The captain looked at him blankly. ‘Do American states have official insects?’

‘Apparently.’

‘What’s the official insect of California, then?’

Garcia shrugged.

‘The dog-face butterfly,’ Hunter said, and with a hand movement urged Garcia to continue.

He did.

‘In California only a small number of species can be found, mainly around the Mojave Desert area and parts of southern California. Among those species, according to the entomologist we’ve spoken with, is one of the most intriguing ones – the Pepsis menechma.’ He pointed to the pictures board. ‘The one used by the killer.’

‘What’s so intriguing about them?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia closed the folder and returned it to his desk. ‘In essence, tarantula hawks are lone wasps,’ he explained. ‘They don’t live in nests, or hives, or any sort of community. They don’t move in groups either.’ His shoulders moved up and down ever so slightly, in a what-do-you-know kind of shrug. ‘With the exception of a handful of species.’

‘The one the killer used is one of them,’ the captain concluded. She didn’t even attempt to use the scientific name Garcia had read out moments earlier.

‘Exactly,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘That particular species is very similar to the Brazilian one that put me in hospital when I was a kid. They live in large hives, they hunt and attack in groups and they have one of the most powerful, painful and venomous stings out of all tarantula hawks. They are also diurnal creatures, which means that they don’t like darkness very much. If they are forced to move around in it, they get very angry. And that’s when things get ugly in a hurry.’

Everyone’s eyes moved back to the pictures board. At the center of it was a large, zoomed-in photograph of a tarantula hawk in mid-flight.

‘So there’s no way we can know where he got them.’

‘According to the entomologist,’ Garcia explained, ‘if we find her body before it decomposes, we might be able to trace their location of origin by chemically analyzing the venom they left in her bloodstream. How much help that can prove to be, no one knows.’

Thirty-Four

Garcia gave everyone a moment for his words to sink in, before reaching for two copies of a new printout that was on his desk.

‘As far as the media is concerned, we’ve been a little lucky,’ he said, handing the printouts to Hunter and Captain Blake. ‘Nothing was actually picked up by the major press, but there’s been a little speculation on the Internet. As you know, the broadcast was cloned and uploaded to several video network sites.’

The printout was of a current affairs web page. In the bottom left-hand corner there was a small snapshot of the woman lying inside the glass coffin. Tarantula hawks were all over her. The caption underneath the picture read: “Reality or Hoax?”

‘It’s a small article,’ Garcia continued. ‘It just talks about the on-screen voting process, and summarizes what happened next.’ He gave Hunter and Captain Blake a brief smile. ‘In this particular case, Hollywood came to our rescue.’

‘How so?’ the captain asked.

‘At the moment everyone’s best guess is that that broadcast was part of a publicity stunt for a new horror/reality-style movie. It’s been done before. The trick is to start a buzz by trying to make the public believe it’s a real documentary rather than a Hollywood production.’

The captain returned the printout to Garcia. ‘That suits us just fine. Let them believe the Hollywood bullshit.’ She turned and faced the pictures board again. ‘But they do have a point. This does look like the storyboard for a horror movie. Stung to death by giant wasps, almost dissolved in a caustic soda solution. What the hell?’

‘Most feared deaths,’ Hunter said.

‘What?’

‘The options this killer gave us,’ Hunter followed up. ‘With the first victim – burned to death or drowned. With the second one – buried alive or eaten alive. Why these particular methods?’ He walked up to his computer, brought up his browser and called a web page. ‘Well, I found out that those particular methods are among the ten worst ways to die as voted by the public.’

Garcia and Captain Blake repositioned themselves behind Hunter’s desk. The list on his screen started at number ten and counted down to number one. The death methods mentioned and used by the killer were all there. Drowning was at number six. Burned alive was at two. Eaten alive (by insects or animals) sat at number five, while buried alive held the third position. Voted number one most feared and painful death was being dumped into an alkali bath.

Captain Blake felt her core temperature drop a few degrees.

‘I found several lists,’ Hunter explained. ‘Most of them are just a variation of that one. Different positions but most of the same death methods.’

‘You think that’s what he’s doing?’ the captain asked. ‘Running through a crazy list of deaths he found on the Internet?’

‘I’m not sure what he’s doing, Captain. But he could’ve easily come up with that list by himself.’

Captain Blake glared at Hunter.

‘If I hadn’t showed you this list and just asked you to write down the worst ten death methods you could think of, I’m sure you’d have at least six or seven of those in there.’

Captain Blake thought about it for an instant.

‘Buried alive, burned alive, eaten alive, drowning . . . all of those are universally feared deaths,’ Hunter added.

‘OK, so maybe he created his own list of fucked-up deaths,’ the captain agreed. ‘My question still stands. Do you think that’s what he’s doing? Going through a crazy list just for the fun of it?’

‘It’s possible,’ Hunter admitted after an awkward pause.

‘Sonofabitch. And what about this?’ Captain Blake pointed to one of the printouts on the board, referring to the word centered at the bottom of the screen during the broadcast. ‘GUILTY. He was obviously telling us that in his sick mind, he considered that woman guilty of something.’

‘Possible,’ Garcia said. ‘But the problem is that if this guy really is a psychopath, then she could’ve been guilty of just about anything, Captain. She didn’t even need to know him. She could’ve stepped on his toe inside a crammed subway train, or rejected his advances inside a bar, or maybe he simply didn’t like the way she styled her hair, or looked at him. To a psychopath, any reason is a reason.’

Garcia was right. Psychopaths had a very distorted vision of reality. Their emotions were usually so detached that the simplest of things could affect them in the most unpredictable ways, and just about anything could trigger an extremely violent reaction. They usually considered themselves superior to anyone else around them. More intelligent. More attractive. More talented. More everything. They didn’t cope well with rejection, no matter how small, considering it an aggression against their superiority. They were very easily offended, and they often felt disgusted by the mundanity of other people’s lives. In general, psychopaths were usually impulsive, had little self-control, and their crimes tended to be spur-of-the-moment affairs, but some were very capable of more elaborate planning. Some were even capable of keeping the monster inside them on a leash until it was time to let him loose.

‘Or he could just be playing on the gullibility of people,’ Hunter finally said.

Captain Blake shot him a what-the-hell-is-that-supposed-to-mean look.

‘Opinion manipulation or, in simplest terms, rumor,’ Hunter said, stabbing his index finger over the word GUILTY on one of the printouts on the board. ‘That’s all some people need to make up their minds about a subject, or a person, Captain. It’s a psychological trick. A way to steer someone’s opinion one way or another. It’s the press and the media’s most powerful weapon. They use it every day.’