‘Oh my God, you’re from Homicide?’ She cupped her hands over her nose and mouth as tears filled her eyes.

‘There’s a chance that I’m in the wrong house,’ Hunter said in a steady but comforting voice.

‘What?’ Denise’s hands started shaking.

‘Maybe we should all have a seat.’ Hunter indicated the leather Chesterfield sofa by a six-foot-tall Victorian lampshade.

The Mitchells took the sofa and Hunter one of the two armchairs facing it.

‘At the moment we’re trying to identify someone who shares several physical characteristics with your daughter,’ Hunter explained. ‘Laura’s name is one of four which have come up as a possible match.’

‘As a possible match to a homicide victim?’ Roy asked, placing a hand on his wife’s knee.

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Denise started crying.

Roy took a deep breath. ‘I gave the other detective a very recent picture of Laura, do you have it?’

Hunter nodded.

‘And still you can’t be sure if this victim of yours is Laura?’ Denise asked, her mascara starting to run down her face. ‘How come?’

Roy clamped his eyes shut for an instant and a single tear rolled to the tip of his nose. Hunter could see he’d already picked up on the possibility of the victim being unrecognizable. ‘So you’re here to ask us for a blood sample for a DNA test?’ he said.

It was obvious that Roy Mitchell was a lot more clued up on police procedures than most people. Since the introduction of DNA testing, in a situation such as the one Hunter was facing, it was a lot more practical for the police to collect samples and match them to the victim first. That way they could later approach only the identified family, instead of putting several innocent ones through the panic and the traumatic experience of looking at a photograph of a gruesomely disfigured victim.

Hunter shook his head. ‘Sadly, a DNA test won’t help us.’

For a moment it was as if there wasn’t enough air in the room for all three of them. ‘Do you have a picture of the victim?’ Roy finally asked.

Hunter nodded and flipped through several sheets of paper inside the folder he’d brought with him. ‘Mrs. Mitchell,’ he said, catching Denise’s eyes, ‘this woman might not be your daughter. There’s no reason for you to look at this picture right now.’

Denise stared at Hunter with glassy eyes. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Honey, please.’ Roy tried again.

She didn’t even look at him.

Hunter waited, but the determination in her eyes was almost palpable. He placed the close-up of the victim on the coffee table in front of them.

It took Denise Mitchell just a fraction of a second to recognize her. ‘Oh my God!’ Her shivering hands shot to her mouth. ‘What have they done to my baby?’

All of a sudden the room they were in looked different – darker, smaller, the air denser. Hunter sat in silence for several minutes while Roy Mitchell tried to console his wife. Her tears weren’t hysterical; they were simply full of pain – and rage. In different circumstances Hunter would have left, giving the Mitchells some time to grieve before coming back the next morning with a list of questions, but this wasn’t like any other case, this killer wasn’t like any other killer. Right now Hunter didn’t have a choice. Laura’s parents were his best, and at the moment, only source of information on Laura. And he needed information like he needed air.

Denise Mitchell grabbed a tissue from the box on the side table and wiped her tears away before finally standing up. She approached a small desk next to the window where several photo frames were arranged, most of them containing pictures of Laura at different stages of her life.

Roy didn’t follow, instead slumping himself deeper into the sofa, as if he could somehow escape the moment. He made no attempt to wipe away his tears.

Denise turned to face Hunter, and she looked like a complete different woman from the one who’d greeted him at the door minutes earlier. Her eyes were horribly sad.

‘How much did my daughter suffer, Detective?’ Her voice was low and hoarse, her words coated in pain.

Their eyes locked for a long moment and Hunter saw a mixture of grief and anger burning deep inside her.

‘The truth is that we don’t know,’ he finally replied.

With a trembling hand Denise brushed a strand of loose hair behind her right ear. ‘Do you know why, Detective? Why would someone do something like that to anyone? Why would someone do it to my Laura? She was the sweetest girl you could ever meet.’

Hunter held her gaze firmly. ‘I’m not gonna pretend I understand what sort of pain both of you are going through, Mrs. Mitchell. I’m also not gonna pretend this is easy. We’re after the answers to those same questions and at the moment I can’t tell you much because we don’t have much. I’m here because I need your help to catch who did this. You knew Laura better than anyone.’

Denise’s eyes never left Hunter’s face, and he knew what her next question would be even before the words left her lips.

‘Was she . . .’ her voice croaked as she fought the tears catching in her throat yet again, ‘. . . raped?’

Roy Mitchell finally looked up. His stare went from his wife to Hunter.

There were very few things in life Hunter hated more than having to hide the truth from grieving parents, but without an autopsy on Laura’s body, the best he could do was tell Denise and Roy that again he didn’t know. As a psychologist, he knew that the uncertainty of never knowing the answer to such a question would torture them for the rest of their lives, putting their marriage, even their sanity, in jeopardy.

‘No, Laura wasn’t raped,’ Hunter said with unflinching eyes and without an ounce of hesitation. Certain lies were worth telling.

Twenty-One

The uncomfortable moment stretched until Denise broke eye contact with Hunter, returning her stare to the photographs on the desk. She picked up a small silver frame.

‘Laura was always talented, you know? Always very artistic.’ She walked over and handed Hunter the frame. The photograph showed a little girl of about eight surrounded by crayons and tiny pots of watercolor paint. She looked so happy and her smile was so contagious, Hunter couldn’t help but smile back, for a second forgetting that that little girl was gone and in the most horrifying manner possible.

‘In school, every year without fail, she was awarded an honors certificate in arts,’ Denise said proudly.

Hunter listened.

A sad grin threatened to part Denise’s lips but she held it back. ‘She only started painting professionally late on, but she’d always loved it. It was her refuge from all things bad. Every time she got hurt, she went back to the brushes. It was what cured her when she was a child.’

‘Cured her?’ Hunter’s expression tightened and his gaze bounced between Denise and Roy.

‘One day when Laura was eight, for no apparent reason, she had some sort of seizure,’ Denise explained. ‘She couldn’t move or breathe properly, her eyes disappeared into her head and she almost choked to death. It petrified us.’

Roy nodded and then took over. ‘We took her to four different doctors. Experts, they said.’ He shook his head as if irritated. ‘But none of them could diagnose what had happened. In fact, they didn’t have a clue.’

‘Did it happen again?’

‘Yes, a few more times.’ Denise again. ‘She went through every possible examination, including CAT scans. They found nothing. No one knew what was wrong. No one could tell us what was triggering her seizures. About a week after her last episode, Laura picked up a brush for the first time. And that was it. The seizures never came back.’ Denise touched the edge of her right eye with the tip of her fingers, trying to stop the new tear that had just formed from rolling down her cheek. ‘No matter what anyone says, I know her painting is what made them stop. It’s what made her well again.’