Squirm was curled up into a ball, lying down sideways on his dirty mattress, facing the wall. As he heard the man’s voice, he felt the will to carry on living desert him.

And Squirm didn’t fight it.

What was the point in living if he had to go through another day at the hands of this monster?

Squirm knew exactly what was coming because every day always played out the same. He would be beaten up, sodomized, starved, then beaten up some more – most days, until he passed out and was thrown back into his cell, ready for the whole process to repeat itself the next day.

‘Get up, Squirm.’

Maybe if Squirm didn’t move . . . maybe if he didn’t respond . . . maybe if he disobeyed the man’s orders, this would all end? Maybe the man would get angry enough to dish out a beating so severe the boy’s fragile body and internal organs would finally give up, and life would at last abandon him.

Was it wrong for an eleven-year-old to want to die?

Squirm didn’t think so, because in his mind what was wrong was for an eleven-year-old to live in this way.

Squirm had also given up praying, because he simply didn’t know to whom he was praying anymore. If there was a God, he had no idea what he had done to piss him off so badly.

Once again, tears came to the boy’s eyes. He was tired of them. He was tired of all the pain, and the hunger, and the darkness, and the fear. But most of all, Squirm was tired of living.

As he heard the man take his first heavy step into the cell, the young boy began shivering. Instinctively, his body curled up into an even tighter ball, readying itself for the inevitable.

But Squirm didn’t care anymore. In fact, he would rather be dead.

All I have to do, Squirm thought, is piss him off enough that he won’t stop beating me when I pass out. Yes, that’s it. I just need to make him angry and that won’t take much doing.

‘The Monster’ took another step toward the boy.

Squirm drew in a deep breath, as if he was breathing in courage, rolled his body over on the mattress to face his captor and looked him straight in the eye.

It was time to die.

‘Fuck you, you sick piece of shit.’

Fifty-Five

Garcia didn’t recognize the man standing at the door to their office. Decked out in a well-fitting black suit, a crisp white shirt, and a red silk tie, he was way too well dressed to be a CSI. He also didn’t look anything like any of the IT forensics people Garcia had ever met.

‘Please come in,’ Hunter said, getting to his feet. ‘Carlos, this is Detective Troy Sanders,’ he said, putting an end to Garcia’s questioning look. ‘He’s the head of the Missing Persons Unit’s Special Division based in Ramirez Street. He was also the detective in change of Nicole Wilson’s investigation.’

‘Please, call me Troy,’ Sanders said, shaking Garcia’s hand before turning to face Hunter. ‘I just came over to hand you this,’ he said, nodding at the file he had with him. ‘It’s the results of the search you asked me to run.’

As Sanders handed Hunter the file, his gaze moved past the RHD detective and settled on the picture board directly behind him. A second later, his eyes widened.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Sanders whispered under his breath.

Hunter and Garcia followed his stare.

‘You already have a second victim?’ Sanders asked, his eyes moving about the board.

Neither Hunter nor Garcia said anything.

‘When?’

‘Her body was found the day before yesterday,’ Garcia replied.

Sanders’ expression was a mixture of surprise and incredulity. ‘A day after the first victim was found?’

Garcia gave him a single, subtle nod.

Sanders frowned as his eyes focused on one particular photograph.

‘Sharon Barnard . . . Sharon Barnard . . .’

Reading it from the board, he murmured the name to himself a couple of times, searching his memory for a moment before shaking his head.

‘Neither her name nor her face sound or look familiar.’ He looked back at Hunter and Garcia. ‘Was she ever reported?’

‘She was never missing,’ Hunter explained. ‘There was no abduction this time. Her killer simply broke into her house and murdered her in her living room.’

Sanders’ frown intensified, now speckled with confusion. ‘No abduction? The perpetrator broke away from his original MO?’

‘Don’t even get us started on this “MO” business,’ Garcia said, lifting his hands in surrender. Strategically, he moved around to the other side of the room, dragging Sanders’ attention away from the board.

Hunter quickly joined him.

Garcia moved the subject along. ‘So those are the results of a search? What search?’ The question was directed more at Hunter than at Sanders.

‘Just a long shot, really,’ Hunter explained. ‘I had forgotten all about it. I asked Detective Sanders to run a search against the national Missing Persons database for cases where an abduction was perpetrated under similar circumstances to that of Nicole Wilson.’

Garcia thought about it for a second.

‘I must admit that I hadn’t thought about it like that until then,’ Sanders added. ‘But it made sense. The abduction scene at the Bennetts’ house was too clean. Forensics spent two full days in there and they found absolutely nothing – no prints, no fibers, no hairs, no speck of dust that didn’t belong, not a thing. In ten years with Missing Persons, I’d never come across such a sterile scene. That level of perfection isn’t very easy to achieve, especially alone and on your first ever abduction?’

‘Right from the beginning,’ Hunter took over, addressing Garcia, ‘we both had our suspicions that this killer would kill again, remember? That he would become a repeat offender.’

‘But what if he already was a repeat offender?’ Garcia said, already in sync with Hunter.

Sanders nodded his agreement. ‘Exactly. At least when it came to abductions.’ He once again indicated the file he’d handed Hunter. ‘Well, that long shot might’ve paid off. Have a look in there.’

Fifty-Six

Fuck you, you sick piece of shit.

Fuck you, you sick piece of shit.

Squirm kept repeating those words in his head and he had every intention of spitting them out in his captor’s face, but as ‘The Monster’s’ steps drew nearer and Squirm rolled his body over on the mattress, survival, the most primal of all human instincts, grabbed hold of him in a way it had never done before. Instead of saying what he had rehearsed, the words that came out of the boy’s lips were:

‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m getting up now.’

Still, Squirm had taken too long to reply. Anger had already colored the man’s face. He grabbed the boy by his hair and lifted him off the ground.

In vain, Squirm’s hands shot up to his head, grabbing at the man’s closed fist. Pain once again took hold of the boy’s entire body with the speed of a lightning bolt. He tried screaming, but he was so weak that all his vocal cords could produce was a feeble and muffled ‘Urghh’.

‘You’re going to have to start doing better than this, Squirm. I’m beginning to lose my patience with you.’