Текст книги "I Am Death"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Thirty-Nine

‘What was that about?’ Garcia asked Hunter as both detectives joined Officer Woods by his black and white unit outside.

‘Nothing, really. Just trying to give the kid a tip.’

‘OK,’ Woods said as he finished writing something in his notepad. ‘I’ve just come off the radio with Operations. Before you guys got here, I had asked them to run a quick check on what Marlon had said. That was the info I was waiting for.’

Hunter and Garcia were quietly impressed by Officer Woods’ approach. Most officers would have left all the checking to the detectives.

‘Anything?’ Garcia asked.

‘You tell me,’ Woods began, reading from his notes. ‘There really was a fault with the phone lines reported last month. AT&T sent two engineers to fix it on the twelfth, and yes, they did have a basket-crane truck with them. The fault was fixed that same day. Since then, AT&T has had no other reports, and they have no knowledge of any other faults with the phone lines in this area. They also said that they did not send any other engineers up here for a subsequent check since the fault was fixed. Not on the fourteenth of last month, or at any other time for that matter, and that includes last week.’

‘And it couldn’t have been a different phone company?’ Garcia asked.

‘No,’ Woods replied. ‘No other supplier services this area.’ He closed his notepad. ‘It seems like you have got yourselves a mysterious telephone engineer.’

‘Marlon said that they were working on the telephone pole in front of property number eight-four-five-six,’ Hunter said, looking north.

‘That’s correct,’ Woods confirmed. ‘And that’s the one, right over there on the corner.’ He pointed at the T-shaped telephone pole directly in front of a white-fronted, single-storey house that sat right where Allenwood Road bent sharply left, about thirty yards north of where they were standing.

Hunter and Garcia walked over to have a better look. Officer Woods followed.

It was a regular-looking telephone pole, brown in color, and made of southern yellow pine. It stood somewhere between thirty-five and forty feet tall. A total of seven telephone cables ran through it – five at the very top, through the horizontal arm of the T, and the remaining two just a few feet beneath the first five, through the long, vertical arm.

Hunter and Garcia spent less than ten seconds looking up at the post before both of them came to the same conclusion.

To reach the first of the cables, an engineer would have to climb about thirty to thirty-five feet. No wonder the AT&T engineers used a basket-crane truck to get up there. On the other hand, a single engineer, even with a long telescopic ladder, would be facing a very tough and somewhat dangerous task.

Hunter walked around the pole, checking it from both sides.

‘Do those cables service this whole street?’ Garcia asked, still looking up at the pole.

‘I’m not sure,’ Woods replied. ‘But I would say so.’ He observed the two detectives for a moment.

‘Do you think it was him?’ Garcia asked his partner.

Hunter paused and looked north, where the road bent left and disappeared behind property 8456.

Garcia waited.

Hunter then looked south, in the direction of the Sloan and Bennett houses. If Marlon was at his bedroom window, Hunter wasn’t able to see him. The angle of the window in relation to the pole’s position, coupled with the way the light reflected off the glass, made it virtually impossible for anyone standing at the pole to see inside.

‘Yes,’ Hunter finally replied. ‘I think it was him.’

Garcia’s gaze moved to the telephone cables. ‘Do you think he bugged the phone lines?’

Hunter looked up at the pole one more time. ‘There’s no reason why he would’ve needed to do that,’ he replied. ‘If that’s what he wanted, then it would’ve been a lot easier, and less risky, to do it via the telephone exchange box.’

‘So if you think that this mysterious telephone engineer was your man,’ Woods said. ‘What was he doing up on the telephone pole?’

Hunter looked north again. Past the pole, the road bent sharply left and disappeared behind the house they were standing in front of, impeding his view. From where he was, he could see no other houses, which meant that no other houses could see him either. He then turned and looked south. From that point, he had a clear and unrestricted view of every house on Allenwood Road, including the Bennetts’.

Hunter finally answered Woods’ question with another question.

‘How difficult do you think it would be for someone to place some sort of camera up there?’

Forty

Night arrives slowly in the summertime, gently gaining ground like a silent soldier. First, lazy shadows find the alleyways, then they start creeping across sidewalks, up walls and through windows, until finally darkness takes hold. By the time Hunter and Garcia got to the coroner’s office, after receiving a phone call from Doctor Hove just half an hour earlier, darkness had stealthily found its way into almost every corner of Los Angeles, with the exception of a sliver of purple sky that still colored the horizon over Santa Monica, but that too was fading fast.

At the crime scene in Venice, besides the several bloody footprints retrieved from the carpet in the living room, forensics had also managed to collect a number of fibers, hairs and traces of dust. Everything had been bagged and taken back to the lab for further examination. Due to how careful they all knew this killer was, hopes weren’t high, but they weren’t dead yet either.

Sharon Barnard’s cabin crew suitcase had been left in the living room by the front door. Inside it they’d found a used change of clothes, a toiletries bag, a makeup bag, and a tablet computer, which was password protected. Her cellphone was found on the kitchen counter, its screen locked by a six-digit combination. Both electronic items had been passed to the LAPD Computer Forensics Unit.

Forensics had also discovered a large number of finger-prints all around the house, but just like the ones found on the front door and handle, an initial, naked-eye analysis by the forensics team expert told them that they probably came from only two sources, one of them almost certainly female. The natural conclusion was that the prints had probably come from Sharon Barnard herself and her housemate, Tom Hobbs. Due to the large number of fingerprints found, confirmation was only expected to come some time in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

Tom Hobbs was still in shock, and waves of anxiety, which were triggered by involuntary memory flashes, came and went throughout the day, throwing him into fits of tears and panic attacks. The LAPD had managed to get in contact with his parents, who came and took him with them back to Pomona Valley, but not before a medic was forced to sedate him. Hunter would try to interview him again tomorrow.

After identifying themselves to the receptionist sitting behind the counter at the LA County Coroner, Hunter and Garcia were told that Doctor Hove was waiting for them inside Autopsy Theater One, the same theater they were in the day before.

In silence, Hunter and Garcia navigated their way through the shiny corridors and double swinging doors until they reached the small anteroom leading to Autopsy Theater One. Hunter hit the buzzer by the electronic keypad to the right of the door. Five seconds later, the doors hissed open.

Despite knowing to expect it, the low temperature inside the autopsy room still made Garcia shiver as he stepped inside. It did every time.

‘Robert. Carlos.’ Doctor Hove greeted both detectives with a nod of her head. She wore a regular light-blue lab gown, with her nose mask hanging loosely around her neck. Her hair was pulled back and tied up in a bundle at the top of her head. She smiled, but there was no way of disguising the drained and exhausted look of someone who’d been working for hours on end under artificial light.

Sharon Barnard’s body was laid out, uncovered, on the stainless-steel examination table at the center of the room. The mess of muscle and flesh that her face had become had now taken on a brownish, dry-meat color. Her right eye, the one that had been spared by the handheld sander, had gone completely milky, and the rest of her skin now looked ghostly white.

Doctor Hove approached the instrument counter on the other side of the examination table. Hunter and Garcia were right behind her. She picked up two copies of the autopsy report and handed one to each detective.

‘Unfortunately,’ the doctor began, her voice sounding as tired as she looked, ‘this post mortem examination hasn’t revealed a great deal.’ She switched on the high-powered halogen lights above the autopsy table.

Hunter and Garcia blinked a couple of times while their eyes got used to the enhanced brightness.

‘As you can plainly see –’ she directed their attention to Sharon Barnard’s torso, arms and legs – ‘unlike the first victim, this one shows no signs of having been physically tortured prior to the total disfiguration of her face. No whipping marks or cuts of any kind. None to her back either.’ She turned and indicated the chart on the wall behind her, which itemized the weight of the deceased’s brain, heart, liver, kidneys and spleen. ‘All of her internal organs, including her brain, were in as good a condition as could be expected for a healthy twenty-two-year-old female.’

Hunter and Garcia flipped to the second page on the report. Just as the lead forensics agent at the crime scene, Doctor Brian Snyder, had guessed, the cause of death had been heart failure induced by acute loss of blood.

‘Again, unlike the first victim,’ Doctor Hove continued, ‘this one showed no indication of having been sexually assaulted.’

That discovery surprised Garcia a lot more than it did Hunter. In truth, Hunter was half expecting it. When he had examined Sharon Barnard’s body in situ that morning, he had seen no bruises or abrasions of any sort to her inner thighs, nor around her groin region.

‘Also,’ the doctor added, ‘this time there was no message. Nothing was left in her throat or anywhere else in her body.’

Garcia nodded as he explained, ‘The message was left on the carpet inside the victim’s house. Written in her own blood.’

Doctor Hove’s face was colored by intrigue. ‘What was the message?’

‘Same three words as before, Doc. I Am Death. That’s it. Nothing more. Written all in capital letters.’

The doctor’s gaze returned to Sharon Barnard, and to what should’ve been her face. ‘I will admit that, bar being shot in the face by a close-quarters shotgun, the trauma to her facial muscles and nerves was as severe as I’ve ever seen.’

‘The difference is,’ Hunter said in a somber voice, moving around to the other side of the table, ‘when you’re shot in the face by a close-quarters shotgun, chances are you’ll die instantly. No pain.’ He shook his head. ‘The killer didn’t want that to happen here.’

Everyone went quiet for a moment.

Garcia, whose gaze had returned to Sharon Barnard’s body on the examination table, let out a heartfelt breath.

‘I don’t get this. I don’t get any of this. How can a killer completely switch his MO this way? I’ve never heard of a case like this.’

‘That’s exactly the same thought that has been with me since I started the post mortem,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘If I hadn’t been told, I would’ve never guessed, or found out through the examination, that this victim belonged to the same killer who had tortured and murdered the victim from yesterday morning’s autopsy.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia agreed, bowing his head in the doctor’s direction before looking at Hunter. ‘We’ve dealt with killers who like to experiment before, Robert. Killers whose MOs slightly change from one murder to the other, but this is nothing like that. Here, the break away from the previous MO is too severe. Like the Doc said, this could’ve been a completely different killer. If not for the fact that he likes to authenticate his work by signing it, we would’ve never known both murders were related. We wouldn’t even be in this autopsy room.’

Out of frustration, Garcia stated what Hunter and Doctor Hove already knew.

‘His first victim was abducted and tortured for arguably five-and-a-half days before she was murdered. Her body was covered in whipping marks and lacerations – one hundred and twenty in total. We all know that, when used, abduction and prolonged torture accounts for a large portion of the killer’s MO. That just simply didn’t happen here.’ He nodded at the body on the table. ‘The second victim was never abducted. She was subdued and murdered inside her own home in a matter of hours, not days. Also, the first victim’s cause of death could easily be considered a non-violent method. He kept her upside down long enough to induce oedema of the brain. Painful? Yes. Violent? Not quite. Now just look at this.’ Once again, Garcia pointed to Sharon Barnard’s body. ‘He scraped her whole face off with an electric sander and left her to die. Painful? Hell, yes. Violent? Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’

Garcia took a step back from the autopsy table and folded his arms in front of his chest. The coldness of the room was starting to get to him.

‘And my last point,’ he continued, ‘which baffles me more than all the others, is the fact that victim one was raped repeatedly.’ He shrugged as he spoke. ‘People who are dominated by sexual compulsion to commit ever-increasingly savage and brutal crimes will never find enough satisfaction in their acts to the point that it will make them spontaneously stop. We all know this. They simply can’t stop themselves. Nevertheless, we just found out that victim two wasn’t even touched.’ Garcia paused for breath. ‘Looking at both crimes, the only similarities we have, other than the “I AM DEATH” bullshit, is that both victims were female and in their early twenties. That’s it. Nothing else matches. Not even the level of violence.’

Hunter tucked his hands deep inside his pockets. ‘I know all this, Carlos, and you’re right on every point. Sociopaths who are guided by powerful MOs such as sexual gratification, extreme sadism, and victim abduction followed by torture and death rarely detour from those MOs. And even when they do, it’s usually an escalation, or a slight variation, not a total detachment like we have here. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a plausible theory to explain any of this since I first laid eyes on her this morning.’

Garcia looked at Hunter questioningly.

‘The only thing I could come up with was that this killer is lacking that uncontrollable urge.’

Garcia greeted Hunter’s statement first with silence, then by looking back at Sharon Barnard’s disfigured face.

‘The uncontrollable urge,’ Hunter repeated. ‘That compulsive desire inside of them that so many can’t even explain themselves and are completely helpless against. Like you said a minute ago – they simply can’t stop themselves. I don’t think that that’s what drove this guy to abduct, rape, torture and kill Nicole Wilson, or to invade Sharon Barnard’s home and mutilate her the way he did. That’s not why he’s doing what he’s doing.’

A thoughtful silence descended on the room one more time.

‘So why is he?’ Doctor Hove asked eventually.

Hunter shook his head. ‘I’m not sure what’s driving him yet. But this guy is not out of control, Doc. He’s not losing an internal battle against his urges. On the contrary, he’s completely in control of everything he does. He abducts, he rapes, he tortures, he kills, not to satisfy some overpowering desire inside of him.’

Hunter faced the body.

‘He does it because he wants to. He’s showing us that he can be any sort of killer he wants, morph from one type to another in no time at all. Because he’s not driven by compulsion. He’s a killer by choice.’

Forty-One

Garcia was the one who knocked on Captain Blake’s door. She had called both detectives into her office for an unscheduled meeting, which wasn’t at all unusual. The surprising fact was finding Chief of Police James Bracco in her office, also waiting for them.

Captain Blake was standing by the bookshelf on the south wall, while Chief Bracco had taken one of the two Chesterfield armchairs that faced her desk. He was nursing a full cup of coffee, from which no steam was visible. His posture and facial expressions were tense to say the least.

As Hunter and Garcia stepped into the well airconditioned office, Chief Bracco immediately stood up and turned to face them. Instead of his usual raven-black police uniform with four silver stars on each side of his shirt collar, he wore a well-tailored suit, silvery-gray in color, with the jacket open to reveal a blue tie and a white dress shirt underneath. His horseshoe mustache matched his peppery hair.

‘Detectives,’ he said, taking one step forward and offering his hand.

No introductions were necessary. Despite taking over from the previous Chief of Police just over eight months ago, both detectives had met Chief Bracco at least a couple of times before.

They all shook hands, and then Hunter’s gaze quickly moved to his captain. Hunter could tell that some of Chief Bracco’s anxiety had rubbed off on her.

‘OK, you both know that I’m not a man to beat around the bush,’ the Chief of Police began, placing his untouched cup of coffee on the small coffee table between the two armchairs. His voice was firm but slightly hoarse, as if he was either fatigued or had just come out of a bad cold. ‘So I’m not going to waste your time or mine with bullshit conversation.’

Captain Blake returned to her desk, but instead of taking a seat she stood behind her chair, resting her forearms on the backrest.

‘Despite doing our best to keep the specifics of this investigation as airtight as possible,’ Chief Bracco continued, ‘there’s no avoiding it anymore, the case will make the news by tomorrow.’ He lifted his right index finger to stop anyone from asking any questions before he was finished. ‘Our press office is expected to issue a statement by tomorrow morning. As far as we know, the press isn’t aware of any of the grisly details, like the level of violence used or the fact that this psycho likes to call himself “Death”.’ The chief’s eyebrows arched ironically. ‘As original as that might sound. They also have no idea that this morning’s murder is directly linked to the body that was found in the early hours of yesterday by LAX, so there will be no mention of the term “serial killer”. Not by the press, not at the conference tomorrow, and not by any of us. I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone in this room how sensationalist the LA press can be. Hell, they practically invented the term. If any of this leaks, it will start a city-wide panic that I’m sure will spiral out of control faster than a skunk’s fart. And I hate that goddamn smell.’

Chief Bracco readjusted his tie before moving on.

‘As we all know, for some reason this douchebag decided to bring Mayor Bailey into the loop with the picture and the note that was sent to him yesterday. With elections just around the corner, it’s no surprise that the mayor is now freaking the fuck out.’ He paused for a moment while his gaze moved from one detective to another. ‘Frankly, I must admit that so am I. At least a little bit. This investigation is only two days old – two days old – and we already have just as many bodies. This killer seems to be on a roll.’ He breathed out, shaking his head. ‘Though I haven’t visited the site, I saw the crime-scene photographs. Who the fuck murders someone by scraping off her face with an electric sander?’

No one said anything because they all thought it was a rhetorical question.

They were wrong.

Chief Bracco pinned Hunter down with a gaze that could’ve curdled milk.

‘I understand that you have a Ph.D. in criminal behavioral psychology, Detective Hunter.’

Hunter’s reply was a subtle nod.

‘And that there’s no one more experienced than the two of you when it comes to cases of this nature.’ His eyes moved to Garcia, then back to Hunter.

‘So please, humor me this once. What type of creep are we after here, other than one with a massive hard-on for killing people?’ He nodded at Captain Blake. ‘Barbara has already told me that, despite the star positioning of the first body, neither of you believe we’re dealing with a ritualistic killer here. So who are we after?’

Hunter studied the Chief of Police for a beat.

‘It’s too soon to tell, sir,’ he replied. ‘We are still trying to analyze the little data we have so far. As you’ve just mentioned, we’ve been on this case for less than forty-eight hours.’

‘I understand that, Detective, and as I’ve also said, in that short amount of time this psycho has already given us two bodies. I’d say that that’s plenty to analyze, wouldn’t you?’ Chief Bracco shook his head. ‘I’m not asking for an official psychological profile here, Detective. I would just like to know your personal opinion of this guy.’

Hunter stayed quiet, and once again the Chief of Police watched him, this time with an intense, searching gaze, but Hunter’s expression revealed nothing. Chief Bracco checked his watch.

‘I’m meeting the mayor and the Governor of California in just under an hour. Would any of you like to take a guess as to what the main topic of conversation will be?’

This time it was a rhetorical question.

‘So, for my own peace of mind, Detectives, so that I at least half believe the crap that I’ll be selling them in sixty minutes’ time, and subsequently to the LA press at the conference tomorrow, please give me something.’

‘All I have are hunches and suppositions, sir,’ Hunter finally said. ‘Nothing concrete.’

‘I appreciate that, Detective,’ Chief Bracco said, lifting a hand to stop Hunter before he gave him any more excuses. ‘And a hunch is all I’m asking for. All of us here know that that’s all criminal profiling is – a hunch, a best guess based on the evidence found so far, nothing more. It’s not an exact science and it never will be. So please, Detective, hit me with your best hunch. What kind of sick bastard are we after here? Is he delusional? Is he schizophrenic? Does he hear voices in his head? What?’

‘No. He’s not delusional, or schizophrenic, and I don’t believe that he hears voices in his head, sir.’

Hunter felt too tired to launch into a whole psychological explanation to back up his opinion. Instead, he moved on to the facts.

‘What we do know is that he’s methodical, patient and very disciplined. His risks are well calculated. He never rushes because he knows he doesn’t have to. He never leaves anything behind because his planning is practically flawless. He isn’t the type to panic easily if things don’t go exactly to plan because he knows that he can improvise at the drop of a dime. He’s comfortable getting into character. He’s comfortable lying, and he does it very well and without hesitation.’

‘And you’re basing all those assumptions on what, exactly?’ Chief Bracco asked, sounding intrigued as opposed to condescending.

‘Everything this killer has done so far has worked out perfectly for him, sir,’ Garcia took over. ‘No mistakes. No glitches. Not a speck of dust left behind that he didn’t want to leave behind. His timing with his victims has been impeccable. The risk of anyone running into him while he was with any of them was practically non-existent because it was calculated to the very last detail. None of it, sir, including the fact that he’s so elusive and so thorough, is down to luck.’

The Chief of Police mulled his words for an instant. ‘Wait a second, are you saying that you think the killer knew beforehand that both victims would be alone on the night he acted?’

Garcia nodded. ‘We’re very sure he did.’

‘How? How did he know?’

‘That we don’t know yet, sir,’ Hunter replied. ‘But that kind of information isn’t very hard to come by if you know where to look. A lot of people will freely offer it on social media network sites.’

‘Goddamnit.’ Chief Bracco knew Hunter was right. No matter how often he reminded her of the risks, his own daughter was constantly posting similar information about her daily schedule on her Facebook page.

‘So if you think that he knew his victims would be alone on the nights he acted,’ Chief Bracco said, ‘then you must also believe that he picked them beforehand.’

Hunter nodded. ‘They weren’t picked at random, sir. There’s a reason why he chose them.’ It was Hunter’s turn to lift a hand to stop Chief Bracco before he could ask his next question. ‘And no, sir, at the moment we don’t know what that reason is, but we are doing all we can to find out.’

‘Any links between the victims?’

‘We don’t know yet, sir.’ Garcia was the one who replied this time. ‘We basically just got back from the crime scene and the coroner’s office, but we already have a team working on it. If there’s a link between them, I’m sure we’ll find it.’

‘How about the note and the photograph that were sent to Mayor Bailey?’

‘Clean,’ Garcia answered with a headshake. ‘No prints whatsoever. We’re still waiting on ink, paper and handwriting analyses.’

‘How about the package’s point of origin?’

Garcia quickly told him about the smoke bomb diversion at the FedEx drop box.

Chief Bracco ran his thumb and index finger over his mustache a couple of times.

‘So if I got this right,’ he said, facing both detectives, ‘in short you’re saying that the freak we’re after is careful, very patient, well organized, resourceful, and probably highly intelligent.’

Hunter agreed. ‘You wanted to know who this killer is, sir?’ His gaze paused on Captain Blake before returning to Chief Bracco.

‘This killer is your perfect predator.’