‘Theoretically, yes.’ Hunter, this time. ‘There’s no real way of knowing.’
‘How is this even possible?’
‘Because whoever is doing this,’ Hunter explained, ‘isn’t stupid, Captain. He figured out a loophole that would’ve kept him unnoticed for years.’ He shrugged. ‘With a bit of luck… for ever.’
‘A loophole?’ Captain Blake queried. ‘Explain, Robert.’
Hunter broadly gestured at the board. ‘When a body is brought into the LA morgue, with a clear, seemingly “apparent” cause of death – hit-and-runs, suicides, car crashes and so on – unless there’s some sort of request from a law enforcement agency, that body goes straight to the back of the autopsy pile. Their priority is as low as it gets. If that body goes unclaimed for more than just one to two weeks and a post-mortem examination still hasn’t been performed, that body will inevitably end up being donated to estate universities for medical studies. Out of those, only a small number end up with the pathology department. Out of that small number, only some end up getting a full autopsy examination instead of being dissected for other purposes, and those post-mortems are performed by students, not senior doctors.’
‘Are pathology students that clueless that they won’t pick up on these types of inconsistencies?’ the captain asked.
‘That’s not it, Captain,’ Hunter came back. ‘There are two main factors that you need to consider here. One: with these bodies, the cause of death is already as evident as it can be. The exercise is usually to simply confirm it, not go on a fishing expedition around the body to try to disprove the apparent COD.’
‘Don’t forget that the students are also on a clock,’ Garcia added. ‘Few will be willing to waste time going off on a tangent when their grades are at stake.’
Hunter nodded before continuing. ‘And two: the sort of inconsistencies that we’re talking about here, Captain, can easily be overlooked, even by career pathologists, because they very closely match injuries that could occur had the faked deaths been real – fractured bones, punctured lungs, dislocated joints andwhat-have-you – those do happen when someone jumps from a bridge, or is run over by a truck.’
‘If Dr. Hove hadn’t been the one who had discovered the inconsistencies with Shaun Daniels’s hit-and-run death less than a month ago,’ Garcia pointed out, ‘she would’ve discarded her student’s findings as overthinking – just a student trying to impress her teacher. Something that happens in every class.’
‘And at first,’ Hunter took over again, ‘that’s exactly what she did – discarded the findings as overthinking – until her student told her that Terry Wilford couldn’t have jumped off the 7th Street Bridge that night because he was already dead way before he got there. That kind of coincidence was too much for Dr. Hove to ignore – two victims who were apparently dead before being dead in the space of just a few weeks?’ Hunter shook his head.
‘In short,’ Garcia again, ‘we were lucky, Captain. The minor inconsistencies with Terry Wilford’s jumping suicide could’ve easily been overlooked. But fortunately, like Robert explained – this Kay Sixtree girl is pretty stubborn…’ He smiled to himself. ‘And smart.’
There was a silent moment before Captain Blake spoke again. ‘So what’s the theory here?’ Her gaze settled on Hunter. ‘Do we think that this killer could be a medical professional in some capacity? Or was? Maybe even a medical student? How does one figure out a loophole like this one?’
‘Of course there’s that possibility,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘But to be honest, Captain, none of that information is really hard to come by. All it takes is a bit of research over the Internet and maybe a couple of phone calls, that’s all.’
‘But even if he is,’ Garcia interjected, ‘or was a medical professional, a student or whatever… we have absolutely no way of finding out who he is simply because he figured out a way to operate under the radar. All that the loophole really tells us, Captain, is that he’s very clever.’
Hunter glanced at the board. ‘Maybe that’s not all it can tell us.’
All eyes moved to him.
‘I think we might be poking at the wrong end of the loophole here.’
Twenty-Four
Jennifer Mendoza applied the flamenco-red lipstick to her lips and carefully used a paper tissue to kiss away the excess. That done, she gave her reflection a tentative smile.
The smile didn’t linger, quickly morphing into a desolated look.
Jennifer came this close to reaching for the makeup remover bottle and wiping her face clean for the ninth time that evening.
‘I look like a cheap, back-alley hooker,’ she whispered to the mirror.
No, you don’t, Jenny,the mirror whispered back.‘You’re just not used to it anymore, that’s all.’
The mirror was right. Jennifer’s makeup was subtle by any standards – just a little foundation, some eyeliner, light lipstick and a touch of blush – but it had been a very long time since Jennifer Mendoza had applied makeup to her face with the intention of going out on a date… a real date. To her out-of-practice eyes, a mere contour of lipstick made her look like a circus clown. But a little makeup was better than no makeup at all, because her skin didn’t feel or look like what it used to anymore.
Jennifer studied her reflection for a moment longer before breathing out and using the tips of her fingers to gently brush her fringe to one side. Her dark hair had been cut into a stylish and quite attractive bob, but she would be lying if she didn’t admit that she missed her long hair.
In high school, due to her olive skin tone and how shiny her hair always was, her nickname had been Pocahontas, but Jennifer’s hair, together with everything about her, especially her appearance, had fallen victim to her addiction, which began some twenty-two years ago, when Jennifer was only twenty years old.
Jennifer was born in Bellflower, a neighborhood of South Los Angeles. Her mother, Andrea Mendoza, was a drug addict who, to support her addiction, had turned to prostitution. There was no record of who Jennifer’s father really was.
Not surprisingly, since her mother sometimes used their small apartment for business, Jennifer hated being at home, so she did most of her growing up in the streets of South LA, and she did it as an angry kid. She did go to school – first to Ritter Elementary and then to Jordan High, both public schools in Bellflower – but she never showed any real interest in completing her school education. Her grades were poor and her behavior was disruptive to say the least. Her teachers did try, but Jennifer simply didn’t care and her mother cared even less. She didn’t care if Jennifer went to school or not, got an education or not, graduated or not, as long as she was out of the apartment. At the age of seventeen, halfway through her sophomore year, Jennifer dropped out of school. That was just months before she became pregnant with her daughter, Tabatha.
Jennifer had promised herself that she would never end up like her mother, but she quickly learned that, unfortunately, life rarely turned out like most people expected, or hoped it would. The night after she turned eighteen, high on whatever drug people were passing around at the party, and having consumed enough alcohol to poison most fully developed livers, Jennifer ended up having sex inside a bathroom stall, in some B-rated nightclub in North Hollywood. The boy with whom she had sex, she had met that night. His name was Toby. She never got his last name. She never saw him again either.
