‘I did,’ Garcia nodded. ‘Managed to get some basic information out of her, but she’s psychologically shutting down, and I’m not surprised. Maybe you could try later. You’re better at these things than I am.’
‘She was here on a Sunday?’ Hunter asked.
‘She’s only here on weekends,’ Garcia clarified. ‘Her name is Melinda Wallis. She goes to UCLA. She’s just finishing a degree in Nursing and Caretaking. This is part of her work experience. She got the job a week after Mr. Nicholson was diagnosed with his illness.’
‘How about the rest of the week?’
‘Mr. Nicholson had another nurse.’ Garcia unzipped his coverall and reached inside his breast pocket for his notebook. ‘Amy Dawson,’ he read the name. ‘Unlike Melinda, Amy isn’t a student. She’s a professional nurse. She took care of Mr. Nicholson during the week. Also, his two daughters came to visit him every day.’
Hunter’s eyebrow arched.
‘They haven’t been contacted yet.’
‘So the victim lived here alone?’
‘That’s right. His wife of twenty-six years died in a car accident two years ago.’ Garcia returned the notebook to his pocket. ‘The body is upstairs.’ He motioned to the staircase.
As he took the steps up, Hunter was careful not to interfere with the forensic agents as they worked. The first-floor landing resembled a waiting room – two chairs, two leather armchairs, a small bookshelf, a magazine holder, and a sideboard covered with stylish picture frames. A dimly lit corridor led them deeper into the house, and to the four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Garcia took Hunter all the way to the last door on the right and paused outside.
‘I know you’ve seen a lot of sick stuff before, Robert. God knows I have.’ He rested his latex-gloved hand on the doorknob. ‘But this . . . not even in nightmares.’ He pushed the door open.
Four
Hunter stood by the open door to the large bedroom. His eyes registered the scene in front of him, but his logical mind was having trouble comprehending it.
Centered against the north wall was an adjustable double bed. To its right he could see a small oxygen tank and mask on a wooden bedside table. A wheelchair occupied the space by the end of the bed. There was also an antique-looking chest of drawers, a mahogany writing desk, and a large shelf unit on the wall opposite the bed. Its centerpiece was a flat-screen TV set.
Hunter breathed out but didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t say a word.
‘Where do we start?’ Garcia whispered by his side.
Blood was everywhere – on the bed, floor, rug, walls, ceiling, curtains, and on most of the furniture. Mr. Nicholson’s body was on the bed. Or at least what was left of it. He’d been dismembered. Both legs and both arms had been ripped from his body. One of his arms had been hacked at the joints into smaller pieces. Both of his feet had also been separated from his legs.
But what baffled everyone who entered that room was the sculpture.
On a small coffee table by the window, the victim’s severed and hacked body parts had been bundled up and arranged together into a bloody, twisted, incomprehensible shape.
‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ Hunter whispered to himself.
‘I’m not even going to ask. ’Cos I know you’ve never seen anything like this before, Robert,’ Doctor Carolyn Hove said from the far corner of the room. ‘None of us have.’
Doctor Hove was the Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. She was tall and slim with deep penetrating green eyes. Her long, chestnut hair was tucked away under the hood of her white coverall, her full lips and petite nose hidden under her surgical mask.
Hunter’s attention moved to her for a couple of seconds and then to the large blood pools on the floor. He hesitated for a moment. There was no way he could walk into that room without treading on them.
‘It’s OK,’ Doctor Hove said, motioning him and Garcia inside. ‘The entire floor has been photographed.’
Still, Hunter did his best to circumvent the blood. He approached the bed and what was left of Mr. Nicholson’s body. His face was caked in blood. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if his last terrified scream had been frozen before it came out. The bed sheets, the pillows and the mattress were ripped and torn in several places.
‘He was killed on that bed,’ Doctor Hove said, coming up to Hunter.
He kept his attention on the body.
‘Judging by the splatters and the amount of blood we have here,’ she continued, ‘the killer inflicted as much pain as the victim could handle before allowing him to die.’
‘The killer cut him up first?’
The doctor nodded. ‘And the killer started with the small, non-life-threatening pieces.’
Hunter frowned.
‘All his toes were cut off, together with his tongue.’ Her stare moved back to the revolting body-part sculpture. ‘I’d say that was done first, before he was dismembered.’
‘He was alone in the house?’
‘Yes,’ Garcia answered. ‘Melinda, the student nurse you saw downstairs, spends the weekends here, but she sleeps in the guesthouse above the garage you saw up front. According to her, Mr. Nicholson’s daughters came by every day and spent a couple of hours with him, sometimes more. They left last night at around 9:00 p.m. After putting him to sleep and finishing up in the house, Melinda left Mr. Nicholson at around 11:00 p.m. She went back to the guesthouse and stayed up until three-thirty in the morning, studying for an exam.’
It wasn’t hard for Hunter to understand why the nurse never heard anything. The garage was all the way up front and about twenty yards away from the main building. The room they were in was right at the back of the house, the last one down the corridor. Its windows faced the backyard. They could’ve had a party in here and she wouldn’t have heard it.
‘No panic button?’ Hunter asked.
Garcia pointed to one of the evidence bags in the corner of the room. Inside it was a piece of electric wire with a click button at the end of it. ‘The wire was snipped.’
Hunter’s attention focused on the blood splatters all over the bed, furniture and wall next to it. ‘Was the weapon found?’
‘No, not yet,’ Garcia replied.
‘The spit-like blood pattern and the jagged edge of the wounds inflicted indicate that the killer used some sort of electrical sawing device,’ Doctor Hove said.
‘Like a chainsaw?’ Garcia asked.
‘Possibly.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘A chainsaw would be too noisy. Too risky. The last thing the killer would’ve wanted would be to alert anyone before he was done. A chainsaw is also a harder tool to control, especially if your aim is precision.’ He examined the body and the bed for a while longer before moving away from it and approaching the coffee table and the morbid sculpture.
Both of Mr. Nicholson’s arms were awkwardly twisted and bent at the wrist joints, forming two distinct, but meaningless shapes. His feet had been cut off and bundled together in a peculiar way with the arms and hands. All of it was held in place by thin but solid pieces of metal wire. Wire had also been used to attach a few of his severed toes to the edges of the two pieces. His legs had been laid flat side-by-side, and formed the base to the sculpture. Everything was covered in blood.
Hunter circled it slowly, trying to take every detail in.
‘Whatever this is,’ Doctor Hove said, ‘it’s not something anyone can put together in a couple of minutes. This takes time.’
