‘So what has Detective Kader got on today?’ he said, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table. He sat down, toast in one hand, coffee in the other. He’d left a second cup on the side for Jo. She clipped her holster to her belt and started drinking.

‘There was a body in a motel off Santa Monica Boulevard yesterday,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting a guy this morning in the Hills. He reckons he knows who my killer is.’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘It could be.’

‘So why don’t you sound convinced?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I prefer to err on the side of pessimistic.’

He laughed. ‘That’s the spirit.’

She took another mouthful of coffee.

‘How’s your headache today?’

Ira shrugged. ‘Better, but still there.’

‘You taken something for it?’

‘It’s fine. I’m just stressed about this meeting.’

‘You’ll nail it, like you always do.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about. This pitch, if it’s successful, it’ll pay for a nice vacation next year – but it’ll also mean a ton of hours between now and the deadline.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘we’ll make it work.’

She finished her coffee and placed the mug in the sink next to the bowl, then paused for a second, looking along the hallway at Ethan’s bedroom door. Ira noticed.

‘Something on your mind, Kader?’ he asked.

‘He’ll be all right in Van Nuys, won’t he?’

‘Ethan? He’ll be fine.’

‘It’s just, he hasn’t been to day care for a while.’

‘He’ll be fine, Jo. Honestly.’

‘Okay,’ she said, although it didn’t sound convincing and now Ira was studying her, his jaw working as he ate. She tried to alter the direction of the conversation and switched on the radio, hoping to hear some song the two of them liked, but everyone was still talking about the Night Stalker. More details were emerging about his latest attacks on 20 July: in Glendale, he’d shot and killed a couple in their late sixties, mutilated their bodies with a machete and then raided their home for valuables; in the hours after that, at around 4.15 a.m., he broke into another home in Sun Valley, where a family of four were sleeping. His first act was to shoot and kill the husband, and then he repeatedly raped the wife while their eight-year-old son lay bound and gagged in the next room and the two-year-old daughter slept. As she listened to the part about the woman and the kids, Jo pictured Ethan in the day-care centre and she felt a short, irrational flutter of panic at the idea of leaving his safety in the hands of people they barely knew; when a city was being laid siege to like this, when a man was so depraved he would sodomize a mother while her children were in an adjacent room, nothing was sacred.