Hunter nodded. ‘Do you remember it well?’

Chief Cooper stared back at Hunter and his playful tone had vanished. ‘You don’t forget a crime scene like that, Detective. I don’t care how experienced you are. I know you’ve been through the station first ’cause Chief Suarez just called me. You saw the pictures, right? Could anyone forget those images?’

Hunter said nothing.

‘You didn’t tell me much over the phone, but I guess you didn’t have to. The way I see it, the only reason the LAPD RHD would be interested in a 20-year-old case from a small town is because you guys must have something down there that’s pretty close to what happened here.’

Hunter stared at his reflection in the water for a moment. ‘If I’m right, Chief, it’s a lot closer than you think.’

Ninety-Two

Chief Cooper slotted his fishing rod into the appropriate hook next to his chair and turned to face Hunter.

‘When I left LA this morning, my main concern was finding the log sheet for the Harper crime scene. There are only eight names on it.’ He retrieved his notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘Yours and two of your officers, Kimble and Perez. The Sonoma County sheriff at the time, Sheriff Hudson and two of his deputies, Edmunds and Hale. The county coroner at the time, Doctor Bennett and a forensic investigator, Gustavo Ortiz. Is that right?’

Chief Cooper didn’t have to think about it. He nodded immediately.

‘Can you remember if anyone else saw that scene, anyone at all? Someone who somehow wasn’t logged onto the sheet?’

The chief shook his head firmly. ‘No one else saw the scene. Not once we got there.’ He poured himself some more coffee. ‘The Harper house was only about a block away from the old police station. Tito, their neighbor at the time, called the station saying he heard a gunshot. Tito was, and still is, a pretty accomplished hunter. So when he said he heard a shotgun being fired, I knew it couldn’t have been a mistake. I was at the station when he called. It took me less than a minute to get there. I was first at the scene.’ He paused and looked away. ‘I’d never seen anything like it. Not even in case studies. And to tell you the truth, I hope I never see anything like it again.’

The sky was getting menacingly dark and the wind had picked up a notch.

‘A minute after I got to the house, Officers Kimble and Perez arrived. I knew straight away I had to get the County Sheriff’s Office involved. Despite our restricted experience with homicides, we all knew the protocol. We immediately isolated the house. No one other than the three of us had access to the scene.’

‘Until the sheriff and the coroner arrived,’ Hunter added.

‘That’s right. As you said, Doctor Bennett, who is now retired, had an investigator with him, Gustavo Ortiz. He’s now the chief coroner investigator for Santa Clara County. Sheriff Hudson had two deputies with him, Edmunds and Hale.’

Hunter nodded. ‘Chief Suarez told me. Edmunds is a captain now and Hale is assistant sheriff. They both live in Santa Rosa.’

Chief Cooper confirmed this. ‘No one else entered the house or saw the scene. I am sure because I was there until all the photographs were taken and the bodies removed.’

Thin rain started falling, but neither man moved.

‘The Harpers had a son, right? Andrew,’ Hunter said.

Chief Cooper nodded slowly.

‘I’ve been through all the files down at the station. There’s no photograph of the body, no autopsy report and no mention of what happened to him. It’s like all the files on the kid are missing.’

The way Chief Cooper looked at Hunter made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

‘His files aren’t missing. They aren’t there because his body was never found.’

Ninety-Three

‘What?’ Hunter cleared the rain from his eyebrows and stared back at Chief Cooper. ‘Never found? So how did you know he was murdered?’

The chief let out a deep sigh. His glasses were so heavy with rain Hunter could barely see his eyes. ‘The truth is that we didn’t know. But that was what the evidence told us.’

‘What evidence?’

Chief Cooper finally pulled the nylon hood of his raincoat over his head and retreated a few steps back to the shelter of a large tree. Hunter followed him.

‘The Harpers tragedy happened on a Sunday,’ the chief explained. ‘Every Sunday, without fail, for the six years previous to that day, Ray took his son fishing. Sometimes to Lake Sonoma, sometimes to Rio Nido, and sometimes to Russian River. They’re all within driving distance. I went with them several times. Ray was a great fisherman, and his boy was starting to get pretty good at it too.

‘Tito, the neighbor who called in “shots fired”, saw Ray and his kid packing the truck a couple of hours before he heard the shot. The owner of the gas station a few blocks away from their house also confirmed seeing the kid in the passenger’s seat of Ray’s truck while Ray went into the store to buy some ice cream. Andrew never came back to the house with his father. When Forensics checked the truck, they found the kid’s shirt and shoes. There was blood on the shirt, on the shoes, on the car’s dashboard, and on the inside of the passenger’s door. The kid’s blood. The lab confirmed it.’

‘Wasn’t there an investigation into the boy’s disappearance?’

‘Yes, there was. But we found nothing other than what I just told you. We don’t know where he took his son, Detective – Sonoma Lake, Rio Nido or Russian River. There are also acres and acres of forest surrounding Healdsburg and the rivers. He could’ve killed his son and buried or left him to the wolves somewhere in the forest. He could’ve weighted the kid’s body down and dumped him in the lake or the river. Finding the body without knowing where he went that day was a pretty impossible task. Though we did try, we never found it.’

The chief took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the pads had left two sunken red marks.

‘Ray was a good man, but he suffered from depression,’ he continued. ‘I think he found out about Emily’s affair a few days earlier because there was thought put into what he did. It wasn’t your typical loss of control murder, though it might’ve looked that way from all the mess and blood. We figured Ray found out that Emily saw her lover when she thought it was safe to do so. So he got his kid out of the house and killed him first, disposing of the body somewhere. He then went over to Nathan Gardner’s apartment, disfigured him and left him there, bleeding to death, but not before stitching his mouth shut. After that, Ray returned to his house to confront his wife, and to complete his crazy killing plan.’

Chief Cooper paused and looked straight into Hunter’s eyes.

‘And I have no doubt that in Ray’s plan, no one was coming out alive. No one.’