Gallery of the Dead

by Chris Carter

  Garcia looked at Hunter. ‘Is she for real? Who the hell is this woman? And how do we turn on her hearing aid?’ He addressed the woman again. ‘Hey, crazy lady, over here. I’ve got chocolate.’

  ‘She’s FBI,’ Hunter replied.

  The woman finally turned to face the detectives.

  ‘Well spotted,’ she said with a head nod. ‘I’m Special Agent Erica Fisher with the NCAVC’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.’ She took two steps toward them before offering her hand. She had a small beauty spot above the left corner of her upper lip that added an extra pinch of charm to an already very striking heart-shaped face. Her eyes, which were as dark as her hair and as enigmatic as a coded message in wartime, locked with Hunter’s.

  Neither detective shook her hand, but Hunter held her stare.

  ‘Well,’ Garcia said, walking past her and placing himself between her and the picture board. ‘Regardless of who you are, Special Agent Erica Fisher, you still can’t be in here.’

  ‘I guess that’s where you’re wrong,’ she replied before finally breaking eye contact with Hunter and turning to face Garcia. ‘Let me guess. You must be Detective Carlos Garcia, right? Born in São Paulo, Brazil. Your mother was American and a history teacher. Your father was Brazilian and a federal agent for the Brazilian government. After your parents divorced, you and your mother relocated to Los Angeles. You were ten years old at the time. Your father stayed in Brazil, where he still lives. You joined the police force straight out of high school and your progress was pretty much outstanding.’

  Garcia frowned first at her, then at Hunter, but Special Agent Erica Fisher still wasn’t finished.

  ‘After busting your ass for two years as a detective in North LA, you were given a choice of divisions. That doesn’t happen to many young detectives. You chose to join the Homicide Division. You married your high-school sweetheart, Anna Preston, and you have no kids.’

  ‘Are you thinking about writing my biography?’ Garcia asked.

  Agent Fisher smiled as her eyes returned to Hunter. ‘And the quiet guy over here can only be Detective Robert Hunter. You look a little different from the pictures in our archives.’

  Hunter stayed silent.

  ‘I’ve heard an awful lot about you, Detective Hunter. In fact, I’ve read your book. Every NCAVC agent has. It’s part of our training. Very impressive stuff.’

  Still not a word from Hunter.

  ‘You guess that’s where we’re wrong?’ Garcia said, dragging her attention back to him. ‘That’s what you said, right? And what exactly do you mean by that?’

  Once again, Agent Fisher didn’t seem to take notice of Garcia’s words and for a moment she looked like she was debating what to do.

  ‘Hello?’ A new quirkiness found its way into Garcia’s voice. ‘Is she really deaf?’ he asked Hunter.

  Agent Fisher let go of an irritated breath. ‘No, I’m not deaf, Detective Garcia, and what I meant by “that’s where you’re wrong” is that this whole investigation is being taken over by the FBI. You guys can . . . move on to your next case, go get some donuts, or whatever it is that you do.’

  One second of stunned silence.

  ‘Come again?’ Garcia said, frowning at Agent Fisher.

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘The one about the FBI taking over our investigation.’

  ‘You heard it right, Detective Garcia,’ she confirmed. ‘My orders were to wait before breaking the news to you, but you seemed a little too eager to find out so . . . there you have it. This case doesn’t belong to the LAPD anymore.’

  ‘Who ordered you to wait?’ Hunter finally broke his silence.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Agent Fisher repositioned herself so she could see both detectives without having to rotate her body every time.

  ‘You just said that you were ordered to wait,’ Hunter said. ‘Who gave you those orders?’

  ‘I did.’

  The reply caught everyone by surprise, because it came from the person who was now standing at the door to Hunter and Garcia’s office.

  Twenty-Five

  Hunter, Garcia and Special Agent Fisher all turned at the same time to face the hoarse, gravelly voice that had come from behind Hunter. Standing just outside the door to their office was not one person, but three.

  ‘The orders came from me, old buddy,’ Adrian Kennedy confirmed, his eyes fixed on Hunter. He was flanked by Captain Blake on one side and Special Agent Larry Williams on the other.

  Garcia’s surprised face was a picture. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that we were having a party. I could’ve gotten us all some party horns.’ His questioning stare moved to Kennedy. ‘And you are . . . ?’

  Kennedy didn’t laugh at the joke. ‘My name’s Adrian Kennedy,’ he replied as he stepped into the office. Captain Blake and Special Agent Williams followed him inside. ‘And you must be Detective Carlos Garcia.’ Kennedy walked over to him and offered Garcia his hand. As he walked past Agent Fisher, Kennedy gave her a stern sideways look. ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Detective.’

  Garcia stood still, though he did frown at the word ‘finally’. ‘Sorry, but is your name supposed to mean something to me?’

  ‘Adrian Kennedy is the FBI’s NCAVC’s Director, Carlos,’ Captain Blake explained as she positioned herself by Hunter’s desk. ‘He also heads the NCAVC’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.’

  ‘Great,’ Garcia replied, unimpressed, before addressing Kennedy again. ‘Congratulations. It sounds like you’ve done well for yourself.’ He threw an even more inquisitive look Captain Blake’s way.

  Her reply came in the form of a single shrug.

  Kennedy finally retracted his hand, which had been hanging idle in midair until then. He turned and faced Hunter.

  ‘How are you, old friend? It’s nice to see you again.’

  Hunter did shake Kennedy’s hand.

  ‘This is Special Agent Larry Williams,’ Kennedy said, taking care of the formal introductions. ‘And obviously you’ve already met Special Agent Erica Fisher.’ His gaze found hers. ‘Who should’ve followed orders and waited.’

  ‘I apologize, sir. I was just trying to—’

  Kennedy’s slight shake of the head was enough to bring an early end to Agent Fisher’s excuse.

  ‘What’s going on, Adrian?’ Hunter asked. ‘Why’s the NCAVC taking over this investigation?’

  ‘Well,’ Kennedy said, scratching the underside of his chin. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Simplify.’ Hunter’s tone was firm.

  Special Agents Fisher and Williams looked at each other doubtfully. They had never heard anyone talk back to Director Kennedy that way, let alone a PD detective.

  Before Kennedy could answer the question, his attention traveled to the picture board to his left and he paused. The expression on his face went from surprised to confused in record time.

  That was when Agent Williams also took notice of the board.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said as he stepped closer, his eyes jumping from picture to picture before settling on Kennedy. ‘He skinned the victim?’

  ‘Adrian,’ Hunter called in a firm voice. ‘Why’s the NCAVC taking over this investigation?’

  Kennedy breathed out as he looked back at Hunter.

  ‘Well,’ he finally said. ‘What you’re looking at here, my friend, isn’t this killer’s first victim.’

  Twenty-Six

  As Timothy Davis finally regained consciousness, confusion set in almost immediately. He had no idea of what had happened to him or why. He had no idea of where he was or how he’d gotten there. Right then, the only thing he knew, the only thing he could tell was that the darkness that surrounded him seemed absolute, so much so that for a second he wondered if his eyes were really open. But even so, a strange feeling of familiarity slowly began engulfing him, as if he knew he’d been to that place before.

  Despite how numb his mind seemed to be, Timothy begged his memory to help him, but the images he got were broken and incoherent. The las
t thing he was able to remember was . . . leaving the Red Cross blood-donation center downtown?

  Yes, that was the last thing he could remember.

  He’d given blood for the first time, but when did that happen?

  Today?

  Yesterday?

  Last week?

  As he searched for an answer a new memory took shape inside his head and he remembered something else – he hadn’t been alone as he left the center. There was someone else with him. A tall man he’d met in there, but the man’s name evaded him. Timothy tried but the mother of all headaches had built a solid wall between him and most of his memories.

  ‘Where the hell am I?’

  As soon as he uttered those words, his throat exploded in the most agonizing of pains, as if he had swallowed a ball of angry fire ants. Reflexively his hands shot up to his neck and to the source of the pain, except they never got there. They never even left the side of his body.

  ‘What the hell?’

  The fire ants got angrier inside his throat and he clenched his teeth so tight it felt like they were about to crack. For a moment he concentrated on his breathing, trying to steady it as much as he could.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  Out.

  The pain finally subsided and Timothy realized something that he had somehow failed to until then – he’d been lying on his back on some hard, uncomfortable surface. His legs were fully extended, with his feet side by side, touching each other. His arms were flat against the side of his body, his palms facing up. He tried his arms again and that was when he understood why he couldn’t move them – something was tugging at his wrists, firmly restricting his arms. He tried his legs – something tugged at his ankles.

  ‘Goddamn it, what the hell is going on?’

  Pain exploded in his throat for the third time, but Timothy didn’t care anymore. He needed answers. He needed to understand what was happening to him. He tried lifting his body into a sitting position, but something tugged at his waist. He’d been immobilized with incredible accuracy and precision. He could still move his head and neck, but what good would that do? In absolute darkness, looking right, left, or center made no difference at all. He began feeling sick, as if something putrid was sitting inside his stomach, slowly rotting everything around it.

  Think, Tim, think, he told himself. There was no reason for him to keep on messing with the fire ants in his throat. ‘You’re a mechanical engineer. Problem solving is what you do. Think, goddamn it, think.’

  That was when he noticed a new pain, something that for some reason, his mind had chosen to block out until then, but not anymore. The pain exploded from his left leg, crawled past his torso and chest, taking hold of his neck before crashing like a ferocious wave of thorns inside his head. The mother of all headaches was suddenly introduced to its evil twin sister.

  What the hell is this? he thought. Why am I tied down like an animal? Where the hell am I?

  Timothy felt everything around him begin to spin out of control. Nothing made sense. He closed his eyes and all of a sudden his mind was flooded with memories of his wife.

  Timothy and Ronda had met at the end of his second semester at Berkeley, northern California. He was a Mechanical Engineering freshman and Ronda a Computer Sciences sophomore. It was at a sorority party – Sigma Nu. Timothy was standing out back by the swimming pool, sipping on a bottle of beer, when Ronda spotted him from the balcony. He was about an inch shy of six foot and very attractive, but she couldn’t help thinking that he looked almost out of place, too shy to be at a party where all kinds of crazy seemed to be going on.

  ‘Not really enjoying the party?’ she had asked him as she joined him by the pool. The smile on her lips had been too enigmatic for Timothy to figure out.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he had replied, putting down his beer. ‘The party is just fine. I just needed to get me some fresh air.’

  ‘Did you just call me ma’am?’

  ‘Umm . . . sorry, ma’am. Please make nothing of it. I’m from out of town and it’s just the way I talk.’

  And talk they did, for hours on end. They ended up leaving the party together, but they didn’t go back to their rooms. They walked all the way to Albany Beach, where they sat and watched the first rays of sunlight crack the night. It was against that backdrop – sun coming up where the ocean met the sky – that they kissed for the first time. Timothy had never forgotten that first kiss, or how it made him feel.

  From that day onwards, they became almost inseparable, only being away from each other during class time. They even got a job together in a restaurant on Jefferson Avenue. Ronda worked the tables while Timothy displayed his culinary abilities in the kitchen. Near the end of Timothy’s sophomore year, Ronda took him to Idaho to meet her parents and he surprised her by asking her father for her hand in marriage. With her parents’ blessing, Timothy married Ronda three months after his graduation.

  The move from California to Arizona came during that same year, when a highly regarded technology company, specializing in civil government defense, offered Timothy a fantastic position with their weapons engineering team.

  It was shortly after they moved to Tucson that Ronda began experiencing terrible pains around her pelvic region, especially during her menstrual cycles, but Ronda, being the stubborn African American Idahoan that she was, only agreed to see a doctor after the fifth consecutive month of debilitating pain and heavy bleeding. That was when their world was shattered for the first time. At the age of twenty-five, Ronda Davis was diagnosed with endometriosis of the ovaries, which had also rendered her infertile.

  The news of Ronda’s inability to bear children devastated the couple, but it didn’t lessen their love for each other; in fact, it seemed to somehow strengthen their bond.

  ‘There are other ways of starting a family,’ Timothy had told her, and he promised Ronda that once they were settled and their careers were a little more established, they would start theirs. He told her that nothing in this world would stop them from having their family and being happy, but Timothy was wrong. Just before her twenty-ninth birthday, Ronda began feeling ill again and after a battery of tests and exams, their world was shattered for the second time. Ronda was diagnosed with stage-three pancreatic cancer and given a total of eighteen months to live.

  Maybe it was her stubbornness, or maybe it was the love that Timothy and Ronda had for each other. No one really knows, but Ronda fought her cancer with everything she had and she turned those eighteen months into thirty-four. She finally passed away, in their home, three and a half weeks ago.

  Another surge of pain, coming from his left leg, tore Timothy away from his memory, but the guttural scream he let out didn’t derive from his physical agony. It came from how much he missed Ronda. It came from how angry he was with life and with a God that he had believed in and prayed to for most of his life. But not anymore.

  Clunk. Clunk.

  The distant, muffled sound came from somewhere on Timothy’s right and his eyes shot in that direction like a couple of missiles, but all he saw was darkness.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, totally disregarding the fire ants in his throat. ‘Is someone there?’

  No reply.

  Still as a statue, Timothy waited, concentrating extra hard on his hearing.

  Nothing.

  He was beginning to believe that his ears had played a trick on him when he heard it again.

  Clunk. Clunk. Closer this time, but still not close enough.

  ‘Hello?’ he said again. ‘Who’s there?’

  No reply.

  ‘Please. I’m in here. Can anyone hear me? Please, help me. Please.’

  The next noise Timothy heard sounded like a door handle being turned.

  ‘Yes, in here. Please, help me. I’m in here.’

  Timothy held his breath. A couple of seconds later he heard the creaking of a door being opened. Still, darkness clothed him like a tailored suit.

  ‘Hello?’ he
said in an unsteady voice.

  Suddenly, directly above him, a light bulb flicked into life, bathing the room in brightness.

  The sharp light burned at his eyes like fire, forcing Timothy to squeeze them shut.

  A quick blink.

  Still too bright.

  He waited a couple more seconds before blinking again.

  That was a little better, but still the light hurt him.

  A few more seconds.

  Blink.

  Better.

  Blink.

  His pupils finally adapted to the light.

  Timothy turned his head in the direction of the opened door. As he did, a figure took shape – tall and slim, standing there, looking back at him.

  Timothy squinted, doing his best to make out the man’s face.

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be awake,’ the man said. Despite his voice sounding calm, there was a tingle of preoccupation in his tone. ‘How come you’re awake? I’m sure I’ve dosed everything correctly.’

  Timothy tried searching his memory for that voice, but the mother of all headaches and its evil sister seemed to be having a party in his head, and they were wrecking the place.

  The man was still standing by the doorway.

  ‘What?’ Timothy said, his voice fragile.

  The man finally moved from the doorway, taking a single step into the room.

  ‘Please, sir . . . I don’t understand what’s happening.’

  Timothy strained to keep his eyes on the figure now approaching him, but a new stream of pain shot up from his left leg like fireworks, making every muscle in his body tense as if they were cramping. Instinctively, his eyes left the man and moved to his leg. Darkness was gone and Timothy could finally see why it hurt so much.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Twenty-Seven

  If Adrian Kennedy and his two FBI agents were expecting to surprise Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake with his revelation that Linda Parker hadn’t been this killer’s first victim, they were severely disappointed.