A minute later, the bus pulled up to the next stop on its route.

Three passengers jumped out with her – two women, counting Alison, and a middle-aged man. The man, who appeared to be in a hurry, quickly headed west. The other woman, who looked to be about the same age as Alison, went north.

Alison paused and looked around. This was an ugly part of town. A part of town that she would never visit during the day, never mind at night.

She checked her watch – five minutes past one in the morning. Her bus route wasn’t part of the ‘Owl Service’ that ran 24/7 in LA – but she knew that her route ran all the way up to two a.m. Alison crossed the road and began walking to the bus stop on the other side. She reached into her bag, but as she rummaged around for her purse, she felt a pit begin to materialize in her stomach.

No purse.

She stopped walking, pulled her bag open with both hands and began fumbling inside it again, this time a little more desperately.

Nothing.

‘Oh no, no, no, no, no,’ Alison cried out, almost sticking her whole head inside her bag to look for it. Lipstick, foundation powder, makeup brush, loose change, cellphone, a pen and house keys.

Her purse was gone.

‘Oh, fuck!’

She knew she’d had it with her when she boarded the bus because she kept her TAP card in it.

While she slept at the back of the bus, she’d of course never noticed the hooded eighteen-year-old kid who had first sat across the aisle from her, before stealthily moving over to her side once he’d noticed how deeply asleep she was. When he left the bus, his pocket was a little heavier, and Alison’s bag a little lighter.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

In today’s double shift she had made a total of two hundred and twelve dollars in tips.

The pit in her stomach had now turned into a well.

She desperately needed that money to pay her bills.

Alison looked around one more time. The bus stops on both sides of the road were empty, and the streets looked almost deserted. She didn’t know the area but she didn’t like it one bit. She felt vulnerable.

Feeling cheated and lost, Alison quickly pondered what to do. She could go to the police, but she was certain that there wasn’t much they would do. Lorena, one of the other waitresses at Donny’s, had also been pickpocketed inside a bus on a different route a couple of months back. She’d gone to the police. They’d taken down all her details, and the pep talk they’d then given her about how she should be more careful and more attentive when in a crowded space had made her feel like it all had been her fault.

Alison decided that the best thing she could do was to get home as quickly as possible.

Hanging on tightly to her bag, she began walking south as fast as she could.

She’d been walking for almost forty-five minutes when she reached the underpass. She’d been through it plenty of times before, just never this late at night. But the good news was that the underpass was just a five-minute walk from her place.

Alison began walking faster, but as she did so she heard something else other than her own footsteps echo behind her. She looked around wildly for a moment. She could see no one behind or in front of her, but due to the shadows created by the poor lighting, she just couldn’t be sure.

Definitely a B-movie horror scene, she thought.

Alison exhaled slowly, as if blowing out hot air would carry with it the ripples of fear that had iced over her heart a moment earlier. The echoes faded around her and she listened to the raspy sound of her own breath.

Seconds later she began walking again, and again she could swear that she heard something else behind her other than the echoes of her own footsteps, but this time she was also overwhelmed by a sense of narrowing. It was as if the walls around her had closed in ever so slightly.

Alison shook her head, hoping that by force of vigorous motion she could cleanse the sensation from within her.

It didn’t work. Instead, the sensation grew stronger, moving to plain and simple fear.

She swung her body around to look behind her one more time.

That was when she saw him.

The middle-aged man who had stepped off the bus with her. He had been following her since she’d left the diner. When she’d missed her stop, he’d sat tight. He jumped off when she did, and followed her from a distance.

In the underpass now, he was no more than four steps behind her.

Where the hell had he come from? How was he able to move so fast?

Three steps.

His hand came out of his jacket pocket.

Two.

He was holding something.

One.

Oh my God, is that a syrin—

Too late. The needle had already been plunged into her neck.

Fifty-Two

When Hunter got to their office, Garcia was standing by his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for something. His attention, though, was on the several printouts neatly arranged on his desktop.

‘What’s all that?’ Hunter asked, pressing the ‘space’ bar on his keyboard to wake up his computer.

‘Forensic lab reports,’ Garcia replied, his gaze not moving from the paper. ‘They all came in less than ten minutes ago. I just printed them out.’ He grabbed one of the files and passed it over to Hunter. ‘The toxicology on our first victim, Nicole Wilson, came back negative,’ he announced. ‘The killer kept her completely sober for six to seven days while raping and torturing her. We’re still waiting on the results from Sharon Barnard.’

He turned to face his partner.

Hunter nodded while he scanned the report.

Garcia leaned back against the edge of his desk. ‘If this was any other killer, I would’ve said that toxicology on the second victim would mimic the first, but with this guy . . .’ Garcia shrugged. ‘Expect the unexpected. He doesn’t even have an MO. It wouldn’t really surprise me if we found out that, unlike Nicole Wilson, Sharon Barnard had been drugged to her eyeballs.’

Hunter couldn’t argue with Garcia’s logic.

Garcia reached for a couple more sheets of paper from his desk, passing them to Hunter.

‘OK, moving on,’ he said. ‘Forensics checked the telephone pole on Allenwood Road. They found no finger-prints, but what they did find were two tiny screw holes that didn’t seem to belong. They were high off the ground, just past the first set of telephone cables. They checked them against all the other poles on that road.’ Garcia shook his head. ‘No other pole had them. AT&T confirmed that the holes shouldn’t be there.’

‘Camera holder?’

‘That’s also my opinion,’ Garcia agreed. ‘According to IT forensics, it could’ve been easily done. The camera could’ve either stored the recorded images to some sort of hard drive, or streamed them live over the Internet.’

Hunter seemed unsure. ‘Storing it to a hard drive would have meant using a camera bulkier than the killer would’ve wanted, or having a separate hard drive connected to it. Forensics found only one set of screw holes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So no separate hard drive. A bulkier camera would’ve also been easier to spot from the road. I don’t think he would’ve gone for that option.’

‘Neither do I. Live streaming would’ve been the best option by far. IT forensics said that a camera with a wireless Wi-Fi connectivity could’ve piggybacked the Wi-Fi connection from any of the neighboring houses and no one would’ve known. Some of those cameras are as small and as light as a credit card.’