I Am Death

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.’

Hunter nodded his agreement, but said nothing in return. Garcia didn’t need to explain what he meant. He and Hunter had come across that sort of stare more times than they would’ve liked to. It was the kind of stare they both knew never to overlook.

Garcia glanced at Hunter from the corner of his eyes. ‘But that wasn’t what you were looking at, was it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘C’mon, Robert, you’ve been staring at those pictures as if you’re looking for Wally. Well, let me tell you, he’s not there. So what is it?’

Hunter regarded the photographs one more time. ‘Nothing, really. Just something the killer mentioned in his second note.’

This time Garcia didn’t glance at Hunter. He turned to look at him.

‘Shit!’ he said before quoting: ‘“If they looked straight into my eyes, would they see the truth inside them? Would they see what I have become, or would they falter?”’

Garcia had also memorized the killer’s note.

‘I had forgotten about that,’ he admitted. ‘But now that you’ve mentioned it, and looking at those photos, one thing is for damn sure — those eyes can certainly tell a story on their own.’

‘Well, these are just photographs,’ Hunter said, finally closing the file. ‘We’ll get a better idea once we meet him face to face... ’

‘. . and look into his eyes,’ Garcia finished.