Due to the camera angle and the fact that Genesis Williams had hooked her thumbs through the belt loops on her jeans, her hands weren’t exactly noticeable. It was only after Hunter’s hint that Garcia and Captain Blake saw it, but still, even after craning their necks forward to get a closer look, neither of them could be one hundred percent sure of what they were actually looking at.
‘What’s wrong with her hands?’ the captain asked, squinting at the photo. ‘Is she missing a finger?’
‘It’s called ectrodactyly,’ Hunter explained. ‘It’s a congenital disorder, characterized by the absence or malformation of one or more of the fingers and toes. Mr. Hartley told me that only Genesis Williams’s hands were affected, not her feet. In her case, the index and the middle fingers on both of her hands never developed.’ Hunter indicated on the board. ‘You can’t really tell from this photo because of the position of her thumbs, but according to Mr. Hartley, her thumbs were curved inwards, at the knuckles, and her ring and little fingers were webbed together, giving the illusion that on both hands, she only had her thumb and one finger.’ He walked over to his desk and picked up a new printout. ‘I looked it up. Ectrodactyly is divided into six levels of severity. A curved thumb together with webbing of the only two fingers left on the hand is considered level five.’
‘In other words,’ Garcia said, ‘quite severe.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, but she’d still have relatively good use of her hands. She would’ve been able to write, draw, type, drive a car, grip objects, etc.’ He pinned the printout to the board. ‘This is how her hands would’ve looked.’ The image had come from a specialized medical website and it showed a hand affected by ectrodactyly, where the ring and little fingers were webbed together and the thumb was curved inwards at the knuckle.
Hunter gave Garcia and Captain Blake a few seconds to study the printout before dropping the bomb.
‘Due to how the condition causes the muscles of the hand to atrophy and the bones to reshape,’ he explained, as he indicated, ‘ectrodactyly is also referred to as “lobster claw syndrome”.’
Two pairs of wide, surprised eyes moved to him.
‘Are you joking?’ Garcia asked, knowing full well that Hunter wouldn’t joke about something like this.
Hunter gave him a subtle shake of the head.
Garcia’s attention moved to the photos of Oliver Griffith’s crime scene. ‘Now this is finally starting to make some sort of sense.’ He pointed to the pictures with the lobsters pinned to Oliver’s thighs.
‘They were clues,’ Hunter told them. ‘But not directed at us. Directed at the person who the killer knew would find the body.’
‘Oliver’s wife,’ Garcia said. ‘Josie.’
‘Precisely,’ Hunter agreed. ‘He wanted her to know why her husband had died. That’s why he used the lobsters. That’s why he left the line on the wall. They were clues. He wanted her to remember.’
‘So he’s playing a goddamn game,’ Captain Blake said, her tone moving toward angry. ‘A “catch me if you can” game.’
‘More like a charade,’ Hunter said. ‘Like a “who am I” kind of game.’
‘But why leave clues only in the last of his four crime scenes?’ the captain asked.
‘That’s just it,’ Hunter clarified. ‘He didn’t. He left a line at each of the four crime scenes, but none of the people who were supposedly able to identify it, did. Maybe there were other clues as well – the posing of the bodies, the way in which they were murdered, props that were used.’ Hunter shrugged. ‘We don’t know because like I’ve said, the clues weren’t directed at us. They were directed at the people who knew Genesis Williams.’
‘Did her teacher tell you that there was a bullying problem?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘Were other students mean to her?’
‘He said that he never saw it happening in his classroom,’ Hunter explained. ‘And that he doesn’t remember it being a problem, but he also agreed that just because he never saw it happening, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen at all.’
‘We’ve said it before, Captain,’ Garcia commented. ‘Kids will be kids – and what I mean by that is kids can be assholes sometimes. Even if bullying wasn’t a recurring problem, I’m sure that mean comments… name-calling… stupid jokes… notes in the locker… all that kind of shit would’ve popped up every now and then.’
‘Enough to push her over the edge and make her want to end her own life?’ the captain asked.
‘It would all have depended on her state of mind,’ Hunter took over. ‘But understandably, kids with physical disorders or abnormalities – congenital or not, severe or not – tend to struggle a lot more with depression and anxiety, especially during their teenage years. That’s when they first start worrying about their looks and about their bodies – girls start to notice boys, boys start to notice girls. You know how it goes. Genesis Williams knew she looked different and at that age, when she might’ve been getting the hots for someone for the first time, that knowledge would’ve played havoc with her confidence and her self-esteem, making her state of mind even more fragile. Even if she wasn’t really being constantly bullied, like Carlos said – mean comments… name-calling… stupid jokes… all that kind of stuff would have popped up here and there, and unfortunately, things like that don’t just go away. They stay with you. They accumulate in your mind.’
‘That’s so terribly sad,’ Captain Blake said, as she took a step back from the board. ‘But still, it doesn’t justify her brother going on a manic killing spree.’ She checked her watch – it was getting late. ‘Do you think we’ll manage to locate him tonight?’
‘Hard to say,’ Hunter replied. ‘Research is doing their best. The facial image recognition software will be running all night, or until it hits a match. If we still have nothing by the morning, we’ll use aging software on the yearbook photos we have of Michael Williams to hypothesize what he looks like now, thirteen years on. We’ll then APB those images to every police station in LA and Greater LA.’
‘But the advantage has tipped our way now, Captain,’ Garcia jumped in. ‘Because if we’re right about his next victim being Sofia Elliot’s husband, Lucas – and I do think we are – he’s not back from Italy until Saturday morning. It’s Tuesday, which gives us three full days to track Michael Williams down. But even if we somehow fail to locate him, we’ll have eyes on Mr. Elliot from the second he touches down at LAX. His house is already under surveillance. The only way that the Mentor, Michael, or whatever crap name he wants to call himself is getting to Lucas Elliot before we get to him is if he becomes invisible.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘And he’s not doing that. His game is over.’