No one would find that odd due to the family history.
No one would ask any questions.
And no one would miss him.
His father could then move to a different city and start a new life as a single, childless man, because ‘the plague’ had finally been removed from his life.
The emptiness Squirm felt inside was so devastating it made him break his promise to himself. Tears came to the boy’s eyes and, alone in his cell, he cried.
Now he knew that no one was coming to save him, because no one was looking for him.
No one had ever been.
Sixty-seven
Garcia was still in the kitchen when Hunter exited the bedroom and walked back into the living room of apartment two-eleven. He immediately spotted the two evidence bags that Garcia had left on top of the small desk by the window — one holding the red BIC Cristal pen and the other the sheets of white printer paper. As he checked them, the same splinter of excitement that had made the hairs on the back of Garcia’s neck stand on end grabbed hold of Hunter for just a millisecond, but he knew better than to let excitement cloud his objectivity. They needed to get those evidence bags to the forensics lab ASAP.
‘Robert!’ Hunter heard his partner call. ‘Come check this out.’
Hunter placed the evidence bags back on the desk and made his way into the kitchen.
Garcia was standing by the stove, with an urgent look on his face.
‘What have you got?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia flicked the book of matches Hunter’s way and he caught it midair.
‘Have a look inside,’ Garcia urged him.
Hunter thumbed it open and paused. An annotation had been made on the cover’s flipside. Hunter stared at it as if hypnotized, his heart beating just a little bit faster than a moment ago.
The annotation read — Midazolam, 2.5 mg.
‘Do you know what that is?’ Garcia asked.
‘I think it’s an anesthetic,’ Hunter replied, his eyes never leaving the text.
Though Garcia didn’t know the drug, he had guessed it to be some sort of sedative, but that wasn’t what had excited him, or kept Hunter so transfixed.
The handwriting was.
The handwriting that they both had stared at for hours on end over the past few days.
The killer’s.
Sixty-eight
Hunter and Garcia’s first stop after leaving Mathew Hade’s apartment was the LAPD Scientific Investigation Division’s Criminalistics Lab in El Sereno, East Los Angeles. On their way there, Hunter called Doctor Brian Snyder, the lead forensics agent who had attended Sharon Barnard’s crime scene in Venice. He had just come back from a double homicide scene in Westlake.
Doctor Snyder came out to meet the detectives at the lab’s reception lobby.
‘Detectives,’ he said, shaking their hands. ‘Nice seeing you again. How can I help?’
Hunter gave him a quick summary of everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, before handing him the evidence bags he had with him.
Doctor Snyder studied them for a short moment, his eyes lingering over the book of matches for a little longer than they did the other items.
‘Midazolam,’ he read out loud, his voice full of concern.
‘Do you know what that is?’ Garcia asked.
Doctor Snyder nodded. ‘Yes. Midazolam is a Benzodiazepine-based anesthetic with hypnotic properties.’
Garcia blinked twice.
‘There are three Benzodiazepines in common anesthetic use today,’ he explained. ‘Diazepam, Lorazepam and, especially, Midazolam. It is the most lipid-soluble of the three, which means that it’s the fastest to be absorbed by the body and, therefore, also the quickest acting. Its main properties are sedation, relatively little respiratory and cardiac depression, anti-panic, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant, and it’s also a very strong, centrally acting muscle relaxant. It will induce unconsciousness, or a hypnotic state, in under thirty seconds, producing a very reliable level of amnesia very similar to the “black hole amnesia” caused by Rohypnol, the rape drug. The patient, or victim, will remember nothing.’
‘So, in short,’ Garcia commented, ‘it’s the perfect drug to quickly immobilize a victim.’
Doctor Snyder agreed with a nod. ‘Or, depending on the dosage, to pacify them enough so they would offer no resistance. A person under a mild dosage of Midazolam would act as if he or she were drunk — very drunk, actually. To a passer-by, a perpetrator dragging a victim in that state would just look like somebody helping a drunken friend. That’s all.’ His gaze returned to the book of matches for an instant. ‘But the dosage described here — two point five milligrams — is more than enough to completely subdue a subject as tall and as heavy as any of us.’
‘How difficult is it to obtain?’ Hunter asked.
‘Not very. Especially with the clandestine sites you find on the net today. If you know where to search, it won’t take long.’
‘Perfect,’ Garcia said.
‘How long do you think it will take to process those, Doc?’ Hunter asked.
The face Doctor Snyder made didn’t fill them with confidence.
‘I can put them through right now with an “urgent” request,’ he told them. ‘And I promise that I’ll do all I can to move them as close to the top of the pile as possible. If I get lucky, I can probably have the result of the handwriting analysis back to you by tomorrow, or the day after.’ He reflexively checked his watch as he mentioned the time frame. ‘As for the rest, I’m really not sure. Maybe two days... maybe more.’
Hunter and Garcia knew that there was nothing more they, or Doctor Snyder, could do. The Criminalistics Laboratory was part of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center at the LA Regional Crime Lab and the whole facility was shared jointly by five different organizations, all of them wanting results back by yesterday. Their technicians had more work than they could possibly handle. An urgent request by one of their own sure was an advantage, but not a guarantee. For now, all they could do was wait.
Sixty-nine
Hunter managed only three and a half hours of sleep before his brain was fully awake again. He kept his eyes shut for another minute or two, hoping, willing, but deep inside he knew that it was a futile exercise. No matter how hard he wished, no matter how tightly he squeezed his eyes, sleep would not come back.
Finally giving up, he rolled over in bed and opened his eyes. Unorganized thoughts collided against each other inside his head, creating an undecipherable mess that only served to confuse him more. He breathed out a leaden breath, swung his feet off the bed and sat at its edge, giving his eyes a chance to get rid of the stupor of sleep. He checked the digital clock by his bed — 4:55 a.m.
In the bathroom, Hunter washed his face and brushed his teeth before regarding himself in the mirror just above the washbasin for an instant. He looked exhausted. His eyes were half bloodshot and the circles under them were starting to look like badly applied makeup.
Entering his living room, and without even thinking about it, he checked the floor by the front door.
Nothing.
No envelopes.
He shook his head as he considered the silliness of what he’d just done.
But was it really? he heard the little voice at the back of his mind ask. The killer had done it once, and there was nothing to keep him from doing it again. In his entire career as an RHD detective, Hunter had never dealt with a more unpredictable predator.