug user – you know, something that ran just under the radar?' Her eyebrows lifted at Hunter. ‘Because we all know that in America, especially in LA, people will still get whacked for owing a hundred bucks just the same as they would for owing millions.'

‘Maybe so,' Hunter agreed. ‘But he wasn't just murdered, Captain. He was tortured… for a month. People just don't go through that much effort for small debts.'

‘That's true.'

‘Or maybe it could be something else entirely.' Garcia jumped in.

‘Like what else?' the captain pushed.

‘Money laundering. People can definitely get whacked for money laundering.'

Hunter nodded. ‘There is that possibility.'

‘We're having Special Crimes take a look at his company's books and bank accounts,' Garcia continued. ‘A lot of these "one-man companies" are used for money laundering for smaller criminals. The "one-man" company takes on a big job, which really isn't big at all, overcharges, takes a nice cut, and returns the rest to the client via some other bogus transaction.'

Captain Blake turned to look at the photos on the board one last time. ‘Well, if it turns out that he was involved with some sort of organized crime, doing some of their money laundering for them, we're turning this over to the FBI in a heartbeat. That's not our fight. If you find out that he was linked to drugs and that what happened to him was some sort of payback due to a drug debt, no matter how small…' Captain Blake shrugged. ‘Also not our fight. His file goes straight to the DEA. We're not taking on other agencies' investigations.'

Neither detective objected to Captain Blake's decision.

‘But until then,' she continued. ‘What do we have to go on?'

‘Not much,' Hunter informed her. ‘But his last credit card transaction dates back to the evening of May 18th – same date as his last cellphone communication.'

‘And where did it flag up?'

‘A drinking den in Lomita called O'Hearn's Bar and Grill,' Hunter replied. ‘Not that far from his apartment. His last transaction came at 10:41 p.m.' Hunter returned to his desk and picked up a copy of Shaun Daniels's credit card statement. ‘The good thing here is that Mr. Daniels had recurring transactions at that same bar several times during that week and practically every week prior to it.'

‘So that was his local wet hole,' Captain Blake concluded.

‘It appears so, yes,' Hunter confirmed. ‘Which means that hopefully the bartenders… maybe even other customers, might know a little bit more about our mysterious Mr. Daniels.'

‘It's a start,' Captain Blake agreed.

‘They open at midday,' Hunter said, instinctively checking his watch – 9:33 a.m. ‘We'll drop by in the afternoon and see if we can find anything else.'

‘Last night we also placed a request for his cellphone records,' Garcia added. ‘Hopefully we'll have something by tomorrow.'

‘All right.' The captain nodded as she made her way to the door. ‘Keep me in the loop whatever happens, because there's something very fishy here. We've all been in this game for long enough to know that if somebody wanted him dead because of a debt, they'd just shoot him in the head and move on. If somebody wanted him punished, they'd beat him up, break his legs and walk away, but instead, somebody went through great lengths to torture and stage the death of a, so far, on paper, very average man. That only happens in films, not in real life.'

As Captain Blake closed the door behind her, Hunter and Garcia turned to face the board. They both knew that she was right – there was definitely something very wrong with that entire scenario.