‘Is it ready?’

‘Yep, they worked overnight. It’s on its way to you now.’

‘That’s great.’

‘OK,’ Doctor Hove proceeded. ‘Forensics lifted five sets of fingerprints from the crime scene and other locations throughout the house – kitchen, bathroom, staircase handrail . . . you know the drill. As expected, no joy there. The fingerprints are confirmed to have come from the two nurses, both of the victim’s daughters and the victim himself.’

Hunter said nothing. He wasn’t really expecting anything to come from those.

‘The hairs retrieved from most of the same locations as the fingerprints were also matched to the same five people,’ Doctor Hove continued. ‘I don’t think we’ll need to DNA-test them. Analysis on some of the fibers found is still going on. The ones they’ve already analyzed came back as cotton, polyester, acrylic . . . the most common fibers found in everyday clothes. Nothing that will lead you anywhere.’

Hunter rested an elbow on his desk. ‘Any toxicology results yet, doc?’

‘Yes, I had to push for them, though. The lab is overworked.’ She paused for just a split second. ‘And here is where it gets interesting. And positively more evil.’

Hunter grabbed Garcia’s attention with a quick hand wave and motioned him to listen in on his extension.

‘What does the test say, doc?’ Hunter asked.

‘OK, we know that to prolong the victim’s suffering the perp clamped the brachial artery of the amputated right arm using medical forceps, keeping the victim from bleeding out. But even so, something was baffling me from the start.’

Hunter pulled out his desk chair and had a seat. ‘The victim’s fragile condition.’ He didn’t phrase it as a question.

‘That’s right. The victim was already in the very late stages of terminal pulmonary cancer. His body was as weak as a 90-year-old man’s. His resistance to pain, his stamina, had all been reduced to a fraction of what it should’ve been. A person in those conditions should’ve died of shock after losing a finger. He lost five of them, all ten toes, his tongue and an arm before dying.’

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a long worried look.

‘As I expected,’ the doctor continued, ‘he wasn’t sedated, but he was drugged to his eyeballs. Toxicology found high levels of a few drugs, but that was expected due to the victim’s ill health. But some of the high-level drugs are just plain wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘OK, we found high levels of propafenone, felodipine and carvedilol.’

Garcia looked at Hunter and shook his head. ‘Hold on, doc. Easy with the chemical jargon. Chemistry wasn’t my strongest subject in school, and school was years ago. What are those?’

‘Propafenone is a sodium-channel blocker. It works by slowing the influx of sodium ions into the cardiac muscle. Felodipine is a calcium-channel blocker, and very big on controlling high blood pressure. Carvedilol is a beta-blocker. It blocks the binding of norepinephrine and epinephrine to beta-adrenoceptors. The combination of those three drugs will also, most certainly, inhibit the body’s production of adrenaline.’

Garcia’s frown was so intense his forehead looked like a prune. ‘You did hear when I said that chemistry wasn’t my strongest subject in school, right, doc? OK, neither was biology. Pretend I’m a seven-year-old kid and tell me all that again.’

‘In a nutshell, that’s a very strong cocktail of drugs to slow anyone’s heart rate down, control blood pressure and inhibit the production of adrenaline by the adrenal glands. As you know, adrenaline is released whenever a person senses danger. It’s the fear and pain hormone. It increases heart rate and dilates air passages, getting the subject ready to fight or flee.’

Garcia still looked a little puzzled.

‘So the killer reduced the victim’s blood flow,’ Hunter said, ‘and sedated his production of adrenaline.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘When the body senses danger or feels pain, like when having a finger, toe or tongue cut off, adrenaline is released and the heart speeds up, pumping more blood to the affected area, brain and muscles. Those drugs wouldn’t allow that to happen. They’d keep the heart in rest pace, if not even slower. That way, smaller amounts of blood were distributed throughout the victim’s body. He would’ve bled a lot less than expected. But none of those drugs have a sedating effect.’

‘Meaning he would’ve felt all the pain,’ Garcia caught on. ‘But held on for longer.’

‘Correct,’ the doctor agreed. ‘When a victim is severely cut, but no vital organs are damaged, there are mainly two ways the victim can die. Bleed to death, or the heart gets overworked to such an extent that it fails. In an unorthodox way, this killer addressed both of those problems with his drug combination. He didn’t want the victim to die too soon. And he certainly wanted the victim to feel as much pain as he could endure. But without a surgical team to help him, the killer would’ve had to work a lot faster to be able to perform the amputations and contain the hemorrhaging before the victim bled out. Well, his cocktail of drugs helped him a lot.’ She paused, dwelling on the severity of her own words. ‘I think all this strengthens our suspicion that this killer knows medicine, Robert. And I’d say he knows it well.’

Eighteen

Hunter and Garcia placed their receivers back in their cradles at the same time. Hunter laced his fingers, rested both elbows on the arms of his chair, and sat back.

‘OK,’ he said, facing his partner. ‘I know this is a long shot, but since all three of the drugs toxicology found are prescription only, let’s start checking with drugstores and pharmacists to see if anyone has sold all three in one go. I mean, all in the same prescription to the same person. Who knows, we might get lucky.’

Garcia was already reading through the email they’d just received from Doctor Hove, noting down the names of all three medications.

‘How are we doing on that list of criminals Nicholson put away?’ Hunter asked.

‘We haven’t got it yet, but the team is working on it.’

‘Tell them we’ll need to reprioritize it. Check if anyone on that list has any previous medical education, worked in a hospital, care home, maybe even a gym.’

Garcia’s eyebrow twitched.

‘Gym instructors and personal trainers must know first aid,’ Hunter explained. ‘If any of the people on that list knows so much as how to properly put on a Band-Aid, I want to know.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ Hunter called from his desk.

The door was pushed open by a petite and very pretty woman in a dark business suit. She had long, straight, dyed blonde hair and deep-brown eyes. In her right hand she held a black leather briefcase. There was no doubt she was a lawyer, or worked for one.

‘Detective Hunter?’ she said, looking straight at him.

‘Yes, can I help you?’ Hunter stood up.

The woman stepped forward and offered her hand.

‘I’m Alice Beaumont. I work for Los Angeles District Attorney’s office. Directly with DA Bradley himself. He said you could use my help on the Derek Nicholson investigation.’ She shook Hunter’s hand with a firm and self-assured grip.

Garcia frowned.

Hunter studied the woman in front of him for a moment. Her eyes were full of intelligence – both the university and street kind. Hunter noticed that she had expertly and subtly allowed her gaze to run around the room. It took her less than two seconds to take in her entire surroundings. There was something vaguely familiar about her.

‘DA Bradley gave me your card,’ Hunter said. ‘But maybe I misunderstood him. I thought he said that if we needed your help, I would give you a call.’