The Crucifix Killer - Chris Carter [112]
‘OK, I’ll get the dishes into the dishwasher.’ Garcia cleared his plate and quickly ran it under the tap.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Anna’s cry came from the living room.
Garcia left his plate on top of the dishwasher and dashed out of the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, approaching Anna who was standing by the window.
‘There was somebody down there staring at me.’
‘What? Where?’ Garcia said, staring out the window at an empty street and parking lot.
‘Down there, just between those two cars,’ she pointed at two vehicles parked halfway down the street.
Garcia looked out the window again. ‘I can’t see anything, plus it’s quite dark down there. Are you sure you saw someone?’
‘Yes. I saw someone staring straight at me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He was looking up at me.’
‘He? It was a he?’
‘I’m not sure. I think so.’
‘Maybe it was a cat or something.’
‘It was no cat, Carlos. Someone was staring into our apartment.’ Anna’s voice was less steady now.
‘Into our apartment? Maybe the person was just looking up at the building.’
‘He was looking straight at me, I know it, I felt it, it scared me.’
‘Maybe it was just one of the neighborhood kids. You know they’re always out and about until the early hours.’
‘The neighborhood kids don’t freak me out like that.’ Her eyes became tearful once again.
‘OK, do you want me to go downstairs and have a look around?’
‘No . . . please stay with me.’
Garcia hugged her and felt her body shivering against his. ‘I’m here, babe. You’re just tired and upset, I’m sure it was nothing. C’mon, let’s go to bed.’
From the parking lot, hidden in the shadows, the stranger watched with an evil smile as they hugged and moved away from the window.
Fifty
They had divided their tasks. Garcia was to go over Hunter and Scott’s initial investigation files, going back three months prior to Mike Farloe’s arrest. He was also in charge of checking with the wigmakers and physiotherapy clinics.
Hunter took over the hospital search. He thought about contacting them and requesting a list of patients who’d had an operation anywhere up to two months after Mike Farloe’s arrest. An operation that would’ve required a long recuperation period, especially physiotherapy. Through experience he knew that putting in a request, no matter how urgent it was, would still take weeks. To speed up the process he decided to check the hospitals in the downtown Los Angeles area himself and place a request for the remaining ones.
The task was laborious and slow. They first needed to narrow it down to what sort of operation would require such a lengthy recovery period and then go back almost a year and a half to find the records.
Hunter wasn’t surprised to find that the archiving of records in hospitals was bordering on comical. Part stored in drawers in some stuffy and crammed archive room. Part stored in disorganized spreadsheets and part stored in databases that very few people knew how to access. Not that far away from the archiving of files by the RHD, he thought.
He’d been at it since eight-thirty that morning. At midday the temperature hit 98 degrees and the badly ventilated rooms made Hunter’s task seem like penitence. By the end of the afternoon his shirt was drenched and he’d only managed to cover three hospitals.
‘Have you been swimming?’ Garcia asked, frowning at Hunter’s wet shirt as he got back to the office.
‘Try being locked in stuffy, pathetically small rooms in the basement of hospitals for a few hours and see how you like it,’ Hunter shot back unamused.
‘If you got rid of that jacket it would probably help. How did you get along anyway?’
Hunter waved a brown envelope at Garcia. ‘Patients’ lists for three hospitals. Not much but it’s a start.’
‘And what’s that?’ Garcia pointed to the box Hunter had under his left arm.
‘Oh, it’s just a pair of shoes,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘Big spender, are we?’
‘That’s the thing. I saw these in the window of a shop close to one of the hospitals. They are closing down in a week so everything is at giveaway prices.