The Executioner

Sixty-Three

‘Their fears?’ The captain echoed Hunter’s words.

‘You read Garcia’s report on what he found in Father Fabian’s journal, right?’ Hunter asked.

‘The dream thing?’

‘Yeah, the dream thing. It might seem crazy to all of us, but to the priest it was something that scared him out of his skin for over twenty years. In Amanda Reilly’s case, she was so petrified of fires she wouldn’t have a gas stove in her house.’ Hunter searched his desk for his report on their interview with Tania Riggs and handed it to Captain Blake.

‘Or candles,’ Garcia added.

‘She’s been that scared since she was a teenager.’ Hunter paused, allowing Captain Blake some time to reflect and scan the interview transcript.

‘There’s no way in hell the killer guessed that, right?’

Hunter gave her an almost imperceptible head shake.

‘So how does the killer know about their fears? Does he force them to tell him before killing them?’

‘I don’t know how yet, captain, but he knows about them beforehand,’ Hunter stated.

‘How can you be so sure?’ she challenged.

‘The amount of research and planning he puts into his kills.’ He tapped one of Father Fabian’s photos on the board. ‘To bring Father Fabian’s nightmare to life, the killer needed a sword and a dog’s head.’

‘Which he had with him,’ Garcia cut in.

‘In Malibu,’ Hunter continued, ‘the killer picked the perfect empty house where he wouldn’t be disturbed. A house with an intensity-controlled fireplace so big he could’ve cooked a hippo. This is LA, captain. Our winter sucks. Large fireplaces aren’t exactly a common residential feature in this city.’ He leaned shoulder first against the wall to the right of the photo board. ‘The killer knew them well.’

‘How well?’

‘That’s the money question. Tania Riggs told us that when the killer called to say he’d be late for his appointment with Amanda Reilly, he asked to speak to Mandy.’

The captain narrowed her eyes and searched the interview transcript in her hands. ‘That’s an affectionate nickname.’

‘Precisely,’ Hunter agreed. ‘Not your regular customer/client way of addressing each other. A slip of the tongue, maybe.’

‘Have we run the two new pictures against the Missing Persons and the California Homicide databases?’ She addressed Hopkins.

‘I started this morning. Nothing yet,’ he replied shyly, ‘but it’s still early.’

‘Dan Tyler, the owner of the Malibu house, has no idea who the two on the pictures could be. He never saw them before. I ran the pics by him.’ Hunter paused as his gaze locked onto the four faces pinned side by side on the corkboard.

Garcia recognized that look. ‘What have you got, Robert?’

Hunter lifted his hand in a ‘wait a minute’ gesture. ‘If the killer knew the victims well…’ He let his words float in the air for a moment.

‘There’s a chance they knew each other,’ Garcia deducted.

‘I think there’s a good possibility,’ Hunter confirmed.

‘But Amanda wouldn’t have known Father Fabian from the Seven Saints church,’ Garcia continued.

‘Why not?’ Captain Blake questioned.

‘Tania Riggs said Amanda wasn’t religious at all. She didn’t even believe in God. If she knew Father Fabian from somewhere, it wasn’t from his church.’

‘And that knowledge can save us some time,’ Hunter said.

‘How’s that?’

‘From what we found out so far, Father Fabian was some sort of recluse,’ Hunter clarified. ‘He lived for the church and its community, but that was all. His social life outside the Catholic Church was nonexistent.’

‘Yeah, so?’ The captain deposited the report back on Hunter’s desk.

‘So we know Amanda Reilly didn’t go to church. It will be easy to find out if she was a charitable person, linked to any of the charities Father Fabian was involved with.’ He tilted his head in Hopkins’s direction, who made a mental note of finding that out. ‘If not, then when would they have met?’

Nobody answered.

‘They didn’t live in the same part of town; they didn’t shop in the same stores,’ Hunter carried on. ‘I’m certain Father Fabian never rented or bought a house from Reilly’s real estate agency. Their paths had no reason to have crossed other than by extreme coincidence.’

‘So if they knew each other, they must’ve met a long time ago.’ The captain finally picked up on what Hunter was getting at.

He turned to Hopkins. ‘Find everything you can about Amanda Reilly and Brett Stewart Nichols.’

‘Who?’

‘Brett Stewart Nichols was Father Fabian’s real name,’ Garcia explained.

‘Find out where they lived, where they went to school, anything you can. Starting from when they were teenagers.’

‘I’m on it.’

Hunter’s cell phone rang. He returned to his desk and retrieved it from his jacket pocket – unknown caller. ‘Detective Hunter.’ The conversation was hurried and hushed. When he disconnected, Hunter had a surprised look on his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ Garcia asked.

‘I gotta go.’ He reached for his jacket.

‘Go where?’

But Hunter was already halfway down the corridor.