Текст книги "The Death Sculptor"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

One Hundred

The next twenty-four hours went by in a blur. Everyone was working as fast and as hard as they could, but so far very little progress had been made.

With her experience in navigating databases, Alice had volunteered to run the searches for bodies found chopped to pieces inside any sort of container, but she hit a wall almost immediately. Her expertise was in the digital world. If any records were stored anywhere online, she would no doubt get to them. But when you’re searching for something that dates back years before the use of digital databases, it all becomes a lottery. If some underpaid clerk had, at some point, been given the mind-numbing task of transposing that information from paper to digital, then Alice knew she would find it. But if that information was still packed away inside a dark archive room somewhere, that was exactly where it would stay. Realistically, due to budgeting and a lack of staff, most government organizations would never manage to completely digitize their backlog of paper files.

Hunter and Garcia went back to Amy Dawson’s house – Derek Nicholson’s weekday nurse. She had seen the newspapers front pages and the photographs of all three victims. She couldn’t understand why a serial killer would go after Mr. Nicholson.

Hunter revisited the subject of Derek Nicholson wanting to make peace with God and tell someone the truth about something, but Amy told him that that had been all he’d said. He’d never mentioned anything else or any names. She had no idea what truth he had referred to, and she remembered nothing new about the second person who’d visited Mr. Nicholson that day.

Speaking to Melinda Wallis, Nicholson’s weekend nurse and the person who had found his body that morning, was a much more delicate affair. Since the murder, she had moved back into her parents’ house in La Habra Heights, a rural canyon community located on the border of Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Even with Hunter’s experience, interviewing her proved almost impossible. The trauma caused by what she had seen in that room, and the knowledge that she’d been a breath away from a ruthless killer, and the bloody message he had left on the wall specifically for her, had spread its roots deep into her conscious and subconscious mind. Even with years of psychotherapy, which her family couldn’t afford, she would never be the same person again. Sadly, Melinda had become another victim of the Sculptor.

One Hundred and One

Before returning to the PAB, Hunter and Garcia had one more stop – Allison Nicholson’s apartment in Pico-Robertson, just south of Beverly Hills.

Derek Nicholson’s youngest daughter lived in a luxurious two-bedroom apartment in the much sought-after Hillcrest development, adjacent to the famous Hillcrest Country Club. Hunter had contacted both of Nicholson’s daughters by phone earlier in the day. They’d arranged to meet at 7:15 p.m. at Allison’s apartment.

The Hillcrest development looked and felt more like a holiday resort than a residential complex. Its residents enjoyed a very large fitness center with a cardio island, dry sauna, two resort-style pools, two beauty spas, towering palm trees, waterfalls, and an outdoor fireplace with lounge area and barbeque grills. After signing in with the security guard at the complex’s electronic gates, both detectives were given instructions for finding the visitors’ parking lot.

The concierge at Allison’s apartment block’s entry lobby showed Hunter and Garcia to the elevator, and told them that Miss Nicholson’s apartment was located on the top floor.

The luxury that had started right at the electronic gates reached its peak inside Allison’s flat. The living room was almost the size of a basketball court, with Karndean flooring, impressive chandeliers, Persian rugs, and even a granite fireplace. The furniture was nearly entirely antique, and expensive paintings hung on the walls. But the décor was charming, giving the place a very relaxing atmosphere.

Allison invited both detectives in with a polite but sad smile. Her deep brown eyes were sorrowful. Her sadness had undoubtedly taken a bite at her beauty. Olivia looked just as worn out. Allison was still in her work clothes – a perfectly fitting dark suit, complemented by a gray, frilled, V-neck blouse. She’d taken her high heels off, and without them she stood at around five foot five.

‘Please have a seat,’ she said, indicating a pair of light brown leather Chesterfields.

Olivia was standing by the window, her long hair pulled back and clipped at the edge of her neck.

‘We’re sorry to disturb you,’ Hunter said, taking his seat. ‘We’ll take very little of your time.’ Hunter showed both sisters the photographs of Nashorn and Littlewood that had appeared on the front page of the LA Times. Neither Allison nor Olivia could confirm if their father were friends with either of the other two victims. Neither their faces nor their names rang any bells.

‘Who are these people?’ Olivia asked.

‘Friends of your father,’ Hunter said. ‘From a long time ago. We’re not sure if they were still friends.’

Allison looked perplexed.

‘A long time ago?’ Olivia questioned again. ‘How long?’

‘Around thirty years,’ Garcia answered.

‘What?’ Allison’s gaze moved from both detectives to her sister and then back to Garcia. ‘I wasn’t even born then. What do my father and some friends from thirty years ago have to do with any of this?’

‘We believe these killings aren’t random, and that the killer is targeting that specific group of friends,’ Hunter said.

‘A specific group of friends?’ Olivia joined in. ‘How many?’

‘We believe that there were at least four of them.’

Hunter’s words hung in the air for a moment.

‘Why?’ Olivia moved closer. ‘Why is this killer after these people?’

‘We’re not sure.’ Hunter saw no point in telling Olivia and Allison about his theory at the moment.

‘And you believe this killer is going to kill again.’

Hunter saw the glint in Olivia’s eyes.

Neither detective answered her question.

‘So you think this killer is after a specific group of people,’ Olivia carried on. ‘But you’re not sure how many. People who were friends thirty years ago, but you’re not sure if they are still friends. And you’re not even sure why the killer is targeting them. You guys don’t know much, do you?’

Hunter could see that Allison was getting tearful again. He had noticed a wooden sideboard behind the Chesterfields, which held a collection of picture frames of all different sizes. All the photos were of her family.

‘I was wondering if you have a photograph of your father when he was young that we could borrow,’ Hunter said to Allison. ‘It could really help us. You’ll get it back.’

Allison nodded. ‘I have an old wedding picture.’ She gestured towards the sideboard Olivia was standing next to.

Olivia turned, looked at all the portraits and hesitated for a moment, emotion running through her again. She reached for a frame and stared at it for a second before handing it to Hunter. The six-by-four-inch portrait showed a close-up of Derek Nicholson and his wife, their smiles reflecting how happy they were. Allison looked just like her mother, especially her eyes. Hunter remembered a picture he had obtained of Nicholson a year before he was diagnosed with terminal cancer; other than a receding hairline and the addition of the mandatory age wrinkles, he hadn’t changed much.

Back in Garcia’s car, just as he turned the key in the ignition, Hunter’s cellphone rang – Restricted Call.

‘Detective Hunter,’ he answered.

‘Detective, this is Tammy from Operations Crimeline. I have someone on hold who’d like to speak with the detective in charge of the Sculptor investigation.’

Hunter knew that the Crimeline team was trained to filter all bogus calls. Every time a high-profile investigation made the news, they received tens of those a day – people looking for rewards, drunks, druggies, cranks, pranks, tricksters, attention seekers, or simply people who liked to waste police time. If the investigation was related to a possible serial killer, the call-volume would multiply tenfold, easily going into the hundreds, sometimes even thousands, every day. Since this investigation had started, this was the first call Operations Crimeline had put through to either Hunter or Garcia. ‘She says she has some information,’ Tammy said.

‘What kind of information?’ Hunter asked, signaling Garcia to wait a moment.

Tammy cleared her throat. ‘She says she knew all three victims.’

One Hundred and Two

The greasy café sat at the corner of Ratliffe Street and Gridley Road in Norwalk, southeast Los Angeles. All tables but one were taken. Sitting alone, facing the shop’s front window, was a black woman in her early fifties. On the table in front of her, a half-drunk cup of coffee had been pushed to one side. Twice now, in the fifteen minutes she’d been sitting there, she’d thought about getting up and leaving. She still wasn’t sure if she was making something of nothing, but it seemed like way too much of a coincidence to be just a coincidence.

She had clocked them way before they entered the café, as they parked their car outside. She could still tell cops from a mile away. She looked up as both detectives stepped through the door, and Hunter immediately saw a face that, long ago, must have been pretty, but now looked hollowed out and emptied of life. There was a long, thin scar on her left cheek that she made no effort to conceal. They locked eyes for just a second.

‘Jude?’ Hunter asked, coming up to her table. He knew that wasn’t her real name, but it was the name she’d given him over the phone.

The woman nodded as she studied both faces in front of her.

‘I’m Detective Hunter and this is Detective Garcia. Do you mind if we have a seat?’

She recognized Hunter’s voice from their brief phone conversation less than half an hour ago. Jude’s reply was a tiny shrug.

‘Can I get you another cup of coffee?’ Hunter offered.

She shook her head. ‘I need to get up early in the morning, and I already blew my caffeine quota for today.’ Her voice was slightly husky, sexy even, but firm. She was wearing a collarless, long-sleeve white shirt with a red rose embroidered over her left breast. There was a delicacy to her perfume, with a base-note of spice, something dry and exotic like clove or star anise.

‘What can I get you gentlemen?’ an overweight waitress asked, approaching the table.

‘Are you sure?’ Hunter tried again, sending a smile Jude’s way.

She nodded.

‘Two black coffees, no sugar, please,’ Hunter replied, looking back at the waitress.

The waitress nodded and started collecting the plates from the next table along.

They sat in silence for a few seconds. As the waitress moved back into the kitchen, Jude looked across the table at Hunter and Garcia. ‘OK, as I told you over the phone, I don’t know if this has any relevance, but it has been bothering me for two days now. I’m not a great believer in coincidences, you know?’

Hunter laced his fingers and rested his hands on the table. He knew that the best thing was just to let her speak, no questions.

‘I was taking the subway to work two days ago, as I do every morning,’ she carried on. ‘I tend to avoid reading the papers, specially the LA Times. It’s just too much crap, you know? And I already deal with a lot of that every day. Anyway, the woman sitting opposite me had the morning paper with her. As she flipped through it, I caught the frontpage headline.’ She pursed her lips and quickly shook her head. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at first. So there was another killer running loose in LA, what’s new, right? But then, one of the pictures made me look again.’

The waitress came back with two cups of black coffee.

‘Which picture?’ Garcia asked, once the waitress was out of earshot.

‘One of the victims.’ Jude leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. ‘The guy called Andrew Nashorn.’

Garcia nodded calmly. ‘What about the picture? What made you look again?’

‘Actually it was the name underneath it. I recognized the name.’ Jude picked up on the hint of doubt that had colored Garcia’s face. ‘When I was in school,’ she explained, ‘I had this big crush on this kid, Andreas Köhler. His family had immigrated from Germany.’ A melancholic smile parted her lips. Her teeth looked stained and damaged. ‘Anyway, I thought that I could increase my chances of getting with him if I could speak a little German. So I borrowed a few tapes from the school library. I listened to those tapes for about a month solid. Didn’t learn much. It’s a difficult language. But one of the things I did learn was the names of animals. And I still remember them.’

Garcia’s confusion intensified, but he tried not to show it.

‘Nashorn means rhinoceros in German.’

‘Really?’ Garcia looked at Hunter.

‘I didn’t know that either.’

‘It does,’ Jude affirmed. ‘And that made me take a closer look at the picture. He obviously looked older. His hair was all gray, but I would recognize that face anywhere. It was the same person. And that’s when I paid a little more attention to the photographs of the other two victims, and it all came back to me. They were all much older, but the more I looked, the less doubt I had. I knew all of them.’

Hunter hadn’t touched his coffee yet. His eyes were studying Jude’s facial and body movements. There were no twitches, no rapid eye movement, no fidgeting. If she was lying, she was really good at it.

‘Well, I didn’t actually know them,’ Jude clarified. ‘I was beat up by them.’

One Hundred and Three

Those words fell over Hunter and Garcia like slabs of rock, almost knocking the breath out of them.

Garcia shook the surprise off his face. ‘You were beaten up by them?’

For the first time Jude broke eye contact with the detectives. Her gaze moved down to her unfinished coffee cup. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I’m also not ashamed of my life. We’ve all done things we wished we never did.’ She paused, collecting her thoughts. Hunter and Garcia respected her breathing space. ‘When I was a lot younger, I worked the streets down in Hollywood Boulevard, the low end of the Strip.’

The east end of the famous Hollywood Boulevard used to be LA’s best-known red-light district.

‘I was new to the area. My usual spot used to be around Venice Beach, but back then the Strip was a much more popular place. If you could handle the numbers, you could make some serious cash.’ There was no shame in her words. She couldn’t change her past, and she accepted that with tremendous dignity. ‘Anyway, I was picked up one night by this guy. It was really late, past midnight, I think. He was quite good-looking, and funny. He took me to this place out by Griffith Park, but what he’d never told me in the car was that there were another three guys waiting for us.’

Jude’s gaze moved past both detectives and up into the distance, as if she was trying to see what was coming.

‘Well, I told them right then that I didn’t do gangbangs. Not for any money.’ She stopped talking and reached for her cold coffee.

‘But they didn’t care,’ Hunter said.

‘No they didn’t,’ she replied after having a sip. ‘They were all high on something, and they were drinking a lot. The problem wasn’t really having sex with four drunken men at once. The problem was that they liked it rough.’ She paused and thought better of her words. ‘Well, two of them did, more than the other two. By the time they were done, I was so bruised I wasn’t able to work for a week.’

It was pointless asking Jude if she’d gone to the police. She was a working girl, and the sad truth was that the police would’ve barely lent an ear to her story. She might even have been arrested for prostitution.

‘But things like that happened. It came with the job,’ Jude said in a resigned tone, without bitterness. ‘And they still do. It was a risk us girls took when we chose to work alone. I was beaten up before, worse than that. The reality is that, out on the streets, you never really know what kind of jerk is going to roll down his window and call you over.’

By ‘work alone’ both detectives knew Jude meant she didn’t have a pimp. Pimps provided protection for their girls. If anyone laid a rough hand on them, or decided they didn’t want to pay, they would have their legs broken, or worse. The problem was, the girls had to work for peanuts. Pimps would take 80 to 90 per cent of all the money their girls made, sometimes more.

‘The driver,’ Jude continued. ‘The one who picked me up and took me to his friends, that was the guy in the picture in the paper. Nashorn, rhinoceros man.’

‘He told you his name?’ Garcia asked.

‘No, but while he was on top of me, slapping my face with his animal hands, I heard one or two of the others cheer him on. First I thought it was a joke or something. That they were calling him rhinoceros in German for fun. But then I realized it couldn’t be. I remember thinking that he wasn’t the only rhinoceros in that room. They were all animals. But when you hear a name being called while someone is on top of you, beating you up, you tend to remember it forever.’

‘And you’re sure about the others? I mean the other two victims you saw in the paper – Derek Nicholson and Nathan Littlewood?’

‘I never heard their names being called that night. But I remember their faces. I made a point of never closing my eyes. Never giving them the satisfaction of my fear. I know that’s what dominant men thrive on, right? The submission. That night I did all I could to not submit to them, at least not mentally. While they were on me, I looked straight into their eyes. Every single one of them.’ Jude looked up at Garcia. ‘So yes, I’m very sure the other two men I saw in the paper were there that night.’

Hunter was still studying her. There was anger in her words, but it sounded dead, something that was now in the past, something that, just as she’d said, was a risk that came with what she did. And she had accepted it.

‘You said that two of them liked it rough more than the others,’ Hunter said. ‘Which two, do you remember?’

Jude ran a hand through her hair. Her stare returned to Hunter. ‘Of course I do. Rhinoceros man and the Littlewood guy. They pretty much did all the beating. The other two joined in for the sex, but they weren’t violent. In fact, I think they even asked the other two to take it easy.’

Hunter’s eyes dropped to the plastic tablecloth and he thought about Jude’s last words. He’d seen that sort of situation many times when young, and countless times in his adult life – peer pressure. It happened everywhere, even inside the LAPD. People would do things they didn’t agree with, or didn’t want to do, simply to be accepted, to feel part of a group. It ranged from common behavior like smoking and bullying, to terrible and damaging acts like committing a crime – even murder.

‘How long ago was this?’ Hunter asked.

‘Twenty-eight years,’ Jude confirmed. ‘A few months after that, I quit the streets.’

One Hundred and Four

For a long moment they all sat in silence. Jude had just confirmed that Derek Nicholson did indeed know Andrew Nashorn and Nathan Littlewood, and that they all used to hang out together. Further to that, Hunter’s theory seemed to be correct when it came to the group having a fourth member.

‘Are you sure you can’t remember any other names?’ Hunter said finally, rupturing the silence.

Jude ran her tongue over her dry bottom lip. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since I saw their pictures in the paper and realized who they were. That was one of those nights you just don’t want to remember. And to tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it for years. As I said, I’d been beaten up before, just never by anyone called Rhinoceros and his gang.’ She reached for her handbag. ‘That’s everything I had to say. I don’t know if it will help you any, but at least now the weight is off my shoulders, and I can hopefully get some sleep again.’

‘Just one more thing,’ Hunter said before Jude got up. ‘Did you ever see them again? Any of them?’

Jude stared at her thin hands. Her pale-pink nail varnish was chipped everywhere. ‘I saw the rhinoceros man once, a few months after that night. I just told you, I quit the streets later that year.’

‘Where did you see him?’ Garcia this time.

‘Same place, down Hollywood Boulevard. He was picking someone else up.’ She paused and gave them what sounded like a suppressed chuckle. ‘Huh.’

‘Is there something else?’ Hunter read her expression.

Jude took a moment, searching her brain for an old memory. She put her handbag back down. ‘There was this girl who had just started down at the Strip. Roxy, she called herself. Because she was new, she was easily hustled away from the good spots by the other girls. I told her she could work the corner where I was.’ Jude tilted her head to one side and explained. ‘I know how hard it can get, especially for the new girls. I was just trying to give her a little hand. She was nice. Not stunning, but attractive enough. Very petite, though. I told her she had to get some more meat on her bones. Men like curves, it’s a fact. The problem was, she was way too nervous, and she had no idea of how to stand.’

Neither Hunter nor Garcia said anything. Jude explained anyway.

‘Out on the streets we had to sell ourselves, and it’s all about the way you stand and the way you look. You stand wrong, you never get approached. That’s how it works. Well, after about an hour I took pity on her. I bought her a coffee and decided to give her a few tips. That was her first night on the job. She told me that she’d tried, but she couldn’t get a job anywhere. She was desperate, and that was why she’d decided to hit the streets. But she wasn’t a junky. I know a user when I see one.’

Both Hunter and Garcia knew that prostitution and drugs were like twin sisters.

Jude looked down at her hands. ‘Her desperation wasn’t for drugs. At least not the usual drugs.’

Hunter looked intrigued.

‘She told me she had a kid who was ill. She needed money for medicine. She was really scared for her kid. She said that she only needed to do it that once, maybe two nights, and she’d have enough for her kid’s medicine.’ Jude shook her head as if trying to erase the memory. ‘Anyway, I gave her a few tips and we went back to my corner spot.’

‘OK,’ Garcia said. ‘What about her?’

‘Well, later that night I got an easy job down a back alley – twenty minutes. When I was walking back, I saw her jumping into a car. She waved as they drove past me, and that was when I saw the driver. It was Rhinoceros Man. I tried waving them down, but they were too fast.’

‘And what happened?’ Hunter asked.

‘I don’t know. She didn’t come back that night.’ Jude shrugged. ‘She didn’t come back any night after that, either. At least not to my corner. I was a little worried. I thought that maybe what happened to me had happened to her. The same four bastards ganged up on her. As I said, it took me a week to be able to hit the streets again after they were done with me, and I was much stronger than she was. I never saw her again. But maybe she quit after that night. I hope she did. She said she only needed to do it that one night. Or maybe she got scared. It happened a lot to the new girls. As soon as they encountered their first rough customer, and inevitably they all did, that was when they figured out that that life wasn’t for them. After that, I never saw Rhinoceros Man or any of his friends again.’

Hunter was still intrigued. ‘Did this Roxy girl ever tell you her kid’s name?’ he asked.

‘She probably did, but there’s no way I will remember it now. That was twenty-eight years ago.’ Jude got up to leave again.

Hunter got up with her and handed her a card. ‘If you remember anything else, any of the names of the others in that group, could you please give me a call – anytime.’

Jude stared at Hunter’s card as if it were poisonous. After a long, hesitating moment she took it, and walked out of the café.

The only thought in Hunter’s mind was that he’d been wrong. The shadow image they’d got from Andrew Nashorn’s boat didn’t depict a fight. It depicted a sexual attack – a gang rape.