Despite feeling exhausted and emotionally drained, his brain was still able to ponder basic facts, and four of the most basic ones, when it came to this investigation, simply weren’t adding up.

One: He had been conveniently away at the time of his wife’s murder. Two: No signs of forced entry had been found, which meant that the investigation would have to consider the possibility that the perpetrator had a key to the house to start with. Three: The video-call he claimed he had received could never be properly verified. Even the detectives had confirmed that. And four: The note that was found inside Cassandra’s handbag could’ve easily been planted there to create the illusion that she was being stalked and to try to drag the investigation down a different path.

Considering those four facts alone, Mr. J knew that he was supposed to have been grilled like a rack of ribs at a fat men’s barbecue, but that just didn’t happen.

As he left his hotel late last night, he had begun thinking about what sort of questions would be coming his way. Questions about alibis to corroborate any of his stories. Questions about what sort of business or meetings he was supposed to have had back in Fresno. Names, phone numbers, schedules, addresses . . . everything. As the interview started, with questions about his last two trips and who had keys to the property, he thought that he was well en route to the expected grilling but, to his surprise, the line of questioning quickly moved on to something he could never have predicted. Neither detective seemed too interested in digging any deeper into his business trip.

To Mr. J, that was problem number one. Problem number two was that Cassandra had been murdered inside their own home without an apparent motive. No burglary. No obvious sexual assault. When Mr. J added problem number one to problem number two, and he was sure that the detectives he met had already done so, the main result was a big and shiny ‘crime of passion’, blinking right at the top of the list, but the interview hadn’t gone down that route either. They never asked him if he and Cassandra had been arguing a lot recently, or if he had any indications that she could’ve been involved in an extra-marital affair. They never asked him if he was involved in one himself, or even if any of them had talked about, or considered, a divorce. In fact, there had been no questions whatsoever concerning the state of their marriage after twenty-one years. What the detectives seemed really interested in was the video-call, and in as much detail as possible.

Why? he asked himself.

If they believed that the video-call had been fabricated, maybe it was because they were trying to catch him on a lie, make him contradict himself, but still . . .

Mr. J’s breath hitched within his throat, because that was when he realized the mistake he had made.

Fifty-Six

By 8:30 a.m., Garcia was back at the Jenkinsons’ house together with two uniformed officers. He was studying the photographs on the mantelpiece when Hunter finally got to the house, almost two hours after him.

‘How are you guys doing?’ asked Hunter. ‘Anything?’

‘Nada,’ Garcia replied. ‘We’ve been through everything in the bedroom, everything inside Ms. Jenkinson’s wardrobe, every pocket, every pair of shoes, every box we could find, every drawer.’ He shook his head Hunter’s way. ‘No other note, or anything else to indicate that she was being stalked.’

The honest truth was, Garcia was just going through the motions. After what Mr. J had told them in the early hours of the morning, neither detective was really expecting to find another stalker’s note inside the house. They both had figured out the same thing that Mr. J had – the reason why Cassandra Jenkinson had kept the note they’d found inside her handbag was because she was waiting for her husband to come home so she could show it to him. That had been the note that had either scared her or tested her patience. The note that had made her decide that she’d had enough. Even if she had received other notes previously to the one they’d found, and neither Hunter or Garcia doubted she had, according to what Mr. J had told them about the kind of woman his wife was, she probably did discard them as a silly prank and threw them away.

Garcia reached for another picture from the mantelpiece. In the photograph, Mr. J was standing behind his wife with his arms wrapped around her waist. He seemed to be whispering something into her ear.

‘Do you think that this was how the killer got the idea for his final question?’ Garcia asked, putting the picture down and facing Hunter.

‘I’m not sure,’ Hunter replied. ‘But if these pictures were what made him think of the wedding question in the first place, then the killer has been in this house before. And I mean, before last night.’

Garcia nodded. ‘That was exactly what I was thinking when you got here. Just like he did with Tanya Kaitlin, the killer knew beforehand that Mr. Jenkinson wouldn’t be able to answer the “big” question. This guy does nothing by chance.’ He looked at the picture frames again. ‘It would be naive of us to think that this prompted the wedding date question on the spot, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

‘Too great a risk for him to take,’ Hunter agreed. ‘If you put it all into perspective, this was an even easier question than the one he asked Tanya Kaitlin.’

In his head, Garcia ran through both questions using himself as a subject. If he were asked for his wedding date, he wouldn’t hesitate half a second. If he were asked for Ana’s cellphone number . . .

Right then, a guilty feeling punched him square in the face. In all the years they’d been married, he had never memorized his wife’s number. Then guilt turned into shame because he realized that he had never even tried to. He had always relied on his cellphone memory not only for her number, but also for every number in his contact list, including Hunter’s. The only number he knew by heart was his own. Silently and ashamed, Garcia made himself a promise right there and then.

‘But I think that that is exactly what he wanted us to believe,’ Hunter said, dragging his partner back from his thoughts.

‘Believe that these pictures were what made him come up with the wedding date question?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter nodded. ‘Think about it, Carlos, the killer doesn’t know that we’ve figured out that the questions he asks aren’t simple or random at all, though they are designed to look that way, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, so just for a moment let’s pretend that we know nothing about this killer. We get the call. We work the crime scene as we always do. We notice the wedding pictures on the mantelpiece, but they don’t jump out at us because there’s no real reason for it. Then we interview Mr. Jenkinson and he tells us about the video-call and the questions he was asked. We might’ve made a connection then, but even if not, there’s always the second look at the crime scene. Not to mention all the scene photographs that we’ll be looking at, over and over again.’

Garcia jumped into Hunter’s threat of thought. ‘So unless we were either blind or stupid, we would’ve seriously considered the possibility that his second question had been a spur of the moment thing, triggered by these wedding photos.’

Hunter agreed again.

‘And that,’ Garcia continued, ‘at least for a while, would’ve caused us to lose track of what to really look for, which is the fact that the killer already knew that Mr. Jenkinson would get the question wrong. The fact that, just like you’ve said, he has probably been in this house before.’