The long silence was interrupted by footsteps and voices coming from outside. Hunter, Garcia and Doctor Hove turned and faced the cabin’s entrance. A second later two forensic agents dressed in white, hooded coveralls and carrying metal briefcases appeared at the door.
‘Can you give us a minute, Glen,’ Doctor Hove said, lifting her right hand before the agents entered the cabin.
Glen Egan and Shawna Ross stopped by the steps.
‘We just want to check a few things in here first,’ the doctor continued. ‘You can start up on the deck if you want.’
‘No problem, doc.’ They turned and went back up to the deck above.
‘Deranged or not,’ Doctor Hove continued. ‘This killer knows what he’s doing.’ Her attention had returned to the mutilated body on the chair. ‘This time he used needle and thread to close both brachial arteries and contain the bleeding, and it looks like he did a good job too.’ She looked under the chair. Both of Nashorn’s legs had been bandaged at the ankles, where his feet had been cut off. ‘And for some reason, the killer dressed the leg wounds.’
Hunter moved closer to have a better look. ‘That’s strange,’ he commented, and all of a sudden caught another noseful of the strange, stinging smell.
‘Yes, that’s very strange,’ the doctor agreed.
Garcia retrieved the CD from the stereo and placed it in a plastic evidence bag. The CD case was on a shelf together with other CDs. Garcia quickly looked through them. They were mostly from rock bands from the eighties and nineties.
Hunter finally moved towards the new sculpture. It was even more sinister and creepy than the first one.
This time the arms had been severed from the body just below the shoulders, and then again at the elbow joints to produce four distinct pieces. Both forearms had been bundled together with wire, inside wrist against inside wrist, and placed in an upright position. The hands were opened outwards awkwardly, palms up, giving the impression that they were ready to catch a flying baseball. The thumbs were twisted out of shape, clearly broken. All the other fingers were missing. They’d been severed at the knuckles and tightly bundled together two by two, using wire and a strong bonding agent to form four separate pieces. But the killer made the pieces look almost identical by carving them into strange figures – chunky and round at the top, curved at the center, and skinny at the bottom. They were then placed on the breakfast bar, about a foot away from the hands. Two of the figures were standing upright. The other two were lying down, one on top of each other.
‘So what you think that is this time?’ Garcia asked, stepping closer. ‘A crocodile?’
Doctor Hove’s eyebrows arched, surprised. ‘This time . . . ? You figured out what the first sculpture means?’
‘We haven’t figured out its meaning yet,’ Hunter said.
‘But we now know what the sculpture is supposed to create,’ Garcia added.
‘Create . . . ?’
Garcia stole a peek at Hunter before pulling a face. ‘The sculpture creates shadow puppets on the wall.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Garcia nodded. ‘Yep, you heard it right, doc,’ he confirmed. ‘Shadow puppets. Quite neatly done, too. The one from the first crime scene cast a dog and a bird shadow onto the wall.’ He paused. ‘Or something to that effect.’
Doctor Hove looked like she was waiting for one of the detectives to burst out laughing.
Neither did.
‘We discovered it by chance,’ Hunter said. ‘Just minutes before we got the call to come to the marina. We haven’t had a chance to properly analyze it yet.’ He quickly ran Doctor Hove through what had happened back in his office.
‘And it looks like a dog and a bird?’
‘That’s right.’
Her green eyes moved to the sculpture on the breakfast bar. ‘And you’re sure that wasn’t just a fluke?’
Both detectives shook their heads.
‘The images are too perfect for it to have been a fluke or a coincidence,’ Hunter said.
‘So now you have to figure out what this dog and this bird mean?’
‘Exactly,’ Garcia said. ‘The killer is playing charades with us, doc. Giving us a riddle within a riddle. Something that could mean absolutely nothing. He could be laughing at us right now. Making us go around in circles trying to figure out if there really is a meaning behind Scooby-Doo and Tweety Bird. Meanwhile, he’s off on his dismembering rampage.’
‘Wait.’ Doctor Hove lifted a hand. ‘The images look like cartoons?’
‘No they don’t,’ Garcia clarified. ‘I apologize for my crap sense of humor.’
The doctor looked at Hunter and pointed at the sculpture. ‘So if you’re right, that thing should give us another shadow puppet.’
‘Probably.’
If there were a device inside that boat cabin that could measure tension, its gauge would have gone through the roof.
‘OK, let’s check it out right now, then,’ the doctor said, her curiosity so intense it was almost visible. She clicked her flashlight back on before walking over to the light switch and flicking it off.
Hunter and Garcia also turned their Maglites back on. They spent the next few minutes going around the sickening sculpture, illuminating it from all sides and checking the shadows it projected against the wall.
They got nothing – no animals, no objects, no words.
That was when Hunter’s gaze went back to Nashorn’s head on the coffee table. Something about the way it had been positioned caught his attention. It was looking directly at the sculpture, but from a low, diagonal angle, looking up at it.
‘Let me try something.’ Hunter turned his Maglite back on and repositioned himself, directing his flashlight beam back at the sculpture but from the exact same angle as Nashorn’s stare.
‘Maybe the killer is showing us how to look at it.’
‘By positioning the victim’s head?’ the doctor asked, looking a little dubious.
‘Who knows? I wouldn’t put anything past this monster.’
They all paused and contemplated the strange shadows that were now cast onto the wall behind the sculpture.
Doctor Hove’s entire body tingled as if it’d been electrified, turning her skin into gooseflesh.
‘I’ll be damned.’
Twenty-Nine
There must’ve been at least a dozen police vehicles parked around the lot behind the New World Cinema building in Marina Harbor. The curious crowd that had gathered was now substantial, and the number of news vans and reporters had doubled in the last hour.
‘Excuse me,’ a young woman in her mid-twenties asked the mechanic, who was standing towards the back of the crowd, leisurely observing the police and media circus unfold. ‘Do you know what happened here?’ She spoke with a Midwestern accent. Maybe Missouri or Wisconsin. ‘Has a boat been stolen?’
The mechanic chuckled at the woman’s naivety and turned to face her.
‘I don’t think you’d get this many cops and TV vans around here just for a stolen boat. Not even in Los Angeles.’
The woman’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘Someone was murdered?’ Her voice lifted with excitement.
