by Chris Carter
Due to the fact that the female body in question had only been discovered in the early hours of last night, the file Dr. Hove was looking at held a limited amount of information – victim’s name and address, a basic description of the crime scene, the name of the unit and the detectives assigned to the case, and the name of the lead forensics agent who had attended the scene. There were no CSI photographs. Not yet. Those would be added later, together with several different forensics lab reports.
Dr. Hove’s attention returned to her computer screen and she rechecked her roster. Level Zero autopsies always took priority over absolutely everything.
After rescheduling a private postmortem examination and postponing a late-morning meeting, she was able to slot the new entry into her first autopsy of the day. Half an hour later, she had suited up and was ready to start.
Autopsy Theater Zero was more than just a postmortem examination room. It was a completely self-contained pathology examination area, with its own cold-storage chamber and an individual lab facility. Its restricted access database also sat separate from the Department of Medical Examiner’s main databank, which meant that the results of any postmortem examinations conducted inside Theater Zero couldn’t be accessed by general personnel and therefore could be kept a secret, at least for some time.
Linda Parker’s body, still sealed inside a body bag, was brought down to Theater Zero by one of the autopsy technicians, who also helped Dr. Hove move it from the gurney to one of the three stainless-steel examination tables inside the large white-tiled room.
‘Would you be needing anything else, Doctor?’ the athletic-looking technician asked as his gaze moved around furtively. He’d never been inside this room before. ‘Would you like me to help you wash and prepare the body?’
‘No, I’ll be fine on my own,’ the doctor replied, pushing her dark-framed glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘If I need anything else I’ll call.’
She waited until the technician had exited the theater before unzipping the body bag.
Despite all her experience, despite the hundreds and hundreds of murdered bodies she’d examined throughout her career, the brutality of certain cases that ended up on her autopsy table still had the capacity to disturb her. This certainly was one of those.
The full examination lasted just a little under two hours and as Dr. Hove finally identified the cause of death, she took a step back from the table and regarded the savagely mutilated and skinned body on it one more time.
‘This doesn’t make any sense.’
Thirteen
Hunter and Garcia’s office was at the far end of the Robbery Homicide Division’s floor, inside the famous Police Administration Building in downtown LA. The office was a claustrophobic twenty-two-square-meter concrete box, with barely more than two desks, three old-fashioned filing cabinets and a large white magnetic board pushed up against the south wall, but it was still a completely separate enclosure to the rest of the RHD, which, if nothing else, kept prying eyes and the loud buzzing of voices locked out.
Hunter had received an email from Kevin White less than an hour ago, enclosing a copy of the crime-scene forensics report together with a .zip file containing all the images captured by the official photographer. Hunter had spent the last half-hour printing them all out and pinning them to the magnetic board, when Captain Blake pushed open their office door and stepped inside.
Barbara Blake had taken over the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership several years ago, after the retirement of its long-standing captain, William Bolter. Elegant, attractive, with long black hair and mysterious dark eyes that could make most people shiver with a single stare, Captain Blake wasn’t easily intimidated. After so many years and so many different roles within the force, very little ever unsettled her, but for the next full minute she didn’t say a word to either of her two detectives. All she did was study the pictures on the white board with a disbelieving look.
‘The victim was skinned?’ she finally asked in a breath that nearly failed her.
‘Almost entirely, Captain,’ Garcia replied, letting himself slump back on his chair.
‘Alive?’
‘Couldn’t be determined at the scene.’ This time the reply came from Hunter. ‘We’re still waiting for the autopsy report to confirm it. If we’re lucky, we might still get it this morning.’
‘The killer also took her hands and feet,’ Garcia added.
The captain’s stare paused on him for an instant before returning to the board. She stepped closer and her eyes found the close-up photograph of what the killer had carved into the victim’s back.
‘What the actual hell?’ Among the carvings, Captain Blake was able to identify a few letters. ‘Is this supposed to say something?’
Garcia got to his feet. ‘It’s actually Latin, Captain.’ He approached the board and showed her how several of the lines should have connected but didn’t. When he was done, Captain Blake shook her head as if she had been temporarily stunned. Her eyes narrowed, trying to make out the words.
‘It means – “beauty is all around her”, Captain.’
Blank turned into skeptical.
‘I don’t get it,’ she finally said.
Garcia didn’t suffer from insomnia but, just like Hunter, he too had had very little sleep overnight. After returning from Linda Parker’s crime scene, he had spent most of the early hours of the morning trying to understand at least a fraction of the madness he had seen inside that house . . . the blood, the carvings, the skinned body, the missing feet and hands . . . No matter which path he tried to follow inside his head, they all seemed to end up at the exact same well.
‘It’s early days, Captain,’ Garcia said, walking back to his desk. ‘But a half theory sort of emerged last night at the crime scene.’
‘All right,’ the captain said with interest. ‘And what is this half theory?’
Garcia knew that he was about to enter Crazyland. He sat back on his chair, rested his elbows on the armrests and touched fingertip against fingertip.
‘That maybe this killer thinks of himself as an artist.’ He paused and indicated the photos on the board. ‘And that craziness you see there would be nothing more than his “art piece”, which he considers to be a work of beauty.’
The captain’s gaze had returned to the photos on the board, but it slowly moved back to Garcia.
‘Are you joking?’ She almost choked on her next words. ‘An artist? A work of beauty? What?’
Garcia nodded. ‘To the killer – maybe – yes.’
‘That’s absurd.’
Garcia looked at Hunter for help.
He got none.
‘Indeed it is,’ Garcia agreed. ‘And to be honest, no matter how inventive we might believe we are, we would never have come up with such a crazy theory if not for the message the killer carved into this poor girl’s back.’
On the board, Captain Blake found the picture that showed the carvings.
‘Beauty is all around her?’ she asked. ‘Is that what you said all that nonsense translates to?’
‘That’s it. And I know how crazy it all sounds, Captain, but it also makes some sort of crazy sense.’
Glaring at her detective, the captain threw her hands up. ‘Well, I’m all ears, Carlos. Please, by all means, enlighten me.’ She grabbed a fold-up chair that was leaning against one of the walls and took a seat.
Garcia got up and walked back over to the picture board.
‘Have a look at these, Captain,’ he began, indicating the photographs taken of the walls, the furniture and the floor inside Linda Parker’s bedroom, all of it completely smeared in blood.
Captain Blake shrugged. ‘Yeah, so? This is the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit, isn’t it? Ninety-eight percent of all crime scenes you investigate look like that or worse.’
‘That’s true. But in all of them there’s an obvious reason for all the blood.’ He shook his head. ‘Not here.’
‘What? You’re telling me that you c
an’t find a reason to justify all those blood smears?’ Her questioning stare ran from Garcia to Hunter then back to Garcia. ‘How about a struggle?’ she suggested. ‘A desperate victim, covered in blood, trying to get away from her attacker and stumbling everywhere: the walls . . . the furniture . . . isn’t that a possibility?’
‘Our first thought too,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But have a closer look at these pictures.’ He indicated a group of three photographs showing furniture pieces inside Linda Parker’s bedroom – a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a bedside table – the pieces all had blood smeared against them. ‘If all this blood was the result of our victim desperately running away from her killer, then what’s missing from these photos?’
The captain studied the images for a long moment.
‘A mess,’ she said, finally understanding what Garcia was referring to. ‘There’s no mess.’
‘Precisely,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘Nothing was out of place. Nothing had been knocked over anywhere. The vase, the alarm clock, the reading lamp, the picture frames, her makeup, her jewelry . . . every object in that room seemed to be exactly where it was supposed to be. There was nothing on the floor, either. Not even a hairclip. Trust me, we looked. If she’d been running for her life, leaving bloodstains all over the place while colliding with her furniture, her stuff should’ve been all over the room.’
The captain couldn’t fault Garcia’s logic, which right then began to scare her a little bit. ‘So what you’re saying is you think that all those blood smears and smudges everywhere were done on purpose? To transform the room into a . . . piece . . . a sculpture . . . a canvas . . . whatever.’
Once again, her stare played between her two detectives.
This time, Hunter finally replied.
‘Right now, that’s what it looks like, Captain.’
Fourteen
The man had always preferred to travel at night. The low temperatures were a lot kinder, not only to the car’s engine, but also to its tires, not to mention how so much lighter traffic was everywhere, but that was only part of the reason.
Ever since he was a little kid, the man had always been a creature of the night. There was no denying that. He had always loved its sounds, its smell, its mystery. He loved the way nighttime scared and liberated him at the same time, but most of all, he loved the darkness and how perfectly it was able to hide him.
The man could easily remember when his mother used to order him to bed – 9:00 p.m. on the dot, every day. No exceptions. Ever.
The man would never argue, either. There was no point because there would never be an argument. If he ever tried talking back to her, or contradicting her in any way, the gates of hell would open before him. So instead of arguing, as soon as the clock struck nine o’clock, the man would quietly and calmly retire to his bedroom. His mother didn’t even need to say anything. The trick was – he wouldn’t really go to sleep. All the man would do was lie on his bed and pretend. Pretend that he was somewhere else. Pretend that he was someone else.
And his imagination was powerful.
A lot more powerful than the gates of hell.
A lot more powerful than hell itself.
But that had been a long time ago. Those particular gates were now forever shut.
Unfortunately, newer, improved and a lot more powerful ones had opened.
The man was dragged away from his memory by a barking dog somewhere down an alleyway. The nighttime drive had made a seven-hour trip last just under five and a half and he had made it to his destination with plenty of time to spare.
The man checked his watch. The center would open in a few hours.
Still sitting in the driver’s seat, he stretched his back and massaged his neck. The movement of people on the streets was starting to pick up, as regular office hours were just around the corner. Bus stops were filling up, strolls were becoming more hurried and traffic noise seemed to be doubling by the minute.
The man sat back and thought about what to do. Maybe he would go get some breakfast in a café somewhere and strike up a conversation with the person behind the counter or at the next table. It would give him a chance to test his new character: Mike – that was the name he had chosen for this particular one.
Yes, he thought. That was a good plan.
After that, he would get back to his car and start bandaging his arm.
Fifteen
Captain Blake took a moment, allowing her thoughts to try to catch up with what Hunter and Garcia were suggesting. It didn’t take an expert to read the hesitation in her demeanor.
‘As Carlos has pointed out, Captain,’ Hunter said, grabbing her attention again. ‘It’s way too early in the investigation to assume anything with any degree of certainty. All this really means is that we’ll all have to keep an open mind here. Someone who is capable of something like this, will, I’m sure, also have a very distorted vision of reality.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ the captain said. Very little ever made sense at the LAPD’s Violent Crimes Unit.
‘So who is she?’ Captain Blake asked, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Do we have any background info on her yet?’
‘We do, but nothing in great detail,’ Garcia replied, reaching for the notepad on his desk. ‘Her name was Linda Parker, born on March ninth, 1994 in Harbor City. She was the only child of Emily and Vincent Parker. Emily was a housewife and Vincent an accountant running his own private firm in Rolling Hills. Linda went to Newport Harbor high school, where she graduated in 2011. Apparently she managed to escape most of the downfalls of puberty because she started modeling for catalogs when she was only thirteen years old. In school, she was voted Newport Harbor Prom Queen for three consecutive years. As a senior she was also voted “most likely to become a supermodel”. By the time she graduated from high school, she was doing quite well as a catalog model, bringing in nearly as much money as her father. After high school, she decided to skip going to college to concentrate on her modeling career. I guess the main idea was to move on to international modeling and big-name designers. She managed to land a few catwalk spots on some well-known international fashion shows, all of them in Europe, but the big top-model career was still to materialize.’
‘When you say catalogs,’ Captain Blake asked, ‘what do you mean?’
Garcia flipped a page on his notepad. ‘Clothes, shoes, swimwear, sportswear, lingerie, jewelry – that sort of thing. Like I said, we don’t have anything in much detail at the moment, but we have a team working on it.’
‘Any X-rated material?’ the captain asked.
‘Not from what we found out so far.’
‘Nevertheless, she was a model,’ the captain said. ‘That was her profession.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So I’m assuming that she probably had fans.’
‘Yes, and quite a lot of them,’ Garcia confirmed, checking his notes once again. ‘She had a very prominent online presence. All the usual suspects – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even a YouTube channel where she gave viewers tips about makeup, hair styling and fashion. In total, over a quarter of a million followers.’
Captain Blake used two fingers to massage her left temple. She could already feel a headache coming on.
‘Over a quarter of a million followers?’ she said, making a face. ‘That blows the scope wide open, doesn’t it? Because correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t a murder where the killer specifically disfigures the victim, especially the face, suggest an obsession with her? More specifically, with the way she looked, with how pretty she was.’ Her eyes paused on Hunter for confirmation.
‘Theoretically, yes,’ he agreed.
‘So with that many followers,’ the captain continued, ‘with all her social-media exposure, photos, videos, catalogs and who knows what else, any number of those followers could’ve developed such an obsession; isn’t that so? And out of those, any number of them could’ve been psychopathic enough to carry out a murder of this magnitude. We
all know how crazy fans can get.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed again. ‘Because the victim was a celebrity in her own right with so many fans, the scope for who the killer might be is wide open. An obsessed but disillusioned fan with psychopathic tendencies could’ve very well been capable of something like this. And since the advent of the internet, with more and more social-media websites popping up everywhere, developing obsessions, not only toward celebrities but anyone, really, has become a lot easier.’
‘Great!’ Captain Blake said. ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand possible suspects spread all around the world. You guys should have this wrapped up in no time, then. Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend? A lover?’
‘She wasn’t married,’ Garcia replied. ‘And according to her mother, she wasn’t seeing anyone either, but we’ll dig a little deeper into it.’
The captain stood up and took a couple of steps back to get a wider view of the board.
‘Beauty is all around her,’ she said to herself, now fully considering the half theory Garcia had suggested.
‘That’s what the killer wrote,’ Garcia reaffirmed. ‘Which means that he’s clearly trying to tell us something.’
‘I get that,’ Captain Blake agreed. ‘But why write the message in Latin?’
‘We’re not sure,’ Hunter replied.
‘Care to venture a guess?’
Hunter stayed quiet, but Garcia didn’t.
‘It could be a clue to where he’s from,’ he said.
The captain turned to face him, pondering that idea for a second. ‘In which way, Carlos?’
‘You’ve said so a moment ago – over two hundred and fifty thousand fans spread all over the world. A hurt, disillusioned and psychotic enough fan could’ve flown in from anywhere, killed her, and since her body wasn’t discovered for a couple of days, be back to where he came from by now. In which instance, we’ll probably never catch him.’
Captain Blake’s thoughtful look deepened.
