I Am Death (29 page)

Sanders’ last few words got Hunter and Garcia’s attention.

‘On the week of Ms. Dillard’s disappearance, Mathew Hade had been doing some roofing work on the same road where she was housesitting, two houses away, actually. That same week, he
was also seen out on the street, talking to Ms. Dillard on one or two occasions. He completed all the roofing work a day before she went missing. The boot prints found in the garden matched
Hade’s shoe size, but the sole pattern didn’t match any of the shoes the police found in his house.’

‘What shoe size was he?’

‘Eleven,’ Sanders replied and made a face. ‘Yeah, I know, the most common male shoe size in the US.’

‘How about the jacket fibers?’ Garcia asked.

‘Mr. Hade told the police that he did have one of those exact jackets, but it was old and torn, so he had thrown it away a few days prior to his interview.’

‘Convenient,’ Garcia commented.

‘Was he ever arrested?’ Hunter asked.

‘No. Despite suspicions, police didn’t have enough to justify an arrest.’ Sanders regarded both detectives for a quick second. ‘I know what you’re thinking –
so this Mathew Hade was a person of interest in a missing persons investigation in Fresno, so what, right?’

Neither detective replied. Their silence spoke for itself.

‘Well, I don’t blame you, because I thought the same. But there’s more,’ Sanders added. ‘Just turn the page. And here is where it starts to get
interesting.’

Despite still being completely confused by what was happening, Squirm drew in a courageous breath and took a couple of wary steps in the direction of the breakfast table. The
boy’s eyes were fixed on the man sitting at its head. Part of him was still expecting this whole thing to be a trick. He kept anticipating ‘The Monster’ jumping up from his seat
and punching him hard enough to shatter bone, then laughing at how easy it had been to trick him.

But that never happened.

‘C’mon, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ said, once again tapping the tabletop twice with his right hand. ‘Have a seat. Eat your breakfast.’ He reached for the
newspaper and pushed it across the table as well. ‘Have a look at the paper if you like. It makes no difference to me.’

As Squirm got closer, the man pulled out the chair next to him.

‘It’s not a trick, Squirm,’ the man said, reading the fear in the boy’s eyes. ‘I give you my word. I understand why you’re so hesitant. I would’ve
reacted the same way, but this is for real. The food is yours if you want it.’

Squirm’s gaze finally moved from the man’s face to the breakfast plate and he immediately started salivating. His stomach growled like a sick dog.

‘I can actually hear how hungry you are,’ the man said, placing his plastic cutlery by the plate. ‘Here, today you also don’t have to eat using your hands. You can use
these.’

At last, Squirm took a seat at the table. Still very concerned, the boy kept his gaze on the man and his hands in his lap.

‘It’s not going to magically jump from the plate into your mouth, Squirm. And I sure as hell am not going to put it there for you.’

Squirm’s hunger finally won the battle and the boy reached for the knife and fork. As he did, the heavy metal chain that shackled his wrists together rattled against the tabletop, almost
tipping over the plastic cereal bowl and pushing the breakfast plate off the table.

‘Here,’ the man said, reaching inside his trouser pocket for a key. ‘Let me help you with that.’

He took the boy by the arm and unlocked one of the metal rings around his wrists.

Squirm looked down at his hands. The skin around his free wrist, where the thick metal ring had hugged it for so long, was red, raw and inflamed. Instinctively, he touched it with the fingertips
of his opposite hand and as they grazed the ugly wound a burning, stinging pain shot up his arms, but boy, did it feel good?

OK. This must be a dream. This just can’t be happening.

The man looked down at the breakfast plate, and followed the look with a jerk of his head. ‘Eat.’

Squirm gripped the fork with his free right hand. His good eye scanned the contents of the plate, trying to decide what to go for first. He could barely remember the last time he’d had a
civilized hot meal. His hand shot toward the plate and he scooped up as much scrambled eggs as the tiny fork could possibly hold. A millisecond later, the fork was in his mouth. The process was
repeated once again, almost too fast for the eye to see. His scrawny cheeks puffed up like inflated balloons from the amount of food the boy had shoved inside his mouth. He could hardly chew it
all.

‘Wow, hey,’ the man said, lifting a hand. ‘Easy, Squirm. You’re going to make yourself sick. The food isn’t going to go anywhere. I told you, you can have it all.
I’m not going to take it away from you.’

Squirm still chewed as fast as he could. Once he finally swallowed the first mouthful, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. One more time, and still fearfully, he peeked at the man, who
seemed totally unconcerned.

The boy reached for a piece of toast.

In silence, the man watched him eat. Squirm still ate fast, but not as fast as his first few mouthfuls. He drank his orange juice in gulps and finished the bowl of cereal in record time, but
without spilling a single drop. He was about to eat the last of the food, a piece of bacon rasher, when the man spoke again.

‘You really don’t remember what day today is, do you?’

Squirm paused before the piece of bacon hit his lips.

‘Not at all?’ his captor asked.

Squirm frowned, but failed to reply.

‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ There was a forced, full-of-suspense pause. ‘Today is your birthday, Squirm.’

Shocked, the boy looked back at his captor. The piece of bacon fell from his fork back on to the plate.

Squirm’s life had taken such a drastic turn in the past few days that he had completely forgotten about his own birthday. The last time he had thought about it had been on the day he was
abducted, as he was leaving school. Back then, there had been only nine days to go.

The boy’s eyes ran the length of his skinny arms all the way to his hands. Dry blood coated his knuckles and every single one of his nails. All of them broken. He had no idea what his face
looked like, as there were no mirrors or shiny surfaces anywhere in the house, but Squirm wasn’t sure he wanted to know. What he did know was that he had also lost a silly amount of weight.
He looked like someone who had been struggling with either anorexia or bulimia.

Oh my God! I’ve been here for only nine days?

In the boy’s mind, it really did feel like a year or more.

‘I guess that explains why I’m being nice to you today,’ the man said, sitting back in his seat. ‘So, happy birthday, Squirm. That breakfast was your present.’

The boy felt tears coming to his eyes, but he remembered his promise from earlier on and somehow found the strength to choke them.

‘You’re not going to read the paper?’

Squirm peered at it, but his hands didn’t move.

‘You must be curious about what is going on out there, aren’t you? You’ve been missing for quite a few days now. The police must be going crazy trying to find you, don’t
you think?’

No reply. No movement.

‘C’mon, have a look. I’ll help you.’ The man reached for the newspaper and flipped it open to the crime section, before placing it back on the table in front of the boy.
He watched Squirm’s good eye move to it and quickly scan all the headlines.

Nothing.

‘Oh!’ ‘The Monster’ said sarcastically. ‘Nothing in today’s paper. That’s strange, isn’t it? Would you like to check the earlier newspapers
too?’

They locked eyes, or in Squirm’s case – eye.

‘I’ve kept them all.’ ‘The Monster’ jerked his head to his left. ‘They’re in the cupboard. Let me get them for you.’ He got up, walked over to the
cupboards high on the south wall and opened the second one from the left. From inside, he retrieved a pile of folded newspapers.

‘Here they are,’ he said, dumping them on the table. ‘Every single
LA Times
since the day after I picked you up from outside your school.’

Squirm found it astonishing that ‘The Monster’ made it sound as though what had happened that day was nothing more than a regular school pick-up.

‘Go on,’ the man pushed. ‘Have a look.’

The boy reached for the first one at the top of the pile, yesterday’s
LA Times,
and unfolded it. He found that the papers had already been opened on to the crime section. This time
he took a little longer going over the articles and headlines. In the ‘Missing Persons’ section, he came across a few photographs, most of them of kids around his age or younger. His
wasn’t one of them. He put the paper down and quickly reached for the next one – the
LA Times
from two days ago. Again, his picture wasn’t listed in the ‘Missing
Persons’ section.

A cold, discomforting feeling began to grow inside the boy’s stomach.

Newspaper number three.

No pictures of him.

Number four.

A repeat of the previous three.

The discomfort turned to nausea, branching out to some sort of spike that stabbed at his heart.

Five.

Not a thing.

‘The Monster’ simply observed Squirm, his eyes sparkling with satisfaction.

Six.

No.

Last newspaper. The one dated the day after he’d been abducted.

The boy’s picture wasn’t there.

If there was still such a thing that Squirm called ‘world’, it collapsed right in front of him that morning.

OK, this is a dream. It has to be. There’s no other explanation for how fucked-up crazy this morning has become.

‘Nothing?’ ‘The Monster’ asked, his lips parting into a malicious grin.

Squirm’s attention didn’t break from the newspapers, which were now scattered all over the breakfast table. His good eye was still searching from paper to paper.

I must’ve missed it. It’s there somewhere. It has to be.

‘Looking at them some more isn’t going to make your picture miraculously appear on the paper, Squirm. Let me try to save you the trouble. It’s not there. It never has
been.’

Squirm began shaking.

‘Haven’t you wondered how come I knew that today was your birthday, Squirm?’ The man shrugged. ‘I never asked you. You never offered it.’

The boy turned to look at ‘The Monster’. All the madness had happened so fast that morning that Squirm had never stopped to think about it.

How did he know it was my birthday?

‘That question can be answered by answering another couple of questions.’ Once again the ‘The Monster’ paused, lifting his eyebrows to emphasize his words. ‘How
come there are no pictures of you in the papers? How come there’s no story about the boy who went missing after leaving school a week and a half ago?’

Squirm felt as though something had begun choking his heart inside his chest. He said nothing. He didn’t know
what
to say.

‘And the answer is – because you were never reported missing, Squirm.’

‘Just turn the page,’ Sanders said. ‘Because here is where it starts to get interesting.’

Hunter did, and Sanders carried on with his account.

‘Five months after Ms. Dillard’s disappearance, in July two thousand and nine, Sandra Oliver, a twenty-four-year-old bank clerk from Fresno, also went missing. She lived by herself
in the west part of town. Once again, the Missing Persons investigation concluded that whoever had taken her had done so from inside her own house and, once again, there was no sign of a break-in
or a struggle. The abduction scene was almost a carbon copy of Ms. Dillard’s – relatively clean, no fingerprints, no mess, just a few fibers and a couple of shoeprints by the back door.
The shoe size and sole pattern matched those found in Ms. Dillard’s abduction scene so suspicions of it being the same perpetrator were high.

‘Now, guess who’d been working in the neighbor’s house the same week of Ms. Oliver’s disappearance?’ Sanders didn’t wait for a reply. ‘That’s
right, our friend Mathew Hade. He’d been doing several minor repairs to the property, as well as remodeling their front garden. All the work was completed just a couple of days before Sandra
Oliver went missing. Once again, the police ended up knocking on Mr. Hade’s door, and once again they didn’t have enough to take him in. The detective in charge of the investigation
managed to get a warrant to search Hade’s house but they found nothing incriminating. A week and a half after she went missing, Ms. Oliver’s body was found on a patch of green grass in
the northern part of town.’

Hunter and Garcia’s interest grew.

‘Now tell me if this sounds familiar,’ Sanders continued. ‘She was found fully clothed, positioned in a human crucifix shape, with her legs fully extended but close together
and her arms wide open, palms up. Ligature marks were found on both of her wrists and ankles.’

Hunter and Garcia both lifted their head to look at the Missing Persons detective.

‘Her picture follows,’ Sanders said expectantly, nodding at the file.

One more page flip and both detectives were held fast.

Sandra Oliver was a petite woman with very similar features to Nicole Wilson. Just like Ms. Wilson, she had a round face, which was also framed by shoulder-length dark-brown hair.

Hunter checked the next photograph along. It was a crimescene snapshot, showing the position in which Sandra Oliver’s body had been found. If her legs had been spread apart, she
would’ve been left in the exact same position Nicole Wilson was found in, on a similar patch of green grass.

To better compare them, Hunter looked at Nicole Wilson’s crime scene photograph pinned to the picture board. This had indeed got interesting.

Sanders’ gaze followed his before he added, ‘The post mortem concluded that Ms. Oliver was tortured for several days prior to her demise,’

‘What sort of torture?’ Garcia asked.

‘She was severely beaten up. The skin under her clothes was black and blue, covered in bruises and hematomas, but no lacerations. For some reason, her torturer punished her body but left
her face completely intact, as you can see from the photographs. According to the coroner, the blunt traumas to her body were inflicted by hand alone – punches to be more precise – by
someone with relatively big fists.’ Sanders paused for breath. ‘Also, whoever punished her was kind of an expert. Superficial injuries only. No broken bones or internal organ
damage.’