'Yes.'

'At the same time?'

'Yes.'

'And we're not talking obsessed fan love?'

'No.'

His eyes narrowed further. 'If he's really in love with them, why would he kill them in such a brutal way?'

'I didn't say he was in love with them,' Hunter clarified. 'I said he thinks he's in love with them. But what he's really in love with is their image. Who they represent, not who they are.'

Silence.

Realization came seconds later.

'Sonofabitch! Both of the victims remind him of someone else,' Garcia finally caught on. 'Someone he loved. That's why they look so alike.'

Hunter nodded. 'It's not them he wants. It's who they remind him of.' He watched the convertible BMW pull away. 'The lack of bruising prior to the stitching on both victims has been bothering me from the start. I kept thinking: since he doesn't kidnap them for ransom, there's gotta be a reason why he keeps them instead of killing them straight away, but more importantly, there's gotta be a reason why he never touches them until the last minute. It didn't make any sense. No matter which path I followed, I couldn't see how there'd be no bruising. If the killer was keeping these women to satisfy his sexual needs, there'd be bruising . . . For revenge, there'd be bruising . . . Generalized hate against women, or even brunette painters induced by some past trauma, there'd be bruising . . . If he were an obsessed fan, there'd be bruising . . . Sadistic paranoia, there'd be bruising . . . Pure homicidal mania, there'd be bruising . . . Nothing fitted.'

Garcia raised his eyebrows.

'I heard it first a few days ago, when we were interviewing Patrick Barlett, but I guess it just got filed away in my subconscious.'

'Patrick Barlett?' Garcia frowned. 'Laura Mitchell's ex-fiance?'

Hunter nodded as he watched the traffic flow. A black woman driving a white Peugeot to their right was shaking her head and gesticulating while apparently singing along to something. She noticed Hunter looking at her and smiled, embarrassed. He smiled back before continuing.

'Patrick said that he'd never hurt Laura, no matter what. He loved her too much.'

'Yeah, I remember that.'

'Unfortunately, that day I was more worried about observing Patrick's reactions than anything else. It just escaped me. But it happens more often than you think. It's a spin-off of the combination of two conditions known as transference and projection.'

Garcia frowned.

'Some husbands look for prostitutes that remind them of their own wives,' Hunter explained. 'Some people look for girlfriends or boyfriends that look like an old high-school sweetheart or a teacher, or even their own mothers or fathers.'

Garcia thought back to a childhood school friend who, in fourth grade, had fallen in love with his history teacher. When he was old enough to date, every girlfriend he had was the spitting image of that teacher, including the one he'd gone on to marry years later.

'Anyway,' Hunter moved on, 'it wasn't until a moment ago that the idea of resembling someone paired up with transference and projection came into my head.'

'Shit!' Garcia let out a slow breath through clenched teeth, the confusion finally starting to clear in his mind. 'When he looks at the women he's abducted, his mind sees someone else, because he wants them to be someone else. Someone he was truly in love with. Someone he would never hurt, no matter what. That's why there's no bruising.'

A quick nod from Hunter. 'That's the projection side.'

'But wait a second.' Garcia shook his head. 'He still kills them . . . very brutally. Doesn't that go against this theory?'

'No, it strengthens it. The stronger the transference and projection, the easier it is for the killer to be disappointed. They might have the same looks as the person he wants them to be, but they won't act, or talk, or do anything else in the same way. No matter how much he wants it, they'll never be who he wished they were.'

Garcia thought about it for a beat. 'And as soon as he realizes that, why keep them, right?'

'That's right. But he still can't bring himself to kill them directly. That's why they're still alive when he leaves them. That's why he's not even there when they are supposed to die. He can't bear to see them go. And that's why he created the self-activating trigger mechanism.'

'So he doesn't have to be there.'

'Exactly,' Hunter agreed.

Garcia remained thoughtful. 'So this true love of his, is she dead?'

'Most probably,' Hunter admitted. 'And that might be why he cracked. His mind just can't let go of her.'

Garcia puffed his cheeks out before letting them deflate slowly. 'Do you think she died in the same way his victims died, stitched up? Do you think he killed her as well?'

Hunter stared out the window at a cloudless, baby blue sky, and wished his thoughts were just as clear. 'There's only one way we can find out.'

He reached for his phone.

Sixty-Four.

The Los Angeles branch of the A & E TV network was located in Century City. It occupied fifteen offices on the ninth floor of building two of the famous Twin Century Plaza Towers. It was no coincidence that the buildings resembled the twin towers that were destroyed in 2001 during the terrorist attack in Manhattan's World Trade Center. They'd been designed by the same architect.

The red-haired woman behind the reception counter at the A & E TV network entry lobby was what you'd call striking rather than pretty.

She smiled politely as Hunter and Garcia approached the counter before lifting her index finger to signal that she'd only be a moment.

Seconds later she touched her earpiece and a blinking blue light went off.

'How can I help you, gentlemen?' Her gaze bounced between both detectives and settled on Hunter. Her smile gained an extra twinkle. He explained that they needed to talk to someone about an old documentary their studio had produced. The receptionist glanced at their badges and her demeanor changed. A quick internal call and two minutes later they were being shown into an office at the end of a long corridor. The placard on the door read Bryan Coleman Director of Production.

The man sitting behind the desk smiled as Hunter and Garcia appeared at his door. He too had a hands-free earpiece on. The blue light was blinking. He motioned both detectives inside, stood up and moved to the front of his desk. He was at least two inches taller than Hunter, with close-cropped dark hair and piercing brown eyes set closely together behind horn-rimmed glasses.

Hunter closed the door behind him and waited. The two chairs in front of Coleman's desk were occupied by boxes. Both detectives stood.

'We need to get that redelivered today . . .' Coleman said into the hands-free while nodding at Hunter and Garcia. He listened for only half a second before cutting off whomever he was speaking to. 'Listen, if we don't get it redelivered today, we're gonna get our account transferred to a different company, do you get me?' Another pause. 'Yeah, this afternoon is fine, before three o'clock even better . . . I'll be waiting.' He removed the hands-free from his right ear and threw it on his desk.

'I'm sorry about the mess,' Coleman said, shaking both detectives' hands before clearing the boxes off the two seats. 'We're expanding. We were supposed to be moving premises, but a few months ago the company across the hall from us went bust.' He shrugged indifferently. 'Recession, you know? So we decided to take their offices instead. It's easier, but no less stressful.' He pointed to the phone on his desk. 'Delivery companies are slick little bastards. If you let them, they'll walk all over you.'

Hunter and Garcia nodded politely.

'So?' Coleman clapped his hands together. 'What can I do for you?'

'We're looking for a documentary about West Coast artists that was produced by your network,' Hunter said, taking a seat.

'Do you know the name of this documentary?'

Hunter checked his notebook. 'Yes, it's called Canvas Beauty, The Upcoming Talents from the West Coast.'

Coleman cocked his head back. 'Canvas Beauty?' he said with a surprised chuckle. 'Wow. That was three maybe four years ago.'

'Three,' Hunter confirmed.

'I was in the production team for that. Very low budget stuff.' Coleman took off his glasses and started polishing them with a piece of cloth. 'That documentary was a fluke. A promotional trick. You sure that's the one you want?'

Hunter rested his left elbow on the arm of his chair and his chin on his knuckles. 'What do you mean, a fluke?'

'The only reason it was shot in the first place was because of our regional director at the time,' Coleman explained. 'His daughter was an artist, a painter. She'd been trying to break into the scene for some time without much success. So suddenly a new documentary script found its way to the top of our schedule. You know the drill include a few truly talented upcoming artists, heavily feature his daughter in the middle of it all and hope for the best.'

'Did it work?'

Coleman nodded hesitantly. 'I guess it did its job. She got noticed and I think she's doing OK with her art. That regional director left us a couple of years ago, so I wouldn't really know.'

'What's her name?' Garcia asked. 'The regional director's daughter?'

'Ummm . . .' Coleman started fidgeting with a ballpoint pen. 'Martina,' he remembered. 'That's it, Martina Greene. May I ask why you're interested in that particular documentary?'

'We just wanna have a look at it and find out which other artists were featured,' Hunter replied. 'Were they filmed individually? I mean, on different locations, on different days?'

Another chuckle from Coleman. 'Nope. As I said, it was really low budget. Even our director wouldn't be able to justify spending real money on it. So we crammed the whole thing into one day's shooting. We got all the artists together one afternoon at the . . .' he looked away for a second as if struggling to recall, '. . . Moca Museum in South Grand Avenue.'

'Were they all women?'

Coleman frowned and thought about it for an instant. 'On that particular documentary, yes.'

'And do you know if it was aired again? Maybe recently?'

'I can check, but I wouldn't think so. As I said, it wasn't a very good piece of work.' He pulled himself closer to his computer and typed something into his keyboard.

When the result came back a few seconds later, he repositioned his computer monitor so Hunter and Garcia could have a look. 'Nope, aired once two weeks after it was produced and that was it.'

'Do you have any more recent documentaries or interviews in the same vein as that one?' Garcia asked. 'I mean, featuring Los Angeles female painters?'

A look of interest came over Coleman's face. 'Anyone in particular?'

'If you could just show us whatever you have, we'd be very grateful,' Hunter was quick to answer. He didn't want Coleman's curiosity piqued further.

Too late. Once a reporter, always a reporter.

Coleman twitched in his chair before returning to his computer. 'When you say "more recent", how recent do you mean?'

'A year, maybe two.'

This time the search took a little longer.

'OK, in the past two years we've produced three programs on painters,' Coleman said, 'but they weren't exclusively on Los Angeles or Californian artists.'

Garcia frowned. 'That's it, three programs in two years?'

'Very few people are interested in the art of painting, or in the life of modern painters,' Coleman explained, sitting back in his chair. 'We live in a capitalist world where money rules, Detective, and to us viewing numbers is what translates into money advertising time. If we air a documentary on hip-hop, rap, or whatever trendy new singer is storming the charts, our viewing numbers hit the roof. We air one on painters or any less popular branch of the arts, that number drops to less than a third, even during prime time. Get the picture?'

'Could we get copies of all three,' Hunter said, 'together with the Canvas Beauty one?'

'Of course.'

'We'll also need a copy of the work log for the Canvas Beauty documentary. Names of everyone who worked on it cameraman, make-up artists, production and editing team . . . everyone.'

'No problem. I'll put you in touch with Tom, our archives guy. He'll get you whatever you need.'

As Hunter closed the door behind him, Coleman reached for the phone and dialed the private number of a very good friend of his: Donald Robbins, the lead crime reporter at the LA Times.

Sixty-Five.

The CCTV files from Mr. Wang's convenience store had finished uncompressing. He wasn't sure what he was hoping to find from the footage, but the Missing Persons investigator's assumption that Kelly Jensen had been abducted from Santa Monica, either while parking her car, or walking from it to her apartment building didn't sit right. Even in the dead of night, San Vicente Boulevard was way too busy. Cars drove by every ten seconds or so. Someone could look out the window at any time. It was just too risky. A risk that her killer could've easily avoided by taking Kelly from her much quieter studio in Culver City. And the small parking lot at the back provided a perfect location for an abduction. It was secluded and badly lit. If Hunter were the one planning to kidnap Kelly, that's where he'd have done it from.

Hunter checked his watch. It was late. Before leaving the office, he quickly read through the email he'd received from Jenkins, a good friend from the Records and Identification Division. It contained all the information he'd requested about Whitney Myers and her time with the force, but Hunter had found it hard to concentrate. The punishing headache that had been pounding his brain for the past two hours was threatening to intensify. He needed food. But the cupboards and the fridge back in his place hadn't seen supplies in days. Besides, the only thing he knew how to cook well was popcorn, and he'd already had his share of it this month. He decided to go for something a little healthier. He printed out the contents of the attachment to Jenkins' email, grabbed the laptop and headed for his car.

Uncle Kelome's, a small Hawaiian restaurant in Baldwin Hills, served the best Aloha-style shrimp in the whole of Los Angeles. Hunter loved the food and the relaxed atmosphere. And right now there was nothing that he needed more than to relax, even if only for a few minutes while having his favorite, Volcano Shrimp Platter. The fact that their bar also kept a respectful stock of single malt Scotch was a welcome bonus.

Hunter placed his order at the counter and took a table at the far end of the dining room, hidden away from the often noisy bar. He sat down and buried his head in his hands. His headache was so intense it felt like his brain was about to burst inside his head.

A waitress brought him his drink and placed it on the table in front of him.

'Thank you,' he said without looking up.

'Not a problem, but if you'd like those files I promised you, I'm gonna need my ID back.'

Hunter lifted his head too quickly, and for a fraction of a second his vision was filled with blurry dots. His eyes quickly refocused on Whitney Myers' face.

She smiled.

Hunter didn't.

'Can I sit down?' she asked, already pulling out the chair opposite him.

Despite himself, Hunter appraised Myers. She looked different tonight. Her hair was loose, falling over her shoulders. She was wearing a dark blue pencil skirt suit. The top button on her blazer was undone, showing a silk white blouse underneath. Her make-up was so light it was almost invisible, but it skillfully accentuated her features. Hunter noticed that the group of guys sitting at the table to his right had all turned to look at her; two of them were almost drooling. Hunter's eyes moved from Myers to the glass in front of him and then back to her.