The Executioner (32 page)

A quick head shake.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

Hunter and Garcia arrived at Gardena High fifteen minutes late.

Mrs. Adams was a plump, cheery-looking woman of almost sixty with perfectly coiffed silver hair and a heartwarming smile. She was glad to help and directed both detectives to an archives room filled with storage boxes at the back of the library.

‘The boxes are all labeled by year.’ Mrs. Adams’s voice was as sweet as her pale green eyes.

Hunter turned to her. She was almost a foot shorter than him. ‘Thank you very much for your kindness, Mrs. Adams. We’ll be OK now.’

She hesitated at the door.

‘We won’t make a mess.’ Hunter smiled. ‘I promise.’

‘If you need me, I’ll be in the main library floor.’ She closed the door behind her.

From a folder he’d brought with him, Hunter retrieved the picture of the four girls Garcia had gotten from the old storage room the day before. He placed it on a large table in the center of the room. He also retrieved the male photograph they’d found on the fireplace in the house in Malibu. If the second victim had been a student in Gardena High, there was a chance so had the first one.

‘This was taken in 1985.’ Hunter pointed to the girls’ photo. ‘Let’s include that year and go two above and one below – from ’84 to ’87.’

Garcia frowned.

‘Just because these girls hung out together doesn’t necessarily mean they were in the same class,’ Hunter explained.

They pulled the relevant boxes out of the shelves and it didn’t take them long to find four black and white thirty-six- by twenty-four-millimeter photographs of the graduating classes. Hunter started at the top, class of ’87, the year Amanda Reilly would’ve graduated if she hadn’t dropped out of school. There were a hundred and twenty-six tightly packed students in the photo.

Using a magnifying glass, he took his time jumping from the graduating photo to the girls and the unidentified first victim one, comparing every face until he was sure.

Nothing.

He moved on to the next picture, and the slow, comparing process started again. Twenty-five frustrating minutes later, Hunter struck gold.

‘I found her.’

‘Who?’ Garcia looked up excitedly.

‘Our victim number two.’ Hunter turned the picture around and pointed to a girl hidden behind two quarterback-looking boys on the second to last line of students. Only her face was visible.

Garcia used his magnifying glass, his eyes bouncing between pictures. ‘It’s her alright.’

Hunter consulted the name sheet attached to the back of the photo. ‘Her name’s Debbie Howard.’ He quickly got on the phone to Hopkins with the news, asking him to dig out everything he could on Miss Howard.

It took Garcia another twenty-five minutes to find the first of the remaining two girls – Emily Wells, class of ’84. Fifteen minutes later Hunter spotted the last one – Jessica Pierce, class of ’85. They’d been through all the pictures as thoroughly as they could. Victim number one wasn’t in any of them. They were both very sure of it.

Emily Wells and Jessica Pierce’s names were immediately passed on to Hopkins and the Investigative Analysis Unit.

‘Find them,’ was all Hunter said.

The address they had for Patricia Reed, Father Fabian’s old algebra 2 teacher, was in Pomona, the fifth-largest city in Los Angeles County and home to the famous California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly). In stop-and-go traffic, the drive from Gardena Senior High took them an hour and a half.

Minnequa Drive was a quiet street about ten minutes away from Cal Poly, and they had no problem finding the building they were looking for. Modern in style and set back from the street, the large two-story house was fronted by several perfectly trimmed hedges, a small patch of grass to the left and a two-car garage to the right. A black Dodge Journey was parked in the lavish black-and-white-checked paved driveway.

‘Wow, this is quite a nice retirement home,’ Garcia said, parking on the street in front of the house. ‘Nice ride too.’

They climbed the railed granite steps that led to the front door and rang the bell. After a few moments it was answered by a diminutive, wiry Mexican woman in her thirties dressed in a uniform like a hotel maid’s. Her black hair was bundled tightly under a hairnet.

‘Good morning,’ Hunter said with a pleasant smile, quickly returning his badge to his pocket. He knew from experience that many private house workers in LA were illegal immigrants. A police badge only causes them to panic. ‘We’re looking for Mrs. Reed.’

‘Mista Reed?’ the maid replied in heavy accented English, returning the smile.

‘No, no. Mrs. Reed. Patricia Reed.’

‘Ah.
No hay
. No Mrs. Reed.’

‘What do you mean, no Mrs. Reed? She isn’t home?’

‘No.
Ella se ha ido para siempre
.’

Hunter frowned. ‘She’s gone forever?’

‘What’s the problem, Emilia?’ A man in his early forties dressed in a gray pinstripe wool suit with a light blue tab-collar shirt and a blue-on-blue striped tie appeared at the end of the entrance hall. He was tall, well built and movie-star handsome, with dark blue eyes and a strong, squared jaw.

The maid turned to face him. ‘
Creo que estos señores están en busca de su madre
, Mr. Reed.’

‘
Esta bien
, Emilia,
tranquilo
. I’ll talk to them.’ He motioned her to go back to her duties.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. I’m James Reed,’ the man said as he got to the door. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I understand by what Emilia said that Patricia Reed is your mother?’ Hunter asked in a polite tone.

‘I thought you said you didn’t understand Spanish,’ Garcia said under his breath.

‘Patricia Reed was my mother. She passed away five months ago.’

‘We’re sorry to hear that. We didn’t know.’

‘What’s this about, gentlemen?’

Hunter and Garcia introduced themselves, going over the customary badge-displaying ritual.

‘We were hoping to ask her a few questions about one of her old students from Compton High,’ Hunter said.

A look of interest came over Reed’s face. ‘What year are you talking about?’

‘1984, 1985?’

‘I was a student at Compton High in ’84. It was my freshman year. I graduated in 1987.’

‘Really?’ Hunter’s interest grew. ‘Would you mind looking at some pictures for us? Maybe you might remember them.’

Reed checked his watch and screwed up his face. ‘I’m a professor at Cal Poly. I’m due in class soon. I’ve got only about an hour before I have to leave. Could you come back later this evening, maybe?’

‘It shouldn’t take more than ten, fifteen minutes max,’ Hunter pressed.

‘I’ve got some papers I still have to go over. I have very little time.’

‘It’s very important, Mr. Reed,’ Hunter stated.

Reed studied both men before relenting. ‘Please come in,’ he said, showing them inside.

James Reed’s living room had a hardwood floor and an L-shaped sofa that faced a large wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The curtains were drawn shut. The only light came from a single pedestal lamp in a corner, positioned to illuminate a large round table. On it, thousands of pieces of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle were perfectly separated into color groups. All the border pieces had already been assembled, forming a large rectangular frame. Reed was an aficionado and very organized, Hunter noted.

‘Seven and a half thousand pieces,’ Reed confirmed, following Hunter’s gaze. ‘It won’t take me long to finish it,’ he admitted proudly. ‘I only started it yesterday. Do you like jigsaw puzzles, detective?’

Hunter looked up from the pieces on the table. ‘I do.’

‘There’s no better exercise for a human’s analytical and visual mind.’ Reed paused by the table. His eyes studied the pieces and he picked one up, slotting it into place at the top right-hand corner. ‘It’s also very therapeutic,’ he said before motioning both detectives to the seating area.

Hunter and Garcia sat on the sofa while Reed took the antique-looking chair facing them.

‘Is it a particular student you’re after?’ Read asked, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees.

‘Yes,’ Hunter replied, placing the old Compton High yearbook on the glass coffee table in front of them and flipping it open. ‘He wasn’t from your year. Three years your senior. His name’s Brett Stewart Nichols.’

James Reed tensed and shuffled on his seat.

‘This is him.’ Hunter pointed to the photograph in the center of the page – a skinny kid with wild black hair and energetic dark brown eyes.

Reed made no effort to look at it. His unflinching eyes stayed on Hunter. ‘I don’t need to look at the picture. I remember him.’

‘What do you remember about him?’

Reed ran a hand over his mouth a couple of times as he searched for the right words. ‘He . . . wasn’t a very nice person.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What did he do, detective? Did he kill someone? That wouldn’t surprise me. In school he could easily have been classed as a psychopath in the making.’

Neither detectives were expecting that statement.

‘Why do you say that? Can you tell us a little more about him?’

Reed leaned back, his shoulders tense. ‘He was a bully. He didn’t go to school to learn. School was just a place full of weaker kids he and his friends could push around.’

‘Did he push you around?’ Hunter watched every subtle movement and reaction.

Reed chuckled nervously before retrieving a cherry ChapStick from his pocket and running it over his lips. ‘They pushed everyone around. It didn’t matter what grade you were in. They didn’t care. People were scared of them.’

‘Scared?’

‘You know, when the word bully was used back then, people just imagined a foul-mouthed pupil calling other students names. Maybe teasing them because they were a little overweight or dressed funny or weren’t very good at sports, but not Brett and his friends. If you could imagine a modern-day street gangster with a severe attitude problem being taken back in time, then you’d probably come close to what kind of person Brett was.’ Reed paused and scratched his chin apprehensively. ‘There was this girl I remember. Katherine, I think her name was. She wasn’t in my class. I was a freshman, she was a junior, but I remember she was quite shy, very chubby, always by herself. She wasn’t an attractive girl – strange, hawk-like nose, unaligned teeth, bad hair and deep-set eyes behind big thick glasses. Brett and his friends loved tormenting her. Every time they saw her they’d make loud pig noises and call her names. Anyway, one day, I think it was during fifth period, they followed her into a bathroom and while she was in her cubicle, from over the partition of the adjacent one, they poured a bucket of human excrement over her.’

Garcia grimaced.

‘Did anyone see Brett doing it?’ Hunter asked.

‘No, but everyone knew no one else in Compton High would’ve been capable of something like that.’

‘Nobody ever notified the authorities or the school principal?’ Garcia asked.

‘I don’t think there were any witnesses to that specific incident.’

‘How about bullying in general?’ Hunter asked. ‘Did they simply get away with it all the time?’

Reed looked at Hunter. ‘Do you understand how bullying works, detective?’

Hunter met his stare. ‘Yes. Intimidation.’

‘That’s right, intimidation, and they were very good at it. In and out of school. They’d do things like what they did to this Katherine girl just for fun. No reason, no major grudge against anyone, just because they liked pushing people around and it made them laugh. Imagine what they’d do if you crossed them and they wanted to get back at you.’

‘This gang you refer to, how many were there? Could you point them out to us?’ Hunter pushed the yearbook towards Reed.

‘I can’t really remember.’ Reed shrugged, ignoring the book. ‘It was twenty-five years ago. I was a freshman, Brett was a senior. I tried my best to keep out of their way, as did everyone else. But Brett wasn’t the worst one. He wasn’t the—’ he drew quotation marks in the air ‘—leader.’

Hunter exchanged a quick look with Garcia. ‘So who was?’

Reed pinched his lip for a moment. ‘You still haven’t told me what this is about, detective. Is he wanted for questioning?’

‘Not exactly,’ Hunter replied.

Reed studied Hunter and Garcia. ‘Wait a minute. You guys are homicide, right? Did someone finally kill Brett?’ A thin smile played on his lips.

‘Do you think someone would have reason to?’

‘Did you listen to anything I said?’ Reed frowned. ‘They terrorized everyone in that school. Some students and at least one teacher quit Compton High because of them. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they became hardened criminals after they left school.’