Garcia’s question was asked silently, with an odd eyebrow movement.
‘You’re right,’ Hunter clarified. ‘The number of therapists in LA must be in the hundreds, if not thousands, and the one thing that they all have in common is – they all charge for their time. What’s the one thing that we found in both victims’ houses?’
Garcia thought about it for just a heartbeat.
‘Receipts.’ A ghost of a smile graced his lips. ‘Loads of them.’
Hunter smiled back. ‘Both of our victims seem to have been pretty good in documenting their expenditures.’
‘We need to go through them all again,’ Garcia said. ‘Including credit card records, but this time, we know what we’re looking for.’
Hunter nodded. ‘That’s step one.’
Garcia frowned. ‘Is there another step?’
‘Therapy,’ Hunter explained, ‘of any kind… isn’t exactly cheap, Carlos, and neither of our victims were exactly rich. On the contrary. From what I remember, Shaun Daniels was in and out of the red zone more often than we have lunch. And even if they’d found a therapist who charged a lot less than others, we’d still be talking about several sessions here, because no help is achievedwith a single session. It’s an escalation of trust, which needs to be built slowly. Cheap or not, those sessions add up.’
Garcia took in a deep, frustrated breath. ‘OK. Any ideas?’
Hunter smiled. ‘I have one.’
Forty-One
Once they got back to the UVC Unit’s office, Hunter and Garcia immediately began going over the multitude of receipts they had found at both victims’ apartments. Despite coming to the conclusion that paying for therapy sessions seemed to be a little out of reach for Shaun Daniels and Terry Wilford, they just didn’t want to leave any stone unturned, but as far as they were concerned, the most important task was now with their Research team.
And that task was a very simple one – support groups.
Garcia hadn’t exaggerated – Los Angeles was arguably the most neurotic city on the planet. Other than the City of Angels, LA was also known around the world as ‘The Home to A-list Celebrities’ – from TV and movie stars, to world-famous singers and musicians… from film directors and producers, to top sports personalities. There was no escaping the glitz and glam that surrounded that city, and with every mega-stardom came self-doubt, paranoia, neurosis and, of course, depression. Around the neighborhoods of Hollywood and Beverly Hills alone, therapists for the stars seemed to grow on trees. The problem was that any type of mental health issue didn’t exclusively affect the rich and famous, but most of Los Angeles lived from paycheck to paycheck, barely able to put anything aside for arainy day. Paying for a therapist, of any kind, was a dream too far for most Angelinos to reach. For that reason, free support groups, set up to try to help citizens battling against some of the most concerning mental health issues, could be found spread around the city and its outskirts.
Hunter was certain that in LA there wouldn’t be a shortage of free support groups catering for parents who knew they had an anger or drinking problem… parents who were, or had been, violent toward their kids – and those groups were exactly what Hunter had asked the Research team to search for.
It was just past five in the afternoon when Garcia pushed himself back from his desk and rubbed his face with both hands.
‘Damn, I need a googly-eyes break.’ He blinked heavily a couple of times. ‘Meaning – I’m getting googly eyes here from all these receipts. Have you come up with anything yet?’
Hunter also pushed himself away from his desk for a moment. Since they got back, he’d been going over every single receipt and invoice that they had found inside Shaun Daniels’s apartment, totaling four and a half years. Garcia had been checking the ones from Terry Wilford’s apartment – almost five years’ worth of loose pieces of paper.
‘Nothing that made me worry,’ Hunter replied. ‘A few unidentified receipts, but the amounts aren’t large enough for a bulk therapy payment, and they don’t repeat themselves, which they would do if he was paying for subsequent, individual sessions. You?’
‘Pretty much the same.’ Garcia got up to refill his coffee cup. ‘Shaun Daniels was pretty tight with his budget. His therapy, if any, seemed to be booze and cigarettes.’
‘Well, I still got a fair amount to go here.’ Hunter nodded at the pile on his desk. ‘But I could also do with a break.’
‘Coffee?’ Garcia offered.
‘Please.’ Hunter handed him his mug.
As Garcia was filling up both cups, the phone on Hunter’s desk rang. Internal call. Research team.
Hunter took the call. ‘Shannon, what have you found?’
‘Quite a bit.’
Forty-Two
Hunter nodded at Garcia and immediately switched the call to speakerphone.
Shannon didn’t miss a beat.‘I’m sending you an email right now with all the free and small-donations support groups we managed to find in LA. The number is actually astounding, Robert, and they cater for just about everything. Different groups also offer different types of therapies, as you will see. Not surprisingly, there’s a large number of them that target excessive drinking and substance abuse – this is LA, after all. The list I’m sending you has been filtered down. It contains only the groups that deal specifically with the subjects you mentioned – alcohol and substance abuse, anger management, parenting and domestic violence. The domestic violence ones are divided into two types – abusive and abused – for people who are either perpetrating the violence, or at the receiving end it. Based on what you told me, I have flagged the “abusive” category as the most relevant. All of them meet once a week – evening time.’
