Gently, Hunter pulled her hair away from her face, kissed her forehead, brought her to his chest and hugged her tight. He could still smell her delicate perfume. He could still feel the softness of her hair.

‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’ A suffocating kind of anguish drowned his words. ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’

He held her in his arms until the tears stopped coming.

If he could’ve exchanged places with her, if he could’ve breathed his life into her body, he would’ve done it. He would’ve given his life for hers without a second thought.

He finally let go of her, and as he turned his head he saw something he had completely missed. Written in blood on one of the living-room walls were the words, cop whore.

Seventy-Four

As Hunter finally told Lucien about that night, a dark, endless pit, like an old wound that had never really healed, reopened in Hunter’s stomach, dragging his heart down, and bringing back an emptiness inside of him he’d fought for twenty years to leave behind.

Everyone was silent for a long moment.

‘So you lost both of your partners in the same night,’ Lucien said. If Hunter didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn there was a pinch of sorrow in Lucien’s voice.

Hunter blinked once, pushing the memory as far away from his mind as he could. ‘Madeleine, Lucien, where is she?’

‘Wait a second, old friend, not so fast.’

‘What do you mean, not so fast?’ Hunter replied. His eyebrows curved into an angry look. ‘You’ve heard all there is to hear about what happened to Jessica. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘No, that was just part of it.’ Lucien lifted both of his hands in a truce gesture. ‘But since you told me what happened that night, I’ll give you something in return. It’s only fair. Are you listening?’

It took Lucien just two minutes to give them specific directions of how to get to the site by Lake Saltonstall in New Haven, where they’d find Karen Simpson’s remains, together with the four other victims he’d mentioned earlier.

Hunter and Taylor listened to everything very attentively and without interrupting, but they were sure that Adrian Kennedy would be taking notes from the holding cells’ control room, and within minutes he’d have an FBI team from the New Haven field office dispatched to the site.

‘Now,’ Lucien said when he was done, ‘if you want me to give you Madeleine, let’s go back to Jessica and what happened after she was murdered. Was the perpetrator ever caught?’

‘Perpetrators,’ Hunter corrected him. ‘Forensics found two sets of prints in the house, neither of which matched anything in the police archives.’

Lucien’s expression showed surprise. ‘Was it a sexual attack?’

‘No,’ Hunter replied, and his eyes glistened with relief, ‘she wasn’t sexually assaulted. It was a robbery. They took the few items of jewelry she had, including the engagement ring on her finger, her purse, and all the cash she had in the house.’

‘A robbery?’ Lucien found that strange.

So did Taylor.

‘So why kill her?’ Lucien asked.

Hunter paused. Looked away. Looked back at Lucien. ‘Because of me.’

Lucien waited but Hunter didn’t offer any more. ‘What do you mean, because of you? This was a revenge attack? Someone wanting to get back at you?’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘Jessica had several photographs of the two of us together scattered around the house. In many of them I was in uniform. Those picture frames had all been smashed. Some had the word “pig” written in blood on them. Some had the words “fuck the police”.’

As things became clearer, Lucien’s head moved sideways slowly. ‘So, once they found out that she was engaged to an LAPD officer, they decided to kill her just for fun.’

Hunter said nothing. He didn’t even blink.

‘I’m not trying to teach an old dog new tricks,’ Lucien said. ‘But have you looked at gang members? Gang members have a never-ending hatred for the police hardwired into their brains, especially in a city like Los Angeles. The only other people who hate police officers as much are ex-cons, but if the fingerprints weren’t on file, then those are clearly ruled out.’

Hunter knew that full well; he and the detectives assigned to the case had hammered every single gang contact they had for information. They got nothing, not even a whisper.

‘We’re wasting time here,’ Hunter said, irritation starting to come through in his voice. ‘There’s nothing more to say about Jessica or that night. She was murdered. The people who did it have never been caught. Tell us where Madeleine is, Lucien. Let us bring her in.’

Lucien still wasn’t ready. ‘So you blamed yourself for her death.’ Lucien didn’t ask. ‘Actually, you did it twice, didn’t you? First for being a cop, because you knew that was the reason why they killed her. And second because you didn’t make it to her house for dinner as you were supposed to.’

Hunter stayed quiet.

‘The human mind is a funny thing, isn’t it?’ Lucien spoke in a practiced, therapist’s voice – deep, calm and reasonable. ‘Even though you know full well that neither of the two reasons you’ve been blaming yourself for years are actually your fault, even though you understand the psychology behind the “why” you’ve been blaming yourself, you still can’t avert the guilt.’

Lucien chuckled and got back on his feet. ‘Just because one understands psychology, Robert, doesn’t mean one is immune to psychological traumas and pressures. Just because one is a doctor, doesn’t mean one doesn’t get sick.’

Was that what Lucien was doing? Hunter asked himself in thought. Using Jessica’s murder as an example to defend his own sordid actions? Just because Lucien knew that killing people was wrong, just because as a psychologist he probably understood his urges and where they were coming from, it didn’t mean that he could control them.

‘And that’s the reason why, since then, you’ve always been a loner, isn’t it, Robert?’ Lucien said. ‘Because you blame yourself for what happened. She was killed because she was close to you. I bet you promised yourself you’d never let that happen again.’

Hunter wasn’t in the mood to be psychoanalyzed. He needed to end this. And he needed to do it now. Any answer would do. ‘Yes, that’s the reason. Now tell us where Madeleine is.’

‘In a moment. You haven’t satisfied the psychologist in me yet, Robert. What I really want to know about is what happened inside your head after Jessica was murdered. The earthquake of feelings that I know you went through. You tell me that, and I’ll give you Madeleine.’

After twenty years, Hunter had learned how to live with those feelings.

‘What is there to know?’ he asked evenly.

‘I want to know about the anger inside you, Robert. The rage. I want to know if you were angry enough to kill. Did you go after them?’ Lucien asked. ‘The perpetrators? Jessica’s killers?’

‘An investigation was launched,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s not what I asked,’ Lucien shot back with a shake of the head. ‘I want to know if you launched your own crusade to find her killers, Robert.’

Hunter was about to reply when Lucien interrupted him.

‘Don’t lie to me now, Robert. Madeleine’s life depends on it.’

Hunter could feel Taylor’s eyes on him.

‘Yes. I have never stopped searching for them.’

Hunter’s answer seemed to excite Lucien.

‘So here’s the million-dollar question, Robert,’ he said. ‘If you found them, would you take them in, or would you impose your own justice on them . . . your own revenge.’

In silence Hunter scratched the back of his hand.

‘You would kill them yourself, wouldn’t you?’ Lucien’s smile was confident. ‘I can see it in your eyes, Robert. I saw it while you were reliving that night. I bet Agent Taylor saw it too. The anger. The rage. The hurt. Fuck being a detective. Fuck the law that you swore to uphold. This would take priority over everything. Over your own life. If you came face to face with the people who took Jessica from you, you’d murder them without an ounce of hesitation. I know you would. I know you’ve thought about it hundreds, maybe thousands of times.’