‘She’s not looking at him. She’s looking at his cigarette pack in his shirt pocket. She probably gave up smoking not so long ago.’

Garcia had a peculiar grin on his face when he got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Check out how good you really are.’ Hunter looked on as Garcia started towards the bar.

‘Excuse me, you don’t happen to have an extra cigarette do you?’ he said, approaching the two women but directing his question to the blond one.

She gave him a charming and pleasant smile. ‘I’m sorry, but I quit smoking two months ago.’

‘Really? I’m trying to myself. It’s not easy,’ Garcia said, returning the smile. His eyes moved to the bar and onto her key ring. ‘You drive a Merc?’

‘Yeah, just got it a few weeks ago.’ Her excitement was almost contagious.

‘Very nice, is it a C-Class?’

‘SLK convertible,’ she replied proudly.

‘That’s a very good choice.’

‘I know. I love my car.’

‘By the way, I’m Carlos,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘I’m Wendy, and this is Barbara.’ She pointed to her brunette friend.

‘It’s been very nice meeting you both. Enjoy the rest of your evening,’ he said with a smile before returning to Hunter’s table.

‘OK, I’m even more impressed now than I was before,’ he commented as he sat down. ‘One thing is for sure. I ain’t never playing poker against you,’ he said, laughing.

While Garcia was testing Hunter’s profiling skills, the waitress had come back with their dinner. ‘Wow, I was hungrier than I thought,’ Garcia said after having finished his BBQ ribs together with the Caesar salad. Hunter was still munching on his burger. Garcia waited until he was done. ‘How come you decided to be a cop? I mean, you could’ve been a profiler, you know… gone and worked for the FBI or something like that.’

Hunter had another sip of his beer and used the napkin on his mouth. ‘And you think that working for the FBI is better than working as a Homicide detective?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Garcia protested. ‘What I meant is that you had a choice and you picked being a Homicide detective. I know a lot of cops who’d kill for the chance to work for the feds.’

‘Would you?’

Garcia’s eyes didn’t shy away from Hunter’s. ‘Not me, I don’t really much care for the feds.’

‘And why is that?’

‘To me they’re just a whole bunch of glorified cops who think they are better than everyone else simply because they wear cheap black suits, sunglasses and earpieces.’

‘First day I met you I thought you wanted to be an FBI agent. You were wearing a cheap suit.’ A smirk on Hunter’s face.

‘Hey, that suit wasn’t cheap at all. I like that suit, it’s my only suit.’

‘Yeah, I could’ve guessed that.’ The smirk turned into a sarcastic smile. ‘At first I thought I would become a criminal profiler. That would’ve been the logical move after my PhD.’

‘Yeah. I’ve heard you were some kind of child prodigy, a genius in what you did.’

‘I moved through school faster than usual,’ Hunter said, playing it down.

‘And is it true that you’ve written a book that’s used as a study guide by the FBI?’

‘It wasn’t a book. It was my PhD thesis paper. But yes, it was made into a book and the last I heard it was still used by the FBI.’

‘Now that’s impressive,’ Garcia said, pushing his plate away. ‘So what made you choose not to become an FBI profiler?’

‘I spent all of my childhood immersed in books. That’s all I did when I was young. I read. I guess I was starting to get bored of the academic life. I needed something with a little more excitement,’ Hunter said, revealing only half the truth.

‘And the FBI wouldn’t be exciting enough?’ Garcia asked with a mocking smile.

‘FBI profilers aren’t field agents. They work behind desks and inside offices. Not the kind of excitement I was looking for. Plus I wasn’t ready to lose the little sanity I had.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t think most human brains are strong enough to go through the journey of becoming a criminal profiler in today’s society and come out on the other side unscathed. Anyone who decides to put themselves through that sort of pressure inevitably will pay the price, and that price is too high.’

Garcia looked a little confused.

‘Look, there are basically two schools, two main theories where criminal profiling is concerned. Some psychologists believe that evil is something inherent to certain individuals, they believe it’s something people are born with, like a brain dysfunction that leads them to commit obscene acts of cruelty.’

‘Meaning some believe it’s like a disease, a sickness?’ Garcia asked.

‘That’s right,’ Hunter continued. ‘Others believe that what causes a person to go from being a civilized individual to becoming a sociopath are the series of events and circumstances that have affected that person’s life so far. In other words, if you were surrounded by violence when young, if you were abused or mistreated as a child, chances are you’ll reflect that in your adult life by becoming a violent person. Are you with me so far?’

Garcia nodded, leaning back on his chair.

‘OK, so quick and dirty, the profiler’s job is to try and understand why a criminal is acting the way he is, what makes him tick, what drives him. Profilers try to think and act just like the offender would.’

‘Well, I figured that much out.’

‘OK. So if the profiler can manage to think like a criminal, then he might have a chance of predicting the criminal’s next move, but the only way he can do that is by deeply immersing himself in what he thinks the criminal’s life is like.’ He paused for a swig of his beer. ‘Disregarding the first theory because if being evil is something like a disease, there’s nothing we can do about that. There’s no way we can go back in time to reproduce an offender’s aggressive or abusive childhood either, so the only thing left is the offender’s present life, and here comes step one of profiling. We take a guess at what his life might be like. Where he’d live, places he’d go, things he’d do.’

‘A guess?’ Garcia looked incredulous.

‘That’s all profiling is, nothing but our best guess based on the facts and evidence found at the crime scene. The problem is that when we walk in the footsteps of such deranged criminals for long enough, acting like they do, thinking like they do, immersing ourselves so deep in such dark minds, that unavoidably leaves scars… mental scars, and sometimes the profiler loses track of the line.’

‘What line?’

‘The line that keeps us from becoming like them.’ Hunter looked away for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was sad. ‘There have been cases… profilers that have worked in investigations of sadistic sexual offenders becoming obsessed with sadistic sex themselves, or going the opposite way, becoming sexually inadequate. The simple thought of sex being enough to make them sick. Others that have worked brutal murder cases have become violent and abusive. Some have gone as far as committing brutal crimes themselves. The human brain is still pretty much a mystery, and if we abuse it for long enough…’ Hunter didn’t need to finish the sentence. ‘So I chose to abuse my brain in a different way, by becoming a Homicide detective.’ He smiled and finished the rest of his beer.

‘Yeah, and that is some abuse.’ They both laughed.

A mile from Rusty’s Surf Ranch a well-dressed man checked his reflection against the full-size mirror in the entrance lobby of the Belvedere restaurant. He was wearing a tailored Italian suit, freshly polished shoes, and his blond wig suited him perfectly. His contact lenses gave his eyes an unusual shade of green.

From where he was standing he could see her sitting at the bar, a glass of red wine in her hand. She looked beautiful in her little black dress.

Was she nervous or excited? He couldn’t really tell.

All that time at the supermarket, all those months he’d been working her, feeding her lies, getting her to trust him. Tonight his lies would pay off. They always did.