Right then, Hunter saw Garcia smile at him.
Hunter smiled back.
‘Don’t mind if I do.’
He squeezed the trigger once.
Sixty-Three
The smile was the signal.
Garcia knew that his partner was an expert marksman. At a distance of twenty-five feet, Hunter could put a bullet through a donut hole as it swung on a piece of string. To inch Garcia’s wheelchair toward Jennifer’s cage, Russell needed to use his right hand to push the chair. That meant that the pressure that he was applying to the scalpel with his left one had to be greatly reduced. In doing so, he relaxed his posture just enough to better expose his arm. When Garcia felt the blade relax against his skin, he gave Hunter the signal.
The shot was inch-perfect, hitting Russell right at the top of his left shoulder blade. The bullet ruptured his subdeltoid bursa before shattering the humerus head and exiting at the back. Blood splattered up in the air in a crimson cloud, spitting droplets all over Russell’s and Garcia’s faces.
At such a close distance, the bullet/shoulder impact was powerful enough to propel Russell backward, throwing him to the ground. His arm went immediately limp and he had no other option but to drop the scalpel. As he did, he let out a guttural grunt of pain and anger. There was no way that he was using that arm anytime soon.
‘Motherfucker!’ he shouted, his right hand moving quickly to the fresh wound, as blood gushed out of it.
Hunter knew that he would hit his target, so he started running almost at the same time as he squeezed his trigger, covering the distance between him and Russell in the blink of an eye.
‘Don’t you dare move,’ he said, his weapon now inches away from Russell’s face. ‘How’re you doing, Carlos?’ he called, glancing at his partner. ‘Is that vomit on you?’
‘No, it’s barbecue sauce. We were just about to start a party when you showed up.’
With his weapon still trained on Russell, Hunter bent over and from the floor, retrieved the scalpel, which had fallen just behind Garcia’s wheelchair.
‘Is Anna OK? How long have I been missing for? How many days?’
‘Days?’ Hunter said, as he used the scalpel to cut Garcia’s right hand loose before handing the blade to him. ‘You’ve been missing for about three, three and a half hours, give or take.’
Garcia quickly sliced through the zip tie shackling his left hand before finally freeing his head from the chair’s backrest. A deep skin-groove from the zip tie crossed his forehead from one end to the other. He looked at Russell. ‘You lying motherfucker.’
‘What?’ Hunter asked.
‘I’ll explain later,’ Garcia said, freeing his feet. ‘So what took you so long? I left you clear instructions.’
‘The photo?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yeah, the photo,’ Garcia replied. ‘What else? Clear as daylight.’
Sixty-Four
A few hours earlier – Thomas Riley High School car park
Hunter leaned back against the hood of his car and checked his watch – 10:32 p.m. He had called forensics about five minutes ago and asked them to urgently dispatch a team to the parking lot of the Thomas Riley High School in Watts.
‘Detective,’ Officer Emiliano called, as he joined Hunter at the front of his car. ‘Do you need us to stay around? Is there anything that you’d like us to do?’
Hunter didn’t see the point. What could they do? Help him wait?
Hunter shook his head. ‘No, you guys can go. There’s nothing else to do here but wait for the forensics team to arrive.’
Emiliano nodded, his eyes studying the detective in front of him. ‘OK,’ he finally said, reaching for his pen and pad. ‘I’m just coming off my shift now, but if you need any help with anything.’ He scribbled down his number. ‘Even after hours… off duty… it don’t matter.’ He tore the page off and handed it to Hunter. ‘Give me a holler, all right? I’d love to help, if I can.’
Hunter took the piece of paper and thanked Emiliano.
As the officer walked back to his black-and-white unit, Hunter checked his watch again – two minutes had gone by since the last time he checked. He folded the piece of paper that Emiliano had given him and placed it inside his jacket pocket. As he did, hisfingers brushed against Garcia’s cellphone that he’d put there just minutes earlier. He retrieved it, feeling its weight in his hands for a couple of seconds before waking up the screen and typing in Garcia’s password.
