‘Hello, police,’ a bright voice answered. ‘Can I help you?’

‘My name is Margaret Reiner. Who is the most senior person in your building right now?’

‘I can deal with any report you might wish to make.’

Abigail pulled a face, as if she had bitten into some bitter fruit ‘What’s your name?’

‘Officer Piper.’

‘Well Officer Piper, I’m sure you believe that,’ she said calmly, ‘but let me be blunt. I want to speak to someone more senior than a glorified answering machine about an urgent police matter. If you continue to be obstructive, I will hang up this phone, call my lawyer, and instruct them to start preparing a case for obstruction against you.’

There were a few moments of silence, then a new voice answered the phone.

‘Hello, Mrs. Reiner, this is Chief Gretsch. What can I do for you?’

‘I called last week regarding my daughter being harassed by a retired detective.’

‘Yes.’ Gretsch sighed audibly. ‘And I can assure you, Mrs. Reiner, I personally spoke to the man concerned. He won’t be bothering your daughter again.’

‘Well, that doesn’t inspire me with confidence.’

‘Why would that be, Mrs. Reiner?’

‘I believe my daughter has been abducted by Jones, and, Chief Gretsch, if this turns out to be the case, and if you do not bring the full weight of the law upon this bastard, I’ll see you in court to request your head on a fucking plate.’

35

The woman on the floor of the bus had finally been subdued. Two of the passengers were sitting on top of her, and a third was holding a halothane mask over her red face. All of the remaining passengers were staring serenely out of the bus windows.

The tall, scrawny man holding the mask in place was dripping with sweat. His appetite had put them all at risk. His name was Desmond Dyer, and up until that day, he had been responsible for the murder and sexual assault of no less than thirty-six women - all of them aged between thirty and forty-five, with long dark hair. Three of them had been killed on the bus, two others at the farm in Laughlin.

Forty-two minutes earlier, the bus had been rumbling to an agreed drop off point six kilometres outside Blythe, when it had passed by the garden of a house, where a slim woman with chestnut hair had been hanging washing on a line. Dyer, who was on driving duty, had slammed on the brakes. Some of the passengers had lurched forward.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Dyer?’ Wendell Stein, a large man in cargo pants and yellow Hawaiian shirt, called out, and waddled down the aisle to the driver.

‘Her,’ Dyer said softy, and pointed to the woman the garden.

‘No way!’ Stein narrowed his eyes. ‘You know the rules. Bookings only.’

Dyer wasn’t listening. His eyes were fully locked on to the woman, as she pegged the clothes on the washing line. Stein recognised the expression of obsessive desire on Dyer’s face.

‘Hey.’ Stein clicked his fingers at him. ‘Hey, get back in the room, you crazy bastard.

Without replying, Dyer had leapt out of the driver’s seat, and lurched off the bus.

‘Oh shit!’ Stein made a grab for him, but was not quick enough.

Janey Bernal was lost in thought about Mike when she was startled by the hissing brakes of the long silver bus stopping opposite her yard. She had been thinking about how maybe they could adopt a child. It seemed such a waste of life, otherwise.

However, when she glimpsed the driver, she felt no alarm - he was probably just lost, and looking for directions.

Dyer hurried excitedly into the yard of the house, and called out to the woman. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’

Janey looked up, holding one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, sure.’ Dyer grinned. ‘I need you to get on the fucking bus.’

‘What?’ Janey stifled a shocked laugh.

Dyer pulled a butterfly knife from his rear pocket. ‘I’ll not tell you twice, bitch,’ he said in a dry humourless voice.

Jane made a sudden lunge to the side, and before Dyer could respond, she jumped over the laundry basket, and ran across the yard. Stumbling to the door, she got inside the hallway of house. Gasping for breath, she locked the door behind her, hoping the other passengers on the bus had seen the psychopath’s behaviour, and were currently calling the cops. She didn’t see the large man in the Hawaiian shirt step out of the kitchen and into the hallway behind her. He grabbed her around the waist, picking her up. Jane kicked and screamed, knocking off one of her shoes in the process, but her efforts were wasted - he was simply too strong. Using his free arm, her attacker opened the front door to find the scrawny man still outside, stepping from side-to-side, like an excited child.

‘You need a hand there, Stein?’ he said, grinning at the large man.

‘I’ve got her,’ he replied angrily. ‘Just get back on the fucking bus before anyone sees us!’

The scrawny man did as he was told, but still appeared dangerously excited, as he hurried across the yard. Janey, who had allowed her body to go limp, was simply playing possum. As the man carried her across the yard, she remembered something from her high school self-defence class. She balled one hand into a solid fist, then slammed it backwards, as hard as she could, into the man’s groin. He groaned in agony, and momentarily released her. That was all Jane needed. She broke away from him, and burst into a sprint. No longer trusting the house, she ran sideways out of her yard, and into the scrub-land parallel with the road.

The large man yelled out in pain and rage, then began pursuing her through the dusty countryside. Janey stumbled over rocky terrain, with only one shoe on, cutting her bare foot on sharp rocks and cactus spines. She knew they didn’t want to be seen, so perhaps, if she made it to the road, she could flag down a car.

Despite his bulk, Stein was fast, and caught up with her, just as she reached the road. He threw his bulk against Janey’s back, knocking her to the ground. Standing up, her grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her towards the now approaching bus. She screamed in response to the burning pain ripping across her scalp.

As Stein clambered aboard, dragging the squealing woman behind him, he stopped on the final step, and looked straight at Dyer, who was grinning in the driving seat, then punched him fully in the face, bursting his lip like a squashed pink slug.

‘You put everything at risk, you selfish prick. You can take her to the house, but I have a booking in an hour. If you’re not finished with your cougar by then, I’ll gut and skin the both of you. Now, get the fuck out of that seat, and deal with her!’

He threw the woman on to the aisle of the bus. She was nothing more than an inconvenience to him. Unlike Dyer, he only liked natural blondes, and they had to be clear-skinned and aged between fourteen and twenty-five - give or take. Dyer pushed past Stein, and wiped the blood from his month.

‘Can somebody get the halothane, please?’

Stein put the bus in gear, and it lurched finally forward again.

36

At 2:33 p.m., Gretsch was finally getting some lunch. As he leaned over the paper bag on his desk and bit into the turkey and bacon sub, he tried to formulate a potential strategy. The shit-fest surrounding Leighton Jones and his delusion about an imaginary bus full of serial killers, was starting to impact on the real world.

For most of the previous hour, Gretsch had been locked in a heated conversation with Agent Andrew Donaldson, from the Bureau, who wanted to know why a recently retired Oceanside detective had contacted Quantico that morning to report a group of suspected serial killers active in California. He was particularly curious about the fact there had been no indication of such suspicion from any police station in any of the state’s major cities.