‘Yeah. Monday morning, a woman was out walking her dog here and found his body lying about where you are now. Klein had eaten his gun. The bullet was a .22.’

Suicide.

And not only that. The same type of bullet that Donald Klein had used to blow his brains out had also been used to kill the man that Jo had found in the acid bath.

So had she found her murderer?

Could it really be this easy?

As she looked at the spot in which Klein had been discovered, she thought of Lieutenant Hayesfield. Cases involving murder-suicides, domestic homicides, killings witnessed by police, or when suspects were caught fleeing from the scene, he called ‘self-solvers’, as they were straightforward, self-explanatory and progressed through the system easily, from the squad room to the courtroom. There was an added bonus, too: they also quickly improved Hayesfield’s clearance rate.

‘It was definitely suicide?’ Jo asked Callson.

‘The ME says yes.’

She looked back at him. ‘And what do you say?’

‘I’d say it’s the most likely scenario. The trajectory of the bullet – the way it travelled so close to the nasal cavity – that would be hard, though not impossible, to replicate if you were trying to make a murder look like a suicide. If someone killed Klein, they’d have had to press so hard into the chin with the gun – in order to get the bullet to go where it did – that there probably would have been evidence of the weapon on his face: scratch marks from the rear sight, maybe an imprint from the barrel or ejection port.’ Callson paused, then shrugged. ‘Like I say, suicide is most likely …’ He faded out, turning in order to take in the view. They could see even more of the city from up here: the skyscrapers of Downtown; Griffith Park; the mountains and the valley beyond. ‘Suicide also makes sense given what was in the trunk of Klein’s car.’

He stepped towards her, handing her the binder, before returning to the path again, mindful of crowding her while she worked. Jo nodded, appreciating the gesture, and opened the murder book. Her eyes zeroed in on what was found in the trunk of Klein’s car, and then the photograph of him, the sun glinting off its glossy surface.