The Executioner (43 page)

Garcia crossed his arms and chewed on his bottom lip while studying the young student’s face.

‘Those umbrella ears would have to go,’ Patricia said, leaning back on her chair. ‘He probably got some real heat for them. They’re quite – shall I say? – predominant?’

‘Yeah, OK. I’ll have to agree.’ Garcia nodded.

‘Can you change that?’ Hunter asked, resting a hand on Patricia’s left shoulder.

‘Watch me work.’ She entered a few algorithms into the software and used a device that looked like an electronic pen to draw on a flat board on her desk. Like a painter stroking a canvas, her movements were precise and graceful. Moments later the student’s ears were completely different.

‘Wow, that’s cool,’ Garcia said.

‘Yeah, that looks much better.’ Patricia smiled.

‘OK, so what else would you change?’ Hunter pushed.

‘Probably that bump on his nose,’ Garcia offered. ‘It looks as if it’s been broken.’

Patricia nodded and made the change.

‘Good. Any other problems either of you would like to fix?’ Hunter asked.

‘His teeth.’ Patricia this time.

‘You can’t see his teeth.’ Garcia shook his head, frowning at her.

‘That’s true, but see the way he closes his mouth?’ She used the electronic pen to indicate it on the screen. ‘He’s not doing it naturally. He’s forcing his lips together in a pouting movement, which tells me his teeth were bigger than normal and pushed forward.’

Hunter and Garcia squinted at the picture.

‘Trust me, guys. I work with this sort of stuff every day.’

‘OK.’ Hunter shrugged. ‘But how can you change his teeth on the picture if you can’t see them?’

‘I can change the shape of his mouth, push his lips back a fraction and do away with his pouting. You’ll see,’ she said as her perfectly manicured fingers punched several keys on her keyboard. A few more strokes with the magic pen and the kid had a new mouth.

‘Wow, he looks quite different from the original,’ Garcia agreed.

Hunter shook his head, unsure. ‘Something is not fitting.’

‘His jaw,’ Patricia noted. ‘Because of the alterations I made to his lips and teeth, I’m certain a surgeon would suggest a small redesign of his jawline to fit his new smile. Maybe square it a little.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘As I said, with this pen I can do anything.’ She smiled confidently and made the alterations. When she was done, they all took a step back from the monitor. The image they were staring at was that of a very different-looking boy from the one they’d started with.

‘That’s it,’ Patricia said. ‘I don’t see anything else to add or subtract, do you?’

Both detectives shook their heads.

‘We just turned a geek into a hunk.’ Patricia laughed.

‘That’s perfect,’ Hunter agreed.

Something had changed in Garcia’s expression, but the recognition still wasn’t there.

‘Do me a favor now, Pat.’ Hunter hunched his body over her desk. ‘Darken his hair to a brownish color, add some gray over his temples and make it a shorter, combed-back style, will you?’

They waited while Patricia tweaked the picture once again.

‘Can you hypothesize age?’ Hunter asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Great. Let’s age him about twenty-five years.’

The ageing process took a little longer. When it was finally done, Garcia’s jaw dropped open.

‘No fucking way.’

Susan Zieliski read the letter for the tenth time, and again her emotions got the better of her. She couldn’t believe it was really happening.

Susan hadn’t had the easiest or luckiest of lives. She was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado, twenty-two years ago. Her parents were Polish–Jewish immigrants and very strict when it came to her upbringing. She did her best to respect their laws, but for a young girl growing up in today’s America they were very restrictive, to say the least.

From a very early age Susan had two great ambitions in life. One – she wanted to be on stage and sing. Two – she didn’t want to become like her mother, a very obedient, somewhat submissive wife who’d do anything her husband told her to without questioning.

At thirteen, Susan was already attractive. She’d inherited her mother’s hair – so blond it was almost white – and her father’s deep blue and captivating eyes. Plenty of boys had asked her out, but Susan wasn’t allowed to date. Not until she was eighteen, and even then it had to be under her parents’ supervision and the boy had to be Jewish.

Susan was no angel, though. Her first kiss came when she was fourteen. Bob Jordan took her behind the school gym during their lunch break and they made out like they were the only two people on earth. She allowed him to touch her breasts, and as he did she was overcome by a warm and exciting new sensation. But when he tried to slide his hand up her thigh and between her legs, she panicked and ran away. That panic didn’t last long, and soon the touching became more intense, the breathing more emphatic and the excitement impossible to control. At fifteen Susan had her first full sexual experience. It’d been quick, painful and not very satisfying, but certainly promising.

Cripple Creek is a former gold-mining camp. A bedroom closet society with a population of fewer than two thousand people. That, together with her strict family rules, made it very hard for a girl like Susan to express herself. She wanted to see more, to explore more, and for the time being the answer came in the form of softball.

Susan didn’t care much for sports, but when she found out her school’s girls’ softball team got to travel all over the state for the high school championships, she made sure she was a part of it.

Susan was sixteen when the team traveled to Colorado Springs to play a series of three games over a long weekend. On that Saturday night, the Bomber Gang, a young and upcoming LA rap group, was playing at the Underground. Susan, together with two other teammates, sneaked out of their dorm and made it to the show. It was Susan’s first-ever live gig and it blew her mind. They got to meet the guys in the band and party with them. Susan spent the night with Kool Roxx, the band’s lead rapper. He said all the right words and promised all the right things. They made love several times before she went back to the team’s dorm.

When she missed her next period later that month, she didn’t give it much thought, but soon the morning sickness, the fatigue and the tender breasts kicked in.

Susan’s father, Jacek, was an old-fashioned man who believed in obedience, respect, honor and above all the purity of his bloodline. Susan knew that there was no way her father would understand. It didn’t matter if she thought she was in love. To him she had disrespected and blemished his family’s name in the worst way he saw possible. She decided not to wait for her father’s reaction.

In Susan’s childish, backyard-America naivety, she believed that Kool Roxx had told her the truth that night when he’d said he’d fallen for her. She believed he’d be happy to see her again and even thrilled to learn he would be a father. She had enough money saved up from her job at the local bookshop to get her to Los Angeles. She’d look up Kool Roxx and they could decide together their next move. But the address he’d given her didn’t exist. The phone number he’d given her was of a Chinese restaurant. Four weeks later, alone in the public bathroom of a subway station in east LA, Susan self-aborted.

She stayed in Los Angeles. She was determined she could still make one of her dreams come true. She took a job at a diner in Lynwood and spent her afternoons auditioning for musicals. She had a great voice, very powerful and a little quirky, but her acting skills let her down. As soon as she was able to afford it, Susan started taking classes, and after five years it was all starting to pay off.

‘
We are delighted to inform you that you have been chosen for the new cast of
In the Heights
, the Broadway musical
.’

Susan never got tired of reading that line. The letter had arrived this morning, and since then she’d been walking on clouds. Ironic that
In the Heights
was a show about chasing your dreams and finding your new home in a different place.

The knock on the door startled her. She wasn’t expecting anyone, especially not at this hour. As Susan opened the door of her small apartment in Downey, her eyes widened in shock.

‘Oh my God!’

‘Do you know this guy?’ Patricia asked, hitting the
PRINT
button on her keyboard.

Hunter nodded and she watched as his eyes suddenly widened in realization. ‘Damn, the book,’ he said, bringing both hands to his forehead.

‘What book?’ she asked.

‘The Compton High yearbook.’

‘It’s downstairs,’ Garcia confirmed.

Hunter faced Patricia. ‘Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.’

Patricia glanced at her watch. ‘You gonna owe me big time for this, Robert.’ But he was already racing out of the door and down the steps.

He was back in forty-five seconds flat.

‘Wow, that was fast,’ Patricia said and frowned. ‘How come you’re not even out of breath?’

Hunter didn’t reply. His attention was on the Compton High yearbook pages as he flipped through them, scrutinizing every photo.

‘Who are you after now?’ Garcia asked, taking a step closer and peeking at the book.

Hunter finally stopped turning the pages and rushed over to Patricia’s desk. His face set in concentration. ‘Can you scan this picture?’ He pointed to a photo in the middle of the page. ‘And do the same that we did to that one?’ He nodded towards the printout on her desk.

‘No problem.’

They watched as Patricia Phelps took her time airbrushing and retouching, once again transforming the student on the picture into a completely different one. As she completed the ageing process, Garcia felt his body shiver.

‘You’ve gotta be shitting me.’

Garcia made the trip from the SID to Holmby Hills in less than twenty minutes. They weren’t sure what they were hoping to find, but they needed to talk to him again. Just like James Reed, he’d also lied about his previous knowledge of the victims.

They had no problem finding the house, a white-fronted, two-story, movie-star-style mansion in Beverly Glen Boulevard. The house was in total darkness, but the lights in the beautifully kept suspended front yard were on, and so were the Christmas decorations on the perfectly triangular evergreen trees that flanked the front door.

They took the long left-bending stone steps that led to the house two at a time. The doorbell wasn’t working, and after a minute of constant knocking Hunter skipped over the small hedge to the left of the door and checked both large windows – they were locked and the closed curtains kept him from seeing inside.

‘Let’s give the garage a try,’ Hunter said, running back down the steps to the two-car garage to the right of the house. Again, it was locked and so was the wooden side door to the right of the garage that no doubt led to the house’s backyard. Its padlock looked flimsy, though.

‘What’re you doing?’ Garcia asked, surprised, as Hunter took a step back and shoved his right shoulder hard against the door.

‘Having a better look,’ he said matter-of-factly as he stepped through the door frame. ‘You coming?’

‘Are you nuts?’ Garcia called as he doubled his step to catch up with Hunter.

The house’s backyard was impressive. The centerpiece was a grand teardrop-shaped pool illuminated by underwater spotlights. To its left, a spacious beechwood, off-ground sun deck, and at the back of it a large barbecue area. All of it surrounded by high Raywood ash trees and sculptured hedges. The perfectly mown lawn sloped down several yards to a tennis court. No houselights were on. Hunter tried the glass sliding double doors that led into what looked to be a party room – locked. He cupped his hands over the glass and tried to see inside. It all looked lifeless. Taking off his jacket, Hunter rolled it around his right elbow

‘Woah,’ Garcia said, lifting his hands in a ‘stop’ gesture. ‘What are we doing here, Robert?’

‘I have to have a look inside.’

‘Why? This may not be our guy. We have as much reason to doubt James Reed as we have to doubt him.’

‘You saw the transformation on both pictures,’ Hunter shot back calmly. ‘That was no coincidence. This story goes way deeper. And I think it goes murder deep.’

‘Fair enough, but breaking and entering isn’t the solution.’

‘We have a reason to knock on his door, Carlos.’

‘This ain’t knocking. This is kicking the damn door down, and it isn’t legal.’ He looked at Hunter as if he didn’t recognize him. ‘Even if he’s our guy, any lawyer could get this case blown out of the water because we fucked up and didn’t follow procedure, Robert. Is that what you want? We do this and we might be handing this guy a free out-of-jail card.’

Hunter glanced at his watch. ‘I understand, Carlos. And usually I’d be the one giving that speech, but I’m running out of time here. Mollie’s missing, the killer’s after her and she believes he’s gonna get to her tonight. That doesn’t give me a lot of time.’ He stared deep into his partner’s eyes. ‘I promised her nothing would happen to her. This is a good lead. I don’t have time to go through the right channels and do background research. If I do, she dies. There’s no way the DA’s office will give us a warrant to even search his trash can.’ He paused and breathed in deeply. ‘Go back to Parker Center, Carlos. I’ll deny you had any knowledge of my actions.’