The top of that stainless steel table on the minus first floor of the Izmir Forensic Medicine Institute was the place where the arrogance of the Police Department had truly gone bankrupt. Aylin stood frozen stiff amidst the throat-burning smell of formaldehyde and death in the morgue. On the table across from her lay Deputy Inspector Hale, who only twenty-four hours ago was descending the stairs of the Headquarters with her flawlessness. The woman's chestnut hair that fell to her shoulders had been pushed back, leaving her swan-like neck bare. "The scar is millimeter by millimeter identical to the victim in the parking lot," said the old forensic expert with a muffled voice coming from behind his mask. With the metal rod in his hand, he pointed at that bloody, half-moon shaped cut on Hale's neck. "But this is not the maddening part, inspector. Look here." The expert slid a magnifying light over the wound. Aylin approached the table holding her breath. The top of that fatal cut on Hale's neck, just like in Defne's murder, was covered with a honey-colored, transparent, and smooth resin. That damn pruning paste. Aylin's stomach cramped. When she closed her eyes, that bloody "Elite Killer" file left on Hale's lap at midnight flashed before her eyes. This was not an ordinary murder; this was a savage laughter the killer let out while looking right into the eyes of the Homicide Bureau. The killer was no elite snob; he was an invisible ghost who knew the blind spots of the Department's cameras, felt the breathing of the organization, and had flawless rituals. When she left the morgue and returned to Bozyaka, the inside was like a battlefield. The Chief of Police was unleashing terror in the corridor, issuing a shoot-to-kill order on all radio channels for the wanted Cem Taşkın. When Aylin barged into the chief's office and shouted, "Cem didn't do this! The person who killed Hale is a lone wolf, that flawless serial killer himself!", the answer she got was merely a deafening scolding. The department couldn't swallow a police officer being slashed to death right in the heart of the Headquarters by an "ordinary" killer, and to cover up its own incompetence, it was desperately trying to link the incident to an organized crime network and the fugitive Cem. Towards midnight, with all the weight of the world on her shoulders, Aylin was climbing the stairs to her apartment in Eşrefpaşa. Outside, one of Izmir's fine, insidious rains had begun. Her mind was throbbing, she was fighting her own blindness with her arrogance utterly shattered. When she came to the door of her apartment, she paused. Just as she was about to put her key in the keyhole, she noticed that thing standing on the doormat. A square box made of ordinary, black cardboard, with no shipping label or name on it. Aylin's exhaustion evaporated in a single second. Her right hand instinctively went to her service weapon at her waist. She drew her gun and turned off its safety. With her left hand, using the tip of the barrel, she slowly opened the lid of the box. She was not expecting a bomb or a booby trap; that sharp, bitter smell leaking from inside had already opened the doors of a completely different hell for her. She lowered her gun and looked inside the box. On a black velvet background lay a flawlessly pruned pink flower with its leaves looking vivid. An Oleander flower. That deadly plant growing in every park of the city, mesmerizing with its color, but whose sap was poisonous enough to stop a human heart in seconds. When she looked at the cut stem of the flower, the blood in Aylin's veins turned to ice. The tip of the stem was sealed with that honey-colored, transparent pruning paste she had seen on Hale's neck in the morgue. Right next to the flower stood a small, white note card written in a single line with an old typewriter: "The elites only know the smell of the flower, inspector. I am the one who knows its soil." The moment she read the note, Aylin turned her head in terror towards the darkness of the stairwell. Gripping her gun with both hands, she aimed at the shadows, but there was nothing around except the sound of the rain hitting the glass. The hunter had not only entered the Headquarters, but had infiltrated Aylin's most intimate space, right to the door of her home. The highly trusted, arrogant, and invincible inspector of the Department was now in the personal hunting ground of that poisonous gardener. 1234 copyright protection39ＰＥＮＡＮＡaleEE79fkM 尼

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