Before she’d had Ethan, most of the men she’d worked with more or less treated her the same, at least to her face. That didn’t mean she hadn’t overheard discussions about the size of her breasts, the shape of her ass, how she would perform in bed and what her favourite position might be; about how she wouldn’t be strong enough to pick up a Remington, the department’s shotgun of choice, or how the kickback would probably burst her right tit; and then there were all the barbed comments – dressed up as light-hearted fun – about how she’d never be as effective as a man in chasing down a suspect because, again, her tits would get in the way; and in a high-speed pursuit she wouldn’t be able to keep up, or just crash the car completely, because everyone knew how bad women drivers were. It was generally done out of earshot, or when they thought she wasn’t around, but even when it wasn’t, even when her male colleagues said things directly to her face, all she could do was swear at them or ignore them, because there was no recourse. There was no system of complaint, not even the basic framework for it. There were no other female Homicide detectives to go into battle with, and every senior position was held by a man. So, unless she wanted her career to be over, there had never been any point in protesting about the discrimination before, and – with so much focus on the Stalker, so much tension inside the department, and resources so stretched – it would have been even more suicidal to say something now. All of which meant that, for the past year, she’d not only had to endure all the usual comments, repeated jokes, sniggers and put-downs, she’d had to work some investigations entirely by herself – without a partner – because so many other detectives had been seconded to the Stalker. Worse, it meant she was catching all the shitty cases no one else wanted or got given, and she was having to watch one of the biggest manhunts in the entire history of Los Angeles play out from the opposite side of a squad room. And it was making her angry. It was making her bitter. It hurt.

Starting up the car, she pulled off the driveway and headed south, into the Hills, trying to calm herself by listening to the radio. Tears for Fears played for a while, but when the music stopped, the DJ began talking about the Night Stalker. She switched stations, but the same thing happened again, and then again, over and over, the lulls between songs, the gaps between ads, dedicated to the actions of a depraved animal.

Finally, she turned the radio off completely.