‘A mugshot?’ Garcia said.

Sanders nodded. ‘That mugshot was taken seven months ago. Mathew Hade was taken in because he got involved in an altercation at a bar . . .’ Sanders paused.

‘OK,’ Garcia said.

‘In East Los Angeles,’ Sanders added. ‘Mathew Hade isn’t in Sacramento anymore. He’s here.’

Sixty

‘The Monster’ is lying.

That had been Squirm’s first thought after hearing the man’s words.

He must be lying. Of course my father reported me missing.

The man could see the boy’s demeanor changing. He returned to his seat, placed his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers together, his hands directly in front of his chin.

‘You don’t believe me, do you, Squirm?’ he said, looking at the kid. ‘I don’t blame you. Why would you? But let me tell you a quick story which might change your mind.’

Squirm kept his gaze on ‘The Monster’.

‘A few months ago, I was having a quiet drink in this rundown joint not that far from your school. It was late, sometime between one and two in the morning, I think. The place wasn’t busy at all. I’d say maybe five or six people, max. I was just there, sitting at the bar, minding my own business, when one of the regulars walks in. The reason I know he was a regular was because the bartender greeted him by name – Pete. Well, this guy, Pete, already looked to be pretty hammered, but since he was a regular, the bartender didn’t seem to mind it.

‘Pete ordered a bourbon, neat, and took the stool next to where I was sitting. Strange, as the bar was pretty fucking empty, but hey, it’s a free country and a man has the right to sit wherever he likes, as long as he isn’t bothering anyone.’

Keeping his fingers interlaced, the man used his thumbs to rub his chin.

‘Once the bartender brought Pete his drink, he looked at me, probably because I was the only other person sitting at the bar, lifted his glass and in a stroppy way mumbled the word “Cheers”. Now I’m a polite guy, so in return I raised my glass and we both had a sip of our drinks. Pete then put his glass down, turned on his stool and slowly looked at me from head to toe. In a seedy bar like that, full of drunken people, that was all that was needed to either start a fight or a conversation. Well, I wasn’t in the mood for a fight so that night it was a conversation.

‘We shot the breeze for a while, then ended up moving the conversation from the bar to one of the tables, all the while Pete is drinking neat bourbon and I’m drinking cheap whiskey. Once we took the table, Pete began telling me how he hated his life, how his wife had left him years ago for no good reason, and how she had left him stuck with this boy.’

The man was tracking Squirm’s reactions, but the boy looked as if he had gone into some sort of trance, with his good eye wide open staring back at his captor. The man continued without missing a beat.

‘Pete went on and on, telling me how much of a pain in the ass the boy was, that he had been a mistake that should never have happened and so on. In short, Pete blamed this boy for everything bad that had happened to him in his life. I’m telling you, Squirm, this guy hated his son with a divine passion. He told me that there’d been many nights that he’d gotten back home and almost strangled the boy in his sleep. I asked him “Why hadn’t he?” and he told me that if he thought he could get away with it, he would.’

The man paused, reached for the bacon rasher that Squirm had failed to eat and placed the whole thing in his mouth. He continued only when he was done chewing.

‘That was when I told Pete that there were plenty of ways one could get away with murder. One just needed to know what to do.’

Those words seemed to fill the room with a cold, discomforting air.

‘This Pete guy looks back at me,’ the man continued, ‘and his next few words came out sounding like a challenge.’ ‘The Monster’ spoke with a deep sounding voice. ‘“Oh, really? OK, big shot, if it’s so easy, why don’t you do it for me?”’

‘The Monster’ let those words hang in the air for a moment, giving the boy a chance to take in every syllable.

‘I said nothing in return, but this Pete guy didn’t want to let go, he kept on pushing. “I’m serious, man. You do the kid and I’ll pay you.”’ ‘The Monster’ smiled at the boy. ‘Obviously Pete had no idea who he was talking to, so I looked him deep in the eye and asked him how much he was willing to pay me. Now, I must admit that I thought that all that crap about getting rid of his boy was just the alcohol talking, that deep down he didn’t really mean it, but fuck, was I wrong? He meant every single word.’

Squirm kept his gaze on the man sitting at the head of the table, but his thoughts were elsewhere. In his mind he could picture the bar scene perfectly, and as he did so he felt something come alive inside his stomach. All the food he’d just eaten threatened to come back up, but this time he didn’t care.

‘So once we’d established that neither of us were joking,’ ‘The Monster’ continued with his story, ‘we began to discuss a figure. Would you like to know what that figure was, Squirm? Would you like to know how much your father paid me to take you away and kill you?’

Sixty-One

Detective Sanders was right, Mathew Hade could be nothing more than one enormous coincidence. After all, neither Fresno PD nor Sacramento PD had managed to gather enough evidence on him to substantiate any sort of arrest, despite all the suspicions. But then again, neither Hunter nor Garcia subscribed to the ‘coincidence’ fan club, especially when those coincidences began to accumulate in the way that they had. The fan club that both detectives did subscribe to, however, was the ‘check absolutely everything’ one.

As soon as Sanders had left their office, Garcia asked Operations to compile a detailed profile on Mathew Hade, tracing him all the way back to his childhood. The file would take at least twenty-four hours to compile, so at the moment all they had was the little information contained in the dossier Sanders had handed them. Not much, but definitely a start.

The address listed on Mathew Hade’s arrest sheet was somewhere in East Los Angeles, not that far from the bar in which he had gotten arrested for getting into a fight. The drive took Hunter and Garcia a little over thirty minutes.

For the duration of the ride, Hunter kept Hade’s file open on his lap. He had read and reread the dossier twice over, and every now and then Hunter would flip back to Hade’s mugshot and portrait, as if he needed to verify something against both photographs.

‘You know,’ Garcia said, as he exited Santa Ana Freeway, heading north. He couldn’t help but notice how often Hunter had checked Hade’s photographs. ‘There’s something about him that bothers me too.’ He jabbed at the mugshot. ‘Something about the look in his eyes.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m not sure, but just look at them. Look at that stare.’

Hunter did, for the zillionth time.

‘It’s a dead, cold stare. Full of anger and –’ Garcia had to pause and think of the best word to use – ‘Determination.’