Katia suddenly realized that the voice at the other end of the line wasn’t her father’s. ‘Who is this?’
‘Not your daddy.’
‘Phillip, is that you?’
Phillip Stein was the new conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Katia’s latest affair. They’d been seeing each other for four months, but three days before the end of the tour they’d gotten into a heated argument. Phillip had fallen head over heels for Katia, and wanted her to move in with him. Katia liked Phillip and she had enjoyed their affair, but certainly not with the same intensity as he did. She wasn’t ready for that type of commitment, not now. She had hinted at the idea that maybe they should take a few days off from seeing each other — just to see how things panned out. Phillip hadn’t taken the suggestion well, throwing a tantrum and conducting the worst concerto of his career that night. They hadn’t spoken since.
‘Phillip? Who’s Phillip? Is that your boyfriend?’ the voice asked.
Katia shivered.
‘Who is this?’ she asked again, firmer this time.
Silence.
An uncomfortable sensation made the hairs on the back of Katia’s neck stand on end. ‘Look, I think you dialed the wrong number.’
‘I don’t think so.’ The man chuckled. ‘I’ve been dialing this number every day for the past two months.’
Katia breathed out, relieved. ‘See, now I’m sure you’ve got the wrong number. I’ve been away for a little while. I actually just got back.’
There was a pause.
‘It’s no big deal, it happens,’ Katia said kindly. ‘Look, I’m gonna put the phone down so you can redial.’
‘Don’t put the phone down,’ the man said calmly. ‘I haven’t dialed the wrong number. Have you checked your answering machine yet, Katia?’
The only phone in Katia’s apartment with an answering machine was the one at the far end of the worktop in the kitchen. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and quickly made her way towards it. She hadn’t noticed the blinking red light until then. Sixty messages.
Katia gasped. ‘Who are you? How did you get this number?’
Another chuckle. ‘I’m. .’ there was a click on the line again, ‘. . a fan, I guess.’
‘A fan?’
‘A fan with resources. The kind of resources that make information very easy to come by.’
‘Information?’
‘I know you are a fantastic musician. You love your Lorenzo Guadagnini violin more than anything in this world. You live in a penthouse apartment in West Hollywood. You’re allergic to peanuts. Your favorite composer is Tchaikovsky and you love driving that torch red, convertible Mustang of yours.’ He paused. ‘And you’re having lunch with your father tomorrow at one o’clock at Mastro’s Steak House in Beverly Hills. Your favorite color is pink, just like the bathrobe you’re wearing now, and you were just about to open a bottle of white wine.’
Katia froze.
‘So how dedicated a fan am I, Katia?’
Instinctively, Katia’s eyes shot towards her kitchen window, but she knew she was too high up for anyone in one of the neighboring buildings to be able to spy on her.
‘Oh, I’m not peeping on you through the window,’ the man said with a sneer.
The light in the kitchen went out and the next voice Katia heard didn’t come from her phone.
‘I’m standing right behind you.’
Ten
On any given night Hunter’s insomnia would rob him of at least four hours of sleep. Last night, it had kept him awake for almost six.
It was after cancer took his mother from him when he was just seven years old that his sleeping problems started. Alone in his room, missing her, he would lie awake at night, too sad to fall asleep, too scared to close his eyes, too proud to cry. Hunter grew up as an only child in an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His father made the decision never to remarry, and even with two jobs, he struggled to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.
To banish the bad dreams, Hunter kept his mind occupied in a different way — he read ferociously, devouring books as if they empowered him.
Hunter had always been different. Even as a child, his brain seemed to work through problems faster than anyone else’s. At the age of twelve, after a battery of exams and tests suggested by the principal of his school in Compton, he was accepted into the Mirman School for the Gifted on Mulholland Drive as an eighth-grader.
But even a special school’s curriculum wasn’t enough to slow his progress down.
By the age of fifteen, Hunter had glided through Mirman, condensing four years of high school into two, and amazing all of his teachers. With recommendations from everyone, he was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford on its Psychology School Program.
In college, his advancement was just as impressive, and Hunter received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology at the age of twenty-three. And that was when his world was shattered for a second time. His father, who at the time was working as a security guard for a branch of the Bank of America in downtown Los Angeles, was shot dead during a robbery gone wrong. Hunter’s nightmares and insomnia came back then — even more forcefully, and they hadn’t left him since.
Hunter stood by the window in his living room, staring at a distant nothing. His eyes felt gritty and the headache that had started at the rear of his skull was quickly spreading. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t shake the images of the woman’s face from his mind. Her eyes open in horror, her lips swollen and sealed together. Did she wake up alone in that butcher’s shop and try to scream? Was that why the thread had dug so deep into the flesh around her lips? Did she claw at her mouth in desperate panic? Was she awake when the killer placed a bomb inside her before sewing her shut? The questions were coming at him like tidal waves.
Hunter blinked and the woman’s face was substituted by Doctor Winston’s and the video images they’d retrieved from the morgue — his eyes wide in shock as he finally understood what he was holding in his hand, as he finally realized that death had caught up with him, and there was nothing he could do. Hunter closed his eyes. His friend was gone, and he had no clue why.
A distant police siren brought Hunter out of his daze and he shivered with anger. What he saw on the ceiling of the butcher’s shop last night changed everything. The bomb was meant for no one else but the woman who was left there. Doctor Winston, his friend, someone he considered family, had died for no reason — a tragic mistake.
Hunter felt a pain start in his right forearm. Only then did he realize he’d been clutching his fist so tight blood couldn’t find its way to his arm. He swore to himself that whatever happened, he’d make this killer pay for what he’d done.
Eleven
Due to the sensitivity of Hunter’s investigation, the entire operation was moved from the third to the fifth floor of Parker Center, LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division HQ in North Los Angeles Street. The new room was spacious enough for two detectives, but with only a small window on the south wall it felt claustrophobic. When Hunter arrived, Garcia was studying the crime-scene photographs that had been placed on a large magnetic board
