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know that with the right knowledge and tools, door locks
aren’t that hard to breach.’
    Hunter nodded and carried on reading.
    ‘Ms. Bennett called the police immediately after disconnecting with Nicole,’ Captain Blake added. ‘But by the time they got to the house – twenty-two minutes later
– Nicole was gone.’
    ‘Any CCTV cameras around where the Bennetts live?’ Garcia asked.
    Captain Blake shook her head. ‘None. You’d have to go all the way to the bottom of Hollywood Hills to find one.’
    ‘How about the boy she was babysitting?’ Hunter asked, reading from the file.
    ‘Joshua, three years old,’ the captain confirmed. ‘He wasn’t touched. They found him asleep upstairs, just the way his parents had left him. The boy heard and saw
nothing.’
    ‘Are Nicole’s parents rich?’ Hunter asked.
    ‘Not by any stretch of the imagination. Father is a school-teacher. Mother works in a local supermarket.’
    ‘So the perpetrator broke into a wealthy family’s house to abduct the babysitter?’ Garcia this time. ‘Not the boy?’
    ‘As unnatural as it sounds, yes,’ Captain Blake answered, having one more sip of her coffee. ‘And that’s our first tricky question – why? Why complicate things for
himself? He could’ve made his job a lot easier by taking Nicole either before she got to the Bennett’s house, or after she left. A simple approach and grab job. Why increase his risk by
breaking into the house and taking her from inside?’
    Both detectives understood their captain’s concern very well. They all knew a street abduction made collecting left-behind clues and evidence like fingerprints, fibers, hairs and so on
infinitely harder, not to mention the fact that everything gets exposed to the elements. Clues could easily be blown away by a gust of wind, washed away by rain, or contaminated in many different
ways. But if a perpetrator breaks into a confined space like a house, the risk of third-party contamination decreased exponentially, and he allowed the police an elements-free and much more focused
area to work with.
    ‘One of two reasons,’ Garcia replied, first looking at Hunter, then back at Captain Blake. ‘He was either too stupid to figure out that he would increase his risk of being
identified, or he was confident enough to know that he wouldn’t leave anything behind.’
    Hunter nodded his agreement.
    ‘And if he was so bold as to be having a sandwich in the kitchen and to allow his victim to answer a phone call before making his move,’ Garcia carried on, ‘I don’t think
that we’re looking at reason number one here, are we, Captain?’
    Captain Blake finished her coffee, placing her cup on her desk.
    ‘No,’ she finally replied. ‘Forensics scrutinized the house for two whole days. Everything they found was matched either to the Bennetts or to Nicole Wilson herself. The unsub
left absolutely nothing behind.’
    ‘Did the FBI get involved?’ Garcia asked.
    The captain shook her head. ‘No. The Adult Missing Persons Unit didn’t request any help from the Bureau. As I’ve said, Nicole Wilson was twenty years old, not a minor, which
means that the Lindbergh Law doesn’t apply to her.’
    Hunter got to the end of the dossier. There was nothing else. ‘So when was her body found?’
    Captain Blake walked back behind her desk, opened the top drawer on the left and retrieved two new files.
    ‘In the early hours of this morning. It was left on an empty field by Los Angeles International Airport. And if the house-break-in-sandwich-eating scenario wasn’t creepy enough
– have a look at this shit.’

Seven
    Squirm waited by the metal sink in the kitchen. He kept his eyes low, tracing the black-and-white squares on the old linoleum floor he had just cleaned to as much of a shine as
it would go. His hands were shackled in front of him. A half-foot-long heavy metal bar kept them apart, but each end had been specially fitted with a rotating cuff, allowing