Facial cream with low UV protection.

And another.

Facial cream with cucumber extract.

He carried on.

Facial cream with avocado extract.

Facial cream with olive oil.

Facial cream with almond oil.

Garcia shook his head, a little amused. ‘I feel like I’m shopping for salad here,’ he said under his breath. He returned the bottle to the shelf and tried a different group. This time he frowned at the bottle. ‘What? Strawberry cheesecake scented body lotion? Really?’

His lips parted with a smile but, despite finding it funny, he was also quite intrigued and couldn’t resist. He pulled his mask down, flicked the bottle cap open and brought it to his nose. To his surprise, it smelled so much like freshly baked strawberry cheesecake, he heard his stomach rumble. The question bouncing around in his head though, was why would anyone want to smell like strawberry cheesecake?

Garcia readjusted his mask back over his nose before going through a couple more bottles.

Coconut.

Vanilla.

‘I guess this must be the dessert group.’

He decided to move on to the next shelf.

Eye cream.

Eye cream.

Eye cream.

Hand cream.

Foot cream.

Neck cream.

Once again he paused. ‘There are creams developed specifically for your neck?’ he asked the empty bathroom.

The next shelf was full of hair and skin hydrating oils and lotions. The one after that held several expensive-looking perfume bottles. The fifth and sixth shelves were where Karen Ward kept all her towels.

Garcia exited the bathroom and moved on to the bedroom. Instead of switching on the lights, he walked over to the unobstructed window on the west wall and pulled open the curtains, allowing sunlight to finally bathe the room. From where he was standing, he looked around the crammed space for a long moment before deciding that he would start with the bed.

First he checked under the pillows, the bed cover, and the bed sheet – nothing. He pulled his sleeves up and lifted the mattress to check the bed frame – nothing. He crossed the room to the dresser and tried the first drawer. It was full of lingerie, stockings, and socks; all of it neatly packed away in straight rows. He moved on to the next drawer – T-shirts, blouses, and spaghetti strap tops, again, perfectly arranged to maximize the drawer space. The third drawer was a repeat of the first two, only with sweaters and hot pants. The fourth and last drawer was packed full with a variety of accessories – belts, hair ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, sunglasses and so on.

When Garcia was done looking through the drawers, he dropped to his knees and looked under the dresser. There was nothing there other than some dust.

This is silly, he thought. If there was anything to be found in here, forensics would’ve done it already.

As Garcia swung his body around on his way back up, his right knee slammed into the shoe rack to the right of the dresser. A downpour of shoes came down on top of him.

‘Crap!’ he said, bringing both arms up to protect his head. ‘I’ll be goddamned.’

‘Carlos, are you all right in there?’ Garcia heard Hunter call from the living room.

‘Yep,’ Garcia replied, finally getting back on to his feet. ‘All good. Just bumped into the shoe tower in here by accident and half of them came crashing down on me like a shoe rain.’ He paused, scratching his forehead. ‘Man, do you think she had enough shoes?’ he called out, turning to look at the mess on the floor. Shoes of all different colors and styles were absolutely everywhere. His next words came out as a murmur. ‘Why would anyone need this many shoes?’ He thought about his wife again, then nodded to himself before answering his own question. ‘Because she was a woman, that’s why.’

Garcia began picking them up and placing them back on the rack. Judging by how well organized Karen Ward’s shelves and drawers were, he was sure that every pair had its specific place, probably arranged either by color or style.

Out of sheer respect, he started grouping them as best as he could, and he wasn’t at all surprised to find that most of them looked like they’d never even been worn. And now probably never would be.

Garcia was about halfway through the large pile when something that must’ve come down with the shoes caught his eye.

He reached for it and paused.

‘Oh, shit!’

Nineteen

Fall in the City of Angels was a very elusive thing. There was no sting to the air, no characteristic cold bite at night, no typical shiver early in the mornings; on the contrary, autumn could bring with it some of the warmest days and nights, easily matching the temperatures reached at the height of summer, and today certainly was one of those days.

Hunter had all four of his windows rolled down on his way to the Police Administration Building on West First Street, downtown Los Angeles, but in stop-start traffic he could barely reach enough speed to produce any sort of breeze. The still and stale air inside the cabin, combined with over 70 percent air humidity, made his car feel like a sauna and a steam room at the same time. As he and Garcia finally stepped into their office on the fifth floor of the PAB, the first thing Hunter did was blast the AC unit to full power. Garcia stifled a smile. He could see the long and thin wet mark running all the way down the back of Hunter’s shirt.

‘In this heat,’ Garcia said, as he fired up his computer, ‘having a car with no aircon is a bitch, isn’t it?’

Hunter looked back at him sideways. ‘Don’t you start.’

‘I’m not starting anything, but you do understand that your car doesn’t even belong to this century, right? You really need to take that thing to a scrap yard, my friend.’

‘Why? It’s a great car?’

‘That’s not a car, Robert. That’s a rusty twenty-year-old bathtub with wheels. I know you like to call it a classic, but . . .’

‘No,’ Hunter interrupted him. ‘I just call it a car. It does its job, which is to get me from A to B, and it’s very reliable. What else could I ask for?’

‘Aircon,’ Garcia said, throwing more salt into the wound. ‘You could ask for aircon.’

Without anyone knocking, the door to their office was pushed open and Captain Barbara Blake stepped inside.

Captain Blake had taken over the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership a few years back, after the retirement of one of its longest-standing and most decorated captains, William Bolter. She had been hand-picked by Bolter himself, which angered a long list of candidates, but angering people was something that simply came with the captain’s job, and Barbara Blake had absolutely no problems with it.

She was indeed an intriguing woman – strong and resilient, but at the same time attractive and elegant, with long black hair and suspenseful dark eyes that never gave anything away. Despite being greeted by some hostility when she took over, she had quickly gained a reputation for being a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense captain. She wasn’t easily intimidated, took no crap from anyone – including her superiors in the police department – and had no reservations about upsetting high-powered politicians or government officials if it meant sticking to what she believed was right. Within a few months of her stepping into her new shoes, the initial hostility began to dissipate, and slowly but surely she earned the trust and respect of every single detective under her command.

‘OK,’ Captain Blake said, closing the door behind her. ‘What’s the story on this case that came in overnight? The report I read from Long Beach PD is as loose as a clown’s pocket, but it mentions something about the killer making a video-call to the victim’s best friend? What the hell is all that about?’