‘I was getting a bit fidgety here yesterday,’ Alice admitted. ‘You guys were out all day. I got tired of researching on the Internet and finding nothing. I made a few calls, and DA Bradley arranged with the prison warden to let me check the library. It took me several hours to get this.’
Hunter finally reached for the list.
‘Ken Sands pretty much read Lancaster Prison’s entire library,’ Alice said. ‘But there were several books he checked out more than once. Some
Hunter started skimming through the list. Alice followed his gaze.
‘You’ll notice that the first twenty-four titles are all medical,’ she said. ‘Out of those, half of them are only in the library because they belonged to Sands. They were part of his Nursing and Patient Care degree. I spent some time going over their topics. At least five of them have extensive sections on how to contain severe hemorrhages, with detailed explanations and diagrams on transfixing of arteries and ligation of large veins, including the brachial and the femoral arteries.’
Hunter’s gaze returned to Alice.
She shrugged. ‘I read the autopsy reports.’
Garcia left his desk and moved over to Hunter’s. ‘That’s nothing new, though. We already knew that Sands had medical knowledge,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ Alice agreed. ‘But this confirms that he more than likely had the specific knowledge required to carry out the amputations that were performed on both victims, and to properly minimize the bleeding.’
Hunter was still silent, still reading the list of book titles.
‘In my view,’ Alice moved on, ‘if Sands is our man, then he obviously started developing his revenge plan while inside. But that wouldn’t have happened straight away. A plan like that takes a while to solidify in anyone’s mind. And if this was really retaliation not only for himself, but for Alfredo Ortega as well – who, you will remember, was the closest thing to a brother Sands ever had – then the plan would’ve only started taking real shape after Ortega’s death penalty was carried out, five years ago.’
‘It makes sense,’ Garcia agreed after debating it in his head for a moment.
Hunter looked over the books’ checkout dates before flipping back the page.
‘There are no checkout dates on the more-advanced medical books,’ Alice said, anticipating what Hunter was looking for. ‘The reason is because those books didn’t belong to the library at first. They were the prison’s concession to Sands, to help him with his studies. He put in a request for them, and was allowed to keep them in his cell until he completed his degree. Upon his release, the books were taken by the library. And if you remember from my previous report, he only started both of his long-distance college degrees after Ortega’s execution.’
Hunter carried on reading through the list.
Alice was still tracking his gaze. ‘The next bunch of books are all on psychology – his other degree. Again, a concession from the prison warden to allow Sands to conclude his studies. But one book in particular grabbed my attention. Something that hadn’t even crossed my mind until I saw it.’
Hunter’s eye movement paused halfway down the page. She knew he had recognized it.
Sixty-Six
Standing behind Hunter, Garcia was reading as fast as he could, but nothing stood out. ‘OK, what am I missing?’
Hunter tapped his finger over a title – ‘Principles of Rorschach Interpretation’.
Garcia pulled a face. ‘Pardon my dumbass question, but what’s Rorschach?’
‘Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s best known for developing a psychological projective test – the Rorschach
They could almost hear Garcia thinking. ‘I’ll be damned. Isn’t that that crazy test when you get shown a white card with just a big ink smudge on it? They ask you to tell them what you think you can see. A little like looking at clouds’ shapes in the sky.’
‘In a nutshell, that’s the test, yes,’ Hunter agreed.
‘And in a
Hunter left the list on his desk and leaned back on his chair. ‘The official test consists of ten cards. Each of the blots on them has near-perfect bilateral symmetry. Five inkblots are of black ink, two are of black-and-red ink and three are multicolored. But over the years psychologists have modified the test, creating their own cards with their own inkblots. Some even completely disregard the original bilateral symmetry of the blots.’
‘OK, but what the hell is it for? What does it test?’
Hunter’s head tilted slightly to one side as if not totally convinced. ‘The test is
‘From an inkblot?’ Garcia questioned.
Hunter shrugged and nodded once. He completely understood his partner’s skepticism.
‘Yes, but forget what the test is supposed to measure,’ Alice cut in, ‘and think of what we have. The shadows cast by the sculptures could be seen as Sands’s own inkblot type of test.’
Hunter shook his head firmly. ‘The killer is testing us, that’s for sure, but not with inkblots.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘As Garcia said, the inkblots are exactly that, blots, smudges with no real shape. What the killer has given us has perfect shape. A coyote and a raven on the first one, and though we’re still not entirely sure of the meaning of the second image, it certainly isn’t a shapeless blot.’
‘OK, I’ll go with that, but it still comes down to interpretation, doesn’t it? What we think we can see,’ Alice countered. ‘Most people would never have known that, mythologically, a coyote and a raven together mean a betrayer, a liar.’
‘We didn’t know that either,’ Hunter said. ‘Until you looked it up, remember? To a certain extent, most images are open to interpretation. The way someone looks at a piece of art might well be very different from what the artist intended.’
‘That isn’t art, Robert.’ Alice pointed at the replica sculpture.
‘To us it isn’t, but to the killer . . . ?’ He left the sentence hanging in the air for a second. ‘It’s his work, his creation, his art, gruesome or not. And I bet you he saw something completely different from what we are seeing when he put that thing together. Different frame of mind makes you see different things.’
Alice stared at the sculpture. ‘Different frame of mind?’
Hunter stood up and approached the pictures board. ‘Interpretation is directly related to a person’s frame of mind. Looking at the same image, a person could see two completely different things depending on the mood that person is in at the time. And that’s the problem with the Rorschach test.’
‘How can the same person see two different things?’ Alice’s gaze had moved to the shadow photograph pinned to the board. ‘Every time I look at that, I see exactly the same thing – a devil figure looking down at what might possibly be his victims.’
‘Then you’re not keeping your options open,’ Hunter came back. ‘Look, let’s say you have a shapeless image that resembles a face with its mouth wide open. You then show it to someone who, at that moment in time, is feeling happy. That person might interpret that image as someone laughing out loud.’
Garcia immediately caught on. ‘But if that same person were in a darker frame of mind for some reason, that same image could be seen as someone screaming in agony.’
‘Correct. Your mood alters your outlook. And that’s always been the biggest argument against the Rorschach test. Many say that it measures a subject’s frame of mind at that point in time more than anything else. But I agree
