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in Luis Obispo says he’ll send us a report late today. But listen to this. I just got an E-mail from Quantico. There have been eight murders in California and Nevada that bear some resemblance to the Golden Gate Park ones. Not all of the victims were hung. But they were bitten. The cases go back six years. So far. They’re looking back even further than that.”
    “What cities?” I asked her.
    She glanced down at her notes. “Sacramento—our esteemed capital. San Diego. Santa Cruz. Las Vegas. Lake Tahoe. San Jose. San Francisco. San Luis Obispo. This is so goddamn creepy, Alex. One murder like this would be enough to keep me sleepless for a month.”
    “Plus the murder in Washington,” I said. “I’m going to ask the Bureau to look at the East Coast.”
    She grinned sheepishly. “I already did. They’re on it.”
    I teased, “So what do we do now?”
    “What do cops always do when they wait? We eat doughnuts and drink coffee,” she said, and rolled her dark brown eyes. She had a natural, very attractive beauty, even on just a few hours’ sleep.
    The two of us had a late breakfast at Roma’s around the corner. We talked about the case, then I asked her about other cases she’d solved. Jamilla had a lot of confidence, but she was also modest about her contributions. I liked that about her. She definitely wasn’t full of herself. When she had finished her omelette and toast, she sat there nervously tapping her finger against the table. She had several tics, seemed wired most of the time. I knew she was on the job again.
    “What’s the matter?” I finally asked. “You’re holding something back, aren’t you?”
    She nodded. “I got a call from KRON-TV. They’re close to doing a story that there have been several murders in California.”
    I frowned. “How the hell did they find out?”
    She shook her head. “Who knows? I’m going to give a reporter I know at the
Examiner
the okay to break the story first.”
    “Hold on a second,” I said. “You sure about that?”
    “I’m sure. I trust my friend as much as I trust anybody. He’ll ground the story in reality at least. Now help me figure out if there’s anything we want the killers to read in the newspapers. It’s the least my friend can do for us.”
    When we got back to the Hall of Justice there was bad news. The killers had struck again.

Chapter 16

    IT WAS another bad one, another hanging. Two hangings, actually.
    Jamilla and I split up as soon as we arrived at the murder scene in Mill Valley. We had different ways of doing things, different crime-scene techniques. Somehow, though, I thought we would arrive at the same conclusions about this one. I could see the signs already — all of them bad.
    The two bodies were hung upside down from a rack used to hold copper pots. The scene of the murders was a contemporary kitchen inside a large, very expensive house. Dawn and Gavin Brody looked to be in their mid-thirties. Like the other victims, they’d been drained of most of their blood.
    The first curiosity: Although the Brodys were naked, the killers had left behind their jewelry. A pair of Rolex watches, wedding bands, a large diamond engagement ring, hoop earrings studded with countless small diamonds. The killers weren’t interested in jewels or money, and possibly they wanted us to know it.
    So where were the victims’ clothes? Had they been used to clean up the mess, to sop up blood? Was that why the killers had taken the clothing with them?
    They seemed to have interrupted the Brodys, who were both successful lawyers, while they were preparing a meal. Was there some symbolism involved here? Or dark humor? Was it a coincidence, or had they purposely attacked the couple at dinnertime? Eat the rich?
    Several small-town police officers and also the FBI’s techies were crowded into the kitchen with us. I figured that the damage had already been done by the Mill Valley police. They were well intentioned but had probably never worked a