Текст книги "The Death Sculptor"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Seventy-Two

Hunter sat alone in total darkness facing the pictures board in his office. It was late and everyone had gone home. In his hand he held a flashlight, which he kept flicking on and off at uneven intervals, in an attempt to trick his brain.

As light enters the eye and hits the retina, the eye’s photographic plate, the image that is formed is inverted, but is interpreted the right way up by the brain. If you allow that image to be projected onto the retina for just a split second before cutting off the light source, the brain then has to interpret only what it can remember, drawing from what modern medicine calls the ‘immediate’ or ‘f ash’ memory.

If the image is a shape well known to the brain, like a chair, the minor details the brain failed to register due to the short light exposure, are automatically compensated by the long-term memory – the brain thinks ‘it looked like a chair’, so the brain pulls a chair image from its memory bank. But if the shape is unknown to the brain, then it has nothing to fall back on. It then compensates by working harder in trying to identify details from the original image. That was what Hunter was trying to do, force his brain to see something it hadn’t seen before.

So far, it hadn’t worked.

‘Is this your idea of disco lights?’

Hunter turned in the direction of the voice and switched on his flashlight. Alice was standing by the door, holding her briefcase.

‘I didn’t know you were still here,’ he said.

‘What, you think you’re the only workaholic in this place?’ She smiled.

Hunter shifted in his seat.

‘Do you mind if I switch on the lights?’

‘Go ahead.’ He flicked off his flashlight.

Alice hit the light switch before nodding at the board. ‘Got anything new?’ She knew what he was trying to do.

Hunter rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger while shaking his head. ‘Nothing.’

Alice placed her briefcase on the floor and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Are you hungry?’

Hunter hadn’t thought about it the whole day, and as he did his stomach rumbled. ‘Starving.’

‘Do you like Italian?’

Seventy-Three

Campanile was a rustically elegant restaurant on South La Brea Avenue, reminiscent of a little Mediterranean village, complete with a bell tower, a fountain-accented courtyard, and a tiny bakery.

‘I didn’t know you liked this place,’ Hunter said as he and Alice took a table in the courtyard.

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’ She looked at him with a faint smile on her lips, but not wanting Hunter to dwell on her words, she quickly followed them up. ‘I used to come here a lot. I love Italian food, and the chef here is fantastic. Probably the best around this part of town.’

Hunter couldn’t disagree. ‘So you don’t come here a lot anymore?’

‘Not as much. I still love Italian food, but I’m not getting any younger, and I really have to watch what I eat. Shifting any excess weight isn’t as easy as it used to be.’

Hunter unfolded the cloth napkin and placed it on his lap. ‘I don’t think there’s any shifting to be done.’

Alice paused and looked back at him in a peculiar way. ‘Was that you paying me a compliment?’

‘Yes, and at the same time telling you the truth.’ Alice pushed her hair back behind her ears and swept it around over her left shoulder. A self-conscious and slightly flirtatious move.

It went totally unnoticed.

‘Shall we order?’ Hunter asked.

‘Why not.’ The reply came in a less than enthusiastic tone.

They both ordered spaghetti. Hunter had his with primavera sauce, and Alice had hers with the chef’s special spicy meatballs and sundried tomatoes. They shared a bottle of red wine and tried as best as they could to keep the conversation away from the investigation.

‘How come you’ve never married, Robert?’ The question came at the end of the meal, as the waiter poured them both the rest of the wine. ‘As I said, in school most of the girls I knew had a thing for you. I’m sure you had plenty of opportunities.’

Hunter studied Alice while he had a sip of his wine. She had real interest burning in her eyes, almost like a reporter digging for a new scoop. ‘There are certain things that just don’t go together. What I do and married life are two of them.’

Alice pursed her lips together and twisted them to one side. ‘That’s a lame excuse, if I’ve ever heard one. Many cops are married.’

‘True, but a large number of them eventually get divorced due to the pressures that come with being a cop.’

‘But at least they tried, without hiding behind a pretty bad excuse. What happened to the old saying better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

Hunter shrugged. ‘I never heard that expression.’

‘Bullshit.’

A ghost of a smile betrayed him.

‘How about Carlos?’ Alice said. ‘He is married. Are you saying that his wife will eventually leave him because of his job?’

‘Some people are very lucky, or at least lucky enough to find that one person in life they’re meant to be with. Carlos and Anna are one such example. I don’t think you’ll ever find a better-suited couple. No matter how hard you look.’

‘And you never met that person? The one you’re supposed to be with for the rest of your life?’

In a flash Hunter’s memory was inundated by images of one face . . . the sound of one name. He felt his heart warm in his chest, but as the memories progressed at hyper speed, it grew ice cold.

‘No.’ Hunter didn’t shy away from her stare. But he was sure that something in his eyes gave him away.

Alice did see it. First something tender, then something hard and arctic, something very painful, and in spite of her curiosity, she knew she had no right to ask any more questions.

‘I’m sorry.’ She broke eye contact and changed the subject before the silence became too awkward. ‘So you got nothing new from the second shadow image?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me something, do you think we got the first one right? I mean, the interpretation of it – that the killer was telling us that, to him, Derek Nicholson was a betrayer, a liar.’ She lifted a hand to stop Hunter from answering too quickly. ‘I know that we’ll never know for sure until we catch the killer. But does it ring right to you?’

Hunter could already see where she was leading. ‘Yes.’

‘But still, you have doubts about our interpretation of the second shadow image.’

‘Yes.’

Alice sipped her wine slowly. ‘You, Carlos and I have spent countless hours studying that human sculpture and the shadow image it casts, trying to make some sense of its meaning. I don’t think there’s anything else there, other than what we’ve been seeing from the start. Even the captain agrees. Why do you think we’re wrong this time? Why can’t the killer be using the image to tell us that he’s going after two more victims?’

The waiter came over to clear their table. Hunter waited until he moved away, balancing all the dishes up his arms.

‘In my view, that interpretation is too much of a leap from the first one. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

Alice’s eyes widened. ‘Sense? What in this case makes sense, Robert? We have a maniac out on an ego trip, chopping people up and creating human-flesh sculptures so he can give us crazy clues to a jigsaw puzzle. Where the hell is the sense in all that?’

Hunter quickly scanned the surrounding tables to see if anyone else had heard Alice’s comment. Her voice had risen a few decibels with excitement. Everyone seemed much more interested in their own food and wine than in their conversation. His attention returned to Alice.

‘It doesn’t make sense to us because we haven’t figured it out yet. But to the killer, it makes perfect sense. That’s why he’s doing it.’

Alice measured those words in silence. ‘That’s what you’ve been trying to do, isn’t it? To think like the killer. To see the sense that only he can see.’

‘Well, it’s been exactly a week, and so far I’ve failed miserably.’

‘No you haven’t.’ She placed one hand on the table, and the tips of her fingers brushed against the back of Hunter’s hand. ‘So far you’ve done a better job than anyone would’ve expected. If it weren’t for you, we’d all still be looking at those sculptures, trying to figure out what they meant.’

Hunter paused and looked at Alice. ‘Was that you paying me a compliment?’

‘No, just stating the truth. But what did you mean when you said it was too much of a leap from our interpretation of the first one.’

‘Would you like to see the dessert menu?’ The waiter had come back to the table.

Alice didn’t even look at him, simply shaking her head. Hunter gave him a sympathetic smile.

‘I think we overdid it on the main course. We’ve got no space left for anything else, thank you.’

‘Prego,’ the waiter replied and went on his way.

‘What leap?’ Alice insisted.

‘If we’re right in our interpretation of the first shadow image, then the killer gave us his opinion of Derek Nicholson, right? He considered him a liar.’

Alice sat back on her chair, things starting to connect in her head.

‘But if we’re also right in our interpretation of the second image, then the killer didn’t give us his opinion of Andrew Nashorn.’

Alice saw his point. ‘If we’re right, he gave us his opinion of himself – an angry devil looking down at his victims.’

Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, and I can’t see a reason why he would do that. It seems wrong. This killer wants us to see something through his point of view. He wants us to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. Why he’s killing these people. Telling us that he thought Nicholson was a liar, that he was maybe betrayed by him, makes sense.’

‘But telling us that he’s an angry devil out for revenge, doesn’t?’

‘Does it to you?’

Her eyebrows arched for a second. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘So you think he’s trying to tell us something about Nashorn with the second image?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Yeah, but what? That he considered Nashorn the devil? A man with horns? And how about the other four images, two figures standing and two down? What the hell do they mean?’

Hunter had no reply.

Seventy-Four

His eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings – very damaged butterfly wings. They felt as if they weighed a ton, and it took Nathan Littlewood several seconds and tremendous effort to half open them and keep them that way. Shards of light seemed to rip through his eyeballs. He took a deep breath and his lungs burned as if the air were sulfuric acid. Whatever drug was injected into his neck, it was now wearing off.

His chin slumped down to his chest, his head feeling too heavy for him to lift it back up. He stayed like that for several seconds. Only then he realized that he was naked, except for his sweat-soaked striped boxers clinging to his skin. It took him another moment to understand his position. He was sitting down on a comfortable leather office chair. His arms were pulled back behind him, around the chair’s backrest. His wrists were bound together by something hard and thin that was cutting into his flesh. His feet were also pulled back and tied together under the chair’s seat, about an inch or so from the floor. His whole body hurt as if he’d been at the receiving end of a massive beating, and the pain inside his head was eating away at his sanity.

Something was pulling against the corners of his mouth, and all of a sudden he was overwhelmed by a desperate gagging sensation. Coughing erupted from his chest with incredible force, but the air was half-blocked by the tight cloth gag in his mouth, and that served only to intensify his desire to retch. Littlewood tasted bile mixed with blood, and the coughs quickly escalated into a struggle not to choke to death.

Breathe through your nose, was the only thought that came into his head. He tried to concentrate on that, but he was too scared and drunk on pain for his brain to muster any discipline at that moment. Littlewood needed more air, he was desperate for it, and instinctively he drew another deep breath through his mouth. The mixture of bile and blood that was sitting just under his tongue was sucked back into his throat, blocking the oxygen passage even more.

Total panic.

His eyes rolled back into his head and the contents of his stomach exploded inside him, shooting up through his chest and esophagus like a rocket, though to him everything happened in slow motion. His body started to go limp. Life was quickly draining away from him.

He felt the acid taste of vomit take hold of his mouth a fraction of a second before it was flooded by warm, lumpy liquid. At that exact moment, his gag gave in, dropping from his mouth as if someone had snipped it off at the back.

He threw up all over his lap. But the good news was he could now breathe.

After a battery of dry coughs and spits, Littlewood started taking desperate gasps of air, trying to fill his lungs with oxygen and at the same time calm himself down. He started shaking, convulsing with two realizations – one: he had just come within an inch of death; two: he was still tied to a chair, and he didn’t have a clue what was going on.

Movement came from his left. Startled, Littlewood’s head snapped in that direction. Someone was there, but the shadows didn’t allow Littlewood to see.

‘Hello?’ he said, in such a weak voice he wasn’t sure it’d been audible to anyone but himself.

A few more desperate breaths to steady himself.

‘Hello?’ he tried again.

No answer.

Littlewood looked around himself. He saw a large bookshelf crowded with leather-bound volumes, a floor lamp by the side of a large desk across the room from him – the room’s only source of light. His eyes moved right and he saw a comfortable brown leather armchair. A few feet in front of it he recognized the psychologist’s couch – his psychologist’s couch. He was back in his office.

‘By the look on your face, I can see you’ve figured out where you are.’ The phrase was delivered in an even voice. Someone had come from the shadows, and was now standing about five feet in front of him, leaning against his desk.

Littlewood’s gaze refocused on the tall figure as even more confusion settled in.

‘This is your office. Four floors up from the road below. Thick windows. Thick walls. And your window faces the back alley. Outside your door there’s a large waiting room, and only then do you reach the door to the outside hallway.’ A pause and a shrug. ‘Scream if you like, but no one will hear a peep.’

Littlewood coughed again to try and clear the vile taste from his mouth. ‘I know you.’ His voice was croaked and weak. Fear cloaked every word.

A smile and a shrug. ‘Not as well as I know you.’

Littlewood’s head was still too fuzzy for him to put a name to the face. ‘What? What’s all this?’

‘Well, what you don’t know about me is that I am . . . an artist.’ A deliberate pause. ‘And I’m here to make you into a work of art.’

‘What?’ Littlewood finally noticed that the person in front of him was wearing a clear, hooded, thick plastic jumpsuit and latex gloves.

‘But I guess that what I am does not matter. What matters is what I know about you.’

‘What?’ The fog of confusion was getting denser, and Littlewood started wondering if all this wasn’t just a bad dream.

‘For example,’ the artist continued. ‘I know where you live. I know about your awful marriage all those years back. I know where your son goes to college. I know where you go when you want to let off some steam. I know what you like when it comes to sex, and all the places you go to get it. The dirtier the better, isn’t that right?’

Littlewood coughed again. Spit dribbled down his chin.

‘But best of all . . . I know what you did.’ Pure anger found its way into the artist’s voice.

‘I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The artist took a step to the left and the light from the pedestal lamp reflected on something that’d been laid out on Littlewood’s desk. Littlewood couldn’t make out what it was, but he realized that there were several metal objects lying there. Shuddering fear traveled through every inch of his body.

‘It’s OK. I will remind you as the night goes on.’ An irreverent chuckle. ‘And for you, it will be a long, long night.’ The artist grabbed two objects from the desk and approached Littlewood.

‘Wait. What’s your name? Could I have some water, please?’

The artist stopped directly in front of Littlewood and chuckled sarcastically. ‘What, you want to try your psychology crap with me? What would that be? Let’s see . . . ah yes . . . Appeal to the assailant’s human side by asking for the simplest of things, like water, or going to the bathroom. Sympathy for those in need is a natural sentiment to most human beings. You want to call me by my name? Who knows, maybe I’ll call you by yours – which would humanize the victim in the eyes of the assailant, transposing the victim from a simple victim to a person, a human being, someone with a name, with feelings, with a heart. Someone who the assailant could maybe identify with. Someone who, outside the given situation, could be just the same as the assailant, with friends, and family, and everyday problems.’ A new chuckle. ‘Appeal to their human nature, right? It’s supposedly harder for people to hurt someone they know. So try to strike a conversation. Even a simple one can have a massive effect on the assailant’s psyche.’

Littlewood looked up with horror in his eyes.

‘That’s right. I read the same books as you did. I know hostage-situation psychology as well. Are you sure you want to try your bullshit with me?’

Littlewood swallowed dry.

‘The building is empty. We’ve got until tomorrow morning before anyone even walks past your door. Maybe we can chat while I work, what do you say? Want to give it a try? Maybe spark some sympathy inside me?’

Tears filled Littlewood’s eyes.

‘I say let’s make a start.’

Without any more warnings, the artist pinched and twisted Littlewood’s exposed nipple with a pair of metallic medical forceps, pulling it away from his body so hard that the skin almost ruptured right there and then.

Littlewood let out an agonized cry. He felt vomit starting to rise up in his throat again.

‘I really hope you don’t mind pain. This knife isn’t very sharp.’ The other instrument the artist had retrieved from the desk was a small, serrated knife. It looked old and blunt.

‘Feel free to scream if this hurts.’

‘Oh God, pl . . . , pl . . . , please, don’t do this. I beg you. I . . .’

Littlewood’s next words were abruptly substituted by a soul-chilling scream as the artist slowly started sawing off his nipple.

Littlewood almost passed out. His mind was struggling with everything. He desperately wanted to believe that whatever was happening to him wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He had to be inside the absurd world of some crazy dream. It was the only logical explanation. But the pain that shot up from his blood-and-vomit-soaked chest was very real.

The artist put down the blunt knife and watched Littlewood bleed for a while, waiting for him to catch his breath, to regain some of his strength.

‘As much as I’ve enjoyed that,’ the artist finally said, ‘I think I want to try something different now. This might hurt more.’

Those words sent Littlewood tumbling down a rabbit hole of such intense fear that his whole body tensed. He felt the muscles of his arms and legs cramp so hard it paralyzed him.

The artist moved closer.

Littlewood closed his eyes, and though he wasn’t a religious man, he found himself praying. Seconds later he noticed the smell. Something unbearably strong and intrusive. Something that immediately made him want to be sick again. But his stomach had nothing else to throw up.

The smell was instantly followed by excruciating pain. Only then did Littlewood realize that his skin and flesh were burning.

Seventy-Five

The call came through on Hunter’s cellphone mid-morning, just as he was getting back into his car. He’d just revisited both crime scenes – Nicholson’s house and Nashorn’s boat, still looking for something he wasn’t even sure was there.

‘Carlos, what’s new?’ Hunter said, bringing the phone to his ear.

‘We’ve got another one.’

By the time Hunter got to the four-story office building in Silver Lake, it looked like a music concert was about to take place. A large crowd had gathered around the police perimeter, and no one was prepared to move an inch until they got at least a glimpse of something morbid.

Reporters and photographers were sniffing around like a pack of hungry wolves, listening to every rumor, collecting whatever information they could gather, and filling in the holes in their stories with their own imagination.

Police vehicles were scattered on the street and on the sidewalk, causing traffic chaos. Three officers were frantically trying to organize things, urging pedestrians to move along, telling them there was nothing to see, and signaling cars to drive on as they slowed down to take a peek.

Hunter rolled down his window and flashed one of the policemen his badge. The young officer took off his hat while squinting against the glare of the sun, and used his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead and nape.

‘You can go around the side and park down in the building’s underground garage, Detective. Forensics and the other detectives parked their vans and cars there. No offense, but we don’t need any more cars up here.’

Hunter thanked the officer and drove on.

The underground garage was spacious enough, but very dark and gloomy. As Hunter maneuvered to park next to Garcia’s car, he identified three faulty light bulbs. He also saw no CCTV cameras anywhere, not even at the garage’s entrance. He parked, stepped out of the car and quickly studied the ample space – nothing but a cement box with pillars, parking lines on the ground, and dark corners everywhere. At the center of it, a square block with a wide metal door that led to the underground landing. From there one could choose to take the elevator or the stairs up. Hunter took the stairs. On his way to the fourth floor he passed four more uniformed police officers.

The stairwell door dropped Hunter at the end of a long corridor, alive with movement – more officers, uniformed and plain-clothed, and forensic agents.

‘Robert,’ Garcia called from just over halfway down the hallway, as he pulled down the hood on his white coverall.

Hunter walked over, frowning at the number of people crowding the scene. ‘What’s all this? Are we having a party?’

‘We might as well,’ Garcia replied. ‘This whole thing is a mess.’

‘I can see that, but why?’

‘I just got here, but the initial call didn’t come to us.’

Hunter started suiting up. ‘How come?’

Garcia unzipped his coverall and reached inside his pocket for his notebook. ‘The victim in question is Nathan Francis Littlewood – fifty-two years old, divorced. This is his psychology practice. According to Sheryl Sellers, his office-manager-stroke-secretary, and the person who found his body this morning, Littlewood was still in his office when she left at around seven-thirty last night.’

‘Late office hours,’ Hunter commented.

‘That’s what I thought. The reason was that Littlewood’s last patient ended her session at seven. Ms. Sellers said she always stays until the last patient of the day has left.’

Hunter nodded.

‘She found the body when she came in this morning to start her working day, at around eight-thirty. The problem is, understandably, she panicked when she saw what’s in there. A few people from the other offices on this floor had already arrived to start their day. They all heard the screams and came running. Grotesque or not, our crime scene became an early morning attraction before the cops got here.’

Hunter zipped up his coverall. ‘That’s just great.’

‘As I said, we weren’t the first ones called,’ Garcia continued. ‘Silver Lake falls under the Central Bureau’s jurisdiction – northeast division. Two of their detectives were sent over. When Doctor Hove arrived and saw the scene, she called us. Basically we have a platoon of people who’ve contaminated the scene.’

‘Where’s the doctor?’

Garcia’s head tilted towards the office. ‘Inside, working the scene.’

‘So is this your partner?’ The question came from the man who had come up behind Garcia. He was just under six feet tall, with short black hair, close-set eyes and eyebrows so thick and bushy they looked like hairy caterpillars.

‘Yes,’ Garcia nodded. ‘Robert Hunter, this is Detective Jack Winstanley from the Central Bureau’s northeast division.’

They shook hands.

‘Hunter . . .’ Winstanley said, while his brow creased for an instant. ‘You’re the guys who are investigating that cop’s murder, aren’t you? The one at the marina a few days ago. He used to be with the South Bureau, right?’

‘Andrew Nashorn,’ Hunter replied. ‘Yes.’

Winstanley rubbed the point between his caterpillar eyebrows with his index finger. Hunter and Garcia knew exactly what was coming.

‘Are we talking about the same killer here? Was he chopped up like the guy in there?’

‘I haven’t seen the scene yet,’ Hunter replied.

‘Don’t give me that horseshit. If you’re here to take over my murder scene, then you know what the hell I’m talking about. What’s in there is pure evil.’ He gestured towards the psychologist’s office. ‘The victim was chopped up like a casserole chicken. And what the fuck is that sick thing that was left on the desk? Are those his body parts?’

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a quick look. There was no point denying it.

‘Yes,’ Hunter said. ‘It probably is the same perpetrator.’

‘Mother of God.’