It was then that his principal decided to get in contact with the Los Angeles Board of Education; after a new battery of exams and tests, at the age of twelve, he was accepted into the Mirman School for the Gifted.
But even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress down.
By the age of fourteen he’d glided through Mirman’s high school English, History, Math, Biology and Chemistry curriculums. Four years of high school were condensed into two and at fifteen he’d graduated with honors. With recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University.
By the age of nineteen, Hunter had already graduated in Psychology — summa cum laude — and at twenty-three he received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology.
‘You said he was your roommate?’ Taylor asked.
Hunter nodded. ‘From day one. I was assigned to a dorm room on my first day in college.’ He shrugged. ‘Lucien was assigned to the same room.’
‘How many sharing the room?’
‘The two of us, that’s all. Small rooms.’
‘Was he also a psychology major?’
‘That’s right.’ Hunter’s gaze returned to the sky outside his window as his memory started to take him back to a long time ago. ‘He was a nice guy. I never expected him to be so friendly to me.’
Taylor frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Hunter shrugged again. ‘I was a lot younger than anyone around. I had never been too much into sports, going to the gym, or any sort of physical activity, really. I was very skinny and awkward, long hair, and I didn’t dress like most people did at the time. In truth, I was a bully magnet. Lucien was almost nineteen then, loved sports and worked out regularly. The kind of guy who’d usually have a field day with someone who looked like me.’
From Hunter’s look and physique, no one would ever have guessed that he’d been a skinny and awkward kid when young. He looked like he’d been a typical high school jock. Maybe even captain of the football or the wrestling team.
‘But he didn’t,’ Hunter continued. ‘In fact, it was because of him that I didn’t get picked on as much as I would have. We became best friends. When I started going to the gym, he helped me with workouts and diet and all.’
‘And how was he on a day-to-day basis?’
Hunter knew that Taylor was referring to Folter’s inner-character traits.
‘He wasn’t the violent kind, if that’s what you’re asking. He was always calm. Always in control. Which was a good thing, because he sure knew how to fight.’
‘But you just said that he wasn’t the violent kind,’ Taylor said.
‘That’s right.’
‘But you’ve also just implied that you’ve seen him in a fight.’
Half a nod. ‘I have.’
Taylor’s eyes and lip-twist asked a silent question.
‘There are certain situations that, no matter how calm or easy-going you are, you just can’t get out of,’ Hunter replied.
‘Such as?’ Taylor insisted.
‘I only remember seeing Lucien in a fight once,’ Hunter explained. ‘And he really tried to get out of it without using his fists, but it didn’t work out that way.’
‘How so?’
Hunter shrugged. ‘Lucien had met this girl in a bar at the weekend and spent the night chatting to her. As far as I am aware, that was it. There was no sex, no kissing, nothing bad, really, just a few drinks, a little flirting and loads of laughs. On the Monday after that weekend, we were coming back from a late study session at the library, when we got cornered off by four guys, all of them pretty big. One of them was the girl’s “very pissed off” ex-boyfriend. Apparently, they’d split not that long ago. Now the thing about Lucien was that he’d always been a great talker. As the saying goes: He could sell ice to an Eskimo. He tried to reason his way out of that situation. He said that he was sorry, that he didn’t know that she had a boyfriend, or that they had just split. He said that if he’d known, he would’ve never approached her and so on. But the guys didn’t want to know. They said that they weren’t there for an apology. They were there to fuck him up, full stop.’
‘So what happened then?’ Taylor asked.
‘Not much. Until then I had never seen anything quite like it. They just went for him. Me? As skinny as I was, I wasn’t about to sit and watch my best friend get beat up by four Neanderthals, but I barely got a chance to move. The whole thing was over in ten. . fifteen seconds, tops. I couldn’t really tell you what happened in detail, but Lucien moved fast. . too fast, actually. In absolutely no time, all four of them were on the floor. Two had a broken nose, one had about three or four broken fingers, and the fourth one had his genitals kicked to the back of his throat. After we got out of there, I asked him where he learned to do that.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He gave me a bullshit answer. He said he watched a lot of martial arts movies. One thing I had learned about Lucien was that there was no point in trying to push him for an answer when he didn’t want to give you one. So I just left it at that.’
‘You said that he’s a great talker,’ Taylor said with a slight lilt in her voice. ‘Well, he hasn’t made that much conversation in the past few days.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Kennedy asked.
‘The day I got my PhD diploma,’ Hunter explained. ‘In college I graduated a year before him.’
Taylor knew from Hunter’s résumé that he had sped through his college years as well, condensing four years into three.
‘But I stayed in Stanford,’ Hunter said. ‘I was offered a second scholarship to carry on studying for a PhD So I took it. Lucien and I continued to share the dorm room for one more year, until he graduated. After that, he left Stanford.’
‘Did you keep in touch?’
‘We did, but not for very long,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘He took a few months off after he graduated. Went traveling for a little while, and then decided that he wanted to go back to university. He also wanted to get a PhD.’
‘Did he go back to Stanford?’
‘No. He went to Yale.’
‘Connecticut?’ Taylor was surprised. ‘That’s all the way on the east coast. Why so far away when you have Stanford, Berkley, Caltech, and UCLA right there in California? Four of the best universities in the whole of the country.’
‘Yale is also a great university,’ Hunter countered.
‘I know that. But you know what I mean. Connecticut is a hell of a hike from California. I’m guessing that, after living there for so many years, he probably had lots of friends and some sort of life back in LA. Why the sudden change? Is that where his family is from, Connecticut?’
Hunter paused for a second, trying to remember.
‘I don’t know where his family is from,’ he said. ‘He never talked about them.’
Taylor’s gaze slowly moved to Kennedy and then back to Hunter.
‘Don’t you think that’s a little odd?’ she asked. ‘You two spent years together sharing a dorm room. As you’ve put it, you became best friends. He never said anything about his family at all?’
Hunter shrugged matter-of-factly.
‘No, and I don’t think that’s odd at all. I never talked about my family, to him, or anyone else for that matter. Some people are more private than others.’
‘So you last saw him when you received your PhD diploma,’ Kennedy said.
Hunter nodded. ‘He flew over for the graduation ceremony, stayed for a day, and flew back the next morning. I never heard from him again since.’