The task was laborious and slow. They first needed to narrow it down to what sort of operation would require such a lengthy recovery period and then go back almost a year and a half to find the records.

Hunter wasn’t surprised to find that the archiving of records in hospitals was bordering on comical. Part stored in drawers in some stuffy and crammed archive room. Part stored in disorganized spreadsheets and part stored in databases that very few people knew how to access. Not that far away from the archiving of files by the RHD, he thought.

He’d been at it since eight-thirty that morning. At midday the temperature hit 98 degrees and the badly ventilated rooms made Hunter’s task seem like penitence. By the end of the afternoon his shirt was drenched and he’d only managed to cover three hospitals.

‘Have you been swimming?’ Garcia asked, frowning at Hunter’s wet shirt as he got back to the office.

‘Try being locked in stuffy, pathetically small rooms in the basement of hospitals for a few hours and see how you like it,’ Hunter shot back unamused.

‘If you got rid of that jacket it would probably help. How did you get along anyway?’

Hunter waved a brown envelope at Garcia. ‘Patients’ lists for three hospitals. Not much but it’s a start.’

‘And what’s that?’ Garcia pointed to the box Hunter had under his left arm.

‘Oh, it’s just a pair of shoes,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘Big spender, are we?’

‘That’s the thing. I saw these in the window of a shop close to one of the hospitals. They are closing down in a week so everything is at giveaway prices. I got them for a bargain.’

‘Really? Can I have a look?’ Garcia asked, being curious.

‘Sure.’ Hunter handed him the box.

‘Wow, they are nice,’ Garcia said, after taking both black-leather shoes from the box and looking at them from every angle. ‘And God knows you need new ones,’ he said, pointing to Hunter’s old shoes.

‘I’ve gotta wear them in though. The leather is quite stiff.’

‘With the amount of walking we’ve been doing lately you’ll have no problem.’ Garcia placed both shoes back inside the box and handed it to Hunter.

‘Anyway, how did you get on?’ Hunter brought the subject back to the investigation.

‘I’ve managed to contact Catherine Slater. She doesn’t wear wigs.’

‘Great. Any luck with the wigmakers then?’

Garcia twisted his mouth and frowned, shaking his head. ‘If we wanna get a list of clients that have ordered European hair wigs from any of the wigmakers in LA we’re gonna need a warrant.’

‘A warrant?’

‘They won’t disclose their list of clients. The excuse is always the same… clients’ privacy. Their clients wouldn’t appreciate the fact that they wear wigs being advertised to the world.’

‘Advertised to the world? We are conducting a murder investigation here, we’re not the press. It’s not like we’re gonna sell the information to the tabloid papers.’ Hunter snapped.

‘It doesn’t matter. If we don’t get a warrant we’ll get no clients’ list.’

Hunter dropped the envelope on his desk, placed his jacket on the back of his chair and walked over to one of the fans.

‘I can’t believe these people. We’re trying to help them, we’re trying to catch a sadistic killer whose next victim could be someone in their family or themselves, but instead of cooperation what do we get? Fucking hostility and reluctance. It’s like we’re the bad guys. As soon as we say we’re cops it’s like we just punched them in the stomach. All the doors slam shut and on come the security locks,’ Hunter said, walking back to his desk. ‘I’ll talk to Captain Bolter. We’ll get this fucking warrant and the list as soon as…’ Hunter detected an air of doubt about Garcia. ‘Something’s bothering you.’

‘The hair found inside George Slater’s car bothers me.’

‘Go on,’ Hunter urged him.

‘Nothing else was found inside the car, right? No fingerprints, no fibers, only a hair strand from a wig?’

‘And you’re thinking this doesn’t sound like our guy, right?’ Hunter concluded. ‘The killer cleans the entire car as he’s done with every crime scene, but leaves a hair behind?’

‘He’s never screwed up before, why would he screw up now?’

‘Maybe it isn’t a screw-up.’

Garcia stared at Hunter with uncertainty. ‘What are you saying? He wants to be caught now?’

‘Not at all. He might just be playing games like he’s always done.’

Garcia still looked unsure.

‘He knows we can’t afford to overlook this. He knows we’ll be following this up, checking with every wigmaker in LA, spending time and resources.’

‘So you think he might’ve left the hair behind on purpose?’

Hunter nodded. ‘To slow us down. To buy him time to plan his next kill. He’s getting closer to his final act,’ he said in a quiet voice.

‘What do you mean, final act?’

‘These killings have some sort of meaning to the killer,’ Hunter explained. ‘As I’ve said before, I’m sure this killer has an agenda, and something tells me he’s about to complete it.’

‘And you believe if we don’t catch him before he completes his psycho agenda, we’ll never catch him. He’ll simply disappear.’

Hunter nodded slowly.

‘So let’s catch him,’ Garcia said, pointing to the brown envelope Hunter had obtained from the hospitals.

Hunter smiled. ‘The first thing we gotta do is eliminate anyone under twenty or over fifty years of age from the list. After that let’s try and get a picture of everyone that’s left. We might just come up with something.’

‘Sure, pass me one of the lists.’

‘Have you been through the old investigation files?’

‘I’m still on them.’

Hunter looked pensive for a moment.

‘What’s up?’ Garcia asked.

‘Something’s been bothering me. Maybe the Crucifix Killer did frame Mike Farloe to throw us off course. Maybe he made a mistake and he had to cover it.’

‘A mistake?’

‘Maybe. It could be something to do with the last victim. The one just before we caught up with Mike Farloe. A young lawyer, I remember that. Do you have her file?’

‘It should be here.’ Garcia started searching through the files on his desk.

Their conversation was interrupted by Garcia’s fax machine’s ringtone. He pulled himself closer to his desk and waited for the printout to come through.

‘Você tá de sacanagem!’ Garcia suddenly said after staring at the received fax for half a minute.

Hunter didn’t understand Portuguese but he knew that whatever it meant, it wasn’t good.

Fifty-One

Hunter stared at his partner and waited, but Garcia kept his eyes on the fax, still mumbling something in Portuguese. ‘What the hell is it?’ Hunter shouted impatiently.

Garcia extended his hand displaying a black and white picture of a woman. It took Hunter a few seconds to realize what he was looking at. ‘Is that Jenny Farnborough?’

Garcia shook his head. ‘No this is Vicki Baker.’

‘Who?

‘Victoria Baker, age twenty-four, works as a manageress for a gym called 24 Hour Fitness in Santa Monica Boulevard,’ Garcia read from the foot of the picture.

‘I know that gym,’ Hunter cut in.

‘Apparently she was supposed to have gone to Canada on the second of July.’

‘And did she?’

‘It doesn’t say.’

‘Who sent us this?’

‘Logan from the Missing Persons’ Department. We still have a flag up on anyone that looks like the computer-generated image we got from Doctor Winston remember?’

Hunter nodded.

Because the first victim hadn’t been positively identified yet all protocol measures were still in place and that included constant checks against new entries to the MUPU database.

‘When was she reported missing?’

Garcia checked the fax’s second page. ‘Two days ago.’

‘By who?’

Another check. ‘Joe Bowman, the head manager of the gym.’

Hunter grabbed the fax from Garcia’s hand and studied it for a minute. The resemblance was there, but then again attractive, tall blonds seemed to grow on trees in Los Angeles. Hunter could clearly see how easily Vicki Baker and Jenny Farnborough could both be matched to the original computer-generated image. On their rush to identify the first victim they’d simply assumed Jenny Farnborough was their girl.