was approaching an hour and a half, and it was showing no signs of easing.
Alice had a lot of work to do, but there was no way she could sit at the computer right now, her fingers just wouldn’t move. Instead, she decided to try and look through her paperwork. The itemized cellphone bills that the forensics team had found in Nathan Littlewood’s office had arrived a few hours earlier. They were the first thing she saw on her desk.
She had spent about ten minutes identifying Littlewood’s most-dialed numbers, when she noticed something that made her forget the storm outside.
‘Wait just a moment,’ she said to herself and started rummaging through the pile of documents on her desk. When she found the one she was looking for, Alice flipped through the pages, scanning every line.
There it was.
Eighty-Nine
The rain had finally stopped about an hour ago. The clouds had scattered away, but the sky remained dark as night took over.
There were too many photographs inside that cardboard box for Hunter to be able to thoroughly go through all of them while in Nathan Littlewood’s apartment. One photo had already gotten his heart racing with suspicion. He needed to get back to his office, and the box of photographs was going with him.
Before leaving Littlewood’s apartment, Hunter checked the other two cardboard boxes inside the guestroom’s wardrobe; they contained several old bits and pieces of Littlewood’s past, but nothing that Hunter thought relevant.
Garcia was sitting at his desk when Hunter walked back into his office. Alice was nowhere to be seen.
‘Everything OK?’ Hunter asked, noticing the aura of tiredness around his partner.
Garcia puffed his cheeks up with air before slowly letting it out. ‘I got a call from Detective Corbi from South Bureau.’
‘The detective in charge of Tito’s murder investigation?’
‘The one and the same. And guess what? They just had a result come back on a DNA test performed on an eyelash they found in the bathroom. Matches Ken Sands’s DNA.’
Hunter placed the box of photographs on his desk. ‘An eyelash?’
‘That’s right. And I know that kind of blemishes the theory that Ken Sands could be both Tito’s killer and the Sculptor. The Sculptor has given us three messy crime scenes, blood and guts everywhere, but he didn’t leave anything behind he didn’t want to leave behind. Not even a spec of dust. So how come, if Ken Sands really is both, he acted so carelessly in Tito’s apartment?’ Garcia didn’t wait for Hunter to reply. ‘The problem is, he might not have been careless at all. He might have made a genuine mistake.’
Hunter’s interest grew.
‘Eyelashes don’t shed as easily as regular hairs. I checked it,’ Garcia explained. ‘Humans lose between forty and 120 strands of hair a day, while eyelashes will live on average 150 days before falling out. It’s not a contingency most criminals worry about. No matter how careful they are. So unless Tito’s killer was wearing goggles, it was a genuine mistake.’
‘What did you say to Corbi?’
‘Nothing. Still kept him in the dark about the fact that Sands is a person of interest in the Sculptor case. I did ask him to keep me posted about any new developments. But there’s no escaping it now. They’ll be looking for Sands as well.’
Hunter nodded his understanding. ‘Yes, but you remember Tito’s apartment, right? It was filthy. It hadn’t been cleaned in months. So an eyelash may be good enough to place Sands inside the apartment, but without an eyewitness to testify that he was there on the night of the murder, without a confession, no one will ever get a conviction. All Sands has to say is that he visited Tito any time before the night of the murder.’
Garcia knew Hunter was right.
‘Did you get anything from Littlewood’s office building?’
Garcia used both hands to pull his hair back from his forehead. ‘Not a thing.’ He looked at his watch and irritably pinched his nose a couple of times.
Hunter understood Garcia’s frustration well. ‘Where’s Alice?’
‘No idea. She wasn’t here when I got back. What’s that?’ Garcia nodded at the cardboard box Hunter had placed on his desk.
‘Something I got from Littlewood’s apartment. Old photographs.’
Garcia cocked an eyebrow.
Hunter left the box and moved towards the pictures board. His attention this time locked solely on the human-sculpture and severed-limbs photographs. For a moment he studied them as if that was the first time he was seeing any of it.
‘Anything interesting?’
No answer.
‘Robert,’ Garcia called again. ‘Did you find anything in Littlewood’s apartment? Anything in that box?’
Hunter reached for one of the photographs and unpinned it from the board. ‘We need to go down to the captain’s office before she leaves.’
Ninety
Captain Blake was just finishing a phone call when Hunter and Garcia knocked on her door.
‘Come in,’ she called, after placing a hand over the mouthpiece. As both detectives stepped into her office, she gestured for them to take a seat.
Neither did.
‘Well, I don’t care how you deal with it, Wilks, just deal with it. You’ve got lead on this, so lead, goddammit.’ Captain Blake slammed the phone down and pinched the bridge of her nose while shutting her eyes for just a moment.
Hunter and Garcia waited in silence.
‘OK.’ The captain looked up at them and exhaled a weighted breath. ‘Tell me we’ve got at least a sniff of something new.’
He reached inside his breast pocket and retrieved an old six-by-four-inch photograph, placing it on the captain’s desk.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘A sniff of something new,’ Hunter replied with no sarcasm in his voice. ‘I found it in Nathan Littlewood’s apartment.’
Garcia stepped forward, craning his neck.
Captain Blake picked up the photo and stared at it for several seconds. ‘What the hell am I looking at here, Robert?’
‘Could I have a look, Captain?’ Garcia asked, extending his hand.
She handed him the photo and sat back on her swivel chair.
The picture wasn’t of fantastic quality, but it clearly showed a skinny man barely in his twenties, standing outside by a tree, holding a bottle of beer. It was a bright sunny day and he had no shirt on. His hair was dark and
