‘Her body had to be transferred to the coroner’s office,’ Hunter replied in a conservative tone.

Mr. J didn’t ask for an explanation because he didn’t really need one. If there was something he understood very well, it was police protocol.

Catatonically, he walked past Hunter, Garcia and Dr. Slater in the direction of the chair. Everyone and the world around him disappeared and all of a sudden there she was, sitting directly in front of him, her eyes full of fear and sadness, imploring him to know the simplest of answers. An answer he should’ve known.

Slowly, his right arm extended in the direction of the chair, as if Cassandra was really still there. As if he could touch her face . . . caress her hair . . . wipe away her tears.

‘I’m so, so sorry.’ The words escaped his lips without him even noticing it.

In respect, no one said anything, giving Mr. J his moment alone.

Dr. Slater silently signaled her team to leave.

Mr. J felt his stomach pirouetting inside of him and his legs threatened to buckle under his weight. To steady himself, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When they reopened, just a couple of seconds later, Hunter saw something in them that no one else in that room did – tremendous anger, coated by unwavering focus and determination.

‘OK,’ he said, finally meeting Hunter’s gaze. His tone of voice was arctic cold. ‘I guess you want to ask me a few questions.’

Fifty-One

Back in his hotel room, with his face still buried in his hands, Mr. J had thought very hard about what to do next. He would’ve preferred to have left the LAPD completely out of it, and if he had seen any way around the problem, that was exactly what he would’ve done, but even with all his connections, he knew that there was no way he could pull that off.

His second thought was to maybe pretend that he had never received that damn video-call in the first place. That would’ve given him some much-needed advantage over the LAPD. He knew that he could’ve made it back to LA by 2:00 a.m. His car was certainly fast enough and his radar detector system would’ve kept him from being pulled over. Once home, and without the interference of the police or a forensic team, he could’ve studied the undisturbed crime scene for as long as he needed. He could’ve crawled through his living room looking for possible clues before anyone got there. Clues that, if they existed, he knew the LAPD would’ve never shared with him. But most of all, he could’ve touched Cassandra’s face one last time before she was taken away from their home. He could’ve kneeled down in front of her and begged her for her forgiveness. Forgiveness he could never and would never give himself. Then and only then, he would’ve made the nine-one-one call and pretended that he’d just got back home from a business trip to find his wife murdered in their own living room. But that plan would’ve also collapsed at the first hurdle.

One of the reasons why Mr. J was the best at what he did was because he understood how law enforcement agencies worked. He knew their protocol, their investigative procedures, their tricks . . . and the guidelines for such a case were simple – a married woman gets savagely tortured and murdered inside her own home without any apparent motive, and the ‘people of interest’ list would be headed by none other than the husband. Add to that the fact that the husband was conveniently away at the exact same time his wife was being murdered, and that he had no alibis to corroborate his story, and his life would be completely picked apart by the investigative team. They would easily obtain warrants to approach banks, Internet providers, phone and credit-card companies . . . whatever and whoever they wanted. His old emails and text messages would be read. His phone calls would be listened to. His bank account, his business, his trips, his expenditures, his friends, his medical records, all of it would be dissected into tiny little pieces. But even if Mr. J had an alibi, real or forged – and he could easily get an airtight one if he so wanted – he knew that that plan still wouldn’t work.

In a murder investigation, one of the first things to be examined by the homicide team was the victim’s cellphone account. They would want to know with whom she’d been texting and speaking to recently, especially in the last few hours before her death. Mr. J’s cellphone number would’ve flagged up as the last number Cassandra had ever called, and at around the exact same time she was being murdered. Mr. J had no way of circumventing that. And that had been where he’d gotten lucky.

The killer had used the video-call feature, instead of making a regular voice call. Though the dialed number would get logged in, no cellphone provider in the USA was allowed to store their clients’ video-calls. The LAPD, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, it didn’t matter, no one would be able to obtain even a text transcript of the call, because none existed, and Mr. J was well aware of that. Everything Mr. J had told the killer during that call would stay between him and the killer.

With everything considered, Mr. J came to the conclusion that his best option was to tell the truth . . . or at least to a certain extent. After that, Brian Caldron would monitor the entire police investigation, while Mr. J ran his own.

Fifty-Two

Hunter peeked at the clock on the wall just behind Mr. J – 2:03 a.m.

‘Mr. Jenkinson,’ he said, his voice smooth and cordial. ‘We don’t need to do this right now. It’s perfectly OK for us to wait until the morning. I understand you’ve been driving for hours—’

‘And you think I’ll be more rested in the morning?’ Mr. J interrupted Hunter again. ‘You think I’ll be able to sleep?’ Hunter didn’t reply. Mr. J had a point.

‘I’m guessing you’ve either heard a recording of the nine-one-one call I made, or you were told how I came to know about what happened here. You know about the video-call I received.’

Hunter gave him a sympathetic nod.

‘So if it’s all the same to you,’ Mr. J continued, his tone calm and rhythmically perfect. ‘I’d rather talk about it while everything is still fresh in my head. Sleep, if I were to get any, would bring dreams . . . nightmares . . . visions . . . images . . . whatever. Some of them would be real memories of what happened, but some would no doubt be just my mind going crazy on me. Things that weren’t really there. Things that I didn’t really see. Things that I should’ve said, but didn’t.’ He paused for a second, as if his last few words pained him too much. ‘The problem then is, in my head, there’s no way I’ll be able to discern between what really happened and what didn’t. All of it will seem as real to me as the people in this room.’ His gaze bounced from Hunter to Garcia to Dr. Slater and finally back to Hunter. ‘The longer we wait, Detective, the greater the risk of reality and fantasy getting mixed up in my head.’

Though no one could ever say with total confidence how a person’s brain would react after such a traumatic episode, the nightmares and the images that Mr. J had mentioned would come, of that Hunter had no doubt. As a psychologist, he just couldn’t fault Mr. J’s logic. At the same time, everyone in that room was astounded and intrigued by how composed Mr. J appeared to be.

‘I understand,’ Hunter said, allowing his eyes to quickly circle the room. ‘Would you rather we talk down at the station?’