by Carter Chris
‘But out of pure interest,’ Dr. Slater admitted, ‘I did photograph the first few pages so I could read them later.’
‘Can you send those photos over to the UVC Unit ASAP?’ Hunter asked.
‘Of course,’ she confirmed.
‘But now that we’re sure that the book isn’t a hoax,’ Garcia said, ‘we’re going to need the entire notebook photographed.’
‘No problem,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘I’ll get in touch with the DNA lab tomorrow and ask someone to photograph all the pages.’ She allowed her attention to return to the body in the casket. A few seconds later, she frowned. ‘Wait a second. Something else isn’t quite right with this picture.’
Hunter nodded. He and Garcia had already discussed it while waiting for the doctor.
‘You found her in this position?’ she asked.
‘We haven’t touched a thing, Doc,’ Garcia confirmed.
The body was lying on its back, in a traditional burial position – legs extended, arms by the side of the torso, bent at the elbows with the fingers interlaced and the hands resting on the body’s stomach. Her long black hair was sprawled around her head like a fan.
‘But according to the notebook,’ Dr. Slater said, her stare moving between the two detectives, ‘the victim was buried alive.’
Hunter nodded once.
‘So how come she’s in such a tranquil position, right?’ Garcia asked. ‘Once she woke up inside a dark box, it would’ve taken her just a few seconds to realize that it had been nailed shut. From then on, panic would’ve taken over. She would’ve kicked, punched, scratched, screamed, head-butted . . . anything to try to free herself. She should’ve been in any other position but that one. And then there’s the hair. It perfectly frames her face, as if she was posing for a photograph.’
‘And she did fight,’ Hunter confirmed, indicating the lid that they had carefully rested against a tree a few feet behind them. ‘On the inside of the lid there are plenty of scratch marks, some blood and a few embedded fingernails. She fought all she could.’
Dr. Slater shifted her flashlight beam toward the trees and the lid, but she stayed where she was. She would get a chance to better examine the lid back in the lab.
‘The second problem with this picture,’ Hunter carried on, ‘is that the dress should’ve been at least torn in places and certainly dirty.’ He nodded at the body in the grave. ‘Look at it. It seems almost pristine.’
The penny finally dropped for Dr. Slater.
‘Jesus!’ She gasped. ‘So whoever buried her alive waited for her to die, then came back here, dug her up, reopened the casket, dressed her up in that wedding dress, posed her perfectly, and then buried her again?’
‘That’s the assumption,’ Hunter agreed.
Dr. Slater breathed out heavily. She wanted to ask ‘why’ again, but right then, no one but the killer would really be able to answer that question. Instead, she looked around the area they were in.
‘This is a relatively large area,’ she said. ‘Do you think that there might be any more graves around?’
‘Right now it’s anyone’s guess,’ Hunter replied. ‘But I would hold back on a full search excavation operation for now. We have the book,’ he explained. ‘Since whoever wrote those entries gave us the exact coordinates to her . . .’ he indicated the body on the ground. ‘It stands to reason that he would’ve also noted down the coordinates for any other subsequent graves he might’ve dug, here or elsewhere.’
‘Fair point,’ the doctor agreed. Right then, her phone rang in her pocket. ‘Excuse me for a second.’ She turned away from the grave and took the call.
‘Doc.’ It was Kenneth Morgan, a senior forensics agent who worked with Dr. Slater at the FSD. ‘We’re here. Parked just behind your car. So how do we get to this place?’
‘Stay there. I’ll come and get you.’
Due to the harsh vegetation and the unforgiving hilly and rocky terrain, vehicle access to that particular spot inside the park was downright impossible. No forensics van or police car would be able to get through. They needed to park on Dunsmore Canyon Trail and carry everything in by hand, including lights, excavation equipment and power generators. It was nearly eleven thirty in the evening when the full forensics circus was finally able to be lit up.
‘Getting a crane up here is out of the question,’ Dr. Slater informed Hunter and Garcia. ‘We’ll have to re-seal the box, to avoid dirt falling into it, and dig the whole thing out by hand.’
Both detectives had guessed that that would be the case.
‘While we were waiting for you,’ Hunter said, ‘Carlos and I looked around the area for any traces of anyone being here. This is such an isolated spot that if we’d found anything – a cigarette butt, a piece of gum, a candy wrapper, a discarded bottle of water, whatever – there was a good chance that it would’ve come from whoever dug that grave. Whoever that person is, it looks like he spent a considerable amount of time up here, especially if he came back to dig her up and then bury her again.’
‘Did you find anything?
‘Not a thing,’ Garcia replied. ‘But I’m sure that we weren’t nearly thorough enough. It’s pitch-black up here and all we had were these headlamps.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Dr. Slater assured them. ‘If this monster has left anything behind, we’ll find it.’
The forensics photographer moved past them and began photographing the body inside the coffin.
‘This is going to be slow and boring work,’ Dr. Slater said to Hunter and Garcia. ‘We’ll be here for hours. You guys should go home. I’m sure it’s way past the end of your shift. If we uncover anything else, I’ll let you know straight away.’
‘I’ll stay for a little while,’ Hunter said, before turning to face his partner. ‘But you go home, Carlos. Say hi to Anna for me. I’ll see you at headquarters tomorrow.’
Garcia was about to leave when the photographer snapped another picture and something inside the coffin caught his eye. Something that seemed to be attached to the right corner by the body’s head. Something that her fanned hair had been hiding.
‘Detectives,’ he called, putting down his camera. ‘Maybe you want to come and have a look at this.’
Hunter, Garcia and Dr. Slater moved closer, crouching down by the grave. Kenneth Morgan joined them a second later.
‘Right there.’ The photographer carefully moved some of the hair out of the way and indicated a small, black, rectangular box, about the size of an eight-pin Lego brick.
‘Let me have a look,’ Morgan said, grabbing a brand-new pair of latex gloves. He moved closer still and reached for it, but the tiny black box didn’t budge. ‘It’s not coming out,’ he announced. ‘I think it’s glued to the wood.’
‘What the hell is it?’ Dr. Slater asked.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Morgan replied, angling his body over the coffin to try to get a better look at it. That was when he noticed the tiny, round lens on its face. He paused and looked back at Dr. Slater, his eyes full of surprise.
‘I think this is a camera, Doc. A streaming camera. Whoever did this didn’t just bury this poor woman alive. He watched her die.’
Eight
Tuesday, December 8th
Barbara Blake, the captain of LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division, had spent the best part of her morning in yet another budget meeting. Once the meeting was over, she dropped a file on her desk and went straight into Hunter and Garcia’s office.
‘OK,’ she said, as she closed the door behind her. Her long dark hair was tied back into a slick ponytail, revealing shiny silver earrings dangling from tiny lobes. She wore a dark blue pencil skirt suit. Her jacket was undone, showing a silk white blouse underneath. ‘What’s this file that was on my desk this morning? A “murder diary”? A shallow grave up in Deukmejian? A woman who was buried alive? What the hell?’ Both of her palms faced up.
Hunter ran the captain through the whole story.
‘So where is this diary now?’ s
he asked when Hunter was done.
‘With the FSD DNA lab,’ Garcia replied. ‘But we should be getting photographs of every page sometime today.’
‘And who’s the woman . . . the victim, do we know?’
‘We still need to wait for DNA confirmation to be one hundred percent sure,’ Hunter replied, indicating the photos that were taken by the forensics photographer that were already pinned to the photo board.
The captain’s stare moved to it for a brief second, while Hunter reached for a notepad on his desk.
‘But I will be very surprised if the DNA test doesn’t confirm the information in the diary,’ he said.
‘The diary describes her abduction?’ Captain Blake asked.
‘Not the method,’ Garcia replied. ‘Just the location.’
‘Whom did the case belong to in Missing Persons?’ the captain asked.
‘Detective Henrique Gomez,’ Hunter replied.
‘I know Gomez.’ The captain nodded. ‘Have you spoken to him yet?’
‘We did, this morning,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘But given the amount of cases Missing Persons have to deal with on a daily basis, and taking into account that Miss Gibbs’s disappearance happened over two years ago, it’s no surprise that Detective Gomez barely remembers the case. All the info we got came from the case file he handed us and, from what we gathered, the case died a death within weeks.’
Captain Blake’s eyebrows arched.
‘Missing Persons interviewed everyone they could,’ Hunter explained. ‘The boyfriend, the family, friends, work colleagues, gym members, Albertsons employees who were working on the night that she went missing . . . everyone they could think of, and they got absolutely nothing. Every path led to a dead end. Her car didn’t give them anything either. Officially the case was still open until now. Miss Gibbs was still listed as “missing” according to the MP database, but because every avenue they pursued led them to a complete standstill, unofficially, Missing Persons had classed Miss Gibbs as a “runaway”.’
‘Well, not anymore,’ Captain Blake said. ‘There was no CCTV on the parking lot?’ She sounded surprised.
‘None around the spot where she parked that night,’ Hunter revealed. ‘The place in question, on Rosecrans Avenue, is a huge open complex where you’ll find restaurants, bars, banks, supermarkets, drugstores . . . there’s even a six-screen cinema. The parking lot alone, which doesn’t change a parking fee, covers an area equivalent to one city block, with eleven entry and exit points. It’s accessible via three different main roads – Rosecrans Avenue on its north side, La Mirada Boulevard on its west side and Adelfa Drive on the east.’
‘Our guy,’ Garcia jumped in again, ‘the person who took Miss Gibbs, is no amateur. According to his entry in the notebook, he tailed his target for four days before an opportunity to take her presented itself. That alone shows patience and determination, not to mention knowhow.’
The captain’s stare returned to the photo board. She had read about the wedding dress in the file Hunter had left on her desk that morning, but seeing it, even if only in a photograph, made it completely real.
‘And he buried her in a wedding dress?’ she asked, her frown revealing how incredulous that sounded to her.
‘Reburied,’ Hunter corrected his captain, and proceeded to explain their conclusion.
‘Jesus! Why?’
‘At this point, only the killer knows,’ Hunter said. ‘But maybe the voices told him to.’
Captain Blake’s head jerked back slightly and she almost smiled at Hunter. ‘Voices?’
‘In his entry,’ Hunter explained. ‘The little that we read, the perp mentions “voices”. He says that he should’ve started the journal a while ago, when he first heard them. He then states that the voices had asked for a very specific type of subject, or victim – certain type of hair, height, eye-colour . . . everything. We haven’t read more than just about a page and a half of the journal, but from that entry alone, it seems that he does what he does because voices tell him to. Maybe that’s why he went back to her grave, dug her up, dressed her in a wedding dress and buried her again.’
‘So we’re talking about someone who’s highly delusional.’ Captain Blake didn’t phrase it as a question.
Hunter replied with a half nod, half side-angling of the head. ‘If he’s hearing voices in his head, he’s certainly schizophrenic. Delusions and hallucinations are simply symptoms of such mental illness, but everyone is different, Captain. Not everyone with schizophrenia will experience every symptom.’
‘Well,’ Garcia said, nodding at Hunter. ‘It sounds like this one does.’
‘And what’s this I’ve read about a streaming camera placed inside the coffin?’ Captain Blake shook her head once again.
‘It’s true,’ Garcia confirmed.
‘Will a camera stream images when placed underground?’ the captain asked. ‘How?’
‘We were also unsure of how that could happen,’ Garcia explained. ‘And that’s why this morning we talked to Michelle Kelly. She’s the head of the FBI Cyber Crime Division.’
‘Yes,’ Captain Blake nodded. ‘I remember her. She worked with you two in a couple of cases, didn’t she?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She told us that it all depends on two things,’ Hunter explained. ‘The strength of the signal and how deep underground we were talking about. When I told her that it was a shallow grave two feet deep, she laughed. She said that from that depth, even without a full-strength signal, one could easily stream images and make phone calls. The images might not stream smoothly, but they would stream.’
‘So for him to have a signal, he would’ve needed a cellphone provider?’ Captain Blake concluded.
‘Yes,’ Garcia agreed.
‘Can’t that be traced?’
‘Perhaps.’ Hunter spoke this time. ‘We’re looking into it.’
Garcia walked over to the coffee machine in the corner and poured himself a cup before offering one to his captain.
She declined. Hunter already had one on his desk.
‘So the perp we’re dealing with here not only hears voices in his head,’ Captain Blake added, ‘and acts according to what they tell him to do, but he also seems to have a PhD in sadism, because it wasn’t enough for him to just bury this woman alive. He had to sit and watch the whole thing – the desperate panic, the struggle, the fight – all the way until her death.’
‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if he did all that from his living room,’ Garcia suggested. ‘While eating some popcorn and playing with himself.’
Captain Blake looked at him in disgust. ‘I thank you for that.’
All that Garcia had done was state something that all three of them knew to be true – around ninety to ninety-five percent of all serial murders in the USA had their basis in some sort of sexual gratification. The vast majority of serial killers killed because something about the murder act – the violence, the victim’s fear, the suffering, the pleading, the torturing, the power over the victim, death itself – something aroused them like nothing else could.
Garcia shrugged. ‘We all know the statistics, Captain. Why would this guy be any different?’
‘Yes, I do know the statistics, Carlos,’ Captain Blake agreed. ‘But I could’ve done without the mental image.’ She turned to face Hunter. ‘How many entries are there in this “diary”?’
‘We’re not sure. But Dr. Slater retrieved sixteen Polaroid photos from the book,’ Hunter told her. ‘Sixteen different “subjects”. This guy has been active for years, Captain. Though the first entry in the diary takes us back to just over two years ago, in that entry there is mention of previous victims. No names. Just that there had been previous victims. And as I mentioned, the perp wrote that he should’ve started those records a while ago, when he first heard the voices.’
Captain Blake breathed out and used her thumb and fore-finger to massage her temples. ‘So what’s th
e next move then?’
‘As I said,’ Hunter explained, ‘the diary is now being analyzed and tested by the FSD DNA lab, but since the book appears to be a “private” diary that somehow managed to find its way to Dr. Slater . . . ’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe the owner lost it. Maybe somebody stole it. We don’t know, but at the moment it doesn’t look like the owner parted with that book on purpose. With that in mind, there’s hope that whoever wrote those entries wasn’t as careful as he should’ve been when it comes to fingerprints, DNA, even the entries themselves.’
‘So you believe there’s a good chance the FSD might come up with something,’ Captain Blake said.
‘That’s the hope,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘Either a fingerprint, a DNA sample, or maybe even a compromising entry where he reveals more than he should. Like I’ve said before, we should be getting photographs of every page any minute now.’
‘So for now we wait,’ the captain concluded.
‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed. ‘We also need to break the news to Miss Gibbs’s parents and probably her boyfriend, as soon as we get DNA confirmation on the body.’
Captain Blake understood very well that that was one of the worst jobs a homicide detective had to take on. She was about to say something when the phone on Hunter’s desk rang.
‘Detective Hunter, UVC Unit.’
‘Robert, it’s Susan,’ Dr. Slater said. ‘I’m glad that I’ve got you at your desk.’
‘Hold on, Doc, let me switch the call to speakerphone. Carlos and Captain Blake are here.’ Hunter pressed a button on his desk phone before returning the handset to its cradle. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m at the DNA Lab,’ Dr. Slater told them. ‘And like I’ve said, I’m glad that I caught you in the office this early because I’m about to send you something.’
Everyone in that room moved a little closer to the phone on Hunter’s desk.
‘Not the page photographs?’ Garcia asked.
‘No, not yet, and though those will follow shortly, this is something much better. I’m emailing it to you right now.’
