Текст книги "The Death Sculptor"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Fifty

The blood had coagulated and dried onto the floor and walls, and as the red blood cells died and started to decompose, the odd, metallic smell had faded, giving way to a much stronger odor – something like rotten meat mixed with sour milk. Many who’d been to a brutal crime scene would argue that that was exactly what a violent death smelled like.

Hunter paused by the door to Nashorn’s boat cabin once again. Revisiting crime scenes, alone, in the dead of night, had become almost an obsession with him. It gave him a chance to look around uninterrupted, to take his time, to try, if only for a split second, to adopt the same frame of mind as the killer. But how could anyone make sense of the senseless?

Hunter had read and reread the forensic team’s crime-scene report. The many shoeprints he’d seen around the cabin’s floor the day before were very inconsistent and couldn’t be matched to a specific shoe size. There was so much blood covering the floor that, as soon as the killer moved his foot, more blood seeped back to obscure its outline. That made the forensics analysis a lot more difficult. Mike Brindle, the forensics agent who led the team that attended the scene, told Hunter earlier in the day that he’d found something odd about the shoeprints. The distribution of weight from each step seemed to be unequal. That suggested that the killer either walked with an asymmetric abnormality – as if he had a limp, or had deliberately worn wrong-sized shoes. It was a trick that Hunter had encountered before. Forensics couldn’t identify a sole pattern, either, which suggested that the killer had covered his shoes with a thick plastic cover, or something on those lines. That would also explain the lack of bloody footprints outside the cabin.

Brindle had assured Hunter that his team had left the cabin in the exact same state in which they’d found it. The objects that had been removed for forensic examination had been listed in the document Hunter had with him. Everything else was left in its place.

Hunter zipped up his Tyvek coverall and stepped into the cabin. He wasn’t worried about contaminating the scene; he just didn’t want his shoes and clothes to get smeared with blood, or drenched in that sickening smell. He knew that when that smell found its way into any fabric, no amount of washing or dry cleaning would get rid of it. It was a psychological thing. The brain would associate the clothes with the smell, even after the smell was long gone.

He paused in the center of the room and slowly allowed his eyes to roam the space around him.

Was the killer already on board when Nashorn got to his boat?

The cabin door showed no signs of forced entry, though picking the two locks on it wouldn’t pose a great obstacle to anyone with experience.

Hunter went over most of the same movements he and Garcia had gone through the day before, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. He walked over to the small fridge and pulled its door open. It had been well stocked – several bottles of water, cheese, cold meats and plenty of beer. He rechecked the trashcan – a candy-bar wrapper and an empty bag of beef jerky. No beer cans. No glasses out in the small kitchen either. If Nashorn had invited anyone on board just before sailing off for two weeks, it probably hadn’t been to shoot the breeze.

So what then?

Garcia had suggested earlier that maybe the killer had approached Nashorn outside the boat first with some sort of weapon, forcing him to open the door before striking him across the face. Given both crime scenes, and Doctor Hove’s conclusion that the killer’s weapon of choice had been an electric kitchen carving knife, Hunter found that theory very unlikely. This killer didn’t like firearms.

He crossed the room to the far wall, where the largest concentration of blood splatter was located. The chair in which Nashorn’s body was found had been taken away by forensics, but its spot was marked by masking tape. Hunter paused at the center of it and looked around. There was nowhere to hide. Anyone attempting to conceal himself would’ve been spotted straight away, unless he was a midget. From the door, Nashorn would’ve been able to see the whole of the cabin, with the exception of the bathroom’s interior, but only if its door was closed. If the killer had hidden in there, then he would have had two options: wait until Nashorn pulled the bathroom door open and club him across the face with whichever weapon had been used; or pull the door open himself and storm towards Nashorn once he’d entered the cabin.

Hunter immediately saw two problems with that theory. As in any small boat cabin, the bathroom wasn’t very spacious. Doctor Hove was certain that Nashorn had been knocked out with a single, powerful blow to the face, and the blow had come from right to left in a swinging motion. That was impossible to achieve if standing inside the bathroom. There simply wasn’t enough space. If the killer had stormed out of the bathroom towards Nashorn, no matter where inside the cabin Nashorn had been, in such a cramped environment, it would’ve taken the killer at least two to three seconds to get to his victim. That was enough time for Nashorn to notice the attack and assume the most basic of defensive positions – hands up to protect the face. Even though his arms had been severed from his body, there were no defensive wounds to his hands or arms.

Hunter’s gaze circled the room again and paused on the small door to the inboard engine compartment. Like most things at that end of the cabin, it was covered in dried blood. With the forensics team in a hurry to start processing the scene last night, Hunter had not had a chance to properly check the engine pit. He crouched down next to it and lifted the door open. The compartment was small, not much bigger than a regular cupboard. The engine itself occupied most of the space. Blood had leaked in through the top of the door and dripped onto the engine and the oil-stained floor of the pit. Hunter was about to close the door when he saw something that caught his attention. A pattern of blood across the center part of the engine. Not dripped blood that had seeped through the door, but splattered blood. Hunter had seen that type of splatter many times – wound-spray, usually caused by a rotating motion, like when an assailant hits a victim across the face. The force of the blow would cause the victim’s neck to rotate, and blood from the inflicted wound would fly out in a thin arc.

He reached for the forensics-report folder and quickly flipped through the evidence photographs. As he found what he was looking for, his brain went into overdrive, calculating all the possibilities. He reached down, stuck his head into the pit, and fiddled with the underside of the engine, as if feeling for something. When he pulled his hand out, it was covered in a thin sheet of slimy liquid.

Hunter felt his blood warm inside his veins. ‘Smart motherfucker.’

Fifty-One

By 9:00 a.m., the heat reflected off the dusty roads already felt like an oven door had been opened. Hunter sat at one of the outside tables at the Grub café, in Seward Street. The large white umbrella that shot out from the center of the table provided a very welcome shade. The trimmed green hedges peppered in purple flowers that covered the crisscrossed wooden fence surrounding the café gave the place a country feel, despite it being just east of West Hollywood.

Detective Seb Stokes, Andrew Nashorn’s old partner, was the one who’d suggested they meet there. He arrived a couple of minutes after Hunter, paused by the door to the outside yard, and surveyed the busy tables. He was a bear of a man. His battered trousers stretched tight around an expanding waistline, and his jacket looked like it could rip if Stokes shrugged or sneezed too hard. His hair was thin, light brown and combed to one side to disguise an undisguisable bald patch. He had the worn look of someone who’d spent too much time in the same job, and had grown to hate it.

Despite never meeting him before, Hunter recognized him straight away and lifted a hand, grabbing his attention. Stokes walked over.

‘I guess I look too much like a cop, don’t I?’ His voice matched his image, full-bodied, but tired.

‘I guess we all do,’ Hunter said, standing up to shake his hand.

Stokes looked Hunter up and down, taking his figure and attire in. The black jeans, the cowboy boots, the shirt with its sleeves rolled up around muscular forearms, the broad shoulders and strong chest, the face with its square jaw.

‘Really?’ Stokes said with a sarcastic grin. ‘You look more like the all-American dream gymnast than any cop I’ve ever seen.’ He shook Hunter’s hand. ‘Seb Stokes. Everyone calls me Seb.’

‘Robert Hunter. Call me Robert.’

They both sat down.

‘OK, let’s order.’ Stokes signaled a waitress over without even looking at the menu and ordered the breakfast special. Hunter asked for a cup of black coffee.

Stokes sat back and undid the buttons on his suit jacket. ‘So you’re the lead on Andy’s murder?’ He shook his head and looked into the distance before fixing Hunter with his tired eyes. ‘Is it true what I’ve heard? He was cut up into pieces? I mean . . . dismembered? Decapitated?’

Hunter nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘And his body parts were left on a table, in some sort of crazy sculpture?’

Hunter nodded again.

‘Do you think it was a gang hit?’

‘Nothing points that way.’

‘What? A single perp?’

‘From what we have, yes.’

Stokes used the palm of his left hand to wipe the sweat from his glistening forehead and Hunter saw his jaw almost lock in anger.

‘That’s fucked up. Fucking coward, piece of shit. That’s no way for an officer to die. I would kill for five minutes in a room alone with the mother-humper who did that to Andy. Let’s see who would dismember who then.’

Hunter kept his gaze locked on Stokes, watching him feed off his emotions.

‘You know you have the entire goddam LAPD behind you on this one, right? Whatever you need, from whatever division, just ask. Fucking cop-killer. He’s gonna get what’s coming to him.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘It wasn’t a random attack, right? It was personal? I mean, did it look like a payback job?’

‘Possibly.’

‘For what? Andy hadn’t been in the field for . . .’ Stokes shook his head and narrowed his eyes.

‘Eight years.’ Hunter filled in the blank.

‘That’s right, eight years. He was with the Operations Support division . . .’ He paused, suddenly realizing the implications. ‘Wait up. You think it was payback for a case that goes back more than eight years, back to when he was on the field?’

‘You used to be his partner, right?’

‘Well, not exactly partner. We worked several cases together, yes, but when we were with the South Bureau, most of the investigations we were assigned to didn’t require more than one senior detective. We did a lot of low-level robberies, muggings, domestic violence, thefts, that kinda shit. Andy and I worked together in a few homicides, mostly gang related. Anything more high profile got sent to you folks down at the RHD.’

The waitress came back with their coffees. Stokes’s had so much whipped cream on top it looked like a snow-covered Christmas tree. Hunter waited as Stokes emptied three sugar sachets into his mug.

‘You think this scumbag is someone Andy and I put away?’

‘At the moment we’re looking at every possibility.’

‘Wow, that’s a bullshit, by-the-book, detective’s answer, if I’ve ever heard one.’ Stokes used a small wooden stick to stir his coffee. ‘Wait a second. You think this asshole’s gonna strike again? Please tell me you’re not here to tell me to be careful.’

‘No, I’m not here to tell you that, but it wouldn’t hurt if you stayed alert.’

Stokes laughed out loud. A gritty, throaty laugh. ‘What do you suggest I do, detective? Take some police protection? Buy a bigger gun?’ He leaned forward as much as his stomach would allow, and opened his suit jacket just enough for Hunter to see his shoulder-holstered gun. ‘Let him come. I’m ready for him.’ He sat back and regarded Hunter for a heartbeat. ‘I hadn’t kept in contact with Andy as much as I should have. I’m not with the South Bureau anymore. Got transferred to the West Bureau, Hollywood Division, after my divorce.’

‘When was that?’

‘Seven years ago. A year after Andy got shot. But tell me something. Andy was an active guy. He wasn’t on the field anymore, and he wasn’t as fit as he used to be, the bullet through his lung made sure of that, but he was no pushover. He was also one of those guys who was always on the lookout, you know what I mean? Wary of everyone. And I know he always packed. How did a single perp get to him like that? Ambush him inside his boat?’

Hunter sat back and crossed his legs. ‘No. He posed as a mechanic.’

Fifty-Two

Garcia was an early riser. He always got to the RHD before most, but this morning he’d gotten to his desk a lot earlier than usual. He wasn’t an insomniac like Hunter, but no one can really control their thoughts, or what their subconscious will throw at them once they close their eyes. Last night, the images that lay hidden behind Garcia’s eyelids were enough to scare sleep away for most of the night.

He did his best not to wake his wife up, but despite his lying soundless and motionless, Anna could sense her husband’s uneasiness as if it were crawling up her skin. She always could.

Garcia had met Anna Preston as a freshman in high school. Her unusual beauty captivated many boys, but it mesmerized Garcia, and he fell in love with her almost immediately. As a kid, Garcia was quiet and very shy. It took him ten months to gather the courage to walk up to Anna in a school dance and stammer the words – ‘Would you . . . umm . . . li . . . like to dance . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ she replied with a smile that made his legs wobble.

‘I mean . . . with me . . . would you like to dance with me . . . ?’

Her smile widened. ‘Yes, I’d love that.’

While on the dance floor, swinging awkwardly to a slow song, Anna whispered into Garcia’s ear.

‘What took you so long?’

Garcia pulled his chin from her shoulder and looked into Anna’s hazel-honey eyes. ‘What?’

‘Five school dances. This is the fifth school dance this year. What took you so long to ask me?’

Garcia tilted his head to one side and said tentatively. ‘I . . . like to keep the ladies waiting?’

They both laughed.

They started dating that night.

Garcia proposed three years later, straight after their graduation.

When Garcia became a detective for the LAPD, he made a promise to himself never to bring home any of the grotesque world his profession took him to. To never, ever discuss his day with Anna. Not because it was against protocol, but because he loved her too much, and he would never stain her thoughts with the images and the reality of his every day. He had never broken that promise.

Late last night, while in bed, Anna pulled herself closer to Garcia and whispered in his ear.

‘If you ever wanna talk. You know I’ll always be here. No matter what.’

He faced her and gently swept a lock of hair from her face. ‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘Everything is fine.’ He kissed her lips.

Anna placed her head on his chest and closed her eyes. ‘I love you,’ she said.

Garcia started stroking her hair. ‘I love you too.’ Sleep never came.

Garcia sat facing the pictures board. His attention mostly on the photograph of the shadow image cast by the second sculpture. ‘What the hell is he trying to tell us?’

‘I asked myself that same question all night long,’ Alice said, standing behind him.

Garcia jumped in his chair. He hadn’t noticed her entering the room. ‘Wow,’ he said, consulting his watch. ‘You’re up early.’

‘Or late, depends on how you look at it.’ She placed a few folders on her desk.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘I didn’t want to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes my brain cooked up a new nightmare.’

Garcia made a face as if he knew exactly how she felt.

She picked up one of the folders she’d brought in with her and handed it to Garcia.

‘What’s this?’

‘Prison files and visitation records for Alfredo Ortega and Ken Sands.’

Garcia’s eyes widened. ‘Really? I didn’t even know the request had been sanctioned already.’

‘That’s one of the perks of having the DA, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and the Chief of Police so keen to see an investigation resolved. Things move a lot faster. They were faxed to my office at the crack of dawn today.’

‘Have you been through them already?’

Alice used both hands to tuck her loose hair behind her ears. ‘I have, yes.’

Garcia’s eyes dropped to the folders on his lap.

‘I read fast.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve highlighted a few points.’ She thought better of her words. ‘Actually, quite a few. Start with the blue folder, Alfredo Ortega’s file. As you’ll remember, he went to prison eleven years before Ken Sands.’

Garcia noticed a new quirk in Alice’s voice. ‘And I can tell you’ve found something.’

‘Wait until you read both files.’ She sat at the edge of her desk with a satisfied look on her face. ‘You’ll have to read it to believe it.’

Fifty-Three

Detective Seb Stokes paused midway through a long sip of his coffee and returned the mug to the table. A teardrop blob of cream now sat on the tip of his round nose. An almost perfect fluffy white mustache contoured his top lip.

‘A mechanic?’ he said, using a paper napkin to wipe the cream off his face. ‘You got the fucker on CCTV?’

‘No, CCTV wasn’t working,’ Hunter replied in an even voice.

‘It fucking never is when you need it. So how do you figure the killer posed as a mechanic?’

‘Last night I found out that there was some sort of oil leak with Nashorn’s boat’s inboard engine. He was supposed to leave on his usual two-week sailing trip the day he was murdered. My guess is that he probably noticed the problem while doing his final check-through, and knew he couldn’t sail off with a faulty engine. Too risky.’

‘Yeah, that would be the Andy I know. He was always very thorough. And the one thing he wasn’t was careless. Have you checked with the marina? Do they have a register of mechanics?’

‘I’ve checked.’ Hunter sipped his coffee. ‘They don’t have a mechanic station. What they do have is a list of mechanics they recommend. Nashorn never contacted the marina’s admin office asking for a mechanic’s name. But most boat owners already have a mechanic they trust anyway.’

‘Did Andy?’

Hunter nodded. ‘A guy called Warren Donnelly. I spoke with him last night. He said he was never contacted by Nashorn about any engine-oil leak.’

‘So you’re thinking that the killer tampered with the engine before Andy got to his boat,’ Stokes said, reading Hunter’s expression. ‘Maybe even a day or two before.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Then all he had to do was hang around somewhere close, observing, waiting for the right moment to offer his services.’

‘That’s the theory we’re looking at,’ Hunter agreed.

‘But why not just hide inside the boat cabin and wait for Andy to come in? Why complicate things by going through all the mechanic-scenario crap?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Hunter admitted. ‘Maybe because it was a small boat. The cabin was even smaller. There was no place for anyone to hide. Nashorn would’ve noticed a stranger’s presence even before boarding the boat. The killer would’ve lost the upper hand – no surprise factor.’

‘And Andy was still a cop,’ Stokes said, leaning back on his chair and running a hand over his rumbling belly. ‘And a good one. At the slightest sign of a problem, he would’ve reached for his gun and been on high alert.’

Hunter nodded again. ‘Nashorn was a big and strong guy, obviously able to handle himself. Maybe the killer knew that getting into any sort of fight with him wasn’t a good idea. Things could’ve gone really wrong. And this killer doesn’t take unnecessary risks.’

Stokes started chewing on his bottom lip. ‘So the killer needed to be invited onto the boat. That way Andy wouldn’t have been suspicious. Once onboard, an opportunity to subdue Andy would’ve certainly presented itself.’

‘Judging by the blood splatter, and the location where his teeth were found, it looks like Nashorn was crouching down in front of the engine pit. Maybe the killer asked him to have a look at something, or hold something in place while he grabbed a tool from his bag.’

‘Teeth?’

‘Nashorn received a blow to the face. Shattered his jaw and caused him to lose three of his teeth.’

The waitress returned with Stokes’s breakfast. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she asked Hunter.

‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

‘OK, let me know if you change your mind.’ The waitress gave Hunter a charming wink before turning on the balls of her feet and walking away again.

Hunter gently scratched the bullet-wound scar on his right triceps. Though it was over two years old, sometimes it still itched like mad. ‘Whoever this killer is,’ he said, ‘he had a lot of hate towards Nashorn. And that’s why I’m here. You worked with him. You were part of the same division. Can you think back to any of the cases you investigated together, anyone who comes to mind who you think would be capable of something like this?’

Stokes cut a piece off his Spanish omelet and held it as if it were a slice of pizza. ‘After we talked on the phone last night, I knew that question would be coming my way. I gave it some thought. And the only motherfucker I can think of is Raul Escobedo.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Serial rapist. Convicted for attacking three women in Lynwood Park and Paramount in the space of eight months. The truth is, we think he attacked and raped closer to ten victims, but only three testified. Sadistic fucker too. Liked to rough ’em up real good before doing his business. We caught him because he made a mistake without knowing it.’

‘Which was?’ Hunter’s interest grew.

‘You see, Escobedo was born right here in LA, but his parents were from a small state in Mexico called Colima.’

‘Home to the Colima volcano.’

‘That’s right. Did you know that already?’

Hunter nodded.

‘Huh, I had to look that up. Anyway, Escobedo’s parents immigrated to the US before his mother became pregnant with him. They came from a small town called Santa Inés. Though Escobedo grew up in Paramount, in his house they only spoke Spanish. His problem was, people from Santa Inés speak with a distinct accent. I can’t tell the difference, but there you go.’ Stokes had another bite of his omelet. ‘He had never been to his parent’s hometown, but Escobedo picked up the Santa Inés accent like a native. And that’s what fucked him. His mistake was he liked to talk dirty while raping his victims. The last woman he raped was from Las Conchas, which is the next town along from Santa Inés.’

‘She recognized his accent,’ Hunter said.

‘She did better than that.’ Stokes chuckled. ‘Escobedo used to work for the US postal service as a cashier. Two weeks after the attack, this last victim was staying with a friend in South Gate. It was the week before Mother’s Day in Mexico, so they went down to their local post office to post a card to her friend’s mother. Lo and behold, Escobedo was the one who served them. As soon as the woman heard his voice, she started shivering and all, but she did good. She didn’t lose her cool. Instead of panicking and scaring him away, she left the post office, found a payphone, and got back to us. We put a sting operation on him and boom – three weeks later we caught him red-handed, just about to rape someone else. Andy and I were the detectives who arrested him.’ Stokes returned to his coffee and Hunter sensed his hesitation. There was something he wasn’t telling him.

‘What happened with the arrest?’

Stokes put down the Spanish omelet slice he was holding, brought a napkin to his mouth and assessed Hunter from across the table. ‘From cop to cop?’

Hunter gave Stokes a confident nod. ‘From cop to cop.’

‘Well, we roughed him up a little when we caught him.’

‘Roughed him up?’

‘You know how it is, man. When everything went down, adrenalin was pumping like bad blood. Andy got to him first. Escobedo had dragged this 18-year-old girl into a disused Salvation Army building in Lynwood. Andy always had a temper on him, and his fuse . . .’ Stokes twisted his mouth to one side and followed the movement with his head. ‘Simply non-existent. He used to get shit from our captain all the time for losing his head. He wasn’t exactly a loose cannon, but he was pretty borderline, you know what I’m saying? When he got to the building, Escobedo had already ripped the girl’s blouse off and beat her up pretty good. That was the cue for Andy to transform himself into the Incredible Punching Man, fuck being a cop, you know what I mean?’

Hunter didn’t reply, and silence took over for several seconds.

‘The truth is . . .’ Stokes finally carried on, ‘. . . the bastard deserved every punch he got. Andy made a mess of his face.’

Hunter sipped his coffee calmly. ‘So where’s he now? Where’s Escobedo?’

‘I have no idea. This all happened twelve years ago. Escobedo got ten inside and served every second of it. The last I heard, he was released two years ago.’

Something like an electric charge ran up Hunter’s spine.

‘And I’ll tell you right now,’ Stokes moved on, ‘if that sack of shit is the one who took Andy down then . . .’

‘Where did he go?’ Hunter interrupted Stokes, scooting up to the edge of his seat.

‘What?’ Stokes squinted and pushed back a strand of floppy hair off his forehead.

‘Escobedo, which prison did he go to?’

‘The state prison in Los Angeles County.’

‘In Lancaster?’

‘That’s right.’

Same prison as Ken Sands, Hunter thought.

‘Seriously, if Escobedo did this, I . . .’

‘You’re not going to do anything,’ Hunter cut him off again. The last thing he wanted was for Stokes to leave that café thinking that he had a tip on LA’s newest cop killer. That bogus information would leak like water through a sieve, and by lunchtime Hunter would have half of the cops in the city out on a vendetta hunt. He needed to dissuade Stokes. ‘Look, Seb, if Escobedo is the only guy you can think of, then we’ll look into him, but at the moment he isn’t even a suspect. He’s just a name on a list. We have nothing to link him to the crime scene – no fingerprints, no DNA, no fibers found, no witnesses. We don’t even know where he was the day Nashorn was murdered, or if he possesses the skills to do what was done.’ Hunter allowed a couple of seconds for his words to sink in. ‘You’re a good detective. I read your file. You know exactly how investigations work. If a rumor starts circulating now, this whole investigation will be jeopardized. And when that happens, it gives guilty people a chance to walk. You know that.’

‘This motherfucker ain’t walking.’

‘You’re right, no he isn’t. And if Escobedo is our guy, I’ll get him.’

The conviction in Hunter’s voice softened the hard look in Stokes’s eyes.

Hunter placed a card on the table and pushed it over towards Stokes. ‘If you think of anyone else other than Escobedo, give me a call.’ He stopped as he stood up. ‘And listen, humor me and stay alert, OK? This guy is smarter than your average perp.’

Stokes smiled. ‘And as I said . . .’ he patted the bulge under his suit jacket, ‘. . . let him come.’