Kelly addressed the elephant in the room. “Officer Batista told me she might be able to help us identify the victims. She believes they’re carriers, wants to take a closer look.”

“Which victim do you think you know?” Alves asked her.

“Maybe both,” Ellie replied.

Alves raised his hairy unibrow at that.

“Let’s get on with it,” Kelly said.

Ellie approached the male. He was Hispanic and had a thick mop of black hair that covered his ears. Alves stood on the opposite side of the queen-sized bed. He looked only at the commissioner.

“No sign of a struggle, as you can see,” Alves said. “Looks like they were both attacked while they were sleeping.” Using a gloved finger, he pulled back the woman’s long hair so Kelly could see the stab wound on the back of the neck, near the base of the skull. “My money’s on a hunting knife. Blade was slid in sideways and more or less severed the brain stem. Takes a lot of strength to do something like this.”

Ellie said, “One of them would have woken up, don’t you think?”

Alves let go of the hair. He didn’t answer her question, looked only at Kelly. “My operating theory is that our guy was inside the house when Officers Batista and Boyle entered the backyard. Saw that Officer Boyle had engaged with the woman, Mrs. Vargas, and then he panicked, swiftly executed the two vics before he went out back.”

That would explain why Gingerbread Man took so long coming out of the house after we arrived, Ellie thought. He couldn’t have escaped with these two, and he had killed them so they couldn’t talk later to the police.

Kelly turned to her. “Did the shooter have any blood on him?”

“I didn’t notice any,” she replied.

Alves said, “That’s not surprising. The blood pattern on the pillow and mattress indicates pulsing instead of spurting—the back of the head doesn’t have arteries. And both victims had lowered heart rates, which explains why the crime scene isn’t that messy.” Now he looked to Ellie, his gaze telling her to hurry up.

She turned to the young man and gently lifted the black hair away from his left ear, as though afraid she might wake him.

“This is Alex Hernandez,” she said. “This crease along the top part of his ear? It’s called ‘lidding.’ It should be listed in the distinguishing-characteristic section of his file.”

Alves held his smartphone, tapping the name into the LAPD Blood database through a secured and encrypted link.

Ellie said, “I think he’s the one who wrote the message on the dog tag and left blood. There’s a small cut on his right thumb, and there’s a black ink mark on his hand. The message on the tag was written in black marker. I want to say he’s been missing for three, maybe four years.”

“And you know all of this how?” This from Kelly, Ellie having a hard time reading the man’s tone, whether he was showing normal skepticism or being dismissive.