Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Sheldon Family Limited Partnership 2018

Cover photograph © Robert Jones/Arcangel Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (skyscrapers)

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008229634

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008229665

Version: 2020-01-23

Dedication

For Alice, with love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Part Two

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Sidney Sheldon

Also by Tilly Bagshawe

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

‘No! Please no! I can’t …’

The old man’s eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that bound him. He imagined the spiral metal bit grinding into his flesh, splintering his bones like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden beam.

As they crucified him.

Surely they knew he was good for the money? He would give them what they wanted – everything they wanted! He was no good to them dead.

How long had he been in the warehouse now? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he’d lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screaming burns on his skin, thin and creased with age like crepe paper. The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips. The tiny razor cuts to his genitals. They had tortured and humiliated him in every sadistic way imaginable, while the young woman stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone. Hateful bitch. He despised her most of all, more even than his tormentors.

They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, some sort of grand finale with the drill. Or at least he did. Their boss. The ringmaster at this circus of terror.

The man with the brown eyes.

The devil incarnate.

‘Please!’

The old man’s sobs turned to screams as his torturers switched on the drill, passing it laughingly between them as they revved it louder and louder.

‘I’ll do anything! Oh God, no!’ A warm river of liquid excrement exploded out of his bowels and streamed down his shaking legs.

The man with the brown eyes smiled.

‘What’s that you say?’ he taunted, cupping a manicured hand to his ear. ‘I’m sorry, my friend, with the sound of that drill I can’t hear you.’

He looked on as his men did his bidding, aroused as always by the pleading and the shrieks and the blood, and finally by the silence, once the show was over. Aroused too by the young woman dutifully filming it all for his pleasure, as he’d commanded her to do. He preferred killing women. But ending a life, any life, was a high like no other. The ultimate expression of power.

Once, the battered old man hanging lifelessly from the beam in front of him had been rich and powerful. More powerful than him. Or so he’d thought.

But look at him now. Like a carcass in an abattoir.

‘Should we cut him down, boss?’ one of the goons asked his master.

‘No.’ The man with the brown eyes stepped forward. ‘Leave him there.’ Pulling a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket, he stuffed them violently into the corpse’s mouth.

The stupid old man had never understood.

It was never about the money …

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
DR NIKKI ROBERTS
Brentwood, Los Angeles.
May 12, 11 p.m.

It never rains in Los Angeles in May, so the light mist falling on my bare arms is a surprise. The last surprise I will have on this earth. But that’s OK. I’ve come to hate surprises.

Our yard looks beautiful, lush and green. I am standing under the magnolia tree Doug planted in the spring, just a month before his accident. Accident. I have to stop using that word. I know now that my husband’s death was no random act of fate. The night that Doug crashed on the 405, burned alive in his beloved Tesla: that was the beginning.

Not that I knew it at the time. I didn’t know anything back then.

The gun in my hand, a 9mm Luger, feels small and harmless, like a toy. The man who sold it to me called it ‘a lovely gun for a woman’, as if I were buying earrings or a silk scarf. I tried to take my own life once before, right after Doug’s … after he died. I took pills, more than enough, but I was unlucky. My housekeeper, Rita, found me and called 911. Not this time. This time my little toy gun will get the job done.

I’m not afraid of death. Never have been, although as a psychologist I’ve treated countless patients who are. It’s a control thing, ultimately. Fear of the unknown. The way I see it, what I’m about to do is the ultimate act of control. Leaving the world on your own terms is a luxury.

Not everybody gets that chance.

Too many people have died because of me. Tonight another kind, decent man lost his life. A man I cared about. A man who cared about me.

This can’t go on. I have to end it.

The rain is getting heavier. I wipe my hand on my jeans to dry it and make my grip less slippery. No mistakes this time. I raise the gun to my temple and turn around, looking back at the house that Doug and I built together. A white clapboard, East Coast ‘estate’, beautifully lit, with a romantic balcony off the master suite that has views all the way to the ocean. Our dream home. Back when we still had dreams. Before there were nothing but nightmares.

I close my eyes and see their faces, one by one, like patterns on a kaleidoscope.

The ones I loved: Doug. Anne.

The ones I could have loved. Lou. We’ll never know what might have been.

The ones I let down: Lisa. Trey. Derek. I’m so very sorry.

My last thought is for the ones I hated.

You know who you are. May you rot in hell.

I start to cry. I know this is wrong. I wish there were another way.

But wishing never fixed anything.

CHAPTER TWO
CHARLOTTE
Ten years earlier …

Charlotte Clancy felt the warm summer breeze caress her skin and with it a tingle of excitement. It was part sexual excitement, part happiness, and part the unfamiliar thrill of doing something illicit. Something naughty. Dangerous, even.

Charlotte wasn’t usually the naughty type. At eighteen years old she’d always been a straight-A student at her San Diego high school, where the most trouble she’d ever gotten into was for allowing her girlfriend to crib her Social Studies paper on early Mexican civilizations. Charlotte just loved Mexico – the history, the language, the food. She’d literally had to beg and plead with her parents to allow her to work the summer in Mexico City as an au pair.

‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ her dad said skeptically. Tucker Clancy was a firefighter and a deacon at the local Episcopal church, about as upstanding and conservative a family man as you could hope to find. ‘You hear stories. People get kidnapped down there. And the drug gangs … you read about beheadings and God knows what other terrible things.’

‘That’s true, Dad,’ Charlotte countered. ‘But those things are only happening in certain parts of Mexico. Not where I wanna go. It’s El Salvador and Colombia where you really have to be careful. And this agency, American Au Pairs International, AAPI – they have an amazing safety reputation. Like, zero incidents in twelve years working down there.’

Tucker Clancy listened with pride to his only daughter’s negotiating skills. One thing you could say for Charlie: she never did anything half-assed. As usual she had all the facts and figures at her fingertips. And she was a very sensible girl.

In the end though, it was Charlotte’s mother, Mary, who had tipped the scales in her favor.

‘I’m nervous too, honey,’ Mary told Tucker over dinner at the Steak ’n’ Shake one Friday night. ‘But I don’t think we should let our fears hold Charlie back. She’ll be at college in the fall, living on her own, making all these decisions for herself. She needs some independence.’

‘College is in Ohio,’ Charlotte’s dad countered. ‘They don’t cut people’s heads off in Ohio.’

Mary frowned. ‘Well, according to Charlie, they don’t in Mexico City either. And the lady at the au pair agency was super-reassuring. This family they’ve got lined up for her sound wonderful. The parents are lawyers, they live on this phenomenal estate … Come on, Tucker. Let the girl live a little.’

That conversation had been three months ago. Charlotte had been in Mexico for two months now, and boy, had she lived a lot. She’d smoked her first joint, got drunk for the first time, cheated on her boyfriend Todd for the first time and (she could hardly believe it, even when she said it to herself) fallen in love with a married man.

It wasn’t the dad of the family she was working for, the Encerritos. That would be cheap and tacky, and besides, Charlotte really liked Señora Encerrito, her boss, and would never do that to her. Not that what she was doing was OK. She knew it was wrong to have an affair. In fact, it was worse than wrong. It was a sin, a mortal sin. Charlotte came from a solid ‘church’ family, and there wasn’t much wiggle room when it came to morals, especially sexual morals. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, either. She cared plenty, and she felt guilty and all of that. But none of that mattered. Not when he was there. When he walked into a room, when he looked at Charlotte, when he said her name, even when she heard his voice on the telephone, everything else went out the window. Her caution, her values, her fear, her regrets. Poof. Gone. And when he took her to bed and made love to her? Good God. There were no words to describe the bliss, the absolute ecstasy. Charlotte had had sex with Todd hundreds of times, but never like this. Never, in Charlotte Clancy’s wildest imaginings, had she believed sex could be this wonderful. So she wasn’t going to heaven? Big deal. She had heaven right here and his name was … Shhhh. She giggled to herself. She mustn’t say his name out loud. Not ever. Not to anyone.

‘What we have is a secret, cara,’ he told her, every time they made love. ‘No one must ever know. You understand?’

Charlotte did understand. He was married, and much, much older, and an important man. Their affair had to be discreet. What she didn’t understand was all his other secrets. The mysterious ‘meetings’ he would disappear off to in the middle of the night. The attaché cases stuffed full of US dollars that she’d seen him hand over to the local chief of police in one of the fancy hotels in town.

‘You can tell me, you know,’ she would whisper coquettishly in his ear in bed. ‘I can keep a secret. I just … I want to know everything about you. I want to be part of your life as much as I can. I love you so much!’

He always smiled, and kissed her, and assured her he loved her too and that he found her little outbursts ‘adorable – like you’. But he never told her anything. ‘It’s for your own safety,’ he would say, throwing in a thrilling element of danger to the already exciting situation.

In short, Charlotte Clancy was having the time of her life.

And tonight was going to be even better, the best yet.

Following the map he’d given her – so romantic! – she got out of her car and weaved her way on foot through the maize fields and down towards the river.

She’d taken a big risk a few nights ago, following him in the little Nissan the Encerritos had provided for her use, headlamps off so as not to be seen, only a few hundred yards behind him. It was hard to see along the bumpy roads, no more than tracks really, that he turned on to once they’d left the city. She’d started to panic, wondering how she would ever get back if somehow she lost him, but at that moment the track gave way to a hidden clearing in the trees and he came to a halt. She could make out rows of semicircular sheds, like giant pipes cut in half; inside, men were working at tables, their stations illuminated by old-fashioned oil lamps that made each shed glow softly in the moonlight. Charlotte watched as her lover got out of his car and moved from shed to shed, overseeing the work. It was all quite fascinating, but Charlotte couldn’t see what the men were actually doing from where she was parked. With a boldness she didn’t know she possessed till that moment, she’d got out of her car and walked over towards the shed where he was. She’d got to within about ten yards of the door when two men armed with machine guns leapt out in front of her.

Charlotte screamed so loudly they could probably hear it back in the city. ‘Don’t shoot! Please!’

Her lover turned around, a look of shock and anger on his face. But it quickly softened to a smile, and then a laugh.

‘Cara!’ he chuckled indulgently. ‘You followed me?’

‘I … I wanted to know,’ stammered Charlotte, her long legs still shaking involuntarily at the sight of the guns. ‘You wouldn’t tell me anything.’

He gestured for the men to let her pass, opening his arms wide and pulling her into a tight hug. ‘I never would have thought you had it in you,’ he grinned, ruffling Charlotte’s hair as if she were a disobedient but adorable puppy. ‘You’re a brave little thing, aren’t you, hm? I see I underestimated you.’

Charlotte swelled with pride and relief. He wasn’t angry. He was pleased! She’d been right to take the risk, right to show him she was more than some silly little girl, some au pair he was having a summer fling with.

‘Come.’ He took her hand. ‘As you’re here, let me show you around.’

She’d seen it all then, all the workings of his empire.

Cocaine.

Even the word sounded dangerous to Charlotte, like something from an episode of Miami Vice. She’d never been offered coke in her life, never even seen it. And now, here she was, in the eye of the storm, actually watching the stuff being produced. It was fascinating, and he showed her around with pride, as if this were any other factory or business he’d built. It was also extraordinarily complicated.

In one of the sheds, sheaves of dry coca leaves were being finely ground and dusted with lime before going under a misting machine like a weak garden sprinkler to be moistened with water. From there, the mixture was taken to another shed where it sat in giant vats like cement mixers, into which kerosene was added. The third shed was the ‘extraction plant’, where cocaine was first separated from the leaves, and then subjected to a complicated process of heating, filtering, pressing, siphoning and mixing with sulfuric acid, before being transferred to yet another building where eventually a gummy, yellow solid emerged that he identified as ‘coca paste’. The paste was then carried to a purifying shed, where it was mixed with diluted ammonia and filtered to produce cocaine hydrochloride.

All the while Charlotte listened, and nodded, holding his hand, acting as if this entire experience were perfectly normal, the sort of thing she did back in San Diego all the time.

‘Are you shocked?’ he asked her at the end of the tour. ‘Do you still want me, now you know I’m a criminal?’ He grinned as he said the word, tongue in cheek. But it was true, Charlotte thought. He was a criminal.

‘I’ll always want you,’ she told him, gazing up adoringly into his mesmerizing eyes. He took her back to his car then and made love to her, more passionately than ever before. Then he drove slowly back to the city, with Charlotte following.

Afterwards, she didn’t hear from him for almost a week. She was starting to panic that something had happened, that he’d decided to end things, when she’d finally got his text this morning: I’ve missed you, cara. Meet me here at 7 p.m., he wrote, sending her a link to a map as well as written directions. I have a surprise for you!

Charlotte’s heart soared. He’d never written anything like this to her before. I’ve missed you. That wasn’t his style at all. Nor were little maps and romantic surprises. Something had shifted between them since she’d learned the truth. He sees me as an equal now. As a partner.

A feeling of deep happiness surged through her. This, then, was love.

She was almost at the meeting spot, a place so remote and isolated there couldn’t possibly be anything there. Maybe he’s set up a picnic? Charlotte thought, imagining a soft blanket laid with silver and crystal, and buckets of champagne on ice. It was the sort of thing she could see him doing. Private but luxurious. Different, special, like he was. She felt sure now that her future lay with this man, despite his wife and the age difference and the dangerous things he did for a living. She couldn’t see yet exactly how this future would come to pass. How she would ever reconcile her parents to this new life she’d found. But she trusted, somehow. She was Charlotte Clancy, Charlotte the brave. He’d underestimated her, but only because she’d underestimated herself.

I can be whatever I want to be.

Frederique didn’t understand. ‘Don’t go, Charlotte. Or at least don’t go alone,’ her friend had begged her, when Charlotte showed her the ‘secret’ map. Frederique Zidane was an au pair too, and Charlotte’s only close girlfriend in Mexico City. She knew about Charlotte’s older, married boyfriend, but not enough to piece together who he was or what he did. ‘These places aren’t safe in the daytime, never mind at night. Anyone who lives here knows that. He must know it.’

‘Stop being such a scaredy-cat,’ Charlotte giggled. ‘I’ll be fine.’

But Frederique wasn’t laughing. ‘There are bandits out there. I’m serious. People get robbed, kidnapped, murdered. People disappear.’

‘Well, I’m not going to disappear,’ Charlotte replied robustly.

‘And you know this because …?’

‘Because I won’t be alone,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’ll be there, won’t he? He’ll protect me.’

It was the last conversation Frederique Zidane and Charlotte Clancy ever had.

CHAPTER THREE
LISA

‘So, Lisa. How has your week been?’

Dr Nikki Roberts leaned back in her faded black leather armchair and smiled warmly at her patient.

Lisa Flannagan. Twenty-eight years old. Former model and long-term mistress of Willie Baden, septuagenarian billionaire owner of the LA Rams. Recovering Vicodin addict. Narcissist.

‘Pretty good actually,’ Lisa smiled back and, pressing her palms together, leaned forward in a little bow of gratitude. ‘Namaste. I’m really feeling at peace about moving on from Willie. Like, I’m in a place of light, you know?’

‘That’s great.’ Nikki nodded encouragingly. Raindrops were tap-tapping against the window. This was her last session of the day, thank God. All she wanted was to get home. Switch off. Let the rain lull her to sleep.

‘I know, right?’ Lisa beamed. ‘Your advice in our last session helped me soooooo much.’

Lisa talked like this a lot: in clichés and exclamation points, like a teenage girl who’d swallowed her first self-help book whole, and now considered herself ‘a spiritual person’. As a psychologist, and a highly successful one at that, Nikki didn’t judge. She merely observed, and offered techniques to help her patient modify harmful behaviors and break destructive cycles.

As a person, however, it was a different story.

As a person, she judged plenty.

Lisa Flannagan was a user. A homewrecker. A baby-killer. A slut.

Sinking back into Dr Roberts’ soft, over-stuffed couch, Lisa Flannagan poured out her heart.

‘I moved out of the apartment,’ she announced proudly. ‘I actually did it.’

God, it felt good! Such a release, to come to a place where she was truly seen and understood and just let it all out.

‘Willie was, like, in shock. He was so mad, I thought he was going to hit me. Screaming and yelling and smashing things up.’

‘Did he threaten you?’ Nikki asked.

‘Oh yeah. Sure he did. “You can’t do this to me. I own you. I’ll destroy you. You’re nothing without me!” All of that. But I was super calm. I was like, “No, baby. You need to understand. This is something I need to do for myself. Like, I’m twenty-eight years old, you know? I’m not a child.”’

Lisa looked forward to her Wednesday-night therapy sessions at Dr Roberts’ plush Century City offices the way she used to look forward to scoring Vicodin, or getting laid by one of Willie’s big, black NFL players in the Beverly Hills apartment he’d bought for her two years ago. Back then, she hadn’t seen how totally controlling Willie was being. Like he was trying to buy her or something. Dr Roberts had totally opened her eyes on that score.

She’d also helped Lisa to realize how much inner strength she had. Like, kicking the pills was a big deal. Willie had picked up Lisa’s tab at Promises, but it was Lisa who’d agreed to go to rehab, Lisa who’d changed her own life.

I’m a good person.

If left the drugs behind, I can leave Willie Baden behind.

She would keep the apartment, of course. Or rather, she would sell it and keep the money. Ditto the Cartier sapphire-and-diamond necklace Willie had bought her for her twenty-fifth. New starts were all well and good, but Lisa Flannagan wasn’t about to walk away destitute from an eight-year relationship with a billionaire. That would be plain stupid. Besides, it wasn’t as if Willie needed the money back. Plus she’d done the responsible thing and terminated his baby, not hung around and demanded baby-momma money for the rest of her life, like most girls would have. The way Lisa saw it, once Willie got over the initial blow to his pride, there was no reason why she and her married lover couldn’t part as friends.

As she talked, sipping cucumber water from the jug on Dr Roberts’ coffee table, Lisa Flannagan stole occasional glances at the woman sitting opposite her, the therapist she had grown to rely on and to think of almost as a friend.

Dr Nikki Roberts.

What was her life like, outside these offices?

Thanks to Google, Lisa already knew the basic facts: Dr Nicola Roberts, née Hammond, thirty-eight years old. Graduated from Columbia before doing a postgrad in psychology at UCLA and an internship at Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

Lisa wondered whether that was where Dr Roberts had met her husband, Dr Douglas Roberts, a neurosurgeon and specialist in addiction-related brain disorders. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask. Asking your therapist personal questions was against the rules.

What Lisa did know was that Dr Roberts’ husband had been killed in a tragic car accident last year, right about the time she first started coming to therapy. The LA Times had reported on his death, because by all accounts Doug Roberts had been an amazing guy and a big deal in the LA charity world, campaigning tirelessly to help the city’s addicts wherever he found them, from downtown’s skid row to the mansions of Bel Air.

It was bizarre to think that the poised, attractive, professional woman sitting opposite Lisa, with her sleek brunette bob similar to Lisa’s own hair, her slender figure and intelligent green eyes was actually a grieving widow, whose own inner life was presumably in total turmoil.

Poor Dr Roberts, Lisa thought. I hope she has someone to talk to.

She deserves to be happy.

‘I’m afraid that’s our time, Lisa.’

The therapist’s mellow, soothing voice broke Lisa’s reverie. She looked at the clock on the wall.

‘Oh my God, you’re right. Time passes so fast in here, it’s crazy. Do you find that, Dr Roberts?’

Nikki smiled diplomatically. ‘Sometimes.’

Lisa Flannagan stood up to leave.

‘Don’t you have a coat?’ Nikki asked. ‘It’s pouring out there.’

‘Is it?’ Lisa hadn’t noticed the pounding on the windows.

She was dressed in a tiny denim miniskirt that barely skimmed the top of her thighs, and a tank top with the words ‘ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE’ emblazoned on the front, a garment so tiny it would have struggled to adequately cover a child’s chest, never mind Lisa’s ample bosom.

‘You’ll be soaked to the bone out there,’ said Nikki. Standing up, she reached for her own trench coat, hanging on the back of the door. ‘Here. Take mine.’

Lisa hesitated. ‘Don’t you need it?’

Nikki shook her head. ‘I’m parked downstairs. I can take the elevator right to my car. You can return it at our next session.’

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Lisa took the coat, smiling broadly. ‘That is so kind of you, Dr Roberts. Really.’

She took the therapist’s hand and squeezed it. It was little gestures like that, going the extra mile, that really set Dr Roberts apart from other therapists. She wasn’t in this for the money. She actually cared about her patients. She cares about me.

Outside in the alley behind the Century Plaza Medical Building it was cold, wet and dark. His legs ached from crouching for so long. His skin burned and so did his throat. Every breath felt like he was gargling razor blades, and every drop of rain felt like acid, a tiny burning dagger slicing into his frayed nerves. When it was over, he would get what he needed. Pain, unimaginable pain, would be replaced with exquisite ecstasy. It wouldn’t last long, but that didn’t matter. Nothing lasted long.

The streets of Century City were full of cars, but the slick sidewalks were deserted. No one walked in LA, especially not in the rain.

She did, though. Usually.

Sometimes.

Would she come out tonight?

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

There she was. Suddenly. Too suddenly. He wasn’t ready.

His heart began to pound.

She belted her coat and put her head down against the rain. No umbrella. She was walking fast, crossing the opening to the alley.

‘Help!’ He tried to shout, but his voice was so raspy. Would she hear him? She had to hear him! ‘Help me!’

Lisa Flannagan turned. There was a figure, a man, or maybe a boy – he was tiny – slumped beside some trash cans.

‘Please!’ he called again. ‘Call 911. I’ve been stabbed.’

‘Oh my God!’ Pulling out her phone, Lisa moved towards him, already punching out the numbers. ‘What happened? Are you OK?’

He was bent double, clutching his stomach. That must be where the knife had gone in. She squatted down beside him. He was wearing a hoodie that was soaking wet, covering his face and hair.

‘Emergency, what service do you require?’

‘Police,’ Lisa blurted into her phone. ‘And ambulance.’ She touched the boy lightly on the top of his lolling head. ‘Don’t panic. Help’s on the way. Where are you hurt?’

He looked up and grinned. Lisa felt the vomit rise up inside her. The face beneath the hood wasn’t human. It was the face of a monster, green and rotted, strips of flesh literally curling off the bones and hanging down, like the skin of some rancid fruit. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

‘Ma’am, can you give me your location?’

He recognized the terror in her eyes as she crouched over him, open-mouthed. Still grinning, he plunged the blade deep into her abdomen and twisted. Oh, the scream came then all right! Loud and piercing and horrified. He pulled out the knife and plunged again, so hard that his fist followed the blade somewhere deep inside her, somewhere warm and wet and enticing.

‘Ma’am, can you hear me? Ma’am? What’s happening? Can you tell me where you are?’

Dr Nikki Roberts leaned back against the soft leather of her Mercedes X-Class seats and waited for the garage doors to open.

Traffic permitting, she’d be back home in Brentwood in twenty minutes. Another long, empty evening stretched ahead, but she would fill it with mindless television and a bottle of Newton unfiltered Merlot and Ambien and sleep, and it would pass. Everything would pass.

Nikki felt guilty. She’d only been half-present during today’s session with Lisa. Maybe even less than half. That wasn’t fair, whether she liked the patient or not.

The garage doors inched open, agonizingly slowly.

Nikki edged the car forwards, towards the alley.

Doors. Garage doors!

Lisa heard the grinding of mechanical gears and the close, familiar rev of an engine. Blood was pouring from her stomach and chest. Not oozing but pouring, like milk from a jug. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t stand or run. She could only scream, and she did, again and again and again, each time the monster sliced into her arms and breasts and thighs. He wasn’t even trying to kill her any more. At least, not quickly. He was playing with her, like a cat with a mouse, delighting in the agony he was causing, in shredding her perfect body, piece by tiny piece.

The engine grew louder. Hope soared in Lisa’s heart.

Someone’s coming. Maybe it’s Dr Roberts? Please God, let her see me!

She drew in her breath and screamed, surely the loudest scream anyone had ever made in their lives. She could hear her own blood bubbling in the back of her throat and feel her eyes bulge as if they might burst from their sockets. Headlamps swept over her and the monster, lit them up like a stage spotlight.

The stabbing stopped.

So did the engine.

Lisa sobbed with relief. She’s seen me! She heard the monster’s knife clatter to the floor. She could feel her pulse slowing, and waited for her attacker to run, or for the car door to open.

Seconds passed. Two. Five. Ten …

Nothing happened.

Wait … what’s going on?

The car’s engine started up again.

No!

Headlights lit up the alley.

NO! Please! I’m here! PLEASE!

Nikki’s silver Mercedes glided past them along the alley, then turned slowly into the street.

Rotted, scaly hands coiled themselves around Lisa’s neck from behind. In front of her eyes, the shiny blade glinted, already slick with her blood.

‘Where were we?’

The last noise Lisa Flannagan heard was the monster laughing.

CHAPTER FOUR

Carter Berkeley III looked down at his expensively manicured nails and resisted the urge to bite them. What the hell was he doing here? He should be talking to the police, not a damn therapist.

Then he reminded himself that the police wouldn’t help him. The police didn’t believe him. No one did.

Carter thought about the two armed bodyguards he had waiting downstairs in the lobby, and tried to feel better. It didn’t work. Then he tried imagining his therapist naked. That did work, at least a little. Dr Nikki Roberts was a deeply sensual woman. Carter pictured her gray, pencil skirt pushed up roughly around her hips, and her prissy white blouse ripped open. He imagined her …

‘Carter? Are you with me?’

Her voice made him startle, then blush, then scowl. A highly successful investment banker, handsome, educated and rich, Carter was used to having people jump to his command and scuttle to gratify his every desire. Especially women. He did not appreciate being called out like a naughty schoolboy.

‘Tell me again what you think you saw last night,’ Dr Roberts said.

‘I don’t “think” I saw anything,’ Carter snapped. ‘I know what I saw, OK? I am not crazy.’ He ran a harassed hand through his thick blond hair.

‘I never suggested you were.’ The therapist’s voice was calm. ‘But even sane people can be mistaken some of the time, can’t they? I know I often am.’

‘Yeah, well I’m not,’ Carter growled.

Jesus. They’d all be sorry when he was dead. When these bastards finally got him and strung him up with electrical cord and beat him to death in some godforsaken dungeon. They’d all wish they’d listened then: the police, Dr Roberts, all of them.

Nikki leaned forward earnestly while her patient rambled on, expounding the same conspiracy theory he’d been peddling since he first started seeing her, more than a year ago. Carter Berkeley believed he was being stalked by unnamed assassins. He never offered any reason for this, still less any evidence, other than the elaborate imaginings of his brilliant but tortured mind. And yet, no matter how many logical paths Nikki led him down, Carter’s paranoid fears persisted. In fact, if anything, they were getting worse. Only last week he had informed Nikki solemnly that Trey Raymond, the sweet boy who ran her office and manned the front desk at Century Plaza, was a spy ‘working for the Mexicans’.

‘You can’t trust him. What do you really know about Trey, Dr Roberts?’

‘What do you know about him, Carter?’ Nikki countered.

‘Enough. I know enough,’ Carter pronounced, cryptically. Although, again, he offered no evidence to back this up.

I’m not making him better, Nikki thought sadly. I might actually be making him worse. Why am I even here?

She knew the answer to that, deep down. She was here – at work, in her office, seeing patients – because she had nowhere else to be. Nowhere else except home, alone, with no Doug, and no answers. That prospect was quite unbearable.

Unbearable …

The word took Nikki back.

It was only a year ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

Doug was smiling at her across the table at Luigi’s, wolfing down his spaghetti vongole as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, talking at a million miles an hour, the way he always did when the two of them were together.

‘“It’s unbearable.” What do people even mean when they say that?’ Doug asked Nikki. ‘My patients say it to me all the time: “It’s unbearable, Doc. I can’t bear it.” As if they have any alternative.’

Nikki and Doug Roberts had been married for seven years and together for almost three times that long. But the thrill of each other’s company, of talking and sharing ideas and feelings and experiences, never faded. No lunch date with Doug was ever dull.

‘I guess they’re speaking metaphorically,’ Nikki observed, toying with her own crab salad. Luigi’s food was delicious, but even the salads were rich. Doug might be incapable of gaining weight, but since she turned thirty-eight Nikki found increasingly that she had to watch her figure. There was nothing worse than thinking you might be pregnant at long last, only to realize that your rounded belly was actually ugly, middle-aged fat.

‘They mean that they don’t want to bear it. It hurts. Don’t forget, these are desperate addicts we’re talking about.’

‘You’re right.’ Doug nodded, slurping down the last of his pasta before reaching for the bread basket. ‘I guess I just get frustrated sometimes. Because, at the end of the day, it really is that black and white. Do you want to get better or not? Do you want to die or not? That’s it. That’s the choice.’

To an outsider, Doug Roberts might sound compassionless toward his junkie patients, but Nikki knew that he was anything but. He’d raced to meet her for lunch today directly from the latest meth and opioid clinic he was busy setting up in Venice with his good friend from med school, Haddon Defoe. Helping LA’s most hardened, most helpless addicts had become Doug Roberts’ passion, his life’s work.

‘Anyway, enough about me.’ He looked at Nikki lovingly. ‘How’s your morning been, sweetheart? Did you do another test?’

‘Not yet.’ Nikki looked down shyly at her half-eaten food. ‘Maybe tonight.’

‘Why not now?’ asked Doug.

‘Because. If it’s negative and I feel shitty, it might distract me from my afternoon clients,’ said Nikki.

Doug reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘It could be positive, honey. No reason why it shouldn’t be.’

‘Yup,’ Nikki forced a smile. ‘No reason.’

Except that the last six times we tried, it was negative. And with every month that passes my eggs are getting older and more worn out. And some cruel god out there, some malicious force beyond our control, seems to have decided that we’ll never become parents.

She and Doug had everything else, after all. A wonderful, loving marriage. Wealth. Status. Meaningful, rewarding careers. Great friends. Great family. In what alternate universe did they deserve children, as well as all that?

‘I love you, Nik,’ Doug said softly.

‘I love you, too.’

‘It’ll happen. We still have time. So much time.’

That’s right, thought Nikki. We still have time.

‘Dr Roberts?’ Carter Berkeley sounded irritated. ‘Were you even listening to me?’

‘Of course.’ Nikki dutifully repeated everything her client had just said. She’d long ago learned the knack of ‘surface listening’, using one’s brain to multitask, in this case memorizing Carter’s words whilst actively focusing on something else entirely. It was a trick Doug had taught her.

Why did everything seem to come back to Doug?

‘Now, as we’re almost out of time, I suggest we finish up with a mindfulness exercise,’ Nikki told Carter, deftly regaining control of the session. ‘If you don’t mind putting your feet flat on the floor …’

Once Carter Berkeley had left, Nikki wandered out into the lobby.

Trey Raymond, her PA, office manager and general right-hand man, was busy updating patient files. Not that there was much to update any more. Since Doug’s death, patients had been deserting Nikki’s practice like flies. Perhaps they thought her grief was contagious. Or that her loss might make her less focused, less effective as a therapist. Perhaps they were right about that. Whatever the reason, Nikki now only had four regular clients, down from almost twenty a year ago.

Inevitably, her final four were the most desperate, the ones who simply couldn’t let go.

Carter Berkeley, the paranoid banker, who came once a week.

Lisa Flannagan, the deluded mistress, who typically came twice a week.

Anne Bateman, the insecure violinist, who was Nikki’s most frequent flier, coming to therapy almost daily. Therapeutically, this was overkill, but like many people Nikki found she had a tough time saying no to the young and beautiful Anne. In fact it worried Nikki quite how often she thought about Anne, and how important her patient was becoming to her.

And finally there was Lana Grey, the actress, who regularly failed to pay Nikki’s bills on time, or even at all. Poor lost Lana. Once a mid-level TV star, she was washed up now and borderline bankrupt.

‘Lana ain’t your client,’ Trey would tell Nikki, repeatedly. ‘Clients pay. She’s your charity case. Your lost cause.’

‘Oh really? My lost cause.’ Nikki would smile. ‘And what does that make you, I wonder?’

‘Me?’ Trey would grin. ‘Oh, I’m the patron saint of lost causes. But you can’t get rid of me, Doc. I jus’ keep on coming back, like a bad penny.’

To which Nikki would reply that she didn’t want to get rid of him. That she didn’t know how she would manage without him. Both of which were true, but not because she needed an office manager. The reality was that Trey Raymond was a last link to her husband. Doug had helped Trey, picked him up off the streets and turned his life around. He’d done the same for countless others over the years. But for some reason Trey was different. Doug had loved him like a son.

The son I was never able to give him …

Trey shot Nikki a sidelong glance now, as he finished his filing. ‘You headin’ home, Doc?’

‘I was going to.’ Nikki hesitated, casting around for reasons to stay. ‘Do you need me for anything?’

‘Nope.’ The young man beamed, strong white teeth lighting up his ebony complexion. ‘I got this covered.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m positive,’ said Trey. ‘I’ll call you if anything comes up.’

Outside on the street, Nikki squinted. The sun was blinding, blasting out of the clear blue California sky with a vengeance after yesterday’s unexpected rain.

Nikki used to love the rain but now she hated it. It reminded her of Doug, of the anguish and misery and rage – God, the rage! – that could never be washed away. She imagined the wheels of his Tesla, slick and slipping across the freeway. His panic as he hurtled towards the lights of the oncoming traffic. Nikki imagined Doug’s foot stamping frantically on a useless brake pedal. Did he scream? I hope he screamed.

Up until that day, as far as Nikki knew, she and Doug had been happy in their marriage. Blissfully happy.

Clearly she was mistaken. That was the day it had all unraveled. All the smoke and mirrors had fallen away, and she was left staring at the raw truth. The ugly truth.

And now Doug was dead and she was alone, her life a never-ending nightmare of unanswered questions and ‘what ifs’. Until the accident, Nikki wouldn’t have believed it possible to love someone so much, miss them so much and hate them so much, all at the same time. But here she was, drowning in all three emotions, fighting simply to make it through the day.

She’d found solace in her work, to a degree. But sometimes, like Doug with his addicts, Nikki found herself so frustrated with her patients she wanted to pick them up by the scruff of the neck and shake them, like a terrier with a rat.

Get over it, for God’s sake.

STOP WHINING!

She never used to be that way. Intolerant. Superior. Judgmental.

Grief had changed her.

Lisa Flannagan was a case in point. Nikki didn’t approve of Lisa. Of her life, her choices. On the plus side, unlike Carter Berkeley, Lisa did at least sincerely want to change. Although, again unlike Carter, she was so stupid, so profoundly intellectually giftless, that getting her to see even the most simple correlation between her behaviors, thoughts and emotions was like trying to teach a swamp rat calculus. Was it frustration that had made Nikki so depressed after last night’s session with Lisa? Or something else? Maybe it was envy. Envy at Lisa’s positive outlook. Her happiness, her hope for the future. Hope was something that Nikki Roberts no longer possessed, in any area of her life. After last night’s session she’d driven out into the rainy alley, so upset she’d had to stop the car to compose herself. Then she’d gone home, finished an entire bottle of wine alone (a nightly occurrence these days) and collapsed into bed, too drained even to cry. To her amazement, she slept deeply and well, not waking until almost nine this morning, feeling nauseous but more rested than she had in months.

The sleep had done wonders for her mood, carrying her through the morning on a mini wave of euphoria, right up until her trying session with Carter Berkeley. That had brought her down again. But now it was over, she made an effort to recapture her earlier good spirits.

Arriving home, she kicked off her shoes and turned on the TV news before running upstairs to change. Pathetic as it was, Nikki found that background noise from the television or radio made her feel less lonely, especially in the evenings. Up in the master bedroom it was off with the professional psychologist’s clothes – skirt, pumps, silk jacket – and on with the shorts and sneakers. This evening, Nikki decided, she would run on the beach. She hadn’t done that in forever, not since long before Doug’s accident. Back then, in another life, running beside the ocean used to make her feel happy. Free. Blessed. She didn’t expect any of those feelings today. That would be too much to ask. But getting out and moving had to be better than moping around the house. After all, if Lobotomized-Lisa Flannagan could take a step forward in her pampered, self-centered life, so could she.

The newscaster’s voice droned on in the background as Nikki came back downstairs. She half tuned in.

‘A young woman’s body was found this afternoon, partially hidden in undergrowth close to the 10 freeway,’ the anchor was saying. ‘Initial reports suggest that the victim, a white woman in her late twenties, was stabbed multiple times, possibly even tortured.’

Was it Nikki’s imagination, or did the newscaster seem to be lingering over the gruesome details?

‘According to police, the injuries to the victim’s face are so severe that no formal identification has yet been made.’

Nikki winced and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge. Christ. There are some psychos out there.

‘Sports news now, and in a major setback for the LA Rams …’

Nikki tuned out. Opening the door, she ran out into the still bright evening light.

She’d almost reached Sunset Boulevard when her phone rang. She stopped and answered, panting.

‘Hello?’

It was Trey. He was crying, sobbing so violently it was hard to make out his words. Nikki slipped into doctor mode.

‘Try to breathe, honey. Slow it down.’

Two long, rasping breaths shuddered down the line.

‘Good,’ said Nikki. ‘Now can you tell me what’s happened?’

‘Lisa!’ Trey blurted. ‘Lisa Flannagan.’

Trey had always had a soft spot for Lisa. Nikki could tell. The way he stared at her when she walked down the hall to the restroom, the shy smile he gave every time she came to his desk to pay for a session.

‘What about Lisa?’ Nikki asked kindly. ‘Whatever it is, I’m sure it can’t be that bad, Trey.’

‘She’s dead!’ Trey sobbed.

A low ringing had started in Nikki’s ears. She watched the traffic crawl past her as if in a dream.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean she’s dead. Murdered!’ Trey started to weep uncontrollably. ‘I heard it on the news.’

Nikki’s knees buckled beneath her. She’d seen Lisa yesterday, alive and well and full of plans for her future. This couldn’t be right. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m positive. Oh God, Doc, it’s awful. Some sicko cut her to pieces! Dumped her by the side of the freeway.’

Nikki gasped. The news report she’d heard earlier! About the young woman dumped off the 10. That was Lisa?

‘Dr Roberts? Dr Roberts, are you still there?’

Trey’s voice whined out of her earpiece but Nikki didn’t answer.

Guilt crept over her like a spider. While she’d been envying Lisa’s hope and youth, while she’d been judging her, Lisa had been … Oh God.

She tried not to think about it, but the horrifying images crowding into Nikki’s brain wouldn’t stop.

‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Trey,’ she rasped, and hung up.

A new nightmare had begun.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘We’re looking for Dr Roberts. Dr Nicola Roberts. Now it’s a simple question, son. Is she here or isn’t she?’

The two cops hovered menacingly in front of Trey Raymond’s desk. At least, it felt menacing to Trey. Then again, they were cops, and Trey was black and a former meth-dealer from Westmont, South LA’s ‘Death Alley’, so the three men weren’t ever going to be friends.

‘She’s with a patient right now.’

One of the cops, the shorter, fatter, older one with big, wet, larva-like white lips, regarded Trey with unadulterated contempt.

‘In there?’ he asked, nodding towards Nikki’s office door.

He wasn’t wearing uniform and he hadn’t showed Trey his badge. Neither of them had, for that matter. But he spoke with the innate, entitled authority of a police officer. It didn’t occur to Trey to question him.

‘Yes, in there,’ Trey confirmed. ‘But like I said, Dr Roberts is with a patient. She can’t be disturbed while she’s in session.’

‘Is that a fact?’ The fat cop smiled unpleasantly, moving towards the door.

‘Leave it, Mick.’ His taller, younger, more attractive partner put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘We can wait.’

‘Wait?’ Larva Lips looked furious, but his partner ignored him, smiling at Trey and taking a seat on the Italian leather couch in the waiting room. Picking up a copy of Psychology Today, he asked casually: ‘It’s fifty minutes, right? A therapy session? I remember from when my wife left me.’

‘Which one?’ Larva Lips snarled, obviously not best pleased to have been ‘reined in’ in front of Trey.

‘All of them,’ his partner grinned. ‘I was a wreck every time.’

Larva Lips didn’t smile back but sat down, lowering his ample backside into an armchair where he simmered belligerently. Trey had encountered scores of LAPD like him growing up: knee-jerk racists, Blue Lives Matter assholes who shot first and thought later. Or not. Dude might as well have had a swastika tattooed on his forehead, so obvious were his prejudices. For all Trey knew, his partner might be every bit as rotten inside, but he was better educated and he hid it better. Maybe he thought he’d get more out of Dr Roberts if he played nice with her office staff?

Trey Raymond figured he’d learned a lot, working in a psychologist’s office.

‘How much longer?’ Larva Lips demanded, glaring at the clock on the wall as if it were to blame for his impatience.

‘The session ends in fifteen minutes,’ said Trey. He assumed the police were here to ask about Lisa, which only made him feel worse. The thought of these bozos, picking through Lisa’s private life like vultures pecking at a carcass, made him feel sick.

Trey had seen a lot of death growing up. A lot of murder too, but that was different. That was shootings, gang violence, and where Trey grew up that was a fact of life. Sad, for sure. But not shocking.

Not like this. Lisa wasn’t part of that world. She was white and rich and beautiful, part of a white, rich, beautiful world where shit like this didn’t happen. Dr Roberts came from the same world. Trey didn’t, but he’d been invited in by Dr Roberts’ husband, Doug, before he died. More than invited. Welcomed. Like a son.

These son-of-a-bitch cops had no business here, bringing their dark world into this bright one.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Trey offered the politer officer.

‘I’m fine thanks.’

‘You can get me a Coke,’ the fat one replied, without looking up from his phone. An unspoken ‘boy’ hung in the air.

Beneath the desk, Trey’s fists clenched. He longed to refuse, to tell the man they were all out, sorry. But a deep-rooted survival instinct kicked in. Don’t mess with cops. Not to their face, anyway.

Inside Nikki’s office, Anne Bateman recrossed her slender legs beneath her long linen skirt. All her movements were so graceful, so thoughtful and composed. Like a ballet dancer, thought Nikki admiringly. Only last night Nikki had dreamed about Anne again, dreams that were not overtly erotic but that certainly had something obsessional about them, something voyeuristic. Perhaps being a virtuoso violinist isn’t so dissimilar to being a ballerina? Nikki thought. Whatever the reason, Anne appeared to dance through life to the tune of some inner music, some rhapsody of her own creation.

‘She was your patient, wasn’t she? Like me,’ Anne asked.

‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ Nikki said gently.

Like everybody else, Anne had seen the grisly reports of Lisa Flannagan’s murder on the TV news. She’d been distressed by them, and understandably wanted to talk.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she said quietly, staring down at her lap. ‘I know. I’ve passed her in the corridor a hundred times. Poor woman.’

‘Yes,’ said Nikki. She felt bad herself. Lisa had been so full of hope in their final session together, so focused on her future. A future that, as it turned out, didn’t exist.

It was too late to help Lisa Flannagan now. But Nikki could still help Anne Bateman. Beautiful, intoxicating Anne. In fact, Anne was the one patient who Nikki felt she was helping, consistently. A violin prodigy with a coveted position at the LA Phil, at only twenty-six years old Anne was already wildly successful. Although childlike in some ways, in others she had already lived a life far beyond her years. As a teenager she’d traveled and performed all over the world, eventually marrying young to an extremely wealthy, charismatic, and much older man.

Anne was an attractive girl, in a tiny, fragile, doll-like way. Shy and meek in everyday conversation, with a violin in her hand Anne transformed into a frenzied, passionate woman, utterly lost in her own talent. Many men had been drawn to her on stage, to her alabaster skin and enormous, chocolate brown eyes, as well as to the intensity of her playing. But her husband had coveted her with an obsessive desire. After they married he had carried her off to his vast estate like a fairytale princess, showering her with gifts and clothes and attention and adoration, rarely letting her out of his sight.

It had taken immense courage for Anne to leave him and move back to her native Los Angeles. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. But she’d married so young, and she’d changed, and her music was calling to her, its call becoming more and more insistent with each passing day. The collapse of her marriage was what had prompted Anne to start seeing a therapist, and she and Nikki had quickly formed a strong bond. Over the last three months, Anne had come to rely heavily on Nikki’s support and advice in almost every aspect of her life.

‘You mustn’t feel frightened,’ Nikki told her now. ‘What happened to Lisa was terrible, but it had nothing to do with you. Don’t internalize it. The fact that you happened to see her in this office doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tie the two of you together.’

‘No.’ Anne smiled shyly. ‘You’re right. I’m being silly.’

‘Not silly,’ said Nikki. ‘Death is a traumatic event. Especially violent death. But you’re still processing your own trauma, Anne. Try not to take on anyone else’s, that’s all I’m saying.’

Their time was up. Reluctantly, Nikki opened the door to the corridor to show Anne out. Most patients shook Nikki’s hand at the end of a session, but Anne always hugged her, squeezing tightly like a child leaving its mother at the school gate. It was too intimate a gesture really, not appropriate between a patient and a therapist, but Nikki didn’t have the heart to put a stop to it. The truth was that Anne’s dependence on her felt good. Everything about Anne Bateman felt good.

This time, however, Nikki stiffened the moment Anne embraced her.

Two strange men were heading towards her from the waiting room, watching intently.

Extricating herself swiftly from Anne’s arms, Nikki ushered her patient out before turning to the two men.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked curtly.

One of the men, the younger one, stood up and extended his hand politely.

‘Detective Lou Goodman, LAPD. This is my partner, Detective Mick Johnson.’

Nikki shook Goodman’s hand. ‘I assume you’re here about Lisa? Such a terrible thing.’ She offered her hand to his partner as well, but the short, heavyset man jerked angrily away.

‘Not here,’ he barked rudely, with a sidelong, distrustful glance at Trey. ‘In your office.’

Nikki bristled. What’s his problem? She had the vague sense of having seen him somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. ‘All right,’ she said briskly, walking both men into her consulting room and offering them a seat, before closing the door behind them.

Back in the waiting room, Trey waited until he could hear the three of them talking before he picked up the phone.

‘There’s two cops here!’ he whispered down the line. He was close to tears. ‘What do I do? I’m scared, man.’

The voice on the other end of the line began to talk.

Trey listened, and nodded, trying to calm himself down.

They don’t know.

Nobody knows.

Be cool.

Detective Mick Johnson watched and listened as Dr Nikki Roberts answered his partner’s questions.

When did Nikki last see Lisa Flannagan?

The day she died.

Had Lisa mentioned anything in that session, or prior sessions, about being threatened, or having any fears for her safety?

No.

Did Nikki know of anyone who might have a reason to target Lisa, or hurt her?

No.

Goodman asked all his questions politely, and accepted all Nikki’s one-word answers without question or comment, writing each one down in his little notebook like a schoolboy taking notes from a teacher.

Johnson watched in silent disapproval. He didn’t trust Nikki and he didn’t like her. The arrogant bitch didn’t even remember him! But he remembered her. He would always remember her. Watching her now, poised and cautious, sweeping her shiny dark hair back out of her eyes as she talked with Goodman, he could feel the anger burn his chest like battery acid.

‘Dr Roberts, you may have been the last person, other than her killer, to see Miss Flannagan alive,’ Goodman was saying. Leaning forward in his chair, looking at Nikki intently, it was obvious he was smitten by her. ‘It’s vital that we understand as much as we can about exactly what happened, both in this office, and after she left here.’

‘I understand that, Detective,’ said Nikki. ‘I’m not sure what I can add, that’s all. The session was positive, as I told you. Lisa seemed happy. She’d made a break from her boyfriend—’

‘Boyfriend? You mean her sugar daddy,’ Johnson interjected. ‘Willie Baden?’

These were the first words the angry little man had spoken since he sat down. There could be no mistaking the leer in his voice. The idea of a beautiful young girl like Lisa offering herself sexually to a dirty old man like Baden clearly turned him on, or at least amused him.

‘Yes,’ Nikki said evenly.

‘But, to be clear, she didn’t have a “boyfriend”. She was sleeping with a rich old man, someone else’s husband, for his money,’ Johnson pressed the point, earning himself a dirty look from Goodman, as well as a horrified one from Nikki. ‘She was a high-class whore, basically. Isn’t that right?’

‘I don’t know why she was with him. It’s not my place to judge my clients, Detective,’ Nikki replied coolly, fighting down her distaste at this man’s unabashed sexism. ‘All I know is that in our session that evening, Lisa told me she’d taken steps to leave Willie, and she seemed to be feeling good about that. I’d say she left here in a happy, hopeful mood.’

‘Did she plan to meet anyone after her appointment? A friend, maybe? Did somebody pick her up?’ Goodman asked, glaring at Johnson as he resumed his questioning.

‘No,’ said Nikki. ‘She left alone. Typically, she drove herself to our sessions but on Wednesday she didn’t have her car with her.’

The two cops exchanged glances.

‘Do you know why not?’

Nikki shook her head. ‘No. Sorry. I only remember because it was raining, and she told me she was leaving on foot, so I lent her my raincoat.’

Forgetting his anger for a moment, Detective Johnson sat up eagerly. ‘She was wearing the coat when she left?’

‘Yes,’ said Nikki.

‘Can you describe the coat, Dr Roberts? In as much detail as possible.’

Nikki did so. It was a perfectly ordinary raincoat but both men seemed fascinated by it.

‘Thank you, Dr Roberts,’ Goodman said, smiling warmly. ‘That’s very helpful information.’ He had an intense way of speaking, Nikki noticed, a sort of flattering, micro-focus that made you feel as if you were the only person in the room. It wasn’t flirtatious exactly, but it wasn’t far off.

By contrast, his partner was utterly charmless, firing off a few more questions without any sort of thanks, before both men took their leave. But even he, Johnson, had seemed excited by the raincoat revelation. Could it really be that important?

Once they’d gone, Trey knocked on Nikki’s door.

‘I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t know what to do,’ he said anxiously to Nikki. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want them to interrupt your session, but I think the older guy didn’t like that I made them wait.’

Nikki put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s OK, Trey. You did everything right. How are you feeling? I know you cared about Lisa.’

‘I’m feeling OK, I guess,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’m sad. Shocked.’

‘Me too,’ said Nikki.

‘She was so beautiful.’

‘Yes. She was.’

‘Times like this, I wish Dr Douglas was here,’ Trey blurted. ‘You know?’

Nikki looked pained. Trey hung his head.

‘Sorry, Doc. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to you.’

‘Of course you can say it, Trey,’ Nikki said kindly. ‘You miss him. I miss him too. I don’t want you to feel Doug’s name is taboo. He’d have hated that.’

Later, after Trey had gone home, Nikki sat in her office alone for a long time, thinking.

She thought about Doug, and what he’d have made of all this.

She thought about Lisa, about the horror of her death.

She thought about the angry detective, Johnson: She was a whore, sleeping with someone else’s husband.

Nikki understood anger. Since Doug’s death, it had been her constant companion.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the card that the other detective had given her. The civil one. Detective Lou Goodman.

Lou.

How long would it be, she wondered, before she heard from him again?

CHAPTER SIX

The Medical Examiner, Jenny Foyle, replaced the plastic sheeting covering Lisa Flannagan’s body and returned her attention to the two detectives. In her early fifties, with a short, unkempt bob of salt and pepper hair, a stocky frame and a make-up-free face, Jenny was no beauty. But she was smart, intuitive, waspishly funny and astonishingly skilled at her job.

‘So you’re saying only one of these stab wounds killed her?’ Mick Johnson asked.

‘The one to the heart. Yes,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘The others were all superficial. Designed to wound, to hurt, but never intended to kill.’

Lou Goodman raised a groomed eyebrow. ‘All eighty-eight of them?’

Jenny sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

Most people preferred Lou Goodman to his partner, probably because Lou was handsome and charming and, unlike Mick Johnson, rarely looked as if the thing he’d most like to do in the entire world was punch you in the face. But not Jenny Foyle. Detective Goodman’s charms were lost on her. A New York Irish girl herself, Jenny had always had a soft spot for Detective Johnson. True, he lacked charm and was no oil painting. But Jenny liked the big man’s permanently stained shirts, his gruff sense of humor and his take-no-prisoners directness. In a city that was all about style over substance, and a department in which political correctness had gone mad, the Medical Examiner had always found Mick to be a breath of fresh air.

‘So she was tortured?’ Mick asked her. ‘That’s basically what you’re saying?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ said Jenny. ‘She was tortured. Incapacitated, probably through terror as much as from her physical injuries. Then she was moved. And at a later time, killed. Then she was moved again to the dumping site.’

All three of them paused for a moment to take in the plastic-covered shape that had once been Lisa Flannagan. A gorgeous young girl with her whole life ahead of her, reduced to a mutilated carcass.

Goodman broke the silence first. ‘And you’re confident of this timeline?’

‘I am.’

‘Because …?’

‘Because the rate of healing clearly shows the fatal wound occurred some hours after the first injuries. And because the levels of blood loss at the scene, although substantial, are incompatible with the victim having been stabbed in the heart there,’ Jenny answered matter-of-factly.

‘No sexual assault?’ asked Goodman.

Jenny shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘And she didn’t fight back?’ Johnson asked quietly.

‘Well,’ Jenny peeled off her latex gloves, allowing herself a small smile. ‘At first I thought she didn’t fight at all. Terrified, as I said. But right at the end of my examination I found a tiny – and I mean tiny – sample of tissue under one of her fingernails.’

Johnson’s brow furrowed. ‘Why so tiny?’ he asked. ‘If she scratched him, fighting for her life, wouldn’t there be more?’

‘Indeed there would.’ Jenny’s smile broadened. ‘Which is why I think her nails were cut and the fingers scrubbed. Post-mortem.’

‘Jesus.’ Goodman winced.

‘But he missed a spot?’ Johnson asked brightly. ‘Lucky for us.’

‘I hope it will be,’ said Jenny. ‘Like I say, the sample was tiny. It was also … strange.’

Both men waited for her to elaborate.

‘The cells were unlike anything I’ve seen before. They appeared to be from rotten flesh.’

Goodman raised an eyebrow. ‘Rotten?’

‘Yes, rotten.’ Jenny cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘From something … someone … dead.’

Detective Johnson’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think this chick was killed by a dead guy?’

‘No,’ Jenny replied, deadpan. ‘That would be impossible.’

‘So what are you saying?’ asked Goodman.

‘Simply that the cells I recovered were unusual. And that I can’t guarantee whether the quality or quantity of what we found under that nail will yield a meaningful DNA match to a possible suspect.’

‘Maybe our killer’s a zombie.’ Mick Johnson nudged the ME playfully in the ribs. ‘The living dead are among us!’

Jenny laughed. ‘I’d say you’re proof of that, Mickey. I’ll let you know when I have any more, but that’s all she wrote for the moment, boys. You take care now.’

Standing outside the Boyle Heights Coroner’s Office, the two detectives digested the ME’s bizarre findings in silence. Johnson’s zombie comment was obviously a joke. But exactly how had Lisa Flannagan wound up with a corpse’s flesh under her fingernails?

Realizing someone had to say something, Goodman tried to focus on the facts.

‘So, we’re looking for three sites,’ he observed. ‘Torture. Murder. Disposal.’

‘Uh huh,’ Johnson nodded. ‘Three sites.’

‘I guess we focus on that first.’

‘I guess we do,’ Johnson agreed.

There were a whole bunch of things that irritated him about his slick, young, ambitious partner. But Mick Johnson had to give Lou Goodman credit for an ordered mind, even in the craziest of circumstances.

They were back in their car and about to drive away when Jenny Foyle came rushing out the building towards them, flapping her arms like a lunatic.

Johnson wound down his window. ‘Did you forget something? What else you got for us, Jenny? Vampire teeth-marks on her neck?’ he quipped.

‘Ha ha.’ Panting from exertion, the ME shoved a single sheet of paper into Johnson’s hand. ‘Looks like you got lucky, Mick. DNA results just came back. Turns out your zombie has a name.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lou Goodman drove alone to Pacific Palisades. He and Johnson had agreed long ago to divide and conquer on their homicide cases. Goodman always handled the rich, high-class, educated types, while Johnson bonded with the ‘great unwashed’, as Lou only half-jokingly called the blue-collar witnesses. The system didn’t work perfectly. Johnson was great with low-income whites, and over his years in the drug squad had developed a decent working relationship in some of the rougher Latino communities. But he was old school LAPD when it came to black neighborhoods. He didn’t like them and they didn’t like him.

It was a problem.

But not today’s problem.

Today’s call was up in the wonder-bread-white community of Pacific Palisades. The wide streets and multimillion-dollar mansions were very much Lou Goodman’s territory. He was in his element.

‘Turn right on Capri Drive,’ Google Maps commanded. Goodman obeyed, cruising past homes so opulent it beggared belief. ‘Estate’ was an overused word among LA real estate brokers, but these houses were the real deal: ten-, fifteen-, twenty-bedroom palaces with sweeping driveways and idyllically manicured grounds. Uniformed maids, all of them Latina, darted in and out of side gates, some walking dogs, others taking out trash or directing deliveries. Goodman saw a bouquet of flowers as big as he was being delivered to one house, and to another an entire van’s worth of helium balloons emblazoned with the words ‘Ryan is 9!’

Lucky Ryan. Goodman thought back to his own ninth birthday, a trip to the ice rink in White Plains with his buddy Marco. What a great day that had been. One of the last completely happy days of his childhood, before his father went bankrupt and the Goodman family’s rapid descent into poverty, misery and loss began. By Lou Goodman’s tenth birthday, his father was dead. But he never thought about that any more. He’d trained himself only to remember the good times, the happy times. He’d also learned young that while money couldn’t always buy you happiness, a lack of money always brought anguish. Lou’s father barely understood what real wealth was. Greg Goodman had felt rich when he owned a business and a house with a garage and a big backyard. Losing those modest successes had destroyed him.

His son was different. Lou Goodman knew very well what real wealth was, and the terrible things men would do to obtain it and maintain it.

‘Your destination is ahead,’ Google informed him cheerfully. ‘You have arrived!’

Someone’s certainly arrived, thought Goodman, staring up at the vast, Greek classical mansion that was 19772 Capri Drive, aka the Grolsch Residence.

He’d skim-read the family information in the car on the long drive over from Boyle Heights: Nathan Grolsch had made a fortune in waste disposal way back in the 1980s. Dumped his first wife and two daughters and married again in his fifties to a barely legal beauty queen named Frances Denton. Nathan and Frances had one son together, Brandon. According to the file, the kid had turned nineteen three days ago, the same day Lisa Flannagan was murdered.

If Jenny Foyle’s DNA results were to be believed, Brandon Grolsch had spent his big day slashing Lisa Flannagan to death before tossing her corpse onto the side of the freeway like a bag of trash. Either that or someone else had managed to insert tiny traces of Brandon’s flesh under Lisa’s fingernails, an unlikely scenario, however Goodman looked at it.

Goodman hit the call button on the enormous front gates. Two stone lions gazed impassively down at him from marble pillars to his right and left.

‘Yes?’ a woman’s voice crackled over the speaker.

‘Good afternoon.’ Goodman cleared his throat. ‘I’m Detective Louis Goodman from the LA Police Department. I’m here concerning Brandon Grolsch.’

‘Jus’ a moment please.’ The woman had a Mexican accent. Probably the housekeeper. Goodman heard a crackle of static, then a long silence. He was about to ring again when the gates suddenly whirred into life, swinging open to reveal the house and gardens in all their glory.

Making his way up the bluestone driveway, past a lavish marble fountain, Goodman climbed the formal steps up to the front door. Potted olive trees flanked the entrance, and an antique bronze lamp gleamed above the portico. The place looked more like a fancy hotel than a private residence, a small Ritz Carlton perhaps, or a Four Seasons.

‘Come in, please.’

The housekeeper, indeed Mexican, led him through a light-filled foyer into a small sitting room. Goodman took in his surroundings. The furnishings were overtly feminine – white sofas, pale pink drapes, floral cushions and cream, fringed cashmere throws. A large vase of fresh peonies graced an otherwise bare coffee table, and a candle had been lit that smelled of something cloying and sweet. Maybe figs?

‘Mrs Grolsch will be coming in a minute. Can I get you some tea?’

‘No, gracias.’ Goodman smiled. He was about to arrest this family’s son on suspicion of murder. It didn’t seem right to be drinking their tea at the same time. ‘Is Brandon at home?’

The housekeeper looked down nervously. ‘Mrs Grolsch is coming,’ she mumbled, leaving the room before Goodman could ask her anything else. A few minutes later, the door opened again.

‘Detective? Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Fran Grolsch.’

The woman in front of him was not at all what Goodman had expected. Chubby and out of shape, with the bloated face and puffy eyes typical of pain-pill addicts, Frances Grolsch was unrecognizable as the attractive former beauty queen from her Google Image pictures. This afternoon she was wearing a stained pink Juicy Couture tracksuit that sagged around her backside, and wore her thinning, greasy hair tied up in a cheap elastic. If Goodman had to use one word to describe her, that word would be defeated. Even her voice sounded exhausted, each word elongated – ‘I’m Fraaaaan’ – as if the effort of moving on to the next one was too much to bear.

‘You’re here about Braaaaandon?’ She slumped down onto one of the couches.

‘That’s right. Is your son at home, Mrs Grolsch?’ Goodman asked.

‘Nooooo.’ Frances Grolsch closed her eyes, offering no more information. This woman needs help, Goodman thought.

‘Do you know when you expect him back?’

The eyes opened, but she didn’t respond.

‘Ma’am?’

To Goodman’s embarrassment, Frances Grolsch opened her mouth and let out a long, low howl, an awful, animal moan of distress that went on and on, getting louder and louder. Goodman heard a door slam in the hallway, and heavy footsteps approaching. Seconds later the door swung open and a tall, elderly man in a dark suit stormed in.

‘What the hell, Franny? Shut up! You sound like a goddamn air-raid siren. I’m trying to work.’ Turning on Goodman, the old man barked, ‘Why is she crying? And who the hell are you?’

Goodman produced his badge. The old man inspected it, unimpressed.

‘Homicide?’ he scowled. ‘Who died? Franny, I said shut UP!’ he roared at his wife, who ran whimpering from the room.

‘Nathan Grolsch, I assume?’ Goodman countered, doing his best to take control of the situation. Not easy with such a bullying, forceful man.

‘Of course I’m Nathan Grolsch,’ the old man grunted. ‘The question is, who the hell are you?’

Goodman held up his badge again.

‘So? Why are you here?’ Grolsch asked, unimpressed. ‘I’m a busy man, you know.’

‘I need to speak to your son, Brandon.’

Grolsch rolled his eyes. ‘Is that why she was bawling?’ He nodded towards the door through which his wife had bolted. ‘You asked her about Brandon?’

‘Mr Grolsch, do you know where your son is?’ Goodman asked pointedly. He was beginning to get irritated by the old man’s attitude. ‘A young woman has been brutally murdered and we need to eliminate your son from our inquiries.’

‘Well, that shouldn’t be hard,’ Brandon’s father said bluntly. ‘Brandon’s dead.’

Goodman did a double take. ‘Excuse me?’

There was no record of Brandon Grolsch’s death, or even of his being missing.

‘He took an overdose,’ Nathan Grolsch announced matter-of-factly. ‘His mother got a letter around eight months ago, from a “friend” who saw it happen. Some friend, right? Fran’s still in denial about it. Thinks Brandon’s gonna walk back through that door some day like the prodigal son.’ He snorted derisively.

‘You received word eight months ago that your son died of an overdose, but you never thought to notify anyone?’ Goodman asked, incredulous.

‘What’s to notify?’ Nathan Grolsch shrugged. ‘There was no body, no proof. Look, my son was an addict, OK? A useless, lying, no-good scumbag who threw his life away for drugs. That is the beginning and the end of the story. Brandon was dead to me long before that letter.’

Wow, Goodman thought. What a prince of a guy. With a dad like that, no wonder the kid went off the rails.

‘Does Mrs Grolsch still have the letter?’

‘Nope. I burned it.’ The old man’s pale, rheumy eyes glistened with spite. ‘That meddlesome bitch Valentina Baden should never have shown it to Fran in the first place. She must have known it would screw her up. Better for everyone to get rid of the thing. Close the door on the whole sorry chapter.’

Goodman’s mind raced. ‘Valentina Baden? You mean Willie Baden’s wife?’

‘Right,’ Grolsch grunted. ‘She runs some charity for missing kids. I guess at one point Fran decided Brandon was “missing” and Valentina must’ve gotten involved. In any case, she passed on the letter. So you can go ahead and “eliminate” Brandon from your inquiries.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy, Mr Grolsch,’ Goodman said, pleased to have provoked a look of deep irritation on the old man’s face. ‘We have DNA evidence directly linking Brandon to the murder victim. And as you say, you have no proof your son is dead. No body. And, now that you’ve burned the letter, no hard evidence either. Other than your word.’

Goodman’s tone made it plain how little store he set by Nathan Grolsch’s word.

‘What’s the dead girl’s name?’ Nathan Grolsch sighed deeply.

‘Lisa Flannagan.’

‘Never heard of her.’ Grolsch shrugged.

‘She was Willie Baden’s mistress,’ Goodman shot back. ‘Among other things. Small world, isn’t it?’

A momentary flash of surprise registered on Nathan Grolsch’s face, but he swiftly recovered. ‘Not that small. From what I’ve heard, Baden’s slept with half the pretty girls in LA. Probably why his wife needs charity work to distract her. Look I’m sorry, Detective, but I really can’t help you. My son is dead, whether you choose to believe it or not.’

‘Be that as it may, I’m going to need to know when, exactly, you last saw him,’ Goodman insisted. ‘Who his friends were. His dealers. Where he hung out.’

‘I don’t know any of that,’ Nathan Grolsch snapped. ‘I dare say his mother remembers some of the low-life scum he hung around with,’ he offered grudgingly. ‘You could ask her, although as you can see, Detective, Frances is not exactly at her best by this stage in the day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get changed. My racquetball coach should be here any minute.’

And with that, Nathan Grolsch left the room, without so much as a handshake.

Goodman wisely took a couple of moments to regain his composure before walking back into the hallway and accosting the housekeeper.

‘Take me to Brandon’s room.’

He could see the housekeeper’s panic, her eyes darting around the foyer in search of Mr Grolsch, afraid to comply without his approval. Goodman flashed his badge and repeated the instruction, his tone making it plain this was not a request. Reluctantly she escorted him upstairs and nodded towards the relevant door, then scuttled away as fast as she could.

The room Goodman walked into was a large, brightly decorated boy’s bedroom. He felt a pang of real sadness. There was so much warmth here, so much innocence and hope, traces of the happy child Brandon Grolsch must once have been, before drugs robbed him of his future. The desk chair shaped like a football. The Lamborghini posters on the walls. The trophies, for swimming and karate, wedged between books about NFL heroes and space exploration. The giant ‘B’ cushion, propped up against the Pottery Barn teen bed.

Where did it all go wrong?

A noise behind him made Goodman turn. Brandon’s mother, her eyes still puffy from crying, hovered anxiously in the doorway.

‘Did Brandon have a computer? Or a phone?’ Goodman asked.

She nodded. ‘Both. Once. But he sold ’em, long before he left. You know how it is, when kids have problems.’

Goodman nodded. He knew how it was.

Frances Grolsch gazed vacantly around her son’s room.

‘Maybe he got another phone … I guess he must have.’

‘Mrs Grolsch, your husband believes that Brandon is dead. He said you received a letter—’

‘We don’t know!’ Frances insisted, twisting her fingers round and round in her lap, like someone trying to wring the last drops of water from a dishcloth. ‘That letter wasn’t signed, or anything. Maybe it was a mistake.’

‘But there was a letter?’

She nodded miserably.

‘That Mrs Baden passed on to you?’

Another nod. Then, more lucid than before: ‘He could be dead, Detective. I know that. I’m not stupid. He used to call me two, three, four times a week, no matter what state he was in. Then last summer the calls stopped, just like that.’ Her eyes welled up with tears. ‘Until it’s beyond doubt, until I know for one hundred per cent sure, I can’t give up hope entirely. You understand, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Goodman assured her. ‘Which is why it’s so important we find out what happened to Brandon, Mrs Grolsch. We need to know, for our investigation. And you need to know too, one way or the other. Right?’

She nodded vigorously.

‘Were there any other adults he might have turned to, after he left home? When he stopped calling you. A teacher at school? A counselor? A doctor, even?’

Frances Grolsch sighed heavily. ‘Brandon didn’t like teachers. He had a lot of therapists, but I don’t know if he’d’ve reached out to any of them.’

A thought suddenly occurred to Goodman.

‘Did he ever see a therapist named Dr Nicola Roberts?’

Frances furrowed her brow and thought for a moment. Then, closing her eyes, as if the effort was too much for her, she shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. Don’t think so. I don’t remember that name.’ Looking up at Goodman, she suddenly asked, ‘What is your investigation anyway? Is Brandon in trouble, Detective?’

Goodman stared back at this broken, lonely woman, with her bullying husband, rattling around this opulent prison of a house. I suspect Brandon’s been in trouble for a very, very long time, he thought.

‘We don’t know anything for sure yet, ma’am,’ he said aloud, pulling out his card and pressing it into her clammy hand. ‘But if you remember anything – anything at all that you think might help – please call me.’

‘Mmm hmmm,’ said Frances Grolsch, looking dazed.

Goodman headed out to his car. It had been quite the elucidating visit. Clearly he and Johnson needed to speak to Mr and Mrs Willie Baden, and the sooner the better. But driving away, it was the toxic atmosphere in the Grolsch household that haunted him more than anything, sending shivers running down his spine.

Poor Brandon.

Families like that were how monsters were made.

No amount of money could compensate for a life that loveless and bleak.

Passing the neighboring home with the birthday balloons outside, he found himself saying a silent prayer for nine-year-old Ryan.

Good luck, buddy. I think you might need it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Treyvon? Trey!’

Marsha Raymond’s voice echoed down the hall of the flimsy single-story house on Denker Avenue. Marsha had moved in here two years ago with her son, Trey, and her mother Coretta, after their last place got torched. The Hoovers, one of the worst gangs in Westmont, threw a petrol bomb through Marsha Raymond’s bedroom window one night. No reason for it. No feud or bad blood. It just happened.

That was a bad time all around, back when Treyvon was still using, and dealing to fund his habit. A lot of good things had happened since then. Moving into this place. Trey getting clean. Getting a job. The Raymonds had Dr Douglas, God rest him, and his beautiful wife Nikki to thank for all that. Sometimes, Marsha thought, the Lord truly did work in mysterious ways.

‘TREY!’ she yelled now, struggling to make herself heard over her son’s booming music. ‘You got a visitor! Get out here.’

Haddon Defoe stood in the hallway and grinned as he watched Trey’s formidable mother march into her son’s bedroom and haul the boy out. What a long way Trey Raymond had come since Haddon first met him at the rehab clinic. With Doug. And not only Trey. The whole family. Back then the boy had been a desperate, wild-eyed addict, skeletally thin, his body covered in sores. He was having seizures, the whole nine yards. No one knew better than Haddon how often intervention attempts failed, especially with kids from hellholes like Westmont, kids as deep in their addiction as Treyvon Raymond was. But every now and then, things worked out perfectly. This was one of those rare cases.

‘Hey, man!’ Haddon high-fived Trey as his mom frogmarched him out into the hall. ‘How you been?’

‘Good, man,’ Trey said proudly. ‘I’m doing good. I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I was in the neighborhood.’

Haddon winked and they both laughed. Westmont was not a neighborhood that a man like Haddon Defoe ‘passed through’. Haddon and Trey might share the same skin color, but they came from very different worlds. Haddon had grown up in Brentwood, the son of a doctor and a UCLA history professor. The black kids at the Roberts-Defoe Venice Clinic had nicknamed him ‘Obama’, a reference to his educated, privileged upbringing and whiter-than-white tastes, including a passion for baroque classical music and an obsession with 1920s silent movies. There was nothing Haddon Defoe couldn’t tell you about Charlie Chaplin, but Tupac lyrics drew a complete blank. Trey, on the other hand, was the product of a teenage relationship between his indomitable mother, Marsha Raymond, and a good-for-nothing troublemaker named Billy James who’d disappeared from their lives long ago and whom Trey assumed was either incarcerated or dead.

‘Seriously, Dr Defoe, is everything OK?’ Trey asked Haddon, leading him through to the tiny front room. ‘Why are you here?’

Haddon rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Everything’s fine, Trey. I wanted to check in on you, that’s all. I know Doug would have wanted me to.’

Trey nodded gratefully. Doug Roberts had been the closest thing to a father he’d ever had. He missed him terribly. Haddon Defoe had been the Doc’s best friend, which made him honorary family in Trey’s eyes.

‘How are things going at work? How’s Nikki?’ Haddon asked.

‘You mean since the murder?’

Haddon looked blank. ‘What murder?’

‘Seriously?’ Trey frowned. ‘You haven’t heard? Don’t you watch the news, man?’ Trey told him about what had happened to Lisa Flannagan, and the LAPD visit to Nikki’s office.

‘Lisa was one of Dr Roberts’ patients.’

‘This isn’t the girl they found by the freeway? Willie Baden’s mistress?’ Haddon asked, astonished.

‘She was a lot more than that,’ Trey said defensively. ‘Lisa was a beautiful person, she really was. The cops think Dr Roberts might have been the last person to see her alive. Apart from her killer, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ Haddon seemed lost in thought. ‘What were they like?’ he asked.

‘Who?’

‘The detectives who came to Nikki’s office.’

‘Oh,’ said Trey. ‘You know. They were cops. One of them seemed all right, I guess. But his partner was this short, fat, Irish guy. Real mean. Racist too. You could see it in his eyes.’

Haddon Defoe nodded, still thinking.

‘How’s Nikki taken it? Was she close to this girl?’

Trey shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not especially, I guess. Dr Roberts seems OK. I mean, she’s sad. Everyone’s sad. It’s a shock.’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Haddon.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Haddon left, declining all Marsha’s attempts to get him to stay for supper. ‘We got plenty,’ she assured him. ‘C’mon, Dr Defoe. Where you gotta be?’

‘Back at my office, I’m afraid.’ Haddon smiled ruefully. ‘You have no idea how much paperwork I still need to finish tonight.’

This was a lie. But then so was Marsha Raymond’s claim that she could afford to feed an extra mouth. Even with Trey’s salary coming in, the family were barely scraping by and Haddon knew it.

‘That’s a good man, right there,’ Trey’s grandma Coretta observed, tottering in from the backyard just in time to see Doc Defoe drive off in his fancy electric car. ‘You don’ know how lucky you are, Treyvon.’

‘I do know, Gamma.’ Trey kissed the old lady on the top of her balding head. ‘Believe me. I know.’

It was kind of Haddon to stop by and see him. Thoughtful.

At the same time, a small part of Trey felt suspicious. Why had he chosen tonight to trek all the way out to Westmont? Doug Roberts had been dead a year and he’d never ‘stopped by’ before. And why all the questions about Nikki and the police? Was it really coincidence, Dr Defoe’s visit coming so soon after Lisa Flannagan’s sudden death? And did he really not know anything about Lisa’s murder?

Trey helped himself to a large plate of El Pollo Loco wings, trying to push these irrational fears aside. I’m being paranoid. What could Haddon Defoe possibly know? A few minutes later, his cell phone buzzed. Reading the text, he stiffened.

‘What’s the matter, baby?’ Marsha Raymond asked. After all Trey’s years of addiction, she’d learned to watch her son’s reactions like a hawk.

‘Nothing.’ He smiled.

‘You sure?’

He nodded, putting the phone away. ‘Just work. Something I forgot to do.’

After dinner, Trey did the dishes and took out the trash. It was important to keep to his normal routine, not to look as if he were rushing. He knew his mom would worry if anything seemed out of the ordinary. Only once the kitchen was clean did he grab his jacket, as casually as he could.

‘I’m going out,’ he told Marsha.

Instinctively, her eyes narrowed. ‘Out where?’ Trey hadn’t used in over two years, but ‘I’m going out’ still triggered a fear response. It probably always would.

‘Jus’ for a walk, Mama.’ He kissed her on the cheek.

‘A walk? In our beautiful neighborhood?’ she raised an eyebrow.

Trey chuckled. ‘I need some cigarettes. Today was a crazy day, you know? I won’t be long.’

‘OK, baby.’ Marsha forced herself to relax. He was a grown man after all. She couldn’t keep tabs on his every move. ‘Watch yourself.’

‘I will, Mama.’

The cool evening breeze on his skin gave Trey Raymond no comfort as he walked down Denker Avenue. He was wired like an over-strung guitar, ready to snap at any moment.

He waited till he’d turned the corner, out of sight of his house, to pull out his cell phone and re-read the text:

‘Be at the corner of Vermont and 135th in 1 hr.’

That was all it said. But it was all it needed to say. Trey knew who the text was from, and what it meant. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was too late for that.

He could see the corner, less than fifty yards away. Apart from a couple of wasted hookers, slumped against the convenience store wall, it was deserted.

His phone buzzed again. MMS. A picture this time.

Trey clicked it open and felt the bile rise up in his throat. It was a woman’s torso, what was left of it, covered in stab wounds. Her bare breasts had been sliced open grotesquely, like a split chicken ready for stuffing.

Lisa? Or someone else, someone new? Another victim?

Beneath the picture were two words. ‘Hurry up.’

Trey started to run. He reached the rendezvous, breathless, but there was no one there. No cars, no people, nothing. Only the hookers sitting on the curb. Crouching down over the girls, Trey shook one by the shoulder.

‘Was anybody here? D’you see anybody waiting here earlier?’

The girl looked up at him blankly, her pupils dilating like the pulse of a dying star. Trey tried her semi-comatose friend. ‘Please!’ He could hear the desperation in his own voice and it scared him. ‘I’m looking for someone. It’s really important.’

The second girl sat up suddenly, like a robot whose batteries just got replaced. ‘Looks like you found them, sugar!’ she grinned. ‘Behind you!’

Trey turned, just in time to feel the crackle of the Taser burning into his chest. The pain was excruciating. He fell backwards, slamming his head on the concrete.

Then everything went black.

CHAPTER NINE

‘Two pairs.’

Lou Goodman laid his tens and eights down on the Formica table. Mick Johnson, his partner, was addicted to heads-up poker. Goodman had learned the game to try to bond with the older man. It hadn’t worked, so far, but Goodman kept trying.

‘Straight.’ Johnson cracked a smug smile, laying out his six-through-ten. ‘Guess that means the breakfast’s on you.’

And the heart attack’s on you, my friend, Goodman thought, watching his partner begin to attack his second enormous stack of Denny’s pancakes, drowning in syrup and whipped cream.

The two detectives had escaped the station together to compare their progress, or lack of it, in the Lisa Flannagan murder case. Flannagan’s former lover, the billionaire Rams owner Willie Baden, still hadn’t returned from his vacation home in Cabo San Lucas. Conveniently, he’d been in Mexico the night Lisa was killed, vacationing with his loyal, long-suffering wife Valentina, and the couple were no doubt planning to stay there until the salacious press coverage about his and Lisa’s affair died down. Goodman had told Johnson about the connection between Valentina Baden and Brandon Grolsch’s mother, Frances. But a cursory call to Valentina’s charity offices had yielded nothing of use, which left the detectives with little option but to await the Badens’ return.

Meanwhile Johnson had drawn a blank with the dead girl’s family (no siblings, both parents dead, and an aunt in Reno who hadn’t seen Lisa since she was six) and Goodman was no further ahead in establishing whether Brandon Grolsch was dead or alive, never mind how his DNA came to be under Lisa’s fingernail. Like his parents, none of Brandon’s old friends or girlfriends had heard from him in eight months, and Goodman’s calls to all of the various rehabs and drop-in centers known to have treated Brandon in the past yielded nothing. Though it pained him to agree with Nathan Grolsch on anything, it did seem increasingly likely that Brandon was, indeed, dead. Unfortunately, ‘likely’ wasn’t good enough.

The only other clue they’d managed to find turned out to be a damp squib. There had been a lot of excitement when one of the techs recovered pieces of Lisa’s clothing from the stretch of freeway close to where the body was dumped. But when the lab reports came in they were inconclusive; the unusually heavy rain around the time of Lisa’s death had washed away any useful DNA traces. That left them with only the baffling fingernail cells to go on. So far there’d been no sign of Dr Roberts’ missing raincoat, the one she claimed to have lent Lisa the night she died, nor of the murder weapon.

All in all, it wasn’t exactly a triumphant start.

‘I don’t trust that psychologist broad,’ Johnson observed, as he did every time they discussed the case, pushing the cards aside and shoveling forkfuls of pancake into his open mouth. ‘I think we should talk to her again.’

Goodman frowned. Johnson’s growing obsession with and dislike of Dr Nikki Roberts, the victim’s beautiful therapist, was almost as disheartening as their lack of evidence.

‘Talk to her again and say what?’ he asked, exasperated.

‘We could ask for her notes,’ Johnson mumbled, spooning more cream onto his stack. ‘Session notes. With the victim.’

‘Not without a warrant, we couldn’t,’ said Goodman. ‘Doctor–patient information’s privileged.’

Johnson snorted derisively. ‘She’s not a doctor! She’s a frikkin quack. That lady has about as much medical training as the tarot card readers on Venice Beach.’

‘That’s simply not true, Mick,’ Goodman replied. ‘I don’t understand why you hate her so much.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ the fat man grumbled.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Goodman asked.

‘She’s attractive,’ Johnson said simply. ‘You like attractive women.’

‘And you don’t?’

Goodman pushed aside his cold coffee. He thought everything about Denny’s was disgusting. He couldn’t understand why so many of his colleagues seemed to love the place. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘it doesn’t matter whether she’s attractive or not. The point is, she has nothing to do with this. She’s a distraction, a sideshow. We need to focus on speaking to the Badens and we need to find Brandon Grolsch.’

Johnson grunted noncommittally. His ringing phone interrupted the sullen silence. ‘Yello?’

Goodman watched him slowly put down his fork and stop eating. He was listening intently to whatever was being said on the other end of the line. After what seemed like an age he said an abrupt, ‘OK. We’re on our way now,’ and hung up.

‘What was that about?’ asked Goodman.

‘Remember Treyvon Raymond?’ said Johnson, pushing back his chair. ‘The snotty little black kid from Doc Roberts’ office.’

‘The receptionist? Sure,’ said Goodman. ‘What about him?’

‘Someone found him dumped less than half a mile from where the killer left Lisa Flannagan. Naked. Multiple stab wounds, including one to the heart.’

‘Shit.’ Goodman exhaled slowly. ‘So we’ve got a serial.’

‘Not yet we don’t.’ Johnson stood up and lumbered towards the door.

‘What do you mean?’ Goodman asked.

‘Treyvon Raymond’s still alive.’

CHAPTER TEN

In the heart of West Hollywood, Cedars-Sinai Hospital has always been synonymous with celebrity and glamour. Frank Sinatra and River Phoenix died there, Michael Jackson’s kids were born there and Britney Spears was admitted to the psychiatric wing there after her head-shaving breakdown.

However Cedars was also a bustling, inner-city hospital and home to LA’s busiest ER. Every day, ordinary Angelinos poured through its doors after car crashes or overdoses, ambulances offloading every type of human pain and misery from burns to gunshot wounds to victims of rape and domestic battery. Some of the city’s top surgeons and specialists could be found here too. One of them, a slight, softly spoken Iranian by the name of Dr Robert Rhamatian had just finished surgery on Trey Raymond – what was left of him – when Goodman and Johnson arrived.

‘When can we talk to him?’ Goodman asked the surgeon anxiously. ‘It’s vital we hear what he knows.’

Dr Rhamatian sighed heavily. He was exhausted after six grueling hours in theater and not in the mood for two pushy cops and their demands.

‘I don’t think you understand, Detective,’ he said, with a patience he didn’t feel. ‘Mr Raymond is very gravely ill. He’s heavily sedated right now, which is why he looks so peaceful. The operation was successful, as far as it went, but the damage to his left ventricle is extensive.’

Goodman looked blank.

‘He was stabbed in the heart,’ the surgeon clarified. ‘We’ve done the best we can for him, but I’m by no means certain he’ll survive.’

‘All the more reason we need to talk to him,’ Johnson said gruffly. ‘Can you wake him up?’

‘No.’ The surgeon looked at the sweating cop in the syrup-stained shirt with distaste. ‘I can’t.’

‘Did he say anything before he went into surgery?’ Goodman asked, hoping to get something useful out of the doctor before Johnson alienated him completely. ‘Was he conscious at any time? I’m sorry to press you, Dr Rhamatian. But we think whoever did this to Treyvon Raymond may have murdered a young woman a few days ago. If Treyvon saw his attacker, or can remember anything at all, it’s vital that you tell us.’

‘I understand,’ said the surgeon. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t know what happened before his surgery. You need to speak to the paramedics who brought him in. I’ll get the names for you. Hey!’ Turning around he glared at Johnson, who was trying to open the door to the recovery room. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t go in there.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find I can,’ Johnson said rudely. ‘I’m gonna ask that boy some questions while he’s still alive to be asked ’em, whether you like it or not.’

‘I told you, he’s sedated. He won’t be able to hear you.’

‘Then I won’t be bothering him, will I?’ said Johnson. ‘Look, Doc, you did your job already. Now it’s time for us to do ours.’

Dr Rhamatian looked at Goodman as if to say, Can’t you do something?

‘I’m sorry,’ Goodman muttered. But he did nothing to restrain his partner as Johnson pulled open the door and walked in.

‘So am I,’ said the surgeon angrily. ‘For the boy’s sake. This is an outrage.’

He stormed off, presumably in search of reinforcements. Goodman hurriedly followed Johnson into the recovery suite.

‘Do you have to be such a dick?’ he asked Johnson. ‘The man was helping us.’

‘No he wasn’t.’ Johnson didn’t look up from the bed, where Trey Raymond was lying prone and still, his bandaged chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm, with the help of a machine that looked like a cross between a prop from a 1960s sci-fi movie and a pool cleaner, complete with long, corrugated tubing. His arms, neck and cheeks were covered in shallow knife wounds, exactly as Lisa’s had been, and his face was bruised beyond recognition. No wonder the killer had left him for dead.

‘The kid’s dying, Lou,’ said Johnson. ‘Even you can see that. It’s now or never.’

‘I know,’ Goodman said somberly. ‘But—’

He was interrupted by Johnson’s loud clapping, his fat hands crashing together inches above Trey’s unresponsive face.

‘Wake up!’ he shouted. ‘Tell us who did this to you. TREY!’

‘Mick, come on—’

‘I said, WAKE UP, DIPSHIT!’ Johnson bellowed. ‘Open your GODDAMN EYES!’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Grabbing him by the shoulders, Goodman pulled Johnson back. ‘Stop it. Leave him alone. What the hell is wrong with you?’

Johnson turned, and for a moment looked as if he were about to punch his partner in the face. But before he had a chance, Trey suddenly opened his eyes and let out a panicked scream.

‘I don’t know!’ he yelled, his arms twitching manically. ‘Please! Oh God! I DON’T KNOW!’ His head was tossing from side to side. He screamed again and then an awful gurgling sound began from somewhere deep in his throat. Even Johnson looked alarmed. One of the machines started beeping and a stream of nurses and medics ran into the room, as Trey slumped back, unresponsive, onto the bed.

‘Who let you in here?’ one of the interns barked at Goodman and Johnson. ‘This is medical personnel only. Get out!’

Johnson hesitated, but only for a moment. He followed Goodman out.

Out in the corridor, Goodman turned on him. ‘What in God’s name was that? We could get prosecuted! What if the kid’s family make a complaint?’

Johnson laughed. ‘What if they do?’ There could be no mistaking the racist undertone in his words. The unspoken implication that nobody would listen to the likes of Marsha Raymond, a poor, black single mother from Westmont. Not for the first time, Goodman felt a surge of real dislike for the man he was forced to work with.

‘Where are you going?’ he called after Johnson, who was already headed for the exit.

‘Back to the precinct,’ said Johnson. ‘The boy’s clearly not gonna make it, so that ship’s sailed. Still, at least we now know one thing for sure.’

‘We do?’

‘Sure we do. It’s the same killer. Assuming Trey dies, that’s two victims inside of a week, both attacked and dumped the same exact way.’

‘OK,’ said Goodman, not sure why this obvious fact seemed to please his partner so much.

‘So you tell me,’ Johnson spelled it out. ‘Who’s the one person that connects both of the victims?’

The penny dropped.

It pained Goodman to admit it. But this time, Johnson was right.

As far as they knew, Lisa Flannagan and Trey Raymond had only one thing in common.

They were both close to Dr Nikki Roberts.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Earlier that morning, Nikki Roberts sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. Her sweat-drenched T-shirt clung to her body and she was shaking, shivering, as if she’d just been pulled out of icy water. Her bedside clock said 4.52 a.m. Wearily she sank back against the pillows.

It was the same dream she’d been having for months, or a variant of it anyway: Doug was in danger, about to die, and was screaming out to Nikki, begging her for help. But she didn’t help him, and he died, and it was all her fault. Sometimes he was drowning and she stood and watched from the beach, letting it happen. Sometimes he was in a car, careening out of control, and Nikki held some sort of remote control that could activate the brakes, but she refused to use it. In tonight’s version, they’d been walking along the clifftop path at Big Sur and Doug had somehow lost his footing and slipped off the edge. He was reaching out to Nikki, pleading for her hand to pull him back to safety. But this time, instead of simply refusing or ignoring him, she’d actively peeled off his clinging fingers one by one and pushed him to his death, watching as he was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. She’d murdered him. And the worst part was, in the dream, the act had left her with a sense of elation, a tremendous feeling of power.

A few hours later, an emotional Nikki met her friend Gretchen Adler for brunch on Melrose.

‘I had the dream again,’ she said as the two women sat down at Glorious Greens café.

‘The Doug dream?’ said Gretchen.

Nikki nodded. ‘Only this time it was worse.’

Nikki filled Gretchen in on her latest nightmare while a handsome waiter hovered over them. Nikki ordered her usual poached eggs, toast and triple-shot latte, while Gretchen went for a vile-looking kale-and-beetroot smoothie and a bowl of something involving sprouted grains. Gretchen was Nikki’s oldest friend – they’d known each other since high school – and a sweetheart of the first order, but for most of her adult life she’d been fighting an on-off battle with her weight. As far as Nikki could tell, she rarely got any thinner, but was always raving about some new diet or other. At the moment it was raw-vegan.

‘You look exhausted,’ Gretchen told Nikki. ‘You know, if you’re having sleep problems you should really think about going vegan, or at least only eating raw last thing at night. What did you have for dinner last night?’

‘A burger,’ said Nikki.

‘There you go.’ Gretchen sat back, satisfied she’d proved her point. ‘Red meat. That’s the worst thing for nightmares.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yup. Apart from cheese. Oh my God, it wasn’t a cheeseburger, was it?’ Gretchen gasped melodramatically.

Nikki laughed and confessed that, unfortunately, it was, but that she really didn’t feel her diet was to blame for her night terrors.

‘Well, what do you think it is then?’ Gretchen asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nikki. ‘Guilt, maybe?’

Gretchen didn’t buy it. ‘That’s baloney. What have you got to be guilty about? Doug’s death was an accident.’

‘I know.’

‘You were an amazing wife to him, Nikki.’

‘An amazing, infertile wife,’ Nikki added wistfully.

Gretchen frowned. ‘Come on. You were the one who cared about that, far more than Doug ever did.’

Was that true? Nikki couldn’t remember any more.

‘Maybe it’s anger, then,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m still so damn angry at him, my subconscious is trying to ease the pressure by having me sadistically murder my already dead husband in fantasy?’

‘You know what I think?’ Gretchen said. ‘I think all you psychologists are full of shit. It’s a dream. It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, Christ, Nik, you’ve been under a hell of a lot of stress. No wonder your subconscious is going a bit haywire. What you need is a distraction.’

‘Such as?’ Nikki asked wearily.

‘Well,’ Gretchen leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I assume you’ve been following all the stuff about your poor murdered patient and Willie Baden?’

Reaching down beneath the table for her pocketbook, Gretchen pulled out the latest copy of US Weekly. Paparazzi pictures of the Rams’ owner, looking paunchy and dreadfully old on the beach in Mexico, had been placed alongside glamour shots of Lisa Flannagan from her modeling days. Between these, and three pages of lurid prose about Willie and Lisa’s affair, under the headline ‘Baden’s Betrayal’, were a few pictures of Valentina Baden, Willie’s wife.

Nikki studied them closely. Mrs Baden was an attractive woman for her age, which she guessed was probably early sixties. Slim and elegant with a neatly trimmed bob of gray-blond hair. But at the same time she looked haggard and hounded in all of the paparazzi photographs, using her sarong as a shield and cowering behind oversized sunglasses.

Leafing through the feature, Nikki shook her head angrily. ‘Poor woman. Why don’t they leave her alone?’

Gretchen shrugged. ‘They never leave anyone alone. You know that. And whatever else Valentina Baden may be, she’s not poor.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Nikki.

‘I do, but I suspect you’re wrong about that too,’ said Gretchen. ‘My guess is she’s completely used to his affairs by now. I mean, it’s not as if this murdered girl was his first.’

‘Bastard,’ Nikki muttered under her breath.

‘Maybe they have an “arrangement”?’ said Gretchen jokingly. ‘Valentina might be a cougar with a string of young lovers for all we know.’

‘Don’t be facile,’ Nikki snapped. ‘This is what men do. This is his shit, not hers.’

Gretchen recoiled at Nikki’s anger, white-hot suddenly. Neither of them knew the Badens personally, after all. This was just gossip, something the old Nikki would have enjoyed. Before Doug’s death knocked all the joy out of her.

‘I don’t understand you sometimes,’ she observed quietly.

‘What do you mean?’ said Nikki.

‘I thought you’d be outraged that the media are focusing on Willie Baden and the affair, rather than the actual murder. I mean, this poor patient of yours is dead. Shouldn’t that be the story? But instead you seem more worried about Baden’s wife, who isn’t dead, and who knew what she was signing up for!’

‘No one signs up for betrayal,’ Nikki said bluntly. ‘And besides, Lisa Flannagan is dead. She can’t be hurt any more. Unlike Valentina Baden.’ She jabbed a finger furiously at the magazine. ‘I mean, she’s the only innocent party here. Lisa wasn’t innocent! Trust me, I knew the girl. She was a selfish, lying narcissist, sleeping with another woman’s husband for money.’

Gretchen said nothing, but a feeling of deep unease settled over her, as it did so often with Nikki nowadays. Ever since the awful night of Doug’s car crash, Gretchen had watched Nikki being whipsawed between grief and anger. The circumstances of Doug’s death had changed her. Made her harder. Colder. Less forgiving. Gretchen hoped the change was temporary.

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I think Valentina Baden’s a tougher cookie than you give her credit for,’ she said, trying to lighten the mood a little. ‘Before she married Willie she was with some hotshot financier who she completely took to the cleaners in their divorce.’

‘Really?’ Nikki was intrigued, her anger apparently exhausted for the moment. Not for the first time, she marveled at Gretchen’s vast knowledge of celebrity gossip. ‘How do you know this stuff?’

‘I read,’ said Gretchen. ‘Valentina’s actually had an amazing life. She grew up in Mexico City and when she was a teenager her younger sister went missing and they never saw her again. Can you imagine? She’s given interviews about it, how the family assumed the sister was dead but they never knew for sure. Or whether she’d been raped or kidnapped or what had happened to her.’

‘How awful,’ said Nikki, feelingly. ‘That must have been torture.’

‘Valentina never had children of her own,’ Gretchen went on, ‘but she used her husband’s money to set up a charity to help families of missing kids. Do you remember the Clancy case?’

Nikki thought about it. Clancy. The name rang a vague bell.

‘A young American au pair went missing while working in Mexico City,’ said Gretchen. ‘It was probably about ten years ago now.’

Nikki cast her mind back. ‘I do remember! I think I saw the dad on TV. Wasn’t he a firefighter or something?’

‘Right,’ said Gretchen. ‘Well, it was Valentina Baden’s money that put him on TV and brought public attention to the search for his daughter. I think Valentina felt a personal connection to the case, because of the Mexico City thing and her sister. Charlotte, the girl’s name was. Charlotte Clancy.’

‘Did they ever find her?’

Gretchen shook her head. ‘Never. It was like Valentina’s sister all over again. The endless not knowing. All I’m saying is, Willie Baden’s wife has been through a hell of a lot worse in her life than this. It’s your murdered patient I feel sorry for. So young!’

‘She was young,’ Nikki agreed, softening. ‘And, you know, she was trying to improve her life. It’s not that I don’t feel terrible about Lisa—’

‘Do you think Willie had her bumped off?’ Gretchen interrupted breathlessly. ‘You know, took out a hit on her?’

Closing the magazine, Nikki laughed. ‘You’ve been overdosing on The Sopranos again, Gretch. A “hit”?’

‘I’m serious!’ protested Gretchen. ‘I mean, he’s rich enough, right? I’ll bet he knows people who know people.’

Nikki shook her head. ‘Willie didn’t do it. It was already over between them. Although, he was angry about her leaving,’ she mused, thinking back to her final session with Lisa, and Lisa’s almost throwaway remarks about Baden smashing china and making threats when she called it quits.

‘You see?’ Gretchen warmed to her theme. ‘He had motive.’

Nikki shook her head. ‘I don’t think it was Willie Baden. His pride was hurt in the moment. No one likes being dumped. But I never got the sense Lisa was afraid of him.’

‘Maybe she should have been?’ said Gretchen. ‘Well, if it wasn’t Willie, who do you think did it?’

Nikki looked at her old friend for a moment with a strangely intent expression. ‘I have no idea,’ she said eventually. ‘Why does everyone seem to think I would know who killed Lisa Flannagan?’

Gretchen shrugged. ‘You were her therapist.’

‘Patients don’t tell us everything, you know. I’m sure one of the detectives investigating the case thinks I’m hiding something from him.’

Gretchen frowned. ‘Why would he think that?’

‘Who knows?’ said Nikki, thanking the waiter as he placed her poached eggs in front of her. ‘He’s an odd little man, full of testosterone and rage. He obviously hates me. He hasn’t said it in so many words, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had me down as a suspect.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ said Gretchen.

‘Is it ridiculous, though?’ asked Nikki absently. ‘I was the last person to have seen her alive.’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘And we all have our dark sides. Don’t forget I spent last night pushing my beloved husband off a cliff to his death. And I liked it.’ Nikki paused, then broke into a broad grin.

Gretchen exhaled.

OK. That was a joke. She’s joking.

Black humor was a well-known coping mechanism for grief. Gretchen might not be a therapist, but even she knew that. Still, she found Nikki worryingly difficult to read these days. Joke or no joke, something was off about her, and that something seemed to be getting worse, not better.

This murder, coming on top of everything else, had clearly added to the stress she was under. One more blow and Gretchen worried Nikki might unravel completely.

The sooner they caught the maniac that did it, the better.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was five o’clock by the time Haddon Defoe arrived at the hospital. Taking the elevator to the fifth floor, past the Addiction Recovery Clinic where he worked a couple of days a week, he hurried down the corridor, praying he wasn’t too late. But when the nurses directed him to the Family Counseling Suite his heart sank. That could only mean one thing.

Marsha Raymond’s tear-stained face instantly confirmed Haddon’s worst suspicions.

‘He’s gone, Dr Defoe.’ Trey’s mother shook her head, her lower lip trembling. ‘’Bout fifteen minutes ago. I was sitting in there with him, holding his hand, and all of a sudden his heart jus’ stops beating. He never said one mo’ word after those police left this morning. They should never’ve been here, that’s what the doctor said.’

Instinctively, Haddon pulled the grieving woman into his arms and held her. His own mind was racing wildly. It was all too much to take in. Only an hour and a half had gone by since Marsha had called him, giving him a garbled story about Trey being kidnapped and knifed and in the hospital, and begging him to come. He’d driven to Cedars as fast as he could, his mind jumping between thoughts of Trey and what the hell could have happened, and his old friend Doug Roberts, who had loved the boy like a son. What would Doug have made of all of this? And now Haddon was here but he was too late. Trey Raymond was dead. But not before the police had been here, quizzing him, defying his doctor’s orders. The whole thing was a mess.

‘He was cut, more than fifty times!’ Marsha wailed, extricating herself at last from Haddon’s embrace and sinking into an armchair. ‘They stabbed him in the heart, stripped him, and dumped him by the road. They musta thought he was dead.’

Yes, thought Haddon. They must have.

‘Who would do that, Doc Defoe? Who would do that to my baby?’

‘I don’t know, Marsha,’ Haddon said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t want sorry.’ The small woman’s head shot up, her eyes alive with anger. ‘I want to know WHY. I want to know WHO. My Trey never hurt nobody, Doc. He made his mistakes in the past, we all know that. But he was clean. He was a good boy. He had a new life, everything ahead of him! Dr Roberts …’ Her voice broke, and the tears came again in a great flood, leaving the thought unfinished.

‘Have the police said anything to you?’ Haddon asked gently.

Marsha shook her head, still distraught.

‘Does Nik— Dr Roberts know?’

Another shake. ‘Nobody knows. Only you. You the first. He’s not even cold, Doc!’

A family liaison nurse appeared at the door as the sobbing began again, but Haddon waved her away. ‘I’m a family friend, Nurse. I’ll handle this.’

He turned back to Marsha. ‘Would you like me to talk to the police? And to let Nikki know what’s happened?’

Marsha Raymond dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she sniffed. ‘I’d appreciate that. I need to get back to my mother. She’s waiting at home for news. And then, I guess … arrangements …?’

‘Don’t worry about any of that,’ Haddon said smoothly. ‘Let me handle it. I’ll speak to the police and we can take it from there. You just focus on Coretta. I truly am so sorry, Marsha. He was a very special young man.’

Trey Raymond’s mother smiled gratefully through her tears.

‘You’re a good man, Dr Defoe. Thank you for coming.’

‘No problem.’ Haddon hugged her again. ‘Call me if you need anything.’

Nikki had no sooner stepped out of the shower than she heard the doorbell. Wrapping her wet hair in a towel, turban style, and slipping on Doug’s over-sized toweling robe that she still wore in moments she needed to feel close to him, she raced downstairs.

‘Haddon! What a nice surprise.’

She was taken aback to see Doug’s old friend and former partner here. Although they kept in touch and met up for coffee every once in a while, Haddon Defoe hadn’t been up to the house since the day of Doug’s funeral. Perhaps it was Nikki’s imagination, but she always sensed a certain tension when she ran into Haddon, as though Doug’s absence made him embarrassed to be around her. Today, though, it was clear from his strained expression that something more than the usual awkwardness was on his mind.

‘Hello, Nikki.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’ She led him through to the kitchen, disturbed by the odd formality of his manner. ‘Is everything all right, Haddon? You don’t look well.’

‘I’m afraid I have some pretty terrible news,’ he said grimly. ‘I wanted you to hear it from me before the police contact you, as I suspect they will. Nikki, I’m afraid Trey Raymond is dead.’

Nikki was silent. Reaching out a hand, she leaned on the kitchen island for support, then eased herself down gently onto a barstool. She felt faint.

This couldn’t be happening. Not Trey too?

‘What happened?’ she asked at last, her voice raspy and dry.

‘Well …’ Haddon avoided her gaze, looking down at the floor, out of the windows, anywhere but at Nikki. ‘I don’t know all the details. I literally drove here straight from the hospital. But I’m afraid it appears he was murdered. Stabbed, multiple times, with a fatal wound to the heart.’

Nikki shook her head. No. There must be some mistake.

‘He was found naked, by the side of the freeway. Very close to where—’

‘Don’t say it,’ Nikki cut him off, shaking her head as if to dispel the awful truth. ‘Please, I can’t. It can’t be. Not again.’

Haddon moved towards her. Secretly, he’d always found Doug’s wife powerfully alluring; it was that rare combination of strength and vulnerability that drew him, her ambition combined with a sort of intense neediness. Naturally, it was Doug that Nikki had always needed, not Haddon. Doug, who’d never really realized what a jewel he had. But Doug was gone now and Haddon was here, and so was Nikki, her skin still wet from the shower, her dark eyes welling with tears like two great pools of loss …

He reached out to touch her arm, to comfort her, but she backed away with a jerk, as if he were a rattlesnake.

‘What else do you know?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me everything.’

Haddon threw his arms wide. ‘You know what I know. Like I say, I came straight from the hospital. He was alive when they found him, and I think they’d hoped …’

His words trailed off uselessly. Poor Nikki looked white with shock.

‘Why?’ she asked him. ‘Why would anyone want to hurt a young boy like that? I don’t understand.’

‘None of us do. Yet,’ said Haddon. ‘Marsha Raymond’s asked me to talk to the police for her. I’m going there after this. Hopefully, I’ll know more then. I’m so sorry, Nikki.’

She turned on him, irrationally angry. ‘Why are you sorry?’

The transformation was instant and total, like Jekyll and Hyde. Haddon was so stunned it took him a moment to respond. ‘I only meant … you’ve been through so much already,’ he said, blushing. ‘And I know you and Doug both loved Trey like a son. I’m worried about you, that’s all. Is there someone I can call? I hate leaving you alone like this.’

Nikki blinked, as if waking up from a dream and seeing Haddon for the first time. When she spoke again, she was calm.

‘No need to call anyone. I’m fine. It’s just shock. I’ll be fine. It was sweet of you to come. Really.’

She hugged him and ushered him out, pulling herself together and making small talk as she walked him to his car, standing and waving as he drove away.

Once he’d gone, Nikki closed the door behind him and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

So now there were two.

Lisa Flannagan, who she’d never really liked.

And Trey Raymond, who she’d loved, if only for Doug’s sake.

Two young lives, slashed to pieces, brutally cut down in their prime.

Poor Trey.

Nikki waited for the pain to hit her, for the appropriate torrent of emotion, but instead she felt strangely numb. Funny how grief did that to you. Turned you off like a light switch.

Wearily, she walked back upstairs alone.

Always alone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Valentina Baden took another sip of her perfectly made espresso and leaned back in her chair contentedly. She adored Cabo San Lucas, adored their villa here, with its private whitewashed balcony off the master bedroom with views over the formal gardens and tennis courts and then out to the clear, azure-blue sea. Before Willie bought the LA Rams, they used to come down to Cabo a lot. But ever since his obsession with that godforsaken football team, getting Willie out of Los Angeles had been like trying to pry a barnacle off the keel of a rusty boat.

And it wasn’t only the Rams that had been keeping him homebound. There was the girl too, Lisa, the ridiculous brunette tramp Willie had been running around with for the past eight years, mooning after her pathetically like a lost puppy.

Not any more, though, Valentina smiled smugly. The girl was gone. Good riddance.

Truth be told, Willie and his young mistress had been on the outs anyway. Even before Lisa Flannagan’s untimely demise, Willie had started suggesting that he and Valentina spend more time together in Mexico. ‘We should head down to the villa before the hoi polloi descend,’ Willie had told Valentina over dinner last month, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Spend a few weeks in Cabo. Maybe more, depending on business.’ Apparently, Willie had some property deal brewing down in Punta Mita and another in Mexico City, Valentina’s hometown. His plan was to travel for work during the weeks and head back to Cabo at weekends.

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, darling?’ he purred at his wife. ‘The whole summer in Mexico?’

Valentina replied that she would like it, very much. And she had liked it, despite the unexpected irritation of the paparazzi following her around like a swarm of flies ever since Lisa Flannagan inconveniently went and got herself murdered and the news broke that the dead model had been Willie’s latest lover.

Valentina had read the details of Lisa’s grisly death and the meager ‘facts’ the press had been able to glean about her relationship with Willie, but the Badens hadn’t discussed the matter between themselves at all. The time had long since passed when Valentina cared a fig about Willie’s extra-marital activities. Indeed, if some girl was willing to sleep with him for a few paltry gifts of jewelry and a cheap condo on the wrong side of Beverly Hills, the way Valentina saw it they were doing her a favor, keeping the revolting old toad out of her bed and allowing her to enjoy her lavish lifestyle – not to mention her own freedom – in peace.

The one part of the whole episode that troubled her was that the Los Angeles police had asked to speak with her, as well as Willie, about the murder investigation ‘as soon as possible’, even going so far as to request her immediate return to the States, a request Valentina Baden had no intention of granting. She had no desire to speak to the police about Willie’s murdered whore, or anything else for that matter. In her bitter experience, the police were no help at all when you needed them, but when they needed you they were prepared to harass you at the drop of a hat.

Draining her coffee cup, Valentina picked up the binoculars Willie kept on the balcony for birdwatching and trained them on her beloved spouse, down on the tennis court with his new young coach, Guillermo. The two of them made a ridiculous pair, Guillermo tall and young and athletic, exactly Valentina’s type, his broad shoulders rippling beneath his tennis whites and his thick dark hair blowing in the breeze as he moved gazelle-like across the court. And on the other side of the net, Willie, short, fat and bald as a coot, mimicking the young coach’s movements, his frail, liver-spotted limbs performing a grotesque parody of Guillermo’s effortless forehand.

He is old and disgusting, Valentina thought, sweating like a pig ready for the slaughterhouse.

But, she had to admit, Willie had kept his side of the bargain. Valentina’s credit cards were limitless. Willie made generous, annual donations to her pet charity, Missing, without ever delving deeper into their ‘work’. Just like Valentina’s poor, long-lost sister María, Willie could be gratifyingly trusting when it mattered most. Plus, he rarely made demands on her, either sexually or socially, the way that Richard, her last husband, used to do. On top of all that, until now anyway, he had kept his affairs low-key and discreet.

If only the stupid girl, Lisa, had kept her mouth shut, instead of bragging to all and sundry about her trysts with Willie, she might well be alive today. She’d even gone and poured her heart out to a therapist, the strikingly photogenic Dr Nicola Roberts. As it was, it was Lisa Flannagan who’d become the slaughtered pig, while Willie, her ancient lover, lived to sweat and wheeze his arthritic, self-centered way through another day.

Ah well. We all make our sacrifices, I suppose, Valentina Baden thought wryly. Our deals with the devil.

She only hoped that at some point Willie’s mood would improve, ideally before they both had to face the music and head back to LA.

Down on the tennis court, Willie Baden mopped his brow and glared bad-temperedly at his coach.

‘That last point was in,’ he snarled, doubled over and panting with exertion.

‘If you say so, sir,’ the boy, Guillermo, replied indulgently.

Patronizing asshole, thought Willie. Guillermo was a talented coach but he practically shone with the arrogance of youth. Willie’s players on the Rams were the same, most of them. Arrogant. Lisa had been arrogant too. Narcissistic little slut, may she rot in hell. She’d actually believed she could switch Willie off like a light when she grew tired of him, throw him out like a discarded toy. But it was Lisa who’d ended up discarded, tossed onto the side of the freeway like a rag doll. And now he, Willie, was paying the price for that too, being chased by photographers everywhere he went and having his good name dragged through the mud. It was a headache he could have done without.

‘Willie!’

Glen Foman, Willie’s attorney, was waving at him from the sideline.

‘We need to talk!’ Glen shouted. ‘Can you take a break?’

Wordlessly, Willie handed Guillermo his racket and stalked off the court.

‘What is it now?’ he barked at Glen, unscrewing his water bottle and taking a long, shaky gulp.

‘I’ve finished wording our statement,’ said the attorney, unfazed by his client’s rudeness. ‘You need to take a look. Then I think we should fly back to LA tomorrow and go to the police voluntarily.’

Willie shook his head.

‘You give them the prepared speech,’ said Glen, ignoring him. ‘Let the media take pictures, let me handle any questions—’

‘We can’t leave tomorrow,’ Willie interrupted him. Glen Foman followed his client’s gaze up to the balcony of the villa’s master bedroom, where Willie’s wife sat reading the newspaper, as cool and calm as Lady Macbeth. He’s scared of her, Glen thought. Even with a possible murder charge hanging over him, he’s too afraid to cross Valentina.

‘Mrs Baden wouldn’t need to come,’ Glen reassured him. ‘It would only be you and me. We could turn around and be back here within twenty-four hours.’

‘No,’ said Willie. ‘The cops want to speak to her too.’

‘Since when?’ Glen frowned. ‘Willie, you need to tell me these things. I’m your lawyer. What do they want to talk to your wife about?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Willie barked. ‘Anyway it’s not just Valentina. I have business here, in Mexico City. Important business, with people who don’t like to be let down.’

‘Well, business can wait,’ Glen said bluntly. ‘You need to give the police something, Willie. Hiding out here makes you look guilty.’

Willie’s eyes darted nervously from his lawyer, to the master bedroom balcony, to the ground at his feet. He’s like a trapped rat, thought Glen. Was it only his wife he was afraid of? Or something else? If Willie Baden hadn’t been such a thoroughly unpleasant man, Glen might have felt sorry for him.

Willie looked up at his attorney mournfully. ‘I just want this to end.’

‘Then end it.’

‘It’s not that simple.’ Willie rubbed his temples. ‘Like I said, my business associates here are people you don’t want to cross.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Glen, raising a hand. ‘I don’t need to know. One problem at a time, OK, Willie? Because your girlfriend’s murder is a big problem for you right now, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘I’ve been reading in the press about this therapist woman, Roberts,’ said Willie. ‘Evidently, Lisa was talking to her. Do you think …?’

‘It’s all handled,’ Glen assured him. ‘I’m on this shit, Willie, OK? You need to trust me. But you also need to follow my advice. Go back – with your wife, if the cops have asked to see her. Give the statement I’ve written, no more, no less. Be seen to be cooperating.’

Willie hesitated. His rheumy old eyes looked up again to the house, but Valentina had gone back inside.

‘Do you want me to talk to Mrs Baden?’ Glen offered.

‘No,’ said Willie. ‘I’ll do it. But whatever happens, we need to be back here by Friday. This business in Mexico City is more important than you realize, Glen.’

‘By Friday,’ the attorney nodded. ‘You have my word. Now go pack.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘Tell me please, Mrs Roberts. How long did you take off work after your husband passed away?’

Beneath the interview room table, Nikki dug her fingernails hard into her palms and counted to ten. I must not let this man get under my skin. I must not let him provoke me. That’s giving him what he wants.

‘Again, Detective Johnson, it’s Doctor Roberts.’ She used her softest, most patronizing tone to correct him. ‘You seem to be having a tough time remembering that. Have you always had trouble with your memory? Or is it something age-related?’

Johnson’s jowly face reddened to an ugly puce as his partner suppressed a giggle. Unlike Dr Roberts, Goodman noticed, Johnson showed no self-control when provoked, rising to Nikki’s bait like a starving fish.

‘Oh, I’m not having a tough time remembering anything, lady. I merely choose not to dignify your bullshit profession with a title that actually means something to some people. We both know you aren’t a real doctor.’

Mick looks like an overcooked hotdog about to burst out of its skin, Goodman thought, wincing at his partner’s crassness. Johnson had issues around women in general, but for some reason this particular woman seemed to bring out the absolute worst in him.

Goodman couldn’t understand why. In his opinion, Dr Roberts was looking particularly beautiful this afternoon, in a taupe pencil skirt and matching silk shirt. The outfit was the same color as her tanned skin, giving an exciting, if fleeting, impression of nakedness. Her calm, collected manner was attractive as well, at least in Lou Goodman’s eyes. He liked a woman who could handle herself.

‘Answer the question. How long were you off work?’ Johnson snapped.

‘Around six weeks,’ said Nikki.

‘Seems a long time.’

‘Does it?’ Nikki deadpanned.

‘Yeah, it does. Then again, most of us need to work to live. Unlike you. You just dabble as and when you please, don’t you, Mrs Roberts? You had no money problems after your husband died. He left you a wealthy woman.’

Despite herself, Nikki stiffened. What was this bozo implying?

‘I was perfectly well off when Doug was alive, Mr Johnson. His death didn’t change anything.’

‘Hmmm,’ Johnson grunted dismissively. ‘And when did Treyvon Raymond start working for you?’

Nikki sighed sadly. She hadn’t had time yet to process the reality of Trey’s death, and she certainly didn’t relish talking about him with this slob of a policeman.

‘I don’t remember exactly.’

‘Was it after you came back to work, or before your husband’s accident?’

‘It was not long after,’ said Nikki. Turning to Goodman she added, ‘I don’t understand what any of these questions have to do with the murders. Shouldn’t you be out there trying to find who killed Lisa and Trey, instead of grilling me about employment dates?’

‘That’s exactly what we are trying to do. Find the killer,’ snapped Johnson. ‘Working on the theory that it’s the same perpetrator, first thing we need is a link between the two victims. And guess what? We have one.’ Leaning back in his chair, he jabbed a pudgy finger at Nikki. ‘You, Doctor Roberts.’

‘You think I killed Lisa? And Trey?’

Nikki addressed the question to Johnson, who’d already opened his fat lips to respond when Goodman jumped in, cutting him off.

‘Of course not,’ he said evenly. ‘But you are a link. A common factor, if you will. There’s a good possibility, a likelihood even, that this killer has some connection to you personally or to this practice. A former patient, perhaps? Or even a current one? In your line of work, you obviously come across some deeply disturbed people. Might one of them have become obsessed with you and those around you? Perhaps violently so?’

Nikki conceded it was possible, theoretically. But nobody leapt to mind. Unlike many of her colleagues and peers, she’d never had a patient attack her, although one or two had probably formed unhealthy romantic attachments. Fantasies about one’s therapist were incredibly common. Rarely, if ever, did they result in two mutilated corpses and a homicide investigation.

‘We’re going to need your patient records, past and present,’ Goodman informed her gently.

‘Right,’ Nikki muttered, lost in thought for a moment.

‘All of them,’ Johnson added aggressively. ‘No editing. And no “doctor–patient confidentiality” bullshit either.’

‘Although it may not be a patient,’ Goodman said quickly, before things descended into a slanging match between his partner and their most crucial witness. ‘Do you have any enemies you can think of, Doctor? Anyone who might want to hurt you or people close to you?’

‘No.’ Nikki rubbed her eyes, like someone trying to wake up from a bad dream. ‘No. I really can’t. I mean, that’s ridiculous. What sort of enemies?’

‘Former lovers?’ Goodman proposed tentatively.

Nikki shook her head, not offended but firm.

‘No. There was only ever my husband.’

‘Disgruntled business associates?’

‘No!’ she said, frowning. ‘No offense, Detective, but someone’s out there torturing people to death with a hunting knife. That’s not a business deal gone wrong. That’s a psychopath.’

‘Who said it was a hunting knife?’ Johnson, who’d sat quiet as a mouse since Goodman cut him off suddenly came back to life.

Nikki hesitated for a moment.

‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘You must have, I suppose. Or maybe I heard it on the news.’

Johnson looked knowingly at Goodman but said nothing.

Goodman continued with his good-cop routine, asking Nikki more questions about her relationship with Trey Raymond. She answered confidently and naturally, explaining how first Doug and Haddon, and then she, had taken the boy under their wing. And how proud they all were of the way Trey had turned his life around.

‘Especially Doug,’ Nikki added, tears stinging her eyes for the first time since Haddon had broken the awful news of Trey’s death. ‘We couldn’t have children, you see, my husband and I.’

Goodman’s kind blue eyes seemed to invite confidences. Nikki appeared to have forgotten Johnson was even in the room.

‘I think Doug looked on Trey as a surrogate son. After Doug— When he died, I tried to keep the connection going. That’s when I offered Trey the job here, in the office. He was good at it,’ she added, with a sad smile.

‘OK,’ said Goodman. ‘Thank you, Dr Roberts. I think that’s all we need for now.’

‘Don’t leave town,’ snarled Johnson, as Nikki slipped on her coat.

She didn’t dignify the comment with a look, let alone a response.

‘One last thing,’ Goodman said casually, walking Nikki to the interview room door. ‘Did you ever treat a client by the name of Brandon Grolsch?’

‘No.’ Nikki looked blank. Not a hint of recognition. ‘I don’t know that name.’

‘OK.’ Goodman smiled, masking his disappointment. Both men were disappointed. A direct link between Nikki Roberts and Brandon Grolsch would have helped a lot right now, especially since Jenny Foyle, the Medical Examiner, had texted Johnson earlier to confirm that two hairs found embedded in one of Trey Raymond’s many wounds was a DNA match for Grolsch. The way Johnson saw it, that meant either the kid was alive after all; or – more disturbingly, but a closer fit to the evidence – whoever murdered Lisa Flannagan and Trey Raymond had also handled Brandon Grolsch’s corpse.

‘Thank you for your help anyway, Doctor,’ said Goodman. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Nikki had left the building and was halfway across the parking lot when she heard Detective Johnson call breathlessly after her.

‘Wait!’ he panted.

Nikki stopped and turned, trying to quell the unpleasant pounding sensation in her chest. What now?

‘Your coat.’ Johnson gestured at the classic, sand-colored raincoat Nikki was wearing.

‘What about it?’ Nikki asked.

‘Isn’t that the coat you told us you loaned to Lisa Flannagan?’ Johnson wheezed. ‘The night she was killed?’

Nikki looked at him curiously.

‘You described it exactly in your statement,’ Johnson went on. ‘Full-length raincoat, waterproof canvas, sand-colored, buckled belt. That’s it.’ He nodded at the coat again.

Nikki allowed her gaze to linger for a moment on this obnoxious, rude, sweating, accusatory pig of a man. Clearly he believed he was catching her out at something, that he’d outsmarted her in some way. As if that could ever happen. Smiling, she said simply, ‘That’s right, Mr. Johnson. I have two.’

‘“That’s right, Mr Johnson. I have two.” Patronizing bitch.’

Johnson’s impression of Dr Roberts, complete with exaggerated, hip-swaying walk and nonchalant flick of the hair, had not been improved by his third tequila shot.

He and Goodman were at Rico’s, a dive off Sunset popular with the homicide division. Rico Hernandez, the eponymous owner, was ex LAPD himself and enjoyed hosting his former colleagues for their game nights and late-drinking sessions. Tonight Goodman and Johnson were at a table with two other teams, Hammond and Rae, aka Laurel and Hardy, the division jokers; and Sanchez and Baines, one of the few male–female pairings in the department. Although Johnson questioned whether you could call Anna Baines a woman.

‘I’m telling you, Lou,’ Johnson groused, ‘the good doctor’s in this shit up to her pretty little neck!’

Goodman rolled his eyes. ‘No, she isn’t.’

‘You don’t think the therapist lady could be involved, Lou?’ Bobby Hammond asked, taking a contemplative sip of his Corona. ‘I mean, Mick does have a point.’

‘And what point is that?’ Goodman demanded.

Bobby shrugged. ‘A lot of people close to her do seem to be droppin’ dead.’

‘Starting with her husband,’ Davey Rae chimed in. ‘Let’s not forget him.’

‘That was an accident!’ Goodman almost shouted. What was this, the conspiracy theorists’ association annual drinks party?

The fact was that, ever since the ME found those bizarre ‘dead cells’ under Lisa Flannagan’s fingernails, the entire homicide department had become hooked on the ‘Zombie Killings’. Most of these detectives’ regular cases involved either gang shootings or over-zealous domestic battery, or drug deals turned sour. Few if any had the glamour of this one: a beautiful shrink-to-the-stars, her young black protégé, and her patient – a billionaire’s model mistress. Add to that the mysterious zombie DNA found on the first victim, and you had a full-on thriller on your hands. It wasn’t right for Goodman and Johnson to keep the thing solely for themselves.

‘I hate to be the boring grown-up here and rain on your parade with the cold hard facts,’ Goodman drawled. ‘But the facts are: a) Nikki Roberts had no motive for either murder. None whatsoever. And b) she’s five foot three and can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Treyvon Raymond was six two and a hundred eighty-six pounds of solid muscle. You’re telling me she overpowered, kidnapped, stabbed and dumped that boy? I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe she had help,’ said Johnson. ‘Maybe she hired someone.’

‘Yeah, and maybe Angelina Jolie’s about to walk in and ask you out on a date, Mick,’ Anna Baines observed wryly as she drained her beer. ‘Theoretically possible, but not exactly likely.’

There were snorts of laughter all round.

‘Lou’s right,’ Anna added. ‘You got nothing on this shrink woman.’

Johnson stood up, pushing his chair back with an angry clatter.

‘Not yet I don’t,’ he snapped at Anna. ‘But I will. She’s got no alibi, and I think she’s lying through her straight white teeth. So you can all go screw yourselves.’ And with that he stormed out.

‘Jeesh.’ Anna turned to Goodman, open-mouthed. ‘What’s with him?’

‘I was hoping you guys could tell me,’ Goodman sighed. ‘You’ve all known him longer than I have. Mick’s obsessed with Dr Roberts. He hates the woman’s guts, but he won’t tell me why.’

‘I might have an idea,’ Pedro Sanchez said quietly.

Sanchez was a man of few words, unlike his partner Anna Baines. He rarely offered an opinion, but when he did it was usually worth listening to.

‘The Roberts woman used to get called as an expert witness from time to time.’

‘She gave psychiatric evaluations, you mean?’ asked Goodman.

‘Right. Usually on narcotics cases,’ said Sanchez. ‘She and her husband were involved with the junkies downtown – needle exchanges, counseling, all that shit. They were big-time bleeding-heart liberals.’

Mick is ex drug squad, Goodman thought. ‘Did she testify in any of Johnson’s old cases?’ he asked Sanchez.

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. But I do know the lady wasn’t a big fan of the force in general, which wouldn’t have endeared her to Mick. You know what he’s like with holding grudges.’

Without another word, Goodman left a twenty on the table and ran outside after Johnson. What Sanchez had told him was interesting, but it was another thought entirely that had just occurred to him.

‘Mick!’ he called into the darkness.

Johnson turned around. Thankfully, he’d got no farther than the parking lot, where he was swaying drunkenly in the breeze, waiting for his Uber.

Goodman cut straight to the chase. ‘Let’s say Dr Roberts is involved.’

‘She is,’ Johnson slurred. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘But what if it’s not in the way you think. What if the Doc was the intended victim?’

Johnson rolled his eyes. ‘Not this again. We’ve been over this.’

‘Lisa Flannagan was wearing her coat when she left the office that night.’

‘According to her,’ muttered Johnson. ‘Look, I was excited as you about that raincoat being a lead, but we’ve found nothing. All we have is Dr Roberts’ word for it.’

‘Yes, and why would she lie about something like that? Admit it, you can’t think of a reason.’

Johnson grunted. It was true, he couldn’t. Yet.

‘It was dark. It was raining. Lisa was leaving Dr Roberts’ office, wearing her coat. They’re the same height. Same hairstyle. If the killer approached from behind …’

‘OK, OK,’ said Johnson wearily. ‘I get it.’

‘It’s possible,’ insisted Goodman.

‘Fine. It’s possible. But what about Treyvon Raymond? Your theory doesn’t work so well with him, now does it? Six foot two, male and black as your hat?’

‘Maybe Trey was killed because he was close to Nikki,’ said Goodman. ‘She used to testify on drug cases, didn’t she? That must’ve made her a lot of enemies. Her, and her husband.’

Johnson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you about that?’

‘I’m a detective, dude,’ Goodman dodged. He didn’t want to land Sanchez in it. ‘I find shit out. Maybe a disgruntled dealer, someone Dr Roberts testified against, killed Lisa accidentally, thinking she was the Doc. And maybe Trey figured out who that dealer was.’

Johnson raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘He was a detective too?’

‘Come on,’ Goodman urged. ‘It’s possible, isn’t it, Mick?’

Johnson brooded silently. The last thing he wanted was to re-frame Nikki Roberts as a victim. But he had to admit Goodman’s theory was at least possible.

‘Can we keep an open mind on this? That’s all I’m asking,’ Goodman pleaded.

‘OK,’ Johnson conceded grudgingly. ‘But open minds gotta work both ways.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that we don’t know Roberts wasn’t behind this. She’s still a possible suspect,’ Johnson insisted. ‘How about this scenario? Roberts secretly hated Lisa Flannagan.’

‘Why?’ Goodman asked, genuinely baffled.

‘Lisa was a gold digger. A homewrecker. Maybe Roberts disapproved of her lifestyle.’

‘Come on, man,’ said Goodman. ‘That’s weak.’

‘Is it? We know Lisa aborted Baden’s baby. Roberts can’t have kids, remember?’ Johnson went on. ‘That’s a big deal for women.’

‘In your vast experience of female emotion,’ Goodman quipped.

‘Maybe she’s so jealous, so mad about the baby thing it drives her over the edge,’ said Johnson, ignoring him. ‘Makes her crazy. Homicidal.’

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Goodman decided to end the conversation before Mick’s conspiracy theories got completely out of control. ‘OK, OK, open minds on both sides. What do you say tomorrow we start talking to Dr Roberts’ patients? I’ll take half, you take half?’

‘Fine.’

Johnson’s car finally pulled up. Goodman waited as he heaved his unfit frame into the back of the Toyota.

Deciding to strike while the iron was hot in this rare moment of accord between them, Goodman stuck his head through the open window.

‘One last thing, Mick. Is there any personal history between you and Nikki Roberts?’

Johnson grinned. The question seemed to amuse him.

‘Anything I should know about?’ Goodman pressed.

Leaning back in his seat, Johnson closed his eyes, an amused smile still playing on his alcohol-flushed face.

‘Goodnight, Lou,’ he said, closing the window. ‘Sweet dreams.’

Nikki drove for a long time after she left the police station.

She didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t know where else to go, so she took the 10 freeway all the way down to the ocean and cruised blindly up the coast. Memories of Trey played through her head on a continuous loop.

The first time Doug brought him home, whippet-thin and as dirty as a stray dog, shivering from withdrawal. Nikki’s heart had gone out to him right away, just as Doug had known it would.

‘Hey, Nik. This is a friend of mine, Treyvon. D’you think the chicken can stretch to three?’

From the beginning, Trey had drawn Doug and Nikki even closer together, their common compassion for this poor, broken boy strengthening their love bond and cementing them as a team.

She thought back to Trey’s graduation ceremony out in Palos Verdes, after he’d completed his full sixteen-week detox program, dancing with Nikki to Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’.

Nikki had caught Doug’s eye over Trey’s shoulder and smiled. Doug smiled back, and she’d felt so happy, so full of love for him and the miracle he’d helped happen for this sweet boy he’d come to love as his own.

It was a beautiful memory. But it had been ruined by what had happened since, slashed and mutilated and destroyed, just like Trey. And Lisa.

A million tiny cuts. Then one, final, fatal stab to the heart.

Doug’s death, and the shock of everything she’d learned afterwards, had been the final stabs to Nikki’s heart. So deep, so wounding, she’d believed for a while that she wouldn’t survive them. But she had. She’d survived, and picked herself up and carried on. And she was still carrying on, even in the midst of this new nightmare.

Torture and terror.

Murder and lies.

I ought to call Trey’s mother, Nikki thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her own grief was still so raw, so real, she couldn’t cope with anyone else’s. Perhaps that was selfish, but it was the truth. She knew her own limits.

She drove on for a long time. By the time she got home it was late, very late, and she couldn’t remember where she’d been. That was happening a lot lately. The driveway lights were on, triggered by a timer, twinkling merrily as if all were right with the world. Locking her car, Nikki walked up to the key panel by the front door and was about to tap in her code when she noticed that the door was ajar.

She froze. Today was Monday. Her housekeeper, Rita, came on Mondays. Had she forgotten to close the door properly when she left? It had never happened before. Not once in six years. Rita was extremely reliable.

Someone must have broken in.

Nikki’s heart pounded.

What if they were still inside?

She contemplated getting in her car and driving away. Calling the police. Asking for help. But then an unexpected emotion took over: anger.

This is my home. My sanctuary. I’m not going to be afraid here. I refuse.

Pushing the door open wide, she turned on the hall lights. ‘Hello?’ she called loudly. ‘Is anybody here?’

She walked from room to room, making as much noise as she could, like a hiker hoping to scare away mountain lions. ‘Hello?’

After a few minutes, she exhaled. No one was here. And as far as she could tell, nothing had been taken or touched. In fact, the house looked spotless. It must have been Rita after all.

Pouring herself a large nightcap from the whiskey bottle in the pantry, Nikki went up to bed, proud of herself for not having given in to her fears. Only once she was undressed and slipping between the sheets did she notice.

Her wedding photograph.

The silver framed picture of her and Doug she kept propped on her nightstand, despite the pain it caused.

It was gone.

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