His fingers closed into a fist.

‘It’s pain time, whore.’

One Hundred and Three

Whitney Myers checked her watch before answering her cell phone after the third ring.

‘Whitney, I’ve got some information for you,’ Leighton Morris said in his usual overexcited voice. Morris was another of Myers’ LAPD contacts, who she called upon every now and then when she needed inside information.

‘I’m listening.’

‘That detective you asked me to keep an eye out for, Robert Hunter . . . ?’

‘Yeah, what about him?’

‘He boarded a plane early this morning.’

‘A plane? Where to?’

‘Healdsburg in Sonoma County.’

‘Sonoma County? What the hell? Why?’

‘That I don’t know. But it’s certainly something to do with the case he’s investigating at the moment, which by the way, is very hush-hush.’

‘He left this morning, you said?’

‘That’s right, and he just booked a return ticket for this afternoon.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Actually, he should be boarding pretty soon.’

Myers checked her watch again. ‘Into LAX?’

‘You got it.’

‘Do you have the flight details?’

‘Right here.’

‘OK, text them to me.’

She disconnected and waited.

One Hundred and Four

There were no delays, and Hunter landed at LAX right on schedule. With no luggage to collect, he walked through the gates just minutes after touching down. Garcia was already there, waiting for him with a folder under his arm.

‘Are you parked on a meter?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia pulled a face. ‘Are you crazy? This is official business. We’ve got perks.’

Hunter smiled. ‘OK, let’s grab a coffee and I’ll run you through everything I got. Anything from Operations or the research team yet?’

‘Not a scrap so far. I just checked with them.’

They found an isolated table towards the back of the Starbucks in Terminal One. Hunter proceeded to tell Garcia all he found out about the Harpers. He told him about Andrew’s secret place in the attic and the peepholes. He told him about the self-harming and that he was sure that Andrew had somehow survived and witnessed everything that happened that day, twenty years ago. After that, Andrew had vanished.

‘If his father was that brutal, how did Andrew survive?’

‘I don’t know exactly what happened that day. No one does except Andrew. But he’s alive. And the pressure cooker in his head finally blew.’

‘You mean something triggered it?’

Hunter nodded.

‘And there were no pictures of him whatsoever?’

‘I couldn’t find any. It’s a small town, small school. Back then the school’s yearbook only featured high-school students. Andrew was in fifth grade when it happened.’ He rubbed the scar on his nape. ‘I think we were right about the killer using projection and transference together with a deep love for the person the victims remind him of.’

‘His mother. The person he loved the most at that age. The person he’d never hurt, no matter what.’

‘No matter what.’

‘Oedipus complex?’

‘I don’t think he was in love with his mother in a romantic way, but he was a very shy kid with few friends. His parents were everything to him. In his mind, they could do no wrong.’

‘Could his feelings have mutated into a combination of maternal and romantic love all rolled up into one?’

Hunter considered the theory. ‘It’s possible, why?’

‘OK, it’s my turn. Let me show you what I found out.’ Garcia flipped open the folder he’d brought with him and took out the music magazine he’d found in Jessica Black’s apartment. He quickly ran Hunter through what had happened with Mark Stratton, how he’d failed to control himself, and how he’d completely trashed a possible abduction scene. ‘By chance I came across this magazine when I was in their apartment. There’s an interview with Jessica Black in it. In a particular section, the interviewer asked her about love.’

‘What about it?’

‘He asked her what true love meant to her.’ Garcia pushed the magazine over to Hunter and pointed to some highlighted lines. ‘That was her answer.’

Hunter’s eyes went over the lines and he paused. His heart skipped several beats. He read them again.

‘To me true love is something uncontrollable. Like a fire that burns really bright inside you and consumes everything around it.’

‘A fire that burns bright inside you?’ Garcia said, shaking his head. ‘It didn’t sound like a coincidence to me. So I went back to the office and searched the net . . . found nothing. I then remembered you told me how good the magazine archives were at the public library, so I took a trip downtown.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘I found this.’ From the folder he retrieved a copy of the printout he had got from the library and pushed it over towards Hunter. ‘An interview with Kelly Jensen for Art Today magazine. Another question about true love and how she viewed the subject.’ He pointed to the highlighted lines. ‘Check her answer out.’

Love hurts, and true love hurts even more. I must admit that I haven’t been very lucky in that department. My last experience was very painful to me. It made me realize that love can be like a crazy knife that sits inside you, and at any moment it can simply flick open. And when it does it cuts you. It slices through everything inside you. It makes you bleed. And there’s very little you can do about it.

‘Shit,’ Hunter whispered, running a hand through his hair.

‘In the library I couldn’t find any similar articles on Laura Mitchell. Then I had this crazy idea of going back to James Smith’s apartment.’

‘Best collection of magazines and articles you’ll ever find on Laura.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia agreed. ‘It took me a few hours, but I found this.’ He handed Hunter the copy of ContemporaryPainters.

Another question about love. Hunter read the highlighted lines – True love is the most incredible thing. Something you can’t control. Something that explodes inside you like a bomb when you’re least expecting it and you’re totally consumed by it.

‘He’s giving them love,’ Garcia said. ‘Not his love, but what they consider to be true love, according to what he’d read. According to their own words.’

Hunter agreed mutely. ‘His mind is in a real mess. He’s got no understanding of what love is. And I’m not surprised. To Andrew real love was what his parents had between them, but what he witnessed that night shattered that understanding into a million little pieces, and he’s been trying to put them back together ever since.’

‘OK, but why now?’ Garcia asked. ‘If the trauma occurred twenty years ago, why is he only acting now?’

‘Traumas aren’t straightforward, Carlos,’ Hunter explained, ‘no psychological wound is. Many traumas suffered by people at one stage or another in their lives will never manifest themselves into actions. A lot of the time not even the traumatized person knows what catalyzes it. It just suddenly explodes inside their heads and they have no control over themselves. In Andrew’s case, just seeing Laura, Kelly or Jessica’s picture on a magazine or newspaper could’ve done it.’