‘That’s Detective Garcia’s car,’ Hunter replied, nodding at it. ‘You remember him, right?’
Emiliano nodded back.
‘How long have you been here for?’ Hunter asked.
‘We just got here.’ Emiliano glanced at the other officer.
‘About a minute before you,’ he confirmed.
‘We got a radio in from Dispatch for a possible officer in distress,’ Emiliano explained, giving Hunter a shrug and broadly gesturing at the car park. ‘None of that here, except this lonely vehicle. We were just checking it, when you arrived.’
Hunter approached Garcia’s car. The driver’s window was wide open, but he saw no signs of a break-in or a struggle. There was no blood on the door… no blood on the seats… no blood on the ground outside the car either. On the passenger seat, Hunter saw his partner’s cellphone.
‘Have you checked the trunk yet?’ Hunter asked.
‘Like I’ve said,’ Emiliano replied. ‘We just got here. We were just about to check the car when you arrived. We haven’t touched anything yet.’
‘Good,’ Hunter said, walking back to his car to collect three pairs of latex gloves. ‘This is possibly the scene of an officer’s abduction. So be very careful with whatever you touch.’ He handed them each a pair of gloves.
‘An officer’s abduction?’ Emiliano asked, his eyes bouncing from Hunter to the second officer, then back to Hunter. ‘From here?’
Hunter rounded the car and pulled open the passenger door. ‘Detective Garcia was attending a support-group meeting at thisschool earlier this evening.’ He reached for Garcia’s cellphone. ‘He was supposed to message me once the meeting was over, which happened over an hour ago. He didn’t.’
‘A support-group meeting?’ Emiliano turned to look back at the school building. ‘What kind of support group?’
‘It’s part of an ongoing investigation,’ Hunter explained. ‘We were both attending meetings undercover.’
Hunter pressed a side button on Garcia’s cellphone to wake it up and tapped its screen. He and Garcia had long ago shared their cellphone and computer login passwords, just in case something like this ever happened.
‘So you think that someone who was also at the meeting took him?’ the second officer asked.
‘That would be the logical deduction.’ Hunter nodded.
On Garcia’s cellphone, he navigated to the text application that they always used and checked the last message Garcia had sent him. It was a message from the previous evening, after Garcia’s support-group meeting had ended –And again… nope… nothing tonight. See you in the morning.
Hunter checked the last call out. It had been made to Anna, Garcia’s wife, that evening, at 7:09 p.m.
Hunter had just placed Garcia’s cellphone into his pocket when a short and stumpy, Indian American man exited the school building and made his way to where they were standing.
‘Is there some sort of problem here?’ he asked, as he got nearer.
‘Who are you?’ Hunter asked in return.
‘I’m Pakesh, the school caretaker,’ the man replied, his gaze rounding the group, his index finger pointing back at the school building. ‘I was coming over to lock the gate to the parking lot when I saw the police lights.’
‘Are there any CCTV cameras on this parking lot, Pakesh?’ Hunter asked, not holding out much hope. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see any.
‘No, nothing here,’ the caretaker replied. ‘This is a very quiet school.’
‘Women only, right?’ Emiliano said, with a nod.
‘That’s right,’ Pakesh confirmed. ‘It’s a special school for pregnant minors and teen mothers – part of the LA Unified School District. We have a few CCTV cameras in the building, down a few of its corridors, but that’s all.’
Hunter breathed out as he pressed the release button for the glove compartment in Garcia’s car. In there, he found his partner’s weapon and badge.
This was bad – whoever had taken Garcia had clearly taken him by surprise because he didn’t even have a chance to reach for his gun. The perpetrator was also intelligent enough to leave Garcia’s cellphone and the car behind. Now, there was no way that they could GPS-track him.
‘Did you know that there was a support-group meeting happening at the school tonight?’ Hunter asked Pakesh.