‘Detective Hunter.’

‘Detective, it’s Jude. We talked earlier today.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Hunter was surprised, but his tone gave nothing away.

‘I’m sorry for calling so late, but I did remember something, and though I thought about calling tomorrow morning, it has been bugging me and I can’t sleep. You said that if I remembered anything else, I could call at any time.’

‘Yes, of course. It’s no problem at all,’ Hunter said, checking his watch. ‘What did you remember?’

‘A name.’

The muscles on Hunter’s neck tensed. ‘The fourth member of the group?’

‘No. I told you, I never heard any of the other names that night.’ A short pause. ‘I remember the name of Roxy’s kid. Remember I told you that she mentioned it once or twice?’

‘Yes, yes.’

Jude told Hunter the name and he frowned. Unusual, but at the same time there was something familiar about it.

Jude disconnected, glad to have called, and hoping that her brain would now disengage and allow her to get some sleep.

Hunter placed his cellphone back on the desk. The name Jude had given him was swimming around in his head. He decided to run it against the LAPD database. Maybe that’s why it sounded vaguely familiar.

Hunter switched his laptop on, and as he waited for it to boot up, his eyes went back to the mess of photographs and files on the floor. He paused as he felt a cold swirl whip around inside his stomach.

There was no need to search the LAPD database. He’d just remembered where he’d heard the name before.

One Hundred and Six

Hunter didn’t sleep. He spent the rest of the night exhausting his memory, searching for more clues. Even the possibility that he was right scared him.

He had to drop by either Olivia or Allison Nicholson’s house to obtain one last piece of information, but it was too early to go knocking on anyone’s door. He reached for his cellphone and dialed Alice’s number. She answered it on the third ring.

‘Robert, is everything OK?’ She sounded half asleep.

‘I need a favor.’

‘Um . . . OK. What do you need?’

‘Can you hack into the California Department of Social Services’ database?’

A confused pause.

‘Yeah, that won’t be very hard.’

‘Can you do it now, from your house?’

‘Sure, as soon as I power up my gear.’ A new pause. ‘You do realize that you are asking me to commit a felony, right?’

‘I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

Alice laughed. ‘Hey, you don’t have to convince me. This is what I do best.’

‘OK then, here’s what I need you to find out.’

Olivia Nicholson was about to have breakfast when Hunter knocked on her door. Without giving much away, he explained that they had come across some new information overnight, and he just needed to ask her a few more questions.

Their conversation was brief, but fruitful. She told him that, as far as she could remember, her father’s oldest friend was Dwayne Bradley, the Los Angeles District Attorney.

One Hundred and Seven

It was late afternoon when the phone on Garcia’s desk rang. He hadn’t seen or heard from Hunter all day, but that wasn’t uncommon.

‘Detective Garcia, Homicide Special,’ he answered, and listened in silence for several seconds.

His expression took on such a deep frown that his forehead looked like a tire print. ‘You’re kidding . . . Where? . . . Are you sure? . . . OK, stay put, keep your eye on the house, and if anything changes call me straight away.’ Garcia disconnected, and ran down to Captain Blake’s office. Five minutes later he was dialing Hunter’s cellphone number. Hunter answered it on the first ring.

‘Robert, where are you?’

‘Sitting in my car, waiting, gambling on a hunch.’

‘What? What hunch?’

‘Too complicated to explain now.’ Hunter had already picked up the anxiety in Garcia’s voice. ‘What have you got?’

‘You’re not going to believe this. One of our teams hit the jackpot. We’ve got a solid lead on Ken Sands. Apparently he’s been working for an Albanian drug outfit. We have a positive lock on his present location.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere in Pomona. I’ve got the address here with me.’

Pomona was way out of town.

‘We’ve got a green light from the captain,’ Garcia said. ‘A search warrant is being pushed through the courts as we speak.’

‘How fast can we get a SWAT team in place?’

‘Five to ten minutes to get a team deployed. I already have someone getting me all the information on the location, including architectural drawings. We’ll probably be able to brief the SWAT captain in fifteen, twenty minutes max.’

Hunter consulted his watch. ‘I won’t make the briefing, Carlos. I’m on the other side of town, and rush hour started twenty minutes ago. Give me the address in Pomona and I’ll meet you there.’

Hunter disconnected, and at that exact moment the car he’d been following all day started moving again.

‘Damn,’ he said, turning the key in his ignition and stepping on the gas.

One Hundred and Eight

The windowless room was located at the basement of the PAB. Five SWAT-team members were sitting two-by-two in school classroom formation, with the fifth member sitting by himself at the back. They were all wearing black fatigues and bulletproof vests with the word ‘SWAT’ spray-painted across the back. Their black helmets were resting on their desks. At the front of the room, their captain, Jack Fallon, was standing behind a podium. Garcia and Captain Blake were to his left.

‘Listen up, gents,’ Fallon said in a commanding voice. The room went absolutely still. He pressed a button and Ken Sands’s latest photograph, the one Hunter had obtained from the prison board, was projected onto the white screen to his right. ‘This charming individual goes by the name of Ken Sands,’ Fallon continued. ‘This is the last known picture we have of him, taken six months ago on the day of his release from the California State Prison in Lancaster.’

‘Looks like a regular scumbag to me, Cap,’ Lewis Robinson, one of the SWAT agents said, causing all the others to laugh.

‘That might be,’ Fallon said, sucking their attention back to him. ‘And that’s why we’re here. Sands is a major suspect in a multiple-homicide investigation. His record shows that he’s very violent, very dangerous, and apparently very intelligent. There’s a good chance that he’s the Sculptor serial killer we’ve all read about in the papers.’

An uneasy murmur broke out among the agents.

‘Which means I don’t even have to tell you how royally disturbed that makes him.’ Fallon pressed the button again and the image on the screen changed to the blueprint of a single-story house. ‘This is our target’s location in Pomona. Our intel tells us he’s inside at the moment.’

The blueprint showed a house with three bedrooms, one of them en-suite, a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, and a large kitchen.

‘Is he alone in the house, Cap?’ Neil Grimshaw, the youngest of the SWAT agents, asked. Grimshaw had joined the team only a week ago. This was his first major operation. He looked tense, but in control.

‘It looks like he’s got at least one other person in there with him,’ Fallon replied and looked at Garcia.

‘That’s the intel we’ve got so far,’ Garcia explained. ‘There’s an LAPD detective watching the house as we speak, trying to gather whatever new info he can.’