From her desk, Alice flinched a little too abruptly.
Hunter noticed it. ‘Are you OK?’
Alice didn’t reply.
‘Alice, are you OK?’ Hunter persisted.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Camera flashes sort of bother me a little.’
Hunter could see that it was more than a little. She looked rattled, but he decided not to ask.
Garcia had taken about seventeen pictures when Hunter saw something that took his breath away and made him shiver.
‘Stop,’ he called out, lifting his hand.
Alice raised her eyes from her laptop.
Garcia stopped clicking.
‘Don’t move,’ Hunter said. ‘Take another picture from that exact position, don’t move an inch.’
‘What . . . ? Why . . . ?’
‘Just do it again, Carlos. Trust me.’
‘OK.’ Garcia took another picture.
Hunter’s heart skipped a beat as adrenaline rushed through his veins. ‘No way,’ he whispered.
Alice got up and approached them.
‘One more, Carlos.’
Garcia pointed the camera at the sculpture and fired away.
‘Jesus!’
‘What’s going on, Robert?’
Hunter paused and looked at his partner. ‘I guess I just found out what the killer wants to tell us with that sculpture.’
Twenty-Three
Andrew Nashorn’s eyelids moved in slow motion as he gathered all the strength left inside him to force them open. Light burned at his eyes like a stun grenade, despite the room being lit only by candles. No shape made sense; everything was just one enormous blur.
His mouth felt desert-dry. He coughed, and the pain that shot up from his jaw seemed to compress his head like a vice, filling it with so much pressure he thought it would explode. He was so dehydrated that his lips had chipped, and his glands could barely produce any saliva anymore. He tried forcing them, compressing the glands underneath his tongue by pushing its tip against the roof of his mouth, just like he used to do when he was a kid. He hadn’t forgotten how, and was rewarded with a couple of slimy drops. As they reached his throat, it felt as if he were swallowing a mouthful of broken glass. He coughed again, this time a desperate dry cough, and the pain in his throat and jaw fireballed, engulfing his entire skull. His eyelids fluttered, and Nashorn thought he’d pass out, but something deep inside him told that, if he did, he would never open his eyes again.
He fought the pain with all he had, and somehow managed to steer away from unconsciousness.
God, he needed a drink of water. He’d never felt so weak and drained of life.
Nashorn had no idea how long he’d been awake for, but things were finally coming back into focus. He could make out the outline of a small Formica table with two chairs, and a small L-shaped bench built into the wall against the corner. Two old and deflated cushions served as backrests.
‘Uh . . . ?’ was the only sound Nashorn could utter through the pain of his broken jaw. He knew that place, and he knew it well. He was inside his own sailboat.
He tried moving but nothing happened. His arms didn’t respond, and neither did his legs. In fact, nothing did. He couldn’t feel his body at all.
A desperate panic started to gain momentum inside him. Nashorn forced himself to concentrate, searching for any kind of sensation anywhere – fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, legs, torso.
Absolutely nothing.
The only thing he could feel was the nauseating headache that seemed to be eating away at his brain, chunk by chunk.
Feeling defeated, Nashorn allowed his head to drop down. Only then he became aware that he was naked, sitting down on a wooden chair. His arms were hanging loosely by his sides. They weren’t restrained. His legs didn’t seem to be, either, but he couldn’t see his feet, as his knees were slightly bent back, hiding the bottom half of his legs under the chair seat. What he did see, to his horror, was a pool of blood coming from beneath the chair. His feet seemed to be resting in it. He tried moving his body forward so he could look down at his own legs, but his effort produced nothing. He didn’t move an inch. Nothing in his body responded to his command.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nashorn saw movement and his breathing held tight.
A person stepped out of the shadows, walked around the chair and stopped directly in front of him.
Nashorn’s gaze found the person’s face. His eyes narrowed questioningly for an instant. It took him only a moment to recognize who it was. The mechanic who came to have a look at his faulty engine.
‘It must be really weird not being able to feel your own body,’ the mechanic said, looking straight into Nashorn’s eyes.
Nashorn breathed out, and involuntarily let go of the terrified but weak groan that had hatched in his throat.
The mechanic smiled.
‘Uhhh, ahhhg.’ Nashorn tried to speak, but without the power to articulate his jaw, the best he could do was mumble unintelligible sounds.
‘Sorry about your jaw. I didn’t mean to break it. I was supposed to hit you at the back of the head, but you turned around right at the last minute. It’s my loss though, because now you can’t speak, and I really wanted you to.’
If fear had a smell, Nashorn was drenched in it.
‘Let me show you something, I wanna see how you feel about it, OK?’
Nashorn tried to swallow again. He was so scared, he didn’t notice the pain this time.
The mechanic pointed to a piece of dirty cloth that was covering something on the small bar slightly to the left of Nashorn’s field of vision.
His attention shifted to it.
‘Are you ready?’ the mechanic asked and waited a few seconds just to up the tension. ‘Of course not. No one is ever ready for this.’
With a quick pull, the dirty rag dropped to the floor.
Nashorn gasped and his eyes widened in sheer horror.
Set on the bar, completely covered in blood, was a pair of human feet.
The mechanic paused, enjoying the moment. ‘Do you recognize them?’
Fear and tears filled Nashorn’s eyes.
‘Let me help you with that, then.’ The mechanic pulled a thirty-by-twenty-inch mirror from behind the bar, held it up, and tilted it just enough so Nashorn could see his legs reflected in it.
He finally understood why there was so much blood under his chair.
