As Garcia took the elevator up to the fifth floor, he checked his phone one more time.

Still nothing.

He’d been at his desk for less than a minute when Hunter pushed open the door and stepped inside. Despite how exhausted Hunter looked, Garcia picked up something else in his expression – a mixture of doubt and excitement.

‘Have you heard anything?’ Garcia asked, instinctively peeking at his cellphone yet again. He had nothing.

‘Not yet, have you?’

Garcia shook his head. ‘Nothing from the SIS team, the sheriff’s department or any other LAPD station. I’m just about to check emails, but if we had anything from forensics I’m sure Doctor Snyder would’ve already called one of us.’

‘I’ve received nothing either,’ Hunter confirmed, also checking his cellphone. His ‘silent’ switch was off and his ringer volume was cranked up to the maximum. ‘But I’d like you to have a look at something and tell me if I’m losing my mind or not,’ he added, returning his phone to his pocket and approaching the picture board.

‘OK.’ Garcia swiveled his chair around, intrigued.

‘This morning,’ Hunter began. ‘I thought I saw something on the note that I hadn’t picked up before.’

The intensity with which Hunter delivered his statement made Garcia get to his feet.

‘And what was that?’ He joined Hunter by the board.

‘What does the killer call himself?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia frowned. ‘What?’

‘On the notes, what does the killer call himself?’

Garcia looked at all three notes on the board before his gaze moved back to Hunter.

‘Death,’ he replied, flipping his palms up, as people do when giving an obvious answer.

‘So why doesn’t he sign them as “Death”?’

Garcia’s expression was one of total confusion.

‘OK, maybe you have lost it, Robert. That’s exactly how he signs his notes.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Hunter came back. ‘He signs them “I am death”, not just “Death”. Why?’

Garcia regarded the notes again. ‘What? I’m not sure I’m following you?’

‘Just look at them, Carlos.’ Hunter tapped the board. ‘They all end with the phrase “I am death”, not just the word “death”. No other killer who has ever taunted the police with notes or messages has done that – Jack the Ripper, the BTK Killer, the Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, whoever, it doesn’t matter: they all signed their notes with just a name, not a sentence.’

Garcia pondered this for a moment before accepting it. ‘OK, fine, but what difference does it make?’

‘Probably none, if not for what he wrote in his last message.’ Hunter indicated the note.

Well, the clues are in the name.

FOR I AM DEATH.

‘I see that,’ Garcia said, lifting his hands again in a surrendering gesture. ‘But I’m still not sure where you’re going with this, Robert.’

‘This guy likes to play,’ Hunter said. ‘We all know that by now. The notes are part of his game and, if we are correct in our assumption, he considers himself too smart for us. Actually, too smart for anyone. Playing a game against someone who is so much inferior to him is no fun. And he wants to make this fun.’

‘OK,’ Garcia agreed.

‘At first, you believed this could be his way of being funny or sarcastic, remember? But what if he isn’t being funny? What if he really is giving us a clue?’

The blank stare on Garcia’s face remained.

‘Look at this,’ Hunter said. ‘He wrote: “the clues are in the name”.’ He emphasized the word ‘in’ and at the same time tapped it on the board with his index finger. ‘Not the name. He also uses the word “clues”, not clue, indicating that there’s more than one.’

Garcia looked at the note again. This time, his expression showed concentration.

‘In it,’ Hunter said again and paused.

Garcia kept his attention on the board, a few dots just starting to connect in his mind. ‘In it . . . You mean, like an anagram?’

‘Precisely,’ Hunter said, his voice just a little more excited than a moment ago. ‘But don’t look only at the word “Death”. Look at the whole sentence. “I am Death” – that’s how he signs every note. That’s what he placed inside Nicole Wilson’s throat. That’s what he left us at Sharon Barnard’s crime scene.’

Without waiting for Garcia to start trying combinations, Hunter picked up a marker, wrote the sentence ‘I am death’ on an empty space on the board and, as he used a letter from that phrase, he crossed it off the original sentence. When he was done, he put the marker down.

Garcia had been following everything with the utmost attention. When Hunter stopped, Garcia looked at what he had written, then back at the original sentence, then back to the board.

Without noticing, his jaw had dropped open.

‘No fucking way.’

Seventy-One

Alison coughed and spluttered awake with a jolt as freezing water was splashed on to her face. Her natural reaction was to shake her head, but she immediately regretted it. The pain that the movement awakened inside her skull was so acute she believed her brain was being squeezed by a giant pair of pincers. But the pain she felt inside her head was nothing compared to how her body agonized as the water dripped down from her face and made contact with the tens of open wounds on her torso, arms and legs. One would be forgiven for believing that the animalistic scream she let out belonged to some dying beast.

She coughed again, this time trying to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt heavy and sticky and it required an effort of will to force them open. Water trickled into her gasping mouth and she finally understood why it made everything hurt so much. The water was heavy with a salty, vinegary taste.

A single drop made it past her right eyelid and as it coated her cornea it stung at her eyeball. Immediately, her eyes shot closed once again before she started blinking ferociously, which she did for almost a full minute.

Pain now came at her from all angles and she grunted as her body began shaking, unable to handle the brutality of it all. She braced herself for another bucket full of vinegary water over her head but it never came.

Alison finally blinked her eyes open again. The sting was still there but not as incapacitating as before. The blurriness was now very subtle.

The man was standing directly in front of her. Immobile. Staring.

They finally locked eyes. The feeling of familiarity was still there, but no matter how hard she tried, her brain just couldn’t place him.

The man had lowered the chain that held her arms by a few inches. Alison’s feet could now properly touch the ground, but her legs carried no strength. The bulk of her weight was still being held by her arms and the chain shackled to her wrists – which had now lost their skin. Metal was resting against unprotected raw flesh. Her hands felt like blood-filled balloons and a tiny prick was all that was needed for them to burst spectacularly.

Because Alison kept slipping in and out of consciousness, she had no way of telling the time. No way of knowing how long she had been held captive.

In silence, the man continued to study Alison. Her naked body had been made even more beautiful by all the small cuts and lacerations he had made. At least that was how he saw it. The blood that had flowed from them had recolored her skin in beautiful crimson and that vision filled him with an almost uncontrollable excitement, and his body responded accordingly.

They stared at each other for a long while until, surprisingly, the man was the first to break eye contact. He turned and walked over to the workshop table in the corner.