Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘I can see how most people would think that that was a crazy thing to do,’ Hunter said. ‘But if you take a second, it isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘You know how united the LAPD, or any PD in the country gets as soon as a cop-killer surfaces, right? The entire department would stop at nothing to chase him down.’ Hunter shrugged. ‘You kill the niece of an FBI director and there’s no doubt that you’ll get the wrath of one of the most powerful law-enforcement agencies in the world chasing you with everything they’ve got — every resource, every ally. And Adrian Kennedy won’t give up... ever . But if you make it look like she was the unfortunate victim of a fanatical serial killer, in time the whole thing might just become another investigation in the FBI archives. See the logic?’

Garcia chewed on that thought for several long seconds. ‘OK, I admit, it makes a weird sort of sense, but not enough for the FBI to make it their top theory. They spent two months and countless man-hours talking to the wrong people and looking in the wrong places. There’s a reason why Director Kennedy told you that they haven’t moved an inch since they’ve begun investigating this.’

‘I know,’ Hunter replied. ‘And yes, they’ve made mistakes, but we’ve all been there before, Carlos. Adrian admitted that he was blinded by anger and, unfortunately, that anger stirred the investigation the wrong way. But talking about what should’ve been done won’t help us. The only thing we can do now is forget about those mistakes and move on.’

PING.

The text-message beep came from Garcia’s cellphone. He interrupted their conversation and quickly checked his display screen.

‘Oh shit!’ he said. The look in his eyes was pure fear.

‘Everything OK?’ Hunter asked.

The message Garcia had just received had come from his wife, Anna, and it contained three words, followed by an angry emoji.

Are you coming? ☹

‘I’m dead,’ he said. ‘I’m so dead they’re going to have to bury me twice.’ He quickly typed a message back.

On my way. ☺

‘What happened?’

‘I’ve got to go.’ Even Garcia’s tone of voice had changed. ‘I’m supposed to be having dinner with the in-laws tonight and I completely lost track of time.’

Hunter checked his watch — 7:12 p.m. He too hadn’t noticed the time go by so fast.

‘This is going to be like the tenth time I’m late for dinner with Anna’s parents.’

‘Oh, that can’t be good.’

Garcia reached for his jacket. ‘Are you staying?’ he asked as he got to the door. ‘It’s past seven, Robert, and it’s been a hell of a long day for everyone, not to mention that you got no sleep last night.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to stay just a little longer. There are still a few more things I want to go over.’

‘You’re not superman, you know? You need to disconnect and give your brain some breathing time before that big vein across your forehead pops. Plus, your eyes are tired. I can tell. You look like you’ve just smoked a big doobie.’

‘Really?’ Hunter tried to catch his reflection against the window glass.

‘There’s no point in exhausting yourself on the first day of an investigation. I know we’re starting from the beginning again, but the forty-eight-hour rule doesn’t really apply to this guy. He’s been killing for months.’

‘I know, but I’m really not going to stay long.’ He tapped his watch with his index finger. ‘You, on the other hand, better get going.’

‘Yep. I’m out of here.’

‘Say hello to Anna for me, will you?’

‘I will, if she’s still talking to me, that is. By the way, if I disappear without a trace, please check my backyard for a shallow grave. If not, I’ll see you tomorrow at the Feds.’

Anyone driving down Wilshire Boulevard would be forgiven for mistaking the Los Angeles FBI Headquarters for some sort of special federal prison, where the window bars couldn’t be seen from the outside. Despite its prime real-estate location, one thing was absolutely clear to everyone: the seventeen-story-high concrete box structure hadn’t been built with aesthetics in mind, a feature that repeated itself across every FBI building in the country.

Inside a corner office, on the eighth floor of that nondescript and enigmatic building, Special Agents Fisher and Williams had taken no time settling in. The room they were given was about four times the size of Hunter and Garcia’s office back at the PAB and equipped to the walls with hightech monitors, lightning-fast computers and gigantic curved 4K screens.

Both FBI agents had spent the last three hours looking over all the photos belonging to Linda Parker’s crime scene, as well as revising a series of files concerning their investigation into the murders of Kristine Rivers and Albert Greene — two victims whose life stories couldn’t have been any more different from each other.

‘Shit!’ Agent Fisher said, as she pushed her chair away from her desk. She stared at her computer screen for another second before hurling the pen she had in her hand at it.

‘Are you all right, Erica?’ Agent Williams asked, angling his body to look past his own screen at his partner. He was used to Agent Fisher’s sudden outbursts.

‘I don’t have a clue what I’m doing anymore, Larry.’ The tips of her fingers came up to her temples. ‘I keep on rereading all these files, but I have no idea what I’m looking for.’

But that wasn’t true at all — Special Agent Erica Fisher knew very well what she was looking for as she reread file after file and studied photograph after photograph. She was trying to identify anything that could shed some sort of light, no matter how faint, on why the killer had picked those three people as his victims.

At first they had thought that the reason The Surgeon had taken Kristine Rivers’ life had been because she was Director Kennedy’s niece, but that theory had now been blown completely out of the water. Nevertheless, Kristine Rivers had been chosen, together with Albert Greene and now Linda Parker, and there had to have been a reason for that.

Chance? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Just like Hunter and Garcia had said earlier, they just couldn’t afford to discard any possibilities, but Agent Fisher had never worked a serial-murder case, or even heard of one, where the killer had picked his/her victims absolutely at random. Even in a case like this one, where all the victims seemed to be complete strangers to each other, living in different parts of the country, there was always something that would somehow drive the killer to them — a physical or personal characteristic, something in their past, a location, a preference, a desire, an object, a possession... It didn’t matter if it made sense to anyone or not. It could be something easily identifiable, or something completely obscure, but there was always something.

Even if Detectives Hunter and Garcia had stumbled upon something with the art theory and this killer was indeed mad enough to think that what he was doing was transforming his crime scenes, his victims, into sick works of art, something made him go knock on Kristine Rivers’, Albert Greene’s, and Linda Parker’s door. Agent Fisher was sure of that, but what was it?

The more Agent Fisher thought about it, the more something Detective Garcia had said earlier kept on coming back to her — that they hadn’t yet figured out the real meaning behind any of the carved phrases, and that the killer was reaching out, wanting them to understand why he was doing it.

‘Here,’ Agent Williams said, coming up to Agent Fisher’s desk and placing a new steaming cup of coffee on it. ‘This should help a little.’