Mollifying, no doubt about that.

Despite how hard he tried not to think of the case, the images of what he’d seen in the past two days had nowhere else to go. All they did was tumble over themselves inside his mind. One grotesque scene morphing into another, like a well-edited horror film on a never-ending loop.

Hunter finished his Scotch and decided to have a second one. His palate had gotten used to the single malt’s powerful flavor, so this time he had it neat, no water. Instead of going back to the sofa, Hunter walked over to the window on the north wall and looked outside. Everything looked still. Even the moon, coyly peeking out in its initial state of waxing crescent, seemed scared of the evil that now lurked around the City of Angels.

Hunter’s gaze moved to the lights in the distance. From his window he couldn’t see much, but he could still see the tip of the unmistakable conglomerate of high-rise buildings that formed the central business district of the city, otherwise known as Downtown LA.

Hunter finished his second Scotch and put his glass down on the window ledge.

‘Where are you hiding, you sonofabitch?’ he whispered to himself, his gaze slowly scanning the horizon.

Hunter’s body felt tired, but he could tell that his brain was still wide awake. Going to bed would make no difference. All he would do was toss and turn under the sheets, fighting a battle he knew he would never win, so instead, he decided to have one more drink. As he turned away from the window and faced the inside of his living room, he paused, frowning.

‘What the hell?’

On the floor, about a foot from his front door, he could see a brown paper envelope. He didn’t really have to search his memory. He knew that it hadn’t been there before. Someone had slid it under his door.

Hunter’s eyes sought the clock on the wall – 05:47 a.m.

He could think of no reason why any of his neighbors would need to place a letter under his door, much less at this time at night.

Immediately, every muscle in Hunter’s body went into alert mode. He quickly moved over to the chair where he had left his gun holster, unclipped the lock, pulled out his semi-automatic HK Mark 23 and thumbed the safety off.

His front door was locked. Of that he was absolutely certain. The door chain was also securely locked in place.

The corridor outside his front door was about fifty feet long, servicing eight apartments, with the stairs and the elevator at the east end of it. The hallway lights were activated by means of a very sensitive motion sensor, so if anyone stepped out of their front door, or surfaced from the stairs or elevator, the lights would immediately come on. And they would stay on for sixty seconds.

Hunter could see no light seeping through from under his front door. If someone was outside, he or she had remained totally still for some time.

With careful, noiseless steps, Hunter crossed his living room. As he reached the envelope and looked down, what he saw made every muscle on his body tense up.

The envelope had been slid under his door face up. There was no stamp and no recipient’s address, just a single line written across the front of it in red ink – Detective Robert Hunter, LAPD Robbery Homicide Division.

Hunter didn’t need to look any closer to know that those words were in the killer’s handwriting.

Forty-Four

Adrenalin shot into Hunter’s veins like an angry buffalo stampede. For the moment, he disregarded what the envelope on the floor might contain and quickly positioned himself to the right of the front door, pressing his back flat against the wall. Waiting. Listening.

Thirty seconds.

Nothing.

Sixty.

Not a sound.

Ninety.

Dead quiet.

One hundred and twenty.

The lights outside were still off.

With his left hand, Hunter undid the security chain before turning the key in the lock, keeping it all as quiet as he could. When that was done, he waited another ten seconds before turning the handle and pulling the door open. Immediately, the motion sensor outside picked up the door movement and activated the lights.

Hunter’s apartment was the last one down the corridor, at the opposite end from where the elevator and stairs were. Being the last door on the left meant that there was nothing to the right of his front door except a solid wall. No one could hide there. With that in mind, and still with his back flat against the wall on the inside of his door, Hunter stretched his neck and looked down the corridor, in the direction of the stairs.

There was no one there.

Holding his weapon with a firm two-hand grip, Hunter finally stepped out of his apartment and into the corridor, his aim moving left then right, searching for a target.

He found none. The hallway was empty.

From his position, he could see that the elevator was on the ground floor. As far as he could see, the stairs also looked clear. Whoever had slid that envelope under his door was now long gone.

Hunter breathed out and thumbed the safety back on, but the tenseness in his muscles remained. Once he breathed in again, he felt an awkward surge of emotions rush through his body, as if he had breathed in more than just oxygen. He felt exactly as he had done so many times, as he stepped into a brutal crime scene for the first time. He felt like he was standing where evil had once been.

Back inside his apartment, with the door safely locked behind him, Hunter grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the bathroom and finally turned his attention to the envelope on the floor. At the back of it, there was no sender’s address.

Hunter got back into his living room and lifted the envelope against the floor lamp. The only thing he could make out was a folded-in-half sheet of paper. The color was uniform throughout it, which indicated that there was nothing else in there other than the sheet of paper.

Hunter walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the drawer before carefully tearing the envelope open at the top. A couple of seconds later, he began reading the killer’s new note.

Forty-Five

Tom Hobbs parents’ house was located down a quiet road, just a block away from Pomona’s Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery. The sedatives the medics had given Tom the day before had had their desired effect. He had slept for twelve consecutive hours and, despite the fact that the trauma of what he’d seen would stay forever in his mind, he had finally overcome the initial shock stage.

Tom’s mother, a very elegantly dressed woman in her fifties, showed Garcia into the white two-storey house, which was surrounded by a well-kept cluster of small evergreens.

While Mrs. Hobbs went upstairs to fetch her son, Garcia began browsing the bookshelves in the lavishly decorated study. They were packed full of classics, from Tolstoy and Victor Hugo to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

At the far end of one of the bookcases, Garcia found several picture frames neatly arranged on a shelf. All of them of Tom and his family.