‘I’ll be damned… we’ve got a confession.’ Captain Bolter could hardly hide his excitement.

‘Hell yeah! And it only took Hunter about ten minutes to get it out of him. That’s my boy,’ Scott replied with a smile.

‘If you are the Crucifix Killer, then you did choose your name,’ Hunter continued. ‘You branded the victims. You chose your mark.’

‘They needed to repent. The symbol of our Lord freed their souls.’

‘But you are no God. You don’t have the power to free anyone. Thou shall not kill, isn’t that one of the commandments? Doesn’t killing these people make you a sinner?’

‘No sin shall be when done in the name of the divine. I was doing God’s work.’

‘Why? Did God call in sick that day? Why would God ask you to kill in his name? Isn’t God supposed to be a merciful being?’

Farloe let a smile grace his lips for the first time showing yellow cigarette-stained teeth. There was an evil air about him. Something different, something almost inhuman.

‘This guy gives me the creeps. Shouldn’t we just stop this interview, he’s already confessed, he’s done it, end of story,’ Scott said clearly irritated.

‘Not yet, give him a few more minutes,’ Doctor Martin replied.

‘Whatever… I’m out of here, I’ve heard enough.’ Scott opened the door and stepped into the narrow corridor on the third floor of the RHD building.

Hunter grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it and slid it towards Farloe over the table. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Farloe’s eyes moved down to the paper. He stared at it for about five seconds. By the movement of his eyes and imperceptible frown Hunter knew Farloe didn’t have a clue what the figure on the paper meant. Hunter got no answer.

‘OK, so let me ask you this…’

‘No, no more questions,’ Farloe cut in. ‘You know what I’ve done, detective. You’ve seen my work. You’ve heard what you wanted to hear. There’s no more need for questions. I’ve said my piece.’ Farloe closed his eyes, placed his hands together and began a whispered prayer.

‘Yes it’s true. I never believed he was our killer,’ Hunter finally answered Garcia’s question, snapping back from his memory flash.

Even though it was just past six in the morning the day was already warm. Hunter pressed the button on the passenger’s door and his window rolled down smoothly. The scenery had changed from the luxurious houses of Santa Clarita into noisy traffic as they drove down San Diego Freeway.

‘Do you want me to turn on the air con?’ Garcia asked fiddling with his dashboard.

Hunter’s car was an old Buick and it didn’t have any of the luxury gadgets of modern cars. No air conditioning, no sunroof, no electric windows or mirrors, but it was a Buick, pure American muscle as Hunter liked to call it.

‘No. I prefer it like this, natural polluted LA air – you just can’t beat it.’

‘So why did you think you had the wrong guy? You had all the evidence found in his car, plus the guy confessed. What else did you need?’ Garcia asked bringing the subject back to the Crucifix Killer.

Hunter tilted his head towards the open window letting the air brush through his hair. ‘Did you know we never found any evidence at any of the seven crime scenes?’

‘Again, I’ve heard rumors, but I thought that was just you guys playing your cards close to your chest.’

‘It’s true, Scott and I fine-combed every inch of those crime scenes and so did the forensic team. We never found a thing – not a fingerprint, not a strand of hair, not a fiber… nothing. The crime scenes were like forensic vacuums.’ Hunter paused, letting the wind hit his face once again. ‘For two years the killer never made a mistake, never left anything behind, no slip-ups… the killer was like a ghost. We had nothing, no leads, no direction and no idea of who the killer could be. Then, all of a sudden he gets caught with all that shit in his car? It didn’t add up. How the hell does anyone go from being probably the most thorough criminal in history to being the sloppiest one?’

‘How did you catch him?’

‘An anonymous phone call just a few weeks after the seventh victim was found. Someone had seen a suspect car with what seemed to be blood smudges on the outside of its trunk. The caller had managed to note down the license-plate number and the car was picked up on the outskirts of LA.’

‘Mike Farloe’s?’

‘Exactly, and inside his trunk it was like Christmas time for our investigation.’

Garcia frowned. He was starting to follow Hunter’s line of thought. ‘Yeah, but several major criminals have been caught out just like that, out of a traffic violation or some minor contravention. Maybe he was thorough at the crime scene, but sloppy at home.’

‘I don’t buy that,’ Hunter replied with a shake of the head. ‘He also kept on calling me “detective” throughout the interrogation.’

‘And what’s the problem with that?’

‘The Crucifix Killer used to call me on my cell phone and let me know about the location of a new victim, that’s how we found them. I was the only one who’d had any contact with him.’

‘Why you?’

‘I never found out, but every time he called me he’d always use my first name, he’d always call me “Robert”, never “detective,”’ Hunter paused. He was about to drop an atomic bomb on Garcia’s lap. ‘But the turning point was when I asked him about the crucifix mark branded on the victims’ hands. In a way he accepted it, he said that the symbol of our Lord could free them or something like that.’

‘Yes, so he was a religious psycho – what’s your point?’

‘I showed him a drawing of the symbol used by the Crucifix Killer and I’m sure he didn’t recognize it.’

‘He didn’t recognize a crucifix?’ Garcia arched both eyebrows.

‘The Crucifix Killer never branded a crucifix on the back of the victim’s left hand. That was just a story we fed the media to avoid the copycats, the attention seekers.’

Garcia held his breath in anticipation and felt an uncomfortable shiver down his spine.

‘What the Crucifix Killer did was carve a strange symbol, something like a double-crucifix, one right side up and the other upside down on the back of the victim’s neck.’ Hunter pointed to the back of his own neck. ‘That was his real mark.’

Hunter’s words caught Garcia totally by surprise. His mind flashed back to the scene in the old wooden house. The woman’s body. Her skinless face. The carving on the back of her neck. The symbol of the Crucifix Killer. ‘What? You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ Garcia took his eyes off the road for an instant.

‘Watch the road!’ Hunter realized they were about to run a red light. Garcia’s attention switched back to the road once again and he slammed down on the brakes throwing Hunter’s body forward like a torpedo. Hunter was held by his seatbelt which brought him crashing back to his seat, his head jerking back violently and hitting the headrest.

‘Damn! That brought my headache back, thanks,’ Hunter said, rubbing his temples with both hands.

The last thing in Garcia’s mind was his partner’s headache. Hunter’s words were still echoing in his ears. ‘So what are you saying? That someone found out about the real Crucifix Killer’s signature and is using it?’

‘I doubt it. Only a handful of people knew about it. Just a few of us at the RHD and Doctor Winston. We kept all information about the killer sealed tight. The symbol we saw today, it’s identical.’

‘Fuck, are you trying to suggest that he’s back from the dead or something?’

‘What I’m trying to say is that Mike Farloe wasn’t the Crucifix Killer as I’d always suspected. The killer’s still out there.’

‘But the guy confessed. Why the hell would he do that when he knew he would get the shot?’ Garcia asked, almost shouting.

‘Maybe he just wanted the notoriety, I’m not sure. Look, I have no doubt that Mike Farloe was mentally fucked up, he was a religious psycho, just not the one we were looking for.’