The Death Sculptor

This time the confusion was stamped on Olivia’s face.

‘We’re going to walk out of here, and you can hold your head up high.’ Hunter looked at Scott Bradley. ‘But I will cuff this slimeball.’

The rage was gone from Olivia’s eyes. ‘You are a good man, Robert, and a good cop. But I had this all planned out in my head from the start. There would only be one ending to my story. The director’s cut. And it doesn’t include an arrest.’

Hunter saw her throw something the size of a nickel inside her mouth, saw her jaw tense, and heard the crunching sound as she crushed it between her teeth before swallowing it down. He dashed towards her, but Olivia was already collapsing. She had taken fifty times the lethal dosage of cyanide.

By the time the LAPD took the warehouse, her heart had long stopped beating.

One Hundred and Eighteen

Hunter spent ninety minutes taking Garcia, Captain Blake, and Alice through everything that had happened since last night.

‘I must admit,’ Alice said to Hunter. ‘When you called me and asked me to get into the California Department of Social Services’ database and search for adoption files for Olivia, I thought it was quite a strange request, but her being a suspect never, ever crossed my mind. The only odd thing I found was how fast the whole process took. California adoption laws are very lenient,’ Alice explained. ‘The only true prerequisite is that the adoptee has to be at least ten years younger than the adopter. Derek Nicholson had just graduated from law school. He’d made many friends in the judicial system and he knew a great many people.’

‘Judges,’ Garcia said.

‘Them too. With his contacts and knowledge of the law, he was able to fast-track everything. A typical adoption process in California can last anywhere from six months to a year. Derek Nicholson got all the documentation and everything approved in less than ninety days, no questions asked, everything seemingly above board.’

‘To circumvent the law, one needs to know the law,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s true,’ Alice agreed. ‘And with powerful friends, anything is possible.’

‘OK, but how did you know Olivia would go after the next victim tonight?’ Garcia asked.

‘I didn’t. All I had were suspicions, so I gambled.’ Hunter ran the tip of his fingers over the two cuts on his left cheek. He’d refused any bandaging.

‘Gambled?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘I dropped by Olivia’s house this morning unannounced, with the excuse that I had some new information, and I wanted to ask her a few more questions. When Garcia and I talked to Olivia and her sister last night, I asked them for a photograph of their father when he was younger. Allison had an old wedding picture, which was on a sideboard in her living room. Olivia handed it to me. As she held the frame and looked at the picture, I saw something in her eyes. Some strong emotion, which I’d thought was grief. This morning when I dropped by her house, I handed the picture back to her, and her eyes burned with it again. It wasn’t grief. It was something much deeper, much more pained.’ Hunter rubbed his eyes for an instant. ‘That was when I asked her if her father ever played shadow puppets with her or her sister when they were kids.’

‘You were letting her know that we knew about the real meaning behind the sculptures,’ Alice said.

Hunter nodded. ‘But Olivia played it really cool. She pretended to be surprised by the odd question, but she gave me nothing else. Then I asked her if her mother ever had, and her coolness wavered for just an instant. Her eyes focused on nothing at all, and for a split second her expression softened to something tender, before hardening in a way I hadn’t seen before. And that was when I decided to gamble. I told Olivia that during the night we had come across a new development. We were now sure that the killer had only one more name on his list. I told her that we would have that last victim’s name in twenty-four hours. And when we did, we would put him under constant surveillance.’

Garcia smiled. ‘In other words, if you were right and she was the Sculptor killer, you’d just told her that she had to act in the next twenty-four hours if she wanted to get to the next victim before we did. You forced her to move things forward.’

Hunter nodded again. ‘But I had no time to come back to the PAB and file a request for a surveillance team. I had no grounds to justify that request, either. All I had were suspicions and a nickname.’

‘So you decided to break protocol again and become the surveillance team yourself,’ Captain Blake said; but there was no harshness in her tone.

‘For twenty-four hours,’ Hunter agreed.

‘So what did she do?’ Alice asked.

‘Olivia didn’t leave her house for most of the day.’

‘She was probably re-planning,’ Captain Blake said.

‘When she left, she drove straight to Woodland Hills, where she met up with Scott Bradley in a parking lot. He left his car and jumped in with her.’

Everyone frowned.

‘My guess,’ Hunter said, ‘is that Olivia had already made contact with Scott in the last few days. He is married, but he has a weakness for pretty women, especially if they tell him they are submissive. Olivia knew how to entice him. I’m sure she’d been grooming him for days.’

‘And that explains her change in MO,’ Garcia said. ‘All the previous murder scenes had been a place where the victim felt comfortable and secure – Nicholson’s house, Nashorn’s boat, and Littlewood’s office. Scott Bradley had a wife and two daughters, which made using his house that much harder. He didn’t have a private office either. He was a market broker, working from a large open-plan floor with tens of other people.’

Hunter agreed.

‘So all she had to do was call him and tell him she wanted to meet him tonight,’ Alice said. ‘I’m sure he would’ve dropped whatever he had planned for the evening.’

‘She never intended to walk out of this alive, did she? Even if she hadn’t been caught,’ Captain Blake said. ‘She knew she wasn’t going to prison. She knew she wasn’t going to carry on living either.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘When Derek Nicholson told her the truth,’ Alice said. ‘He condemned her psychologically, giving her much more than she could cope with. If you were suddenly told you’d been lied to your entire life, that your mother was brutally murdered, dismembered, and disposed of like unwanted trash – if you were told the names of everyone responsible, but knew that they’d never been punished, and that they never would be, what would you do? How could you ever have a normal life again with that knowledge swinging back and forth in your head? For her, to carry on living would’ve been a torture, in prison or not.’

‘Olivia gave up her life so her mother could have justice,’ Hunter said. ‘A justice that our system would never have given either of them. In the end, those men killed mother and daughter.’

Thorned silence spiked the air.

‘I know we did what was expected of us,’ Captain Blake said, shaking her head. ‘But maybe we should’ve moved a little slower. If Olivia Nicholson had succeeded in taking out all four victims, I wouldn’t have minded it. Not in the least. That scumbag Scott Bradley got away easy, minus a finger. He deserves worse. And he’s saying that you knocked him out cold.’

Hunter stayed silent.

‘Well, the way I see it,’ the captain proceeded. ‘He was under immense stress. Things can easily get distorted under those circumstances. What happened was that he simply imagined you punching him.’ She paused and her eyes moved around the room. ‘Yep, that answer sounds great to me.’

Garcia then told Hunter what had happened in Pomona. Ken Sands had been arrested, and Garcia would now contact Detective Ricky Corbi, the detective running the investigation into Tito’s murder. Sands was the prime