Hunter had no idea how long he’d been out. Slowly and painfully his memory began to fill him in on what had happened. He tried to calm himself down and a familiar feeling came over him. He looked around in darkness and even though he couldn’t see, he knew where he was. He’d never left his apartment. He was sitting in his living room.

He tried moving again, but his hands and legs had been bound too tight. He made an effort to scream but his voice barely made a sound. It surprised him how weak he felt. Suddenly he sensed a chilling presence behind him.

‘I can hear you’re awake.’

The same robotic voice that had tormented him for over three years echoed through the room, catching him by surprise and startling him stiff. It came from behind him, some sort of speaker set up. Hunter felt a strange sensation run through him. He was finally in the presence of the killer. The Crucifix Killer.

Hunter tried turning, rotating his neck as far as it would go, but darkness prevented him from seeing his assailant.

‘Don’t rush it, Robert. This is the final chapter. For you at least. It’ll all end tonight. Right here. You’re the last one.’

The last one. Hunter’s findings in his office were now confirmed. This had all been about revenge.

He suddenly heard the sound of metal against metal. Surgical instruments he presumed. Instinctively his body went rigid with fear, but consciously he forced himself to stay calm. Hunter understood the psychology of killers, especially serial killers. The one thing they want more than anything else is to be understood. To them their killings have meaning, they serve a purpose and they want their victims to know they aren’t dying in vain. Before the kill, there’s always the explanation.

‘Tonight you’ll pay for what you’ve done.’

Those last words sent a judder of recognition through Hunter’s body. The voice that came from behind him was loud and clear – not robotic – not metallic – no distortion box. Hunter didn’t need to search his memory, he didn’t need to think about it. He knew that voice and he knew it well. All of a sudden the darkness disappeared. Hunter squeezed his eyes as uneven circles of light blurred his vision. His pupils contracted trying to get used to the brightness. As the blurriness dissipated a familiar shape took form in front of his eyes.

Sixty-Eight

The blurriness seemed to have taken forever to subside, but once his eyes regained focus he knew he’d been right. Strangely enough he didn’t want to believe it. His eyes fixed on the person standing before him.

‘By the look on your face I can see you’re surprised,’ she said, her voice as sweet as it’d always been.

Hunter had hoped he’d been wrong. But now, staring at her, it all fell into place. He managed to whisper only one word. ‘Isabella.’

She smiled at him. The same smile he’d seen so many times, but this time her smile carried something else, something it’d never carried before. A hidden evil.

‘I thought you’d be happy to see me.’ Her Italian accent was gone. In fact, everything about her was different. As if the Isabella he knew had vanished, replaced by a total stranger.

Hunter’s expression remained immutable. His brain was finally piecing together the last of the puzzle.

‘You deserve an Oscar. Your Italian accent was perfect.’

She bowed down acknowledging the compliment.

‘Very clever trick with that phone call at the restaurant too. A perfect alibi,’ Hunter said, remembering the call he’d received from the killer when he was having lunch with her for the first time. ‘A recorded message with a timer. Simple, but very effective.’

A hint of a smile creased her lips. ‘Allow me to introduce myself…’ she said steadily.

‘Brenda…’ Hunter interrupted in a hoarse and weak voice. ‘Brenda Spencer… John Spencer’s sister. The record producer.’

She shot him a surprised and uncomfortable look. ‘Doctor Brenda Spencer if you don’t mind,’ she corrected him.

‘A medical doctor,’ Hunter asserted.

‘If you must know… a surgeon.’ A new malevolent smile.

‘This has all been about revenge for your brother’s death?’ Hunter asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Very good, Robert,’ she said overenthusiastically clapping her hands together like a child who’d just been given another unexpected present.

The ghostly silence that followed seemed to go on forever.

‘He committed suicide in his cell,’ Hunter finally offered.

‘He committed suicide because you failed to do your fucking job.’ The anger in her voice was undeniable. ‘To protect and to serve, what a joke. He was innocent and you knew it.’ She paused, letting her words float through the room. ‘He’d told you many times that he would’ve never hurt Linda. He loved her, the sort of love you’d never understand.’ She took a moment to collect herself again. ‘You interviewed him. You knew he was innocent and still you let them sentence him. You could’ve done something, but instead you let them sentence an innocent man to death.’

Hunter remembered the dinner he had at Isabella’s. She’d lied about everything to do with her life, but she did mention a dead brother. That had been a mistake, a slip-up. She was fast to cover it up with the Marine story, saying her brother died serving his country. A bullshit story, but Hunter didn’t pick it up. What he saw in her eyes that night wasn’t sadness. It was rage.

‘It was out of my hands.’ He thought about telling her how he’d tried to convince others of his opinion about her brother’s case, but there was no point now. It wouldn’t make a difference.

‘If you had run the investigation how it should’ve been run you would’ve found the real killer sooner, before my brother lost his mind, before he hanged himself. But you stopped searching.’

‘You can’t blame the police for your brother’s suicide.’

‘I’m not blaming the police. I’m blaming you.’

‘We would’ve found the real killer eventually and your brother would’ve walked free.’

‘No, you wouldn’t have.’ Her voice was angry once again. ‘How would you have found the real killer if you weren’t looking? You’d given up on the investigation because the initial, superficial evidence pointed to John and that was good enough for you and your partner. No need to find the truth. One more successful conviction for the two star detectives. You got to be praised once again and that’s all that mattered. He was convicted of murder, Robert. He was given the death penalty for something he didn’t do. No one gave him the benefit of the doubt, no one including that pathetic excuse for a jury. My brother was classed as a monster. A jealous, murderous monster.’ She paused to take a deep breath. ‘And I lost my entire family because of you, your partner and that fucking, useless, waste-of-space jury. They couldn’t see the truth if it’d danced naked in front of them.’ Her eyes burned with rage.

Hunter gave her a puzzled look.

‘Twenty days after John committed suicide my mother passed away from heart sorrow. Do you know what that is?’

Hunter didn’t answer.

‘She didn’t eat, didn’t speak, didn’t move. She simply sat in her room staring out the window with John’s picture in her hands. Tears rolling down her face until she had none left to cry. The anguish and pain in her heart eating her away from the inside until she was too weak to fight back.’

Hunter kept silent, his eyes following her as she slowly paced around the room.

‘It didn’t end there.’ Brenda’s voice was now dark and somber. ‘Thirty-five years, Robert. My parents had been married for thirty-five years. After losing his son and his wife in such a short space of time, my father started to succumb to a never-ending sadness.’

Hunter already guessed the end to this story.

‘Twenty-two days after burying my mother. After the real killer was finally caught, his depression got the best of him and my father followed my brother’s way out. I was alone… again.’ The anger in her was almost palpable.