Текст книги "The Death Sculptor"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Ninety-Five

With probably the tackiest décor in downtown Los Angeles, Bar 107 sat just a block away from the PAB. Sporting walls redder than Communist Russia, vinyl booths, and a shabby-chic garage-sale theme, the place was a four-room retro drinking spot favored by many for its huge range of cocktails and Scotch whiskies.

Bar 107 was busy, but not excessively so. Hunter and Garcia sat at the far end of the long, varnished bar, and each ordered a shot of 10-year-old Aberlour.

‘Great choice,’ the female bartender said with an inviting smile. Her blonde hair was done up in a messy bun, but there was something very attractive about the way its edges fell down, caressing her naked neck.

Hunter had a sip of his Scotch and let the dark liquid swoosh around in his mouth, fully enjoying the hint of sherry that had been infused into the Aberlour’s taste, enhancing it, but without letting the wine palate take over.

In silence, Garcia watched a well-dressed couple come up to the bar and drink down two shots of tequila each in quick succession. The smile on their lips told him that they were celebrating something. The look on the man’s face told him that he really lusted after the woman, but she probably had never given in. Maybe tonight would be his lucky night.

‘How’s Anna?’ Hunter asked.

Garcia dragged his eyes away from the couple. ‘Yeah, she’s great. She started another crazy new diet. You know – no this, no that, no carbs after seven in the evening.’ He pulled a face.

‘She doesn’t need any of that.’

‘I know. I keep on telling her that. But she won’t listen to me.’ He chuckled. ‘She won’t listen to anyone.’ He paused and sipped his whisky. ‘She’s always asking about you, you know? How you’re doing and all.’

‘I had dinner with you guys at your place three weeks ago.’

‘I know, but that’s how she is. And she knows that if I’m not sleeping well, that means you probably aren’t sleeping at all. She cares, Robert. It’s in her nature.’

Hunter’s smile was full of tenderness. ‘Yes, I know. Tell her I’m OK.’

‘I do, but she knows better.’ Garcia started fidgeting with a paper napkin, folding its edges. ‘You know, she can’t understand how come you’re not with someone.’

Hunter scratched just under his right ear and felt a small, painful lump on his skin. A stress zit was just starting to come up. He left it alone. ‘Yeah, I know, she keeps on trying to introduce me to some of her friends.’

Garcia laughed. ‘And you keep on sneakily getting out of it. But, you know, maybe she’s got a point.’

Hunter looked at his partner funny.

Garcia matched his stare. ‘She really likes you, you know? Alice.’

‘What?’ Hunter had no idea where that came from.

‘You know she really likes you, don’t you?’

Hunter studied Garcia for an instant. ‘And you know this how?’

‘Because I’ve got eyes. Don’t even need to be a detective to pick that one up. Don’t play the blind man, Robert.’

Hunter said nothing and reached for his glass again.

‘Seriously, she likes you. It’s in the way she looks at you when you’re not looking. It’s in the way she looks at you when you are looking. It reminds me of school. You know, when you have a crush on someone, but you’re just too shy to say something. I know because I was that shy. It took me ages to finally ask Anna out.’ Garcia allowed the moment to breathe. ‘Maybe you should take her out for a drink, dinner even. She’s a nice girl. Attractive, intelligent, determined . . . I can’t think of a reason any single man wouldn’t like to take her out. And no offense, but Anna is right, you could do with a steady relationship.’

‘Thanks, Dr. Love, but I do fine the way I am.’

‘I know you do fine. I’ve seen the way women look at you.’ Every time the bartender walked past, her eyes lingered on Hunter for a moment. Hunter and Garcia had both noticed it.

‘Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m really not trying to play matchmaker here. I suck at it, and your personal life is none of my business. All I’m saying is, take Alice out for a friendly drink. Get to know her out of our work environment – which, I might add, is filled with pictures of dead people. Who knows? You guys might just click.’

Hunter swirled his whisky around in his glass. ‘Do you want to hear something funny?’ he said. ‘We knew each other from before.’

‘Who? You and Alice?’

Hunter nodded.

‘What? Really?’

Hunter nodded.

‘From where?’

Hunter told him.

‘Wow, that’s a coincidence. So she was a prodigy kid as well? Boy, do I feel like the dumb one in the box now.’

Hunter smiled and finished his Scotch. Garcia did the same.

‘I don’t want to talk about the case,’ Garcia said, ‘’cos I’m ready to go home here, but do you want to hear something funny? I hate puppets, including shadow ones. I have done since I was a kid.’

‘Really?’

‘I know it’s silly, but I always thought there was something evil about them. Nothing would scare me more than a puppet theater. And my fifth-grade teacher made us stage a puppet play every goddamn month. I either had to manipulate them, or sit with the rest of the class and watch.’ He chuckled uncomfortably. ‘Who knows? Maybe the killer is my teacher and he came back just to haunt me.’

Hunter smiled and stood up, ready to leave. ‘I wish. That would make things much simpler.’

Ninety-Six

Hunter felt so exhausted that no insomnia would’ve been able to keep him awake tonight. Back in his apartment, he had another warm shower and poured himself another shot of Scotch. Against his headache and tired muscles, it worked better than any medicine he could think of.

He kept the living-room lights switched off and headed for the sofa. There was no need for him to see the faded wallpaper, the tired carpet or the mismatched furniture.

Hunter couldn’t even remember when the last time was that he’d turned his TV on. He definitely wasn’t a TV man, but he knew he needed something to keep his mind occupied, no matter how trivial. Something to keep his thoughts from running away from him and back into the case, at least for one night – he really needed to disconnect. Though he loved reading, books tended to excite his brain, while television simply numbed it.

He searched the channels for late-night sports or cartoons, but without cable or satellite TV his choice of channels was somewhat limited. He settled for a rerun of some old World Wrestling Federation show. Entertaining, but not enough to keep sleep from taking over. Slowly, his body and mind gave up the fight and eased into a restless sleep.

It didn’t take long for the nightmares to start. And they came at him in waves – an empty room, bare brick walls, a single, dim light bulb dangling from a wire in the center of the ceiling, weak enough to keep all the corners in a shadow. Everything was so vivid he could smell the room – damp, moldy, stinking of sweat, vomit, and blood. In his dream he was merely a spectator, watching everything unfold before his eyes without being able to intervene.

First he saw Garcia lying unconscious on a dirty metal table while someone slowly dismembered him with a kitchen knife. No matter how much he tried, Hunter could never see the assailant’s face.

In a blink of an eye, the victim on the metal table changed. Garcia was nowhere to be seen. This time, the faceless killer was using his knife on Anna, Garcia’s wife. Her terrified screams reverberated through the room in an endless loop.

Hunter twitched on the sofa.

Another change of scene.

This time the victim was Alice Beaumont, and the dismembering started all over again. The floor of the room was thick with blood. Hunter was helpless, watching these people he knew, people he cared for, being slaughtered in front of his eyes, like a second-rate horror film.

Moments later the killer proceeded to use the body parts like Play-Doh, molding and sculpting them into grotesque, shapeless sculptures. All Hunter could hear were the animated laughs the killer let out every so often, like a kid having the best of times with his new toys.

Hunter’s eyes shot open all of a sudden, as if somebody had shaken him awake. His forehead and neck were drenched in cold sweat. He was still in his living room, the TV was still on, now showing some black and white film. Somehow, while still locked inside his nightmare, Hunter remembered something Garcia had said to him at the bar, and his brain made a crazy connection.

He jumped up and checked his watch – 6:08 a.m. He had been asleep for close to six and a half hours. Despite the horrendous dreams, his headache was gone, and his brain felt fresh and rested, but he needed to get back to his office. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.

Ninety-Seven

By the time Garcia arrived at the PAB, Hunter had been sitting in front of the pictures board for about an hour and a half. His mind had run through dozens of scenarios, trying desperately to answer the questions his brain ceaselessly asked. He hadn’t managed to answer all of those questions, but one scenario made more sense than all the others, and he wanted to run the idea past everyone.

Captain Blake was the last one to join the group in Hunter’s office. Alice had arrived five minutes earlier.

‘I’ve come up with a theory,’ Hunter said, drawing their attention to the pictures board. He had repositioned several of the photographs in a different order. ‘Please bear with me and hear me out, because it might sound a little crazy at first.’

Captain Blake pulled a face. ‘We’ve got a killer who dismembers his victims and uses their body parts to create sculptures and shadow puppets, Robert. Any theory behind those actions, truth or not, has got to be at least a little crazy. I don’t think any of us is expecting a lot of reason here. What have you got?’

‘OK,’ Hunter began. ‘We all know how much effort we’ve put into trying to understand and identify the meaning behind those sculptures and shadow images. Since we got our third victim four days ago, and consequently, our third sculpture and shadow image, we’ve been trying every combination we could think of to make any sense of this mess. Carlos and I even tried looking at the images as a group, instead of individually.’

Garcia nodded. ‘We thought that maybe the images linked into each other in some way to form something else, maybe a larger image. This whole thing felt like a jigsaw from the beginning. So maybe that was what the killer wanted us to do. Slot the pieces he’d given us into the correct position to complete the puzzle.’

Captain Blake cocked an interested eyebrow.

‘We got nothing, Captain,’ Garcia said, curbing her enthusiasm with a shake of his head. ‘No matter which way we pieced it together, we came up with zilch. Each sculpture casts an individual shadow image, and that’s that. They aren’t linked.’

Hunter agreed. ‘We came to the conclusion that they were independent from each other, not smaller pieces of an incomplete picture.’

‘OK,’ the captain said. ‘So you went back to try and figure out their individual meanings.’

‘Yes,’ Hunter admitted. ‘But with the discovery yesterday that the second victim, Andrew Nashorn, and the third one, Nathan Littlewood, also knew each other – possibly since their late teens – I started pondering new possibilities.’

‘Such as?’ the Captain queried.

‘Carlos said something yesterday that didn’t click until sometime in the middle of the night, but I should’ve thought of it before.’

Captain Blake and Alice’s attention moved to Garcia, who in turn looked back at Hunter.

‘What did I say?’

‘That you never liked puppets. And you told me about your fifth-grade teacher.’

Captain Blake tightened her stare.

Garcia shrugged as if it were nothing. ‘Puppets used to freak me out. They still do, in a way.’

‘What about your fifth-grade teacher?’ Alice asked.

‘He came up with a theater class, and made us stage a puppet play every month.’ Garcia scratched his left cheek nervously. ‘Boy, I hated that class. I hated that teacher. I hated that whole year.’

‘And that’s an angle I never considered before,’ Hunter said.

‘What angle are you talking about, Robert?’ Captain Blake said. ‘Because I don’t think any of us see it either.’

‘A theater, Captain. A puppet theater.’ Hunter positioned himself next to the replica of the sculpture from the first crime scene, Derek Nicholson’s house. ‘Puppets are used in theaters for one reason only.’

Just a fraction of confusion lifted from everyone’s faces.

‘To stage a play?’ Alice said.

‘To tell a story,’ Garcia commented a second later.

Hunter smiled. ‘Exactly.’

Ninety-Eight

Captain Blake’s eyes quickly browsed Garcia and Alice’s faces; neither of them seemed to be on the same page as Hunter yet either.

Hunter didn’t wait to be asked. ‘I think we’ve been going down the right track all along, we were just knocking on the wrong door. There is a bigger picture here.’ He pointed at the board. ‘But it isn’t one single image. And the shadow puppets were the clue.’ Hunter cleared his throat before proceeding. ‘I think the killer is staging a play. Just like a puppeteer. He’s telling us a story, giving us a scene at a time.’

Stunned silence.

Simultaneously, everyone’s uncertain eyes left Hunter and moved back to the pictures on the board. Alice started chewing her bottom lip. Hunter had noticed she did that when she was concentrating on something. He could tell that they were trying very hard to stay with him.

‘Let me show you what I mean, starting with the first image we got.’ He turned off the lights, switched his flashlight on, and aimed its beam onto the replica sculpture. The dog and bird-like shadow images appeared on the wall behind it once again.

‘We identified this first image as being that of a coyote and a raven. I have no doubt Alice found the correct interpretation for those two animals in combination – it means a liar, a deceiver, someone who betrays. I also think we are correct in linking that interpretation directly to the first victim. In the killer’s mind, Derek Nicholson was a liar.’

‘Yeah, we’ve all agreed on that,’ Captain Blake said.

Hunter turned the lights back on and pointed to the shadow photograph they had obtained from the sculpture left at the second crime scene, Andrew Nashorn’s boat. The image showed a large, horned, devil-like face looking down at what looked like two people in a standing position, and two lying on the ground, one on top of the other. ‘Now, with this second image, I think there are things we got right, and things we got wrong.’ He nodded at Alice. ‘I think Alice was right again when she said that the killer probably had an agenda. He’s after specific victims. He isn’t picking them at random out of the general public. At the time he created this sculpture, he’d killed two people, Nicholson and Nashorn. We thought they were represented by these two figures lying on the ground.’ He indicated them in the image. ‘And it looked like there were two more names on his list, represented by the two standing figures.’

Captain Blake moved closer to the board. ‘And you think that’s wrong?’

‘Partially. I don’t think that these two on the ground represent the two victims who had been killed at that point, as was suggested. But maybe these two standing up indicate that, at the time of the second murder, there were still two more names on the killer’s hit list.’

Garcia curled his lips over his teeth, considering. ‘So what do you think the two on the ground represent?’

‘A fight.’

Silence ruled again for the next few seconds. Everyone frowned and squinted at the picture, trying to process it under Hunter’s new light.

‘OK, let me walk you through what I think this whole image means,’ Hunter said, grabbing everyone’s attention again. ‘Imagine a group of four friends, and for now let’s say that those four are Nicholson, Nashorn, Littlewood and a fourth person who we haven’t identified yet. This group of friends go out on a drinking night, or a party night, or something. They get too drunk, they get too rowdy as guys sometimes do, maybe even too high, and they end up in an argument with someone, either an outsider, or someone who was originally part of their group. The argument escalates and turns into a punch-up. Even if it had started as a joke . . .’ Hunter indicated the two images piled up on the ground once again, ‘. . . it didn’t end as one.’

Garcia was pinching his chin, following Hunter’s every word, slowly stepping into his partner’s line of thought. Suddenly the dots connected.

‘And they killed him,’ he said.

The shadow image that he’d looked at countless times before now took on a whole new meaning in front of his eyes. ‘The fight got completely out of hand,’ Garcia continued. ‘The rest of the group was standing around, watching, or maybe they all took turns punching and kicking. It takes one wrong kick to the temple, a stumble and a head hit against a curbstone, or a wall, or something, and the punch-up ends . . . badly.’

Hunter nodded. ‘It probably happened unintentionally, but I think somebody was killed. That’s the theory.’

Looking at the picture, listening to Hunter’s interpretation, it was like the image had morphed before Captain Blake’s eyes.

‘But then we’re either missing someone, or we got the numbers wrong,’ Alice joined in.

‘What do you mean?’ the captain asked.

‘When we first looked at this shadow image, we knew the killer had already murdered two people, and we believed he was after two more, represented by the two standing up figures. If this image represents two people fighting on the floor with the rest watching, and as Robert is suggesting, one of them accidentally dies, then we’re left with three remaining figures. The one that comes out of the fight, and the two standing up.’ She lifted three fingers. ‘We have three victims now – Nicholson, Nashorn and Littlewood. And that would mean the killer has got them all. His list is complete.’

‘You’re forgetting him.’ Hunter pointed to the largest figure in the image. The distorted head with what looked like horns, looking down at the probable fight scene. ‘You thought this figure represented the killer, remember? Like a devil. I don’t think it does. I think that with every murder, the killer uses the sculpture and the shadow image it casts to represent that specific victim. This was left in Andrew Nashorn’s boat for a reason. I think the Devil-like figure represents Nashorn.’

‘So why the horns?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘Maybe to indicate that he was the leader, or the instigator. In every group of guys like that, Captain, there’s always one who is the head. The one whom everyone follows. Maybe Nashorn was the one who started the fight. Or maybe he was the one who, instead of stopping it, urged the participants to carry on punching.’

Uneasiness took over the room.

Hunter gave everyone time to consider his theory.

‘Maybe the person isn’t dead,’ Alice said. ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe there was a fight, but instead of dying the victim was physically, or even mentally impaired. Maybe after all these years, that victim is back, and he wants revenge.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘No, the victim died.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because the killer tells us.’

Ninety-Nine

Hunter drew their attention to the last two shadow-image photographs on the board. The ones cast by the two-part sculpture left in Nathan Littlewood’s office.

‘In the last crime scene, the killer left us two shadow images,’ he said, ‘but I think we read them in reverse order. This should be the first one of the two.’ He indicated the image created by Littlewood’s right arm and hand – the one that looked like someone kneeling down with his arm lifted up above his head, maybe praying. In front of the kneeling-down figure were small pieces of something. Their shadows had been created by the flesh sections carved out of Littlewood’s thigh.

Garcia shivered. Something that felt like an electric shock started at the back of his neck and spread throughout his body at incredible speed. Hunter didn’t have to explain. He saw it himself.

‘Oh my God,’ he said, slightly tilting his head to one side. ‘We never figured out why the killer left us two images in one crime-scene. And we specifically struggled to understand that one. It looked like someone on his knees, praying or something, with several objects scattered around on the floor in front of him. It’s not that at all.’ He drew a deep breath and held it for a long instant before letting it out slowly. ‘That’s someone chopping a body into pieces.’

Garcia’s words bounced off the walls like a crazy rubber ball.

Captain Blake stood absolutely still. For a moment, she almost lost the ability to blink. ‘So you think that this group of friends got into a punch-up, beat somebody to death, and cut the body up into pieces to dispose of it?’

Hunter nodded and indicated the last shadow-image photograph they had – part two of the sculpture found in Nathan Littlewood’s office – the one that looked like someone staring at someone else lying inside a box.

‘They placed the dismembered body inside some sort of container before getting rid of it!’ Alice said, letting out a heartfelt sigh. Both images now made perfect sense together.

Hunter waited, taking in their concerned expressions. Almost a minute went by before Captain Blake spoke again.

‘How long ago do you think that happened?’

‘Somewhere around thirty years ago, give or take one or two. It must’ve happened when Nicholson, Nashorn and Littlewood were young, very young – late teens or early twenties maybe, probably before Littlewood got married twenty-seven years ago.’

‘So the obvious conclusion is that our killer was related to that victim in some degree, and he now wants revenge,’ the captain said.

‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed.

‘But why now?’

‘Because our killer didn’t know anything about what really happened until a few months ago,’ Hunter said.

All of a sudden, all the pieces were slotting into place in Garcia’s mind. ‘Nicholson,’ he said, returning to his desk, picking up his notebook and quickly flipping through it.

Captain Blake and Alice turned to face him.

‘Here it is. Derek Nicholson’s nurse told us that he said something about making his peace with God. About telling someone the truth about something. That no matter how much good you do in your life, there are certain mistakes that would haunt you until your dying day.’ He returned the notebook to his desk. ‘That must’ve been what he was talking about. The mistake that haunted him throughout his life.’ He looked at Hunter. ‘The person who visited him in his house. The man we still haven’t identified.’

Hunter nodded.

‘The nurse also said that Nicholson had only two visitors once he was taken ill,’ Garcia clarified, for the captain’s and Alice’s benefit. ‘DA Bradley was one of them, but we’ve never identified the second visitor. He’s got to be our killer. Nicholson finally told him the truth about what had happened. He didn’t want to carry that secret to the grave with him.’

‘And a few weeks later he was murdered,’ Captain Blake said. ‘The revenge rampage started.’

‘So if you’re right,’ Alice said to Hunter, as another piece of the puzzle clicked into place for her, ‘Derek Nicholson must’ve been friends, or at least acquainted, with our killer from before. If he asked him to come to his house so he could clear his conscience, he must’ve known him. And that’s why the killer considered him a liar.’ She shook her head. ‘Better yet, a deceiver. He felt betrayed. Exactly what the shadow image told us.’

Hunter nodded.

‘And with the next victim and shadow image,’ she continued, ‘the killer depicted Andrew Nashorn as the group or gang leader, the one they all followed.’

Another nod.

‘And Nathan Littlewood was the one left with the task of disposing of the body.’

‘I don’t think he disposed of it,’ Hunter disagreed. ‘I think he cut it to pieces, and packed them inside some sort of container. I think the person who disposed of that container is the last name on our killer’s hit list. The fourth member of the group. The next victim.’

Everyone paused and processed that information in their own time.

‘But as I said,’ Hunter massaged the back of his neck, ‘at the moment this is all just a crazy theory in my head. I have no proof of anything yet.’

‘Crazy or not, all the pieces seem to slot into place,’ Captain Blake said, returning her attention to the images on the board. ‘And that would also explain why our killer is dismembering his victims. It’s payback time – an eye for an eye – blood in, blood out.’

She paused for a brief moment while she worked things out in her head. It’d been sixteen days since the first murder, and as things stood, she was inclined to claw at any reasonable possibility. She also hated working with the FBI.

‘OK, it’s plausible, and it makes more sense than anything else we’ve got so far. Let’s go with it. Let’s get a team digging into our three victims’ past. If that group of friends really existed, I want to know who that fourth person was. If you need to get in touch with the FBI to dig deeper, do it. I don’t like them any more than you do, but they have resources that we don’t, and they can get access to things a lot faster than we can. Tell the team already digging into Derek Nicholson’s life to dig harder. We need to find out who visited him by his deathbed. Talk to his nurses again. And let’s get one last team looking into any cases where the victim was found chopped to pieces inside a box, a container, a matchbox, anything. I know there’s a possibility that the body was never found in the first place, but if it was found, and if you are right,’ she addressed Hunter, ‘we identify that victim, we identity our Sculptor killer.’