The Death Sculptor

‘I don’t think a cop leaked the story, Captain,’ Hunter said.

‘Who, then? The woman from the neighboring boat who found the body?’

Hunter shook his head. ‘She was too distressed to talk to anyone last night. It took me half an hour just to get a few pieces of information out of her. Her subconscious was already starting to block her memory. Pretty much the only thing she remembered was the blood. And there was an officer with her until she was sedated and fell asleep. Reporters didn’t talk to her.’

‘Well, they talked to someone.’

‘Probably the marina security guard on duty last night.’ Hunter reached for his notebook. ‘A Mr. Curtis Lodeiro, fifty-five years old. Lives in Maywood. In her panic, Leanne Ashman ran back to the marina’s security hut after leaving Nashorn’s boat. While she called 911, Mr. Lodeiro went over to check it. He had a better look at the crime scene than she did.’

‘Great. I had the DA on the phone to me this morning even before I got out of bed. And his call was quickly followed by Nashorn’s captain, and then by the Chief of Police. With the press now sniffing around this story like starving dogs, the heat for results in this investigation has just hit DEFCON-1 status. And everybody wants some goddamn answers pronto. If it was attention this killer was looking for, one thing is for sure: he’s got every cop in this city thirsty for his blood.’

Thirty-Five

Alice reached for the newspaper on Hunter’s desk and read through the article.

‘This is all speculation,’ she said, breaking the rough silence that had descended onto the room. ‘Pure and simple. There are two pictures; one is a shot from the outside of the boat and the other a colored portrait of Andrew Nashorn. There are no witnesses or detectives’ statements. No interviews. All the details, if we can call them that, are flimsy at best.’

‘Well, thank you for stating the obvious,’ Captain Blake shot back, glaring at her. ‘Speculation or not, it won’t change the fact that a story has hit the papers and the airwaves. It’s out there now. Which is all that’s needed for people to start panicking. They don’t need any proof. All they need is to read it in the newspaper or see it on TV. Now everybody is looking at us for answers, and as always, they want them by yesterday.’

Alice had no reply. She knew how right the captain was. She’d seen it many times in courts of law. Attorneys throwing statements at the jurors that they knew would be objected to by the opposing side, sustained by the judge, and consequently struck from the record. But it made no difference. The statement was out there. Struck from the records or not, the jurors had heard it. And that was all that was needed to get their thoughts moving in the direction that suited the attorney in question.

Captain Blake faced Hunter. ‘OK, talk to me, Robert. If you’re right about those shadow puppets, then it means Nashorn’s boat has given us something new.’

Hunter looked at Garcia, who was now standing by the pictures board, organizing the new crime-scene photographs into distinct groups.

‘It has,’ Garcia replied.

Captain Blake and Alice moved closer, scrutinizing every photo as Garcia pinned them up to the large white board. The prints showed the cabin, the blood on its walls and floors, the body left on the chair, Nashorn’s head on the coffee table, and the new sculpture on the tall breakfast bar.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Alice said, touching her lips with the tips of her fingers. In spite of her horror, she was too transfixed to look away.

Captain Blake’s expert gaze moved from picture to picture, drinking in every detail. In her long career, she was sure she’d seen every ugly face crime and murder had to offer, but what she’d seen in the past three days had fragmented that notion to little pieces and pushed the boundaries to a new level. Evil seemed to be able to reinvent itself very easily.

Her attention finally settled on the group of photographs that showed the new sculpture – arms, hands, fingers and feet covered in blood; dissected, and then put back together in a totally incoherent and horrific way.

‘Did the killer use wire and superglue again?’ Alice asked, squinting at the photo on the far right of the board.

‘That’s right,’ Garcia confirmed.

‘But no message on the wall this time.’

‘There was no reason for it,’ Hunter said. ‘The message left on Derek Nicholson’s wall wasn’t directly related to the crime committed. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

‘OK, I can understand that, but why do it?’ Alice insisted. ‘Why leave such a message? Just to psychologically destroy that poor girl?’

‘That message wasn’t only intended for the nurse.’

Hunter’s words caused Alice to do a double take. ‘Excuse me?’

‘It was also intended for us.’

‘What?’ Captain Blake finally turned away from the board. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Robert?’

‘Determination, resolve, commitment,’ Hunter said, but offered nothing else.

‘Keep on talking, Big Brain,’ the captain urged him, ‘I’ll tell you when we’ve caught up.’

Hunter was used to the spikes in the captain’s intonation.

‘It was the killer’s way of telling us that nothing would’ve stopped him, Captain,’ he clarified. ‘And if a completely innocent person had walked in on him, and in any shape or form endangered his objective, he would’ve killed her as well. No remorse. No guilt. No second thoughts.’

‘It confirms that there was nothing random about Nicholson’s murder,’ Garcia took over. ‘Robert used the operative word – objective. And our killer sure as hell had one: to kill Derek Nicholson and use his body parts to create his morbid piece. The nurse was never part of the plan, and she didn’t endanger his goal. She would have, if she’d turned on the lights.’

‘And that also tells us a very important thing,’ Hunter stepped in again. ‘That this killer isn’t prone to panicking.’

‘How’s that?’ Alice asked.

‘Exactly because he didn’t kill her.’ He wandered over to the window, stretching his stiff arms and back as he went. ‘When the killer heard the nurse walking back into the house that night, he was composed enough to stop what he was doing, turn off the lights in Nicholson’s room and wait. Her fate was in her hands, not his.’

‘Whereas most perps surprised by a third party would either have panicked and gone for her,’ the captain caught on, ‘or fled the scene without finishing what they started.’

‘Correct. The message on the wall wasn’t planned. It was an afterthought. But the killer saw it as a chance to . . . warn us of his resolve, his commitment, despite its psychologically destructive nature.’ Hunter undid the latch and pushed the window open. ‘We didn’t realize that at first, because we had no way of knowing he would kill again.’

‘This guy is very confident, and he has no problem boasting about it,’ Garcia said, pinning the last photograph onto the board. ‘Last night, instead of a written message, he decided to show us that he also has a sense of humor.’

‘The heavy metal song he left playing,’ Captain Blake commented.

Alice flinched. ‘I read that in the article. What’s that about?’

‘The killer left the stereo in Nashorn’s boat on – full blast,’ Garcia explained. ‘Same song playing on an endless loop.’

‘And where’s the sense of humor in that?’ she asked with a slight shake of the head.

‘The song the killer chose is an old song called “Falling to Pieces”,’ Hunter told her.