The Executioner

Eighty-Eight

Hunter and Garcia arrived at Gardena High fifteen minutes late.

Mrs. Adams was a plump, cheery-looking woman of almost sixty with perfectly coiffed silver hair and a heartwarming smile. She was glad to help and directed both detectives to an archives room filled with storage boxes at the back of the library.

‘The boxes are all labeled by year.’ Mrs. Adams’s voice was as sweet as her pale green eyes.

Hunter turned to her. She was almost a foot shorter than him. ‘Thank you very much for your kindness, Mrs. Adams. We’ll be OK now.’

She hesitated at the door.

‘We won’t make a mess.’ Hunter smiled. ‘I promise.’

‘If you need me, I’ll be in the main library floor.’ She closed the door behind her.

From a folder he’d brought with him, Hunter retrieved the picture of the four girls Garcia had gotten from the old storage room the day before. He placed it on a large table in the center of the room. He also retrieved the male photograph they’d found on the fireplace in the house in Malibu. If the second victim had been a student in Gardena High, there was a chance so had the first one.

‘This was taken in 1985.’ Hunter pointed to the girls’ photo. ‘Let’s include that year and go two above and one below – from ’84 to ’87.’

Garcia frowned.

‘Just because these girls hung out together doesn’t necessarily mean they were in the same class,’ Hunter explained.

They pulled the relevant boxes out of the shelves and it didn’t take them long to find four black and white thirty-six- by twenty-four-millimeter photographs of the graduating classes. Hunter started at the top, class of ’87, the year Amanda Reilly would’ve graduated if she hadn’t dropped out of school. There were a hundred and twenty-six tightly packed students in the photo.

Using a magnifying glass, he took his time jumping from the graduating photo to the girls and the unidentified first victim one, comparing every face until he was sure.

Nothing.

He moved on to the next picture, and the slow, comparing process started again. Twenty-five frustrating minutes later, Hunter struck gold.

‘I found her.’

‘Who?’ Garcia looked up excitedly.

‘Our victim number two.’ Hunter turned the picture around and pointed to a girl hidden behind two quarterback-looking boys on the second to last line of students. Only her face was visible.

Garcia used his magnifying glass, his eyes bouncing between pictures. ‘It’s her alright.’

Hunter consulted the name sheet attached to the back of the photo. ‘Her name’s Debbie Howard.’ He quickly got on the phone to Hopkins with the news, asking him to dig out everything he could on Miss Howard.

It took Garcia another twenty-five minutes to find the first of the remaining two girls – Emily Wells, class of ’84. Fifteen minutes later Hunter spotted the last one – Jessica Pierce, class of ’85. They’d been through all the pictures as thoroughly as they could. Victim number one wasn’t in any of them. They were both very sure of it.

Emily Wells and Jessica Pierce’s names were immediately passed on to Hopkins and the Investigative Analysis Unit.

‘Find them,’ was all Hunter said.