The Crucifix Killer Read Online Free PDF Page A

flashlight illuminated her now exposed neck Hunter’s mind went into a whirlwind of confusion. He stared at it in disbelief – the color drained from his face.
    Garcia didn’t have a clear view from where he was standing, but what disturbed him was the look in Hunter’s eyes. Whatever Hunter was staring at, it had scared him soundless.

 
Six

    Despite being thirty-nine years old, Robert Hunter’s youthful-looking face and impressive physique made him look like a man who’d just hit thirty. Always dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a beat-up leather jacket, Hunter was six foot with squared shoulders, high cheekbones and short blondish hair. He possessed a deliberate controlled strength that came across in every movement he made, but it was his eyes that were most striking. An intense pale blue that suggested intelligence and an unflinching resolve.
    Hunter grew up as an only child to working-class parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.
    From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He’d finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and just for something to do he’d sped through seventh-, eighth- and even ninth-grade books. Mr Fratelli, the school principal, was amazed by the child prodigy and arranged an appointment at the Mirman School for the Gifted in Mulholland Drive, North West Los Angeles. Doctor Tilby, Mirman’s psychologist, ran him through a battery of tests and Hunter was pronounced ‘off the scale . ’ A week later, he’d transferred to Mirman as an eighth-grader. He was only twelve.
    By the age of fourteen he’d glided through Mirman’s high-school English, History, Biology and Chemistry curriculum. Four years of high school were condensed into two and at fifteen he’d graduated with honors. With recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University. The top psychology university in America at the time.
    In spite of Hunter’s good looks, the combination of being too thin, too young and having a strange dress sense made him unpopular with girls and an easy target for bullies. He didn’t have the body or the aptitude for sports and preferred to spend his free time in the library. He read – chewed up books with incredible speed. He became fascinated with the world of criminology and the thought process of individuals dubbed ‘evil’. Maintaining a 4.0 Grade Point Average during his university years had been a walk in the park, but he soon grew tired of the bullying and of being called ‘tooth-pick boy’. He decided to join a weights gym and started taking martial art classes. To his surprise, he enjoyed the physical pain of the workouts. He became obsessed with it and within a year the effects of such heavy training were clearly visible. His body had bulked up impressively. ‘Tooth-pick boy’ became ‘fit boy’ and it took him a little less than two years to receive his black belt in karate. The bullying stopped and all of a sudden girls couldn’t get enough of him.
    By the age of nineteen Hunter had already graduated in Psychology and at twenty-three he received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology. His thesis paper titled ‘An Advanced Psychological Study in Criminal Conduct’ had been made into a book and it was now mandatory reading at the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).
    Life was good, but two weeks after receiving his PhD Hunter’s world was turned upside down. For the past three and a half years his father had been working as a security guard for the Bank of America branch in Avalon Boulevard. A robbery gone wrong turned into a Wild West