‘Yes,’ Pakesh nodded. ‘That’s Mrs. Kimura’s support group. Teresa Kimura, but she likes to be called Tessa. She’s a very nice lady. Been running the group here every Friday evening for years.’
‘Do you know which classroom they used for the meeting tonight?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yes,’ Pakesh replied, turning to face the school building once again. ‘Classroom 233, right in that building, over there.’
‘Any CCTV cameras on that corridor?’ Hunter again.
‘Yes, but it’s switched off.’
‘What’s the point of a security camera if it’s switched off?’ Emiliano asked.
‘Tessa’s request,’ Pakesh replied. ‘For the anonymity of her members.’
‘What support group is it?’ Emiliano again. ‘Who is it supporting?’
‘It’s a group to help people struggling with domestic violence,’ Pakesh confirmed.
Emiliano’s eyes darted toward Hunter, who calmly turned to address Pakesh again.
‘As the group was leaving the meeting earlier this evening, did you happen to see anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Out of the ordinary?’ Pakesh looked unsure.
‘Anything strange,’ Emiliano tried to clarify. ‘An argument, maybe? Some kind of altercation between two or more of the group members? A fight here in the parking lot? Loud shouting? Anything?’
The caretaker shook his head, yet again. ‘I didn’t even see the group leaving tonight. I was in the other building, fixing a few desks.’ He shrugged it off. ‘I’m good with things like that, you know? DIY stuff.’
Hunter straightened his body and looked around the empty parking lot, his mind racing through the few options he had.
He could get in touch with the support-group moderator, Teresa Kimura, but how could she help? Just like with every support group that he and Garcia had attended in the past two weeks, Hunter was sure that Teresa Kimura didn’t keep an attendance sheet. There was no roll call and no name-checking. Even if she remembered everyone who had been at her group meeting that evening, how would that help? What could she do? Give a sketch artist six, eight… ten different sketches? And how long would it take the LAPD to track them all down?
Hunter shook his head at himself. The best he could do was to get a forensics team to that parking lot as fast as he could and hope that they could lift something from Garcia’s car – maybe a fingerprint from one of the doors, or a hair follicle from somewhere inside the vehicle, but that too was a shot in the dark.
Garcia took good care of his car, but Hunter knew that he hadn’t had time to have it washed in at least a couple of weeks.Forensics could come up with tens of different fingerprints and/or DNA profiles. And all of that took time… a lot more time than Garcia had.
From experience, Hunter knew that when a perp took a police officer hostage, there were basically only two reasons for that. Either the perp would use the officer as a bargaining chip, if he found himself pressed into a corner, or that officer would be murdered. And since this perp wasn’t being pressed into any corners, why would he use Garcia as a bargaining chip?
Fifty-Seven
Despite the dim light, Garcia could clearly see the two people to the left of where Russell was standing. They were both sitting down, both in wheelchairs… just like Garcia was, but neither of them seemed to be tied down to their chairs. They were just sitting there, quietly observing what was happening in the room.
‘What the fuck?’ Those words rode on a deflated breath.
Garcia was staring back at a man and a woman. Both of them appeared to be somewhere in their eighties, but Garcia could easily be wrong. It was impossible to tell for sure because they both looked almost mummified. Their scaly skin clung oddly to whatever flesh they still had left on their bodies. Their faces looked sunk-in and ghostly white, as if they hadn’t seen the sun in years. There were odd scratches all around their almost cloudy eyes, and the stare in them seemed completely lost… catatonic, even. Their lips were cracked, their fingernails were broken, their skeletal-looking hands were covered in liver spots, and their teeth and gums were dark… possibly rotting. The man had already lost all of his hair and the skin on his head was blotchy and flaky. The woman wasn’t doing much better, with only a few unraveled strands left on her head.
As the dim ceiling spotlight shone down on them, they blinked a couple of times. The man winced once, as if the light hurt his eyes. These two clearly weren’t Russell’s accomplices, like Hunter and Garcia had suspected… they were his victims.
‘Let me introduce you to my mom and dad,’ Russell said, gesturing at the old couple.
Garcia’s gaze shot to him, followed by a long moment of hesitation.
‘These… are your parents?’ he asked, eyes wide, brow furrowed.
‘One and the same,’ Russell said in reply. ‘You can thank them if you like.’
Garcia’s expression gave away his confusion.
‘A moment ago you called me a monstrous sonofabitch,’ Russell explained, as he shrugged. ‘Well, everything I am… everything I became, I owe it to them. They created me.’ He smiled at the old couple. ‘And I do meancreated.’ He started to slowly unbutton his shirt.
