Ryan had led the unit before the stabbing attack that had put him in acoma for weeks and left him incapacitated for months after that. Now CaptainRoy Decker, his boss and the man in charge of HSS, had tasked Ryan with findingcases that fit the profile of the unit, which was in danger of being shut down.
“You mentioned the case vaguely,” she said with the slightest hint ofan edge. “But that’s about all I know. You’ve been keeping all the detailsclose to the vest.”
He picked up on her tone.
“I didn’t tell you much because I knew that if I did, you’d get asobsessed as me,” he said apologetically, before tweaking her. “I didn’t want todrag you down from your ivory tower.”
That was a reference to Jessie’s work as an instructor at UCLA, whereshe’d been teaching criminal profiling for a semester now. Other than anoccasional consulting gig of her own for the department, she’d spent the lastsix months leading a fairly stable, obsession-free lifestyle. Of course, one ofthose consulting gigs was just four weeks ago.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you all the way down there among therabble,” she teased back. “Do you want to give me a hard time or do you want totell me what you’re so clearly dying to share?”
He smiled at her taunt. Jessie knew he loved it when she gave him crapand she loved to see the broad grin on his face. After worrying that he mightnot survive at all, and then watching him endure multiple painful, oftendisheartening months of trying to relearn basic functions like tying his shoesand holding a fork, he was finally starting to look more like his old selfagain.
Once a rock-hard, six-foot, 200-pound specimen, he’d lost over aquarter of his body weight and most of his strength after the attack. Now hewas back up near 180 pounds. His color had returned, as had his easy, warmsmile. He’d had his black hair cut short again and his kind, brown eyes seemedmore alert and focused every day. He was almost back to resembling thedetective she’d been so taken with when he came to speak at her class while shewas working on her master’s. The simple sight of him reviewing paperwork on apending case, doing something she feared he might never be able again, warmedher heart.
“I want to tell you,” he admitted.
“Then go ahead,” she said.
“I found another, older case that makes me think there might be apattern.”
“Back up,” she said. “You’ve been so cagey that I don’t have enough detailsabout the first case to know what might constitute a pattern.”
“Right,” he said, remembering how little he’d told her. “So the originalcase that caught my eye was from last month and involved a twenty-six-year-old femalenamed Jenavieve Holt. She had portions of her skin sliced off in what appearedto be a methodical manner. Also, it looks like she was awake the whole time.”
As he spoke, something in the back of Jessie’s brain lit up, like a dimbulb slowly flickering to life. She said nothing as he continued.
“It seemed very meticulous,” Ryan said, “as if the killer had plannedthe thing well in advance and taken his time. Even as a stand-alone murder, itwas troubling. But it felt like it was conducted with such confidence andpatience that I doubted it was the first time the killer had done somethinglike this.”
“Good instinct,” Jessie said, waiting to see where he would go withthis.
“So I started looking through other recent cases and found one that hadfallen through the cracks. About four months ago, a young guy named Hartung wasfound in a similar situation—skin cut off in long pieces, also seemingly whilehe was still awake.”
“Why did it fall through the cracks?” Jessie asked.
“Because on the way to the morgue, the driver got in an accident andthe van caught on fire. By the time they got Hartung’s body, it was burned to acrisp. The autopsy was useless. Worse, the accident obscured the horror of thekilling. There was an internal investigation. It turned out the driver had beendrinking. That whole mess took precedence and the file got buried under morepressing ones, so the final medical examiner’s report, complete with theoriginal crime scene photos, wasn’t filed until the day before yesterday. I gotit a few hours ago. And it looks just like the Holt case. In both instances, itappears that the killer used something like an X-Acto knife.”
The dim bulb of familiarity in Jessie’s head suddenly started blazing.She heard herself gasp slightly. Ryan looked up at her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I have to show you something,” she said, getting up and leading himdown the hall to her study.
It hadn’t always been hers. Neither had the house. This used to be thehome of Garland Moses, the most celebrated criminal profiler on the West Coast forover a quarter century and Jessie’s personal mentor.
He had willed the house to her upon his death, which occurred at thehands of her ex-husband, Kyle Voss. Kyle was also responsible for stabbing Ryanin the chest. Ryan, along with Jessie and Hannah, had barely survived thatencounter. Kyle did not.
They arrived at the door to the study and Jessie used the handprintverification pad to unlock it. Once inside, Jessie moved over to the safehidden in the wall behind the large, framed print of the Bogart movie TheBig Sleep. She pulled out a thick file and dropped it on the desk betweenthem.
Merely looking at it made her uneasy. Suddenly whatever remaining sleepinessshe’d felt was gone. That file held a record of evil even she had rarely seenand just touching it made her want to shower.
“This material was here when I moved in,” she said. “It’s Garland’s.You won’t be shocked to learn that he held onto a few files for cases he wasnever able to solve. Some are from his days as an FBI profiler. A few are fromhis time consulting for LAPD after he was technically retired. Most
