Unmasked: My Life Solving America`s Cold Cases, Holes Paul

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

From the detective who found the Golden State Killer, a memoir that grabs its reader in a stranglehold and proves more fascinating than fiction and darker than any noir narrative. (LA Magazine)

I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I dont even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. Im drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I cant shake.

Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and Ive had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. Its only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.

When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.

But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy--even fatherhood--because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? Its something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. I dont know if I can solve your case, I whisper. But I promise I will do my best.

It is a promise I know I can keep.