Closing the binder, she grabbed her notes and followed Hayesfield. His office was small and unimpressive. There were blinds at the window, which he never closed, a green, black and yellow flag in a frame on the wall – the official flag of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – and a detailed map of LA County itself, with sticky notes all over it indicating the active crimes that detectives were currently investigating. Jo noticed that there was no sticky note anywhere close to the Star Inn.

‘Take a seat,’ Hayesfield said, easing himself into his own chair. He was in his late forties, mixed race, burly and strong, an amateur boxer who’d won heavyweight belts all across the state in his twenties. He reached for a plastic cup of black coffee on the desk, steam smoking out of it, and said, ‘So where we at, Kader?’

She looked at his map. There were three sticky notes with her name on them: one in Altadena where a woman had been raped and shot outside a country club, another at the fringes of the Angeles National Forest where a man had been found by a trail head on State Route 39 with a bullet in his chest, and a third next to a burger joint on the corner of Sunset and Palm where two men had got into a fight and one of them killed the other.

‘Ortiz, the kid who popped his pal on Sunset, has his arraignment later on this morning,’ Jo said. ‘The case is a slam dunk. We’ve got eyewitnesses all over the place, we’ve got ballistic matches, his prints are all over the gun – it’s going all the way.’ She took out her notebook and leafed through to what she had on the killing at Route 39. ‘The guy we found up in Azusa has been ID’d as Gerald Krysinski. After I’m done at the arraignment, I’m going to head out and talk to his family. His sister told me over the phone they hadn’t seen him for months.’ She flipped through more pages. ‘The rape: we all know it was Kyle Hansen – we’ve just got to prove it, so I’m speaking to the DA later.’

‘Okay,’ Hayesfield said. ‘So that’s one down, two to go.’

Jo glanced at the map.

‘I need those other two closed, Kader.’

‘I hear you, LT.’

‘I hope so, because I’ve got Santos crawling up my ass about our clearance rate while I’m dealing with the biggest manhunt in the history of the department.’

This time, Jo just nodded.

‘Something on your mind, Kader?’

She switched her attention back to Hayesfield and saw that he’d come forward at his desk, pushing his cup aside, his eyes fixed on her.

‘Actually, I think it might be one down, three to go, LT.’

Hayesfield searched the map for a case of hers he’d missed.

‘What are you talking about?’