‘Don’t I know it?’ Garcia dipped his chin to look at Hunter over the rim of his glasses. ‘But the ones who get off on that kind of crap can never limit themselves to a single victim, right? They all ultimately become serial killers because they simply can’t stop themselves. They’re never completely fulfilled, no matter how many they kill.’
Hunter stayed quiet.
‘But I have no reason to believe that that’s the case here. Do you? It just doesn’t feel like the work of a serial murderer.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘But all the other options you mentioned are a real possibility,’ Garcia continued. ‘We know nothing about who Shaun Daniels really was. He could’ve been a drug dealer, a loan shark, a thief, a business owner… whatever.’ He shrugged. ‘Or the other way around – he could’ve owed money to the wrong person, or have slept with the wrong person’s wife, or have told on the wrong person… you know – shit like that can easily get you tortured and killed, especially in a city like LA.’
‘Research is already collecting all they can on him,’ Hunter told him. ‘We should have some sort of file on Mr. Daniels by tonight – tomorrow morning, latest – including credit card activity and phone records.’
‘There’s something else,’ Garcia said. ‘Something that’s been bothering me since I read the traffic accident report.’
Hunter studied Garcia’s expression for a couple of seconds. ‘How come his car was found up there?’
Garcia’s index finger pointed at his partner. ‘Precisely. He didn’t drive it up there, that’s for sure. If he’d been shot, beaten to a pulp, strangled, whatever… even really run over by a truck, him having driven up there would’ve been a possibility.’
‘But the victim died from hypothermia,’ Hunter said, leaning against the passenger door.
‘That’s the wrench in the works,’ Garcia agreed. ‘He froze to death hours before he was found, which means – it didn’t happen up in the Sierra Pelona Mountains. He didn’t drive up there with a lover, or for a drug deal or whatever, and something went wrong. He didn’t get ambushed up there either… and he sure as shit didn’t freeze his ass to death while walking around Lake Hughes Road.’
‘And yet,’ Hunter commented, ‘his car was parked up there.’
‘Which means that someone else drove it up there. Probably the killer… or killers, but even if it wasn’t, I’d really like to have a word with whoever it was.’
Hunter nodded as he slid his shades back up his nose. ‘Yeah, me too.’
Five
To Hunter and Garcia the thought was simple and logical – Shaun Daniels couldn’t have driven his car up to the Sierra Pelona Mountains and parked it down a dirt road because he was already dead by then, so someone else had to have. That someone else could very easily have left some sort of forensics evidence behind – on the seat, on the steering wheel, on the carpets, on the door handles, on the gearshift… somewhere. They just needed to find it.
From outside the LA County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, Hunter placed a call to Detective Sharp of the LAPD Valley Traffic Division, who told him that Shaun Daniels’s car had been towed to the San Fernando Valley Police parking garage for storage. The problem was – since Detective Sharp hadn’t suspected any foul play when he studied the ‘accident’ scene, four days ago – Shaun Daniels’s vehicle wasn’t treated as evidence, or a potential hub for it. The tow-truck driver and the car handlers at the police parking garage had probably completely contaminated the vehicle, and there was simply nothing that Hunter and Garcia could do about that now, except hope for the best… but the best wasn’t exactly what they got.
It took Garcia just a little under an hour to drive to the other side of Hollywood Hills and on to San Fernando Valley. At the LAPD storage garage, they talked to one of the officers at the front gate. The officer handed Hunter the car keys, which hadbeen found inside Shaun Daniels’s trouser pocket at the ‘accident’ site, and directed them to the lot where the vehicle was parked.
‘There it is,’ Hunter said, indicating a white Volvo VX70 parked next to a VW Golf on the east wing of the large parking lot.
‘That’s the one,’ Garcia agreed, checking the license-plate number.
He and Hunter gloved up, approached the vehicle, and had a quick peek through the driver’s window.
‘You have got to be shitting me!’ Garcia said, his face almost melting into a question mark. ‘How old was this guy? Six?’
‘Damn!’
It looked like a bomb had gone off inside that car, but instead of explosives, the bomb was filled with trash. There was stuff everywhere – on the passenger seat, on the floor, on the dashboard, by the gearshift, stuffed into the door pockets… everywhere – wrappers, empty cans of soft and energy drinks, plastic bottles, paper cups, boxes, empty cigarette packs… it was just a mess.
‘I don’t think this car has ever been cleaned,’ Garcia said, rounding the vehicle to look through the back window.
‘You might be right,’ Hunter agreed.
The back seat had been folded down to create more carrying space, which was packed with a ladder, PVC and copper pipes, rolls of white sealing tape, connectors, wires, a toolbox, buckets, and more.
‘Was he a plumber?’ Garcia asked. ‘There’s a lot of plumbing material in the back here… tools and all.’
‘Maybe,’ Hunter replied with a nod.
‘Why would someone want to torture a plumber in the way that he was tortured? Bad pipework?’
