Brindle and Doctor Hove's eyes widened in amazement and confusion, and they both craned their necks a little closer.

Hunter squinted, trying to understand what he was looking at.

Captain Blake's jaw dropped and her mouth went instantly dry, but she was the only one who managed to ask the question in everyone's mind.

'In the name of God, what . . . the hell . . . is that . . . inside her . . . ?'

Forty-Four.

Hunter knew that with everything his brain was trying to process, sleep just wouldn't come. And he'd have to wait until morning for any sort of answer. Forensics were still processing the basement room in the old preschool, though he didn't hold out any great hopes about what they'd find. Doctor Hove would expedite the body's autopsy, but that'd only be at first light.

He collected some files from his office before making his way back to his place and then onto Jay's Rock Bar, a joint just two blocks away from his apartment. It was one of his favorite drinking spots. Great Scotch, fantastic rock music and friendly staff. He ordered a double dose of Glenturett 1997 with a single cube of ice and sat at a small table towards the back.

Hunter sipped his drink slowly for a minute, allowing its strong flavor to take over his palate. In front of him, spread out on the table, were all the photographs they'd received from Missing Persons. He scanned through them carefully, and despite the disfigurement to the new victim's face caused by the rough stitches, he knew she wasn't among them.

He needed to search the MPU database again, go back four, maybe five weeks, but as before, with the stitches and swelling, the face recognition software wouldn't work. Doing it manually again would take too long. Hunter would have to wait until the end of the autopsy and use the new face close-ups once the stitches have been removed from the victim's mouth.

He finished his drink and debated if he should have another one. His eyes rested on the wall closest to him and all its paintings and decorations. He observed them for a moment. That's when a new thought entered his mind.

'It can't be . . .' he whispered as he shook his head.

Hunter gathered all his files together and rushed back to his apartment.

Sitting at the table in his living room, he fired up his computer and accessed the MPU database. He knew the criteria he used for the new search would reduce the output result considerably. He wasn't expecting any more than three, maybe five matches.

He was wrong.

Seconds later the screen flickered and the displayed table showed that his search had produced a single match. Hunter double-clicked it and waited for the file to upload.

As the new photograph materialized on his screen, Hunter let out a heavy breath.

Forty-Five.

Special autopsy room one was located down a different corridor, separate from all the other chambers. It was usually used for postmortem examinations of bodies that could still pose some sort of contamination threat highly contagious viral diseases, exposure to radioactive materials and so on. The room, with its own cold storage facility and separate database system, was sometimes used during high-profile serial killer cases, like the Crucifix Killer investigation a few years ago a security precaution to better contain sensitive information.

The image they got from the portable tactical X-ray unit in the basement of the disused preschool in Glassell Park didn't reveal much, but whatever it was that the killer had placed inside his second victim, it sure as hell wasn't a bomb, Doctor Hove had no doubt of that. The picture showed a solid, triangular shape with a rounded base. Something that resembled a large but very thin slice of pizza. She'd never seen anything like it, and the only way she could find out any more about it was by extracting it from the body.

Doctor Hove had had almost no sleep, and turned up at the LACDC even before the crack of dawn. She just wanted to get on with things. At that time in the morning she had to perform the autopsy of the new victim on her own, no assistant. It would take longer than usual.

It was just past 7:00 a.m. when Doctor Hove called Hunter's cell.

During the short trip from Hunter's apartment to the morgue, he heard a report of shots fired in Boyle Heights and another of an armed robbery in progress in Silver Lake through the police radio. He drove past three light-flashing, siren-wailing police cars and two ambulances. The day had barely started. How could such an incredible city be so saturated with insanity?

The main coroners building at the LACDC was an intriguing piece of architecture with hints of Renaissance styling. Terracotta bricks and light gray lintels gave it an Oxford college look. Its business hours were the same as any city office Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Except under special request, no autopsies were ever carried out in the evenings or weekends. This was certainly one of those.

Hunter had called Garcia from the car and he wasn't surprised to find him already waiting in the empty parking lot.

'You got here quick,' Hunter said, stepping out of his old Buick.

'I got no sleep. I was waiting for this call.'

Hunter looked at him suspiciously. 'How about Anna?'

Garcia bobbed his head to one side. 'She got no sleep either. She insisted on staying up with me. She said that at least we could spend a few hours together since we haven't had much time for each other lately. But you know how perceptive she is. She's already picked up that the case we're working on isn't just a regular one. She never says anything, but you can see the worry in her face.'

Hunter nodded understandingly. He was very fond of Anna. She was the unseen strength behind his partner. Most cops' wives would never understand or stick by their husbands like Anna did. Divorce numbers amongst the police in Los Angeles were around 70 per cent. But Hunter could never see that happening to Anna and Garcia. They were made for each other.

On the other hand, Hunter himself had never been married. The few relationships he'd had over the years had never really worked out. They'd always start well. But the pressures and commitments imposed by his job had a way of taking their toll on most love stories.

Hunter paused and turned as he heard the sound of another car entering the lot.

Captain Blake parked her silver metallic Dodge Challenger next to Garcia's Honda Civic.

'I wanna see this for myself,' she explained as she closed the door and pressed a button on her key. The car's headlights flicked twice followed by a muffled click. 'I want to get a better idea of who the hell we're dealing with here. What kind of freak has claimed the lives of four people in my city so far.'

A silent and haggard-looking Doctor Hove let them into the building. With most of its lights turned off, and without the hustle and bustle of people, orderlies, and pathologists moving around, the place looked and felt like a horror movie mausoleum. The cold, antiseptic odor that was all too familiar to them seemed stronger this early in the morning. The underlying smell of death and decomposition followed their every step, scratching the inside of their nostrils. Garcia fought the shiver that threatened to run up his spine as they walked past the empty reception area and turned into a desolate hallway. No matter how many times he and Hunter had walked those corridors, he'd never get used to the empty feeling that took over him every time.

'There's no point in explaining it until you see it for yourselves,' Doctor Hove said, punching the code into the metal keypad by the door to the special autopsy room. 'And if you thought the bomb left inside the first victim was crazy, wait until you see this.'

Forty-Six.

The room was large and bright, lit by two rows of florescent lights that ran the length of the ceiling. Two steel tables dominated the main floor space, one fixed, one wheeled.

They stepped through the door and were immediately hit by a blast of cold air and an immense feeling of sadness that seemed to chill their bones. The brunette woman's body was lying uncovered on the fixed table. The stitches to her mouth and body had been removed, now substituted by new ones that outlined the Y incision. In a strange way she looked peaceful. The immeasurable suffering that was etched on her face just a few hours ago seemed to have vanished, as if she was grateful to someone for removing those terrible stitches from her body.

They all put on latex gloves and approached the table in silence. Doctor Hove buttoned up her white lab coat and moved around to the other side of the body.

Hunter stared at the woman's face for a long time. There was little doubt in his mind.

'I think her name is Kelly Jensen,' he said quietly, retrieving a black-and-white printout from the folder he'd brought with him and handing it to the doctor.

Captain Blake and Garcia craned their necks across the table. Doctor Hove had a good look at it before holding it close to the woman's face. Without the stitches to her lips, and washed of all that blood, the resemblance was undeniable.

The doctor nodded in agreement. 'On looks alone I'd say you're right, Robert.'

'Her file says that when she was a teenager she tripped and fell through a glass window in school,' Hunter continued, reading from a file sheet. 'Two large shards pierced the back of her left shoulder leaving a V-shaped scar. Her right elbow was also cut and she should have a semicircular scar just below the joint.'

Doctor Hove lifted her right arm and they all bent over to take a look at her elbow. An old and faint semicircular scar marked the skin a couple of centimeters below the joint. Very quickly they all repositioned themselves around the head of the table. The doctor didn't have to lift her upper body far, just a few inches was all that was needed. On the back of her left shoulder, scar tissue marked by the evidence of old stitches formed a sideways V-shape.

'I don't think there's much doubt now, is everyone agreed?' Doctor Hove lowered the victim body back down.

'Who is she?' the captain asked.

'The information I have at the moment isn't much, just what was passed to Missing Persons. Thirty years old from Great Falls in Montana. She was reported missing twenty-one days ago.' Hunter paused to clear his throat. 'Now here comes the punch. The person who reported her as missing was her agent.'

'Agent?' Garcia asked.

Hunter nodded. 'Kelly Jensen was a painter.'

Forty-Seven.

Everyone held their breaths. Captain Blake was the first to slash the silence.

'How old was the first victim?'

'Laura Mitchell was thirty,' Garcia replied.

'And when did she go missing?'

Garcia looked at Hunter.

'She was reported missing fifteen days ago,' he replied.

Captain Blake closed her eyes for an instant. 'Fantastic,' she said, 'so we're dealing with some psycho killer who's after pretty, brunette, 30-year-old painters, and has a hard-on for stitching their bodies shut?'

Hunter didn't reply.

'Are there any more brunette 30-year-old painters who are missing?'

'I searched all the way back to ten weeks, Captain, Laura Mitchell and Kelly Jensen were the only two.'

The captain's gaze returned to the body on the table. 'Well, that's something I guess.' She turned to face Hunter and Garcia. 'We'll talk about this back at PC. What do we have here, Doc?' she asked Doctor Hove.

The doctor stepped a little closer to the autopsy table.

'Well, just like the first victim, the stitches the killer applied to his second one were amateurish, to say the least.' The doctor pointed to Kelly Jensen's mouth. 'Actually, they were more like knots than anything else. Ten in total, five to each body part.'

'Same as the first one,' Hunter confirmed.

Doctor Hove nodded.

'So you're saying we shouldn't be looking for anyone with medical knowledge?' the captain asked.

'If he has any, he didn't show it here. The thread used is also very thick. What in medical suture we call a number six or seven. Thread sizes are identified by the United States Pharmacopeia,' she explained. 'Seven is the thickest. In comparison, a size four thread is roughly the diameter of a tennis racquet string. The thread used here will be going to the lab for proper analysis today, but there's no doubt he used some sort of nylon.' Doctor Hove turned and retrieved a folder from behind her. 'Her organs were healthy, but dehydrated. They also showed symptoms of mild malnutrition.'

The captain shifted on her feet. 'The killer starved her?'

'Possibly, but not for long. The symptoms are consistent with one, maybe two days of starvation at the most. She was deprived of food and water either on the day or the day before she died.' She lifted her right hand in a wait gesture. 'Before any of you raise this point, the stitches to her mouth were brand new, probably inflicted just hours before she died. That wasn't the reason why she'd had no food or water.'

'Any guesses?' Captain Blake asked as her eyebrows arched.

Doctor Hove tucked her dark hair behind her ears. 'There could be any number of reasons. Some sort of ritual on the killer's part, the victim herself refusing to eat as an act of defiance or because she felt sick, or angry, or anything . . .' She shrugged almost imperceptibly.

'Did you find any sort of marks at all on her body, Doc?' Hunter took over.

The doctor's face morphed as if Hunter had asked the million-dollar question.

'Now here is where it starts to get interesting.' She took a step to her right and allowed her eyes to refocus on Kelly Jensen's ghostly white face. 'I couldn't find a single scratch on her.'

Captain Blake looked puzzled. 'Nothing?'

'Nothing,' Doctor Hove confirmed. 'As we said earlier, her wrists and ankles are totally free from marks and abrasions. We know she wasn't restrained to that table in the kitchen basement of the preschool. But I can't find anything that suggests she was restrained at all during the time she was held captive either.' The doctor paused. 'My examination of the inside of her mouth and the skin around it also showed no evidence that she was gagged.'

'Which means the killer wasn't concerned with the victim making any sort of noise,' Garcia noted.

Doctor Hove nodded. 'She was either drugged up to her eyeballs, or locked inside a very secure and soundproofed room, or both. Toxicology results will take a few days.'

'Needle marks?' Hunter asked.

'Not even a little nick. Except for the tiny scrapes to her palms and knees, which I'm pretty sure she got when she fell to the floor, she doesn't have a scratch on her. Take away the stitches, and there's not a shred of evidence the killer ever touched her.'

Everyone went silent for a moment.

Hunter thought back to how long he'd spent going over every inch of the crime-scene pictures of Laura Mitchell. Just like Kelly Jensen, she didn't have a scrape on her.

Hunter's attention shifted to Kelly's hands and his brow furrowed. Every one of her nails had been filed, witch-style. As pointy and as sharp as possible.

'Did you find anything under her nails, Doc? Why are they so . . . claw-like?'

'Good spot, Robert,' the doctor agreed. 'And the answer is I'm not sure why. But I did find something under them, yes some sort of dark copper-colored dust. It could be clay or brick dust, maybe even dry dirt. Again, we'll need to wait for the lab results to be sure.'

Hunter bent down and examined Jensen's hands more closely.

'I'll put an urgent tag with anything related to this case that gets sent to the lab,' the doctor reassured them. 'Hopefully we'll start getting results in a day or two. But unfortunately, due to the severity of her internal injuries and the amount of blood that was discharged, we won't be able to establish with any certainty if she was raped or not. If there was any trace of it, it's been washed away by her own blood.'