ECHO RIVER — SOUTH BANK, BELOW ECHO BRIDGE — 8:09 A.M.
The crime scene tape was yellow against the grey morning. Beyond it, on the concrete slope of the embankment where the path gave way to a narrow strip of exposed bank, three forensics officers moved carefully. A police photographer crouched low taking pictures with her camera. A uniformed officer stood at the tape's perimeter with his arms crossed and his face entirely closed.
Lisa ducked under the tape without breaking stride. The uniformed officer started to say something and then registered James's badge and closed his mouth again.
The body was covered with a white forensics sheet, its edges held down against the river wind with small weighted clips. Lisa stopped a meter away from it and looked at the shape beneath the sheet for a moment before she crouched down and lifted the edge. She did this slowly.
Zen Larsson 's face was pale as river clay. His eyes were closed, which was unusual for drowning victims and suggested they had been closed after. His expression was almost peaceful, which made it worse somehow. The too-thin coat was soaked dark and heavy. His hands, at his sides, were open, palms up, fingers slightly curled, the gesture of a person releasing something.
He told me everything he knew, she thought. He gave me the last thing he had. And then someone found him anyway.
She lowered the sheet carefully. Stood. Turned to the lead forensics officer, a compact man named Dr. Erling who had worked more Echo River scenes than anyone in the department and wore that fact in the permanent set of his jaw. "Talk to me," she said.
Dr. Erling looked up from his tablet. "Time of death is estimated between 9:30 and 11 P.M. last night. Cause, pending full autopsy, but preliminary, is not drowning."
Lisa went very still. "Say that again."
"He was dead before he entered the water. The lungs show insufficient fluid absorption for active drowning. Someone put him in the river post-mortem." Dr. Erling said. "There is bruising at the base of the skull consistent with blunt trauma. One precise strike. He likely lost consciousness immediately and died within minutes."
"Weapon?"
"Nothing we can definitively identify yet. The edge of the bruising suggests something cylindrical. Hard, smooth surface. Could be a dozen things."
James had come to stand beside her. She could feel him listening, that particular quality of his attention that was like a held breath. "One strike," he said quietly, half to her, half to the river. "Clean. No struggle."
"The victim shows no defensive wounds," Dr. Erling confirmed. "Which means either he was approached from behind without warning, or—"
The river moved steadily behind them. Lisa looked at it for a moment. At its flat grey surface. At the way it reflected the overcast sky so precisely that the boundary between water and air became ambiguous, as though the world here existed in two directions simultaneously.
He came to me," she said, quietly, not to James or Dr. Erling but simply into the air. "He reached out and I was the last person he spoke to and he was dead within two hours."
"Lisa." James's voice was careful. "You didn't lead anyone to him."
"I know that."
"Whatever they used to find him, it wasn't you. They were already watching him."
"I know that too." She turned away from the river. "What I know doesn't change the fact that he asked me to find the name at the top, and I'm going to find it."
She walked back toward the tape. Paused. Turned back to Dr. Erling one final time. "The closed eyes," she said. "Was that post-mortem?"
Dr. Erling considered. "Almost certainly. The positioning suggests manual closure. After death."
Lisa absorbed this in silence for three full seconds. Then she nodded once, ducked back under the yellow tape, and kept walking.
SILVELAKE ANIMAL CLINIC — 9:15 A.M.
Hunter had been awake since seven. He had slept four and a half hours, more than sufficient. He had trained himself years ago to function on less. He had made coffee, read the morning news on his phone, and arrived at the clinic forty minutes before his first appointment, as was his habit.
The clinic was quiet In the early morning. Amy had not yet arrived. The overnight patients, two cats recovering from separate procedures and an elderly basset hound named Dori who was being monitored for a cardiac condition, were checked first, before anything else. This was inviolable. Whatever the night had held, the morning began here, with these animals, their needs are important to him.
Dori raised her heavy, wrinkled head when he entered the recovery ward and looked at him with the liquid, trusting eyes of the very old and the very gentle. Her tail moved, once, slowly, a greeting conducted at the absolute minimum of available energy.
"Good morning," Hunter said. He crouched beside the kennel and let Dori sniff his hand, then checked her monitors. Heart rate stable. Respiration even. The numbers were better than yesterday.
He completed his rounds, updated the charts, and was at the front desk reviewing the morning's appointment schedule when Amy arrived. She was slightly breathless, unwinding a scarf from her neck, carrying two paper cups of coffee from the place two doors down that she brought most mornings whether he asked for it or not.
"Good morning, Doctor Salvatore." She set one cup on the desk beside him. "Dori?"
"Better."
Amy's face brightened. She had a face built for brightness. "Oh, that's such good news. Her owner called again yesterday evening, by the way. I told her the same thing you told me to tell her."
"Which was?"
That worrying wouldn't help Dori recover faster." A pause. "She didn't find that very comforting."
"It's still true."
Amy opened her mouth, appeared to consider arguing, and then closed it again. She began logging into the appointment system. "First patient is at nine thirty. Mr. Bove's rabbit, the one with the ear mites. Then at ten fifteen, a new patient. Young retriever, possible hip dysplasia, referred from the DTLA clinic."
Hunter picked up the coffee and drank. It was too sweet, she always got it too sweet, and he had never corrected this, which was perhaps the closest thing to deliberate kindness he regularly performed without examining why. "Fine," he said.
He moved toward his office. Amy called after him: "Doctor Salvatore. There was also a call this morning, before you arrived. Someone asking about your hours. They didn't leave a name."
He paused with his hand on the office door. "What did they sound like?"
Amy frowned slightly, trying to recall a detail she hadn't thought to notice. "A man. Middle-aged, maybe? He sounded, I'm not sure. Careful." She shrugged. "Probably just someone looking for a vet."
"Probably," Hunter said.
He went into his office and closed the door. Stood just inside it for a moment in the stillness, holding the coffee cup with both hands. His expression had not changed. His breathing had not changed. But something behind his eyes had shifted.
A man who sounded careful.
There were several people it could be. Most of them were people he worked for. One or two of them were people he had been trying to find.
And one of them, was the person he had been looking for his entire life.
He set the coffee down on his desk and sat. Opened his patient files. He allowed his mind to fade into the familiar, the manageable, the world where his hands healed life instead of taking it.
At nine twenty-eight, the clinic's front bell chimed. The first patient had arrived.
He stood, straightened his coat, and went to meet it.
LOS ANGELES POLICE PRECINCT — CHIEF'S OFFICE — 10:40 A.M.
Chief Shane Long was a man who had navigated thirty years of departmental politics by being, at all times, exactly as cautious as the situation required and not one degree more. He was in his late fifties, silver-haired, with a face that had been built for authority. He listened to Lisa's account without interrupting, which was either a good sign or a very controlled bad one. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment, his hands flat on his desk, looking at the USB drive she had set between them.
"You met with this man alone," he said. Not a reprimand. A statement of fact being laid on the table for examination.
"He requested it. If I'd gone in with backup he wouldn't have talked."
"And now he's dead."
"Yes."
Chief Long looked at her steadily. "What's on the drive?"
"Financial records implicating Hanley Plc in a systematic pattern of payments that I believe correspond directly to the four killings. There is a single unattributed transaction three days before the first murder that I believe represents a payment to whoever is conducting them."
"Believe."
"The evidence will support it. I need forensic accounting and I need authorization to go deeper into Hanley's registered subsidiaries."
Chief Long picked up the drive and turned it between two fingers slowly, the way he turned all difficult things, and said nothing for a moment. Lisa waited. She was very good at waiting when she wanted something.
"Hanley Plc," Chief Long said at last, "is not a small target, Detective Yoon."
"I'm aware."
"Chairman Clinton has counsel on retainer that could make this precinct disappear inside a courtroom."
"Which is exactly why the case needs to be airtight before it goes anywhere near a courtroom." She kept her voice even. "Sir, five people are dead. The fifth was a witness who came to me. If we don't move on this—"
"I'm not saying we don't move." He set the drive down. Met her eyes with the directness that she had always respected in him, even when she disagreed with his conclusions. "I'm saying we move carefully. And I'm saying you keep me informed at every step. No more solo meetings with informants. No more off-the-books traces."
Lisa held his gaze. "Understood."
"I'll authorize forensic accounting. You'll have a team by this afternoon." He picked up the drive again and this time kept it. "I'll hold this personally until we've established proper chain of evidence."
"Of course."
She stood to leave. At the door, his voice came again: "Lisa."
She turned.
His expression had shifted. He looked concern. "The man who did this," he said. "Whoever it is. He is very good at what he does. I want you to remember that."
Lisa looked at him for a moment. Then: "So am I," she said.
She walked out.
Through the glass, Chief Long watched her cross the precinct floor, watched her stop at her desk, put on her jacket, exchange three words with James, pick up her keys. He turned the USB drive over in his hand one more time, and then locked it in his desk drawer, and sat for a long moment in the silence.
SILVERLAKE — STREET OUTSIDE THE CLINIC — 11:02 A.M.
Hunter stepped outside between appointments. A habit, three minutes of cold air and stillness, a small reset between one patient and the next. He stood on the narrow pavement with his hands in his coat pockets and his face tipped slightly up, eyes closed, feeling the November air against his skin.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the woman.
She was across the street, standing at the entrance to the small park that ran along the block, looking at something on her phone. Dark coat, dark hair pulled back, a posture that was simultaneously relaxed and on some level, ready. She was not looking at him. She was not looking at the clinic. She was, as far as any casual observer could determine, simply a woman standing outside a park checking her phone on a Tuesday morning.
Hunter looked at her for four seconds.
Then he looked at the street in both directions. At the parked cars. At the café across the road. At the second-floor windows of the building beside the park.
Nothing. No secondary coverage that he could see. Either she was alone or the backup was very good.
Or she was exactly what she appeared to be, a woman checking her phone, and he was reading threat into the ordinary world again, which was an occupational hazard of the life he led.
She put her phone in her pocket and walked away, northward, without looking back or across the street. Her stride was quick. In thirty seconds she had turned the corner and was gone.
Hunter stood on the pavement a moment longer.
He went back inside.