‘I understand. Was that your wife on the phone?’

‘What? No, I’m not married. That was work, trust me.’ The last thing Hunter wanted was for her to think he was a cheating husband.

‘OK,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Hunter’s eyes ran the length of her body once again and he felt an exciting tingle. ‘If you give me your number, maybe we could meet up again sometime.’

She studied him for a long moment.

‘You’re thinking I won’t bother to call right?’ Hunter said sensing her reluctance.

‘Oh, you read minds as well? That’s a neat party trick.’

‘You should see what I can do with a deck of cards.’

They both smiled.

‘Plus, there’s nothing I like more than proving people wrong.’

She reached for the notepad on her bedside table with a smirk on her face.

Hunter took the piece of paper from her hand and kissed her right cheek. ‘I gotta go.’

‘That will be one thousand dollars, babe!’ she said gently running her fingers over his lips.

‘What?’ he asked with a shocked look. ‘But…’

She was already smiling back at him. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t resist after you called me a hooker.’

Outside her apartment Hunter unfolded the piece of paper in his hand. Isabella! Sexy name, he thought. He searched the street for his old Buick Lesabre. The car was nowhere to be seen.

‘Shit! I was too drunk to drive,’ he cursed himself before flagging down the first cab he saw.

The directions Garcia had given him took Hunter to the middle of nowhere. Little Tujunga Canyon Road, in Santa Clarita, is eighteen miles long running from Bear Divide to Foothill Boulevard in Lakeview Terrace. Almost all of it is within the Angeles National Forest. At times the woodland and mountain views are simply breathtaking. Garcia’s directions were precise and soon the taxi was driving down a tiny, bumpy, dirt road surrounded by hills, bushes and rough terrain. The darkness and nothingness was overwhelming. Twenty minutes later they finally came to an uneven lane that led up to an old wooden house.

‘I guess this is it,’ Hunter said handing the driver all the money in his pocket.

The lane was long and narrow, just wide enough to fit a standard-size car. Surrounding it were dense, impassable shrubs. Police and official vehicles were crammed everywhere making it look like a traffic jam in a desert.

Garcia was standing in front of the wooden shack talking to an agent from the crime lab, both of them holding flashlights. Hunter had to negotiate his way through the carnival of cars before joining them.

‘Jesus, talk about a place out of the way – any further and we’d be in Mexico… Hi there, Peter,’ Hunter said, nodding at the crime lab agent.

‘Rough night, Robert? You look just like I feel,’ Peter said with a sarcastic smirk.

‘Yeah, thanks, you look great too. When is the baby due?’ Hunter asked tapping his hand over Peter’s beer gut. ‘So what have we got here?’ He turned to face Garcia.

‘I think you better see it for yourself. It’s hard to describe what’s in there. The captain’s inside, he said he wanted to talk to you first before letting the boys tag and bag the place,’ Garcia said looking unsettled.

‘What the hell is the captain doing here? He never comes out to crime scenes. Does he know the victim?’

‘I’m as much in the dark as you are, but I don’t think so. She’s not exactly recognizable.’ Garcia’s statement made Hunter’s eyes squint with a new worry.

‘So it’s a female body?’

‘Oh, she’s female alright.’

‘Are you OK, rookie? You look a little shook up.’

‘I’m fine,’ Garcia reassured him.

‘He’s been sick a couple of times,’ Peter commented with a new sneer.

Hunter studied Garcia for a moment. He knew this wasn’t his first murder scene. ‘Who found the body? Who called it in?’

‘Apparently it was an anonymous call to 911,’ Garcia answered.

‘Oh great, one of those.’

‘Here, take this,’ Garcia said handing Robert his flashlight.

‘Would you like a barf bag as well?’ Peter joked.

Hunter paid no attention to the comment and took a moment to study the house from the outside. There was no front door. Most of the wooden planks from the front wall were missing and grass had grown through the remaining floorboards, making the front room look like a private forest. He could tell the house had once been white from flecks of peeled paint on the remains of windowsills. It was obvious that no one had lived there for a long time and that bothered Hunter. First-time killers didn’t go to the trouble of finding such a secluded place to commit murder.

Three police officers stood to the left of the house discussing last night’s football game, all three holding steaming cups of coffee.

‘Where can I get one of those?’ Hunter asked pointing to the coffee cups.

‘I’ll get you one,’ Garcia replied. ‘The captain’s in the last room on the left, through the corridor. I’ll see you in there.’

‘Working hard, guys?’ Hunter shouted to the three officers who glanced at him indifferently before carrying on discussing the game.

Inside the house a peculiar smell hung in the air, a mix of rotten wood and raw sewage. There was nothing to see in the first room. Hunter turned on his flashlight and moved through the door at the far end into a long and narrow corridor that led to four other rooms, two on each side. A young police officer was standing outside the last door on the left. As Hunter made his way down the corridor, he quickly peeked inside each room he passed. Nothing except for spider webs and old debris. The creaking floorboards gave the house an even more sinister feel. As Hunter approached the last door and the officer standing guard he felt an uncomfortable chill. The chill that comes with every murder scene. The chill of death.

Hunter produced his badge and the officer stepped to one side.

‘Go right ahead, detective!’

On a table just outside the door Hunter found the customary overalls together with blue plastic shoes and head covers. Next to them a box of latex gloves. Hunter got himself ready and opened the door to face his new nightmare.

The shocking image that met his eyes as he stepped into the room sucked all the air out of his lungs.

‘Jesus Christ.’ His voice was just a weak whisper.

Hunter stood at the door of a large double room illuminated only by two moving flashlights – Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston. Surprisingly the room was in much better condition than the rest of the house. A giant pit welled in his stomach as he stared at the image before him.

Directly in front of the bedroom door and about three feet from the back wall, the naked body of a woman hung from two parallel wooden posts. Her arms spread as wide as they’d go, her knees bent as they touched the floor placing her in a kneeling Y position. The rope restraining her wrists against the top of the poles had cut deep into her flesh and dark lines of dried blood now decorated her thin arms. Hunter stared at the dead woman’s face. His mind struggling to understand what his eyes were seeing.

‘Sweet God in heaven!’

An incessant swarm of flies were swirling around her body creating a relentless buzzing sound, but they left her face alone. Her skinless face. A shapeless mass of muscle tissue.

‘Hunter! You finally decided to show up.’ Captain Bolter was standing across the room next to Doctor Winston, the Chief Medical Examiner.

Hunter stared at the woman for a few more seconds before diverting his attention to the captain. ‘Somebody skinned her?’ he questioned from the doorway, his voice carrying a tone of disbelief.

‘Alive… someone skinned her alive,’ Doctor Winston’s calm voice corrected Hunter. ‘She died hours after her skin had been ripped off her face.’