The Death Sculptor (11 page)

Hunter checked his watch. It was getting late. He got up and approached the sculpture for what seemed like the hundredth time. ‘Carlos, do you still have your digital camera here with you?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Garcia opened his top drawer and pulled out an ultra-slim, cellphone-sized camera. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I wanna photograph this thing from different angles.’ Hunter nodded at the sculpture. ‘See what I get.’

‘Not really convinced by what the expert told you?’

‘Maybe he’s right. Maybe the killer
is
delusional enough to think he’s God. After all, it was his decision, not God’s, to end Derek Nicholson’s life. And that’s a mind-boggling power to come to terms with. But I still think we’re missing something, somewhere. The problem is, the more I look at this thing, the less sense it makes. Maybe the camera eye can help.’

‘I guess it’s worth a shot,’ Garcia said, moving towards the board.

‘OK, let’s start from here,’ Hunter indicated a spot directly in front of the sculpture. ‘Let’s take three pictures – one standing up in a downward angle, one leveled with it, and one from a crouched position sort of looking up. Then take a step to your left and do the same again. Let’s go around it once.’

‘OK.’ Garcia started clicking away, the glare of his camera flash filling the room every couple of seconds.

From her desk, Alice flinched a little too abruptly.

Hunter noticed it. ‘Are you OK?’

Alice didn’t reply.

‘Alice, are you OK?’ Hunter persisted.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Camera flashes sort of bother me a little.’

Hunter could see that it was more than a little. She looked rattled, but he decided not to ask.

Garcia had taken about seventeen pictures when Hunter saw something that took his breath away and made him shiver.

‘Stop,’ he called out, lifting his hand.

Alice raised her eyes from her laptop.

Garcia stopped clicking.

‘Don’t move,’ Hunter said. ‘Take another picture from that exact position, don’t move an inch.’

‘What . . . ? Why . . . ?’

‘Just do it again, Carlos. Trust me.’

‘OK.’ Garcia took another picture.

Hunter’s heart skipped a beat as adrenaline rushed through his veins. ‘No way,’ he whispered.

Alice got up and approached them.

‘One more, Carlos.’

Garcia pointed the camera at the sculpture and fired away.

‘Jesus!’

‘What’s going on, Robert?’

Hunter paused and looked at his partner. ‘I guess I just found out what the killer wants to tell us with that sculpture.’

Andrew Nashorn’s eyelids moved in slow motion as he gathered all the strength left inside him to force them open. Light burned at his eyes like a stun grenade, despite the room being lit only by candles. No shape made sense; everything was just one enormous blur.

His mouth felt desert-dry. He coughed, and the pain that shot up from his jaw seemed to compress his head like a vice, filling it with so much pressure he thought it would explode. He was so dehydrated that his lips had chipped, and his glands could barely produce any saliva anymore. He tried forcing them, compressing the glands underneath his tongue by pushing its tip against the roof of his mouth, just like he used to do when he was a kid. He hadn’t forgotten how, and was rewarded with a couple of slimy drops. As they reached his throat, it felt as if he were swallowing a mouthful of broken glass. He coughed again, this time a desperate dry cough, and the pain in his throat and jaw fireballed, engulfing his entire skull. His eyelids fluttered, and Nashorn thought he’d pass out, but something deep inside him told that, if he did, he would never open his eyes again.

He fought the pain with all he had, and somehow managed to steer away from unconsciousness.

God, he needed a drink of water. He’d never felt so weak and drained of life.

Nashorn had no idea how long he’d been awake for, but things were finally coming back into focus. He could make out the outline of a small Formica table with two chairs, and a small L-shaped bench built into the wall against the corner. Two old and deflated cushions served as backrests.

‘Uh . . . ?’ was the only sound Nashorn could utter through the pain of his broken jaw. He knew that place, and he knew it well. He was inside his own sailboat.

He tried moving but nothing happened. His arms didn’t respond, and neither did his legs. In fact, nothing did. He couldn’t feel his body at all.

A desperate panic started to gain momentum inside him. Nashorn forced himself to concentrate, searching for any kind of sensation anywhere – fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, legs, torso.

Absolutely nothing.

The only thing he could feel was the nauseating headache that seemed to be eating away at his brain, chunk by chunk.

Feeling defeated, Nashorn allowed his head to drop down. Only then he became aware that he was naked, sitting down on a wooden chair. His arms were hanging loosely by his sides. They weren’t restrained. His legs didn’t seem to be, either, but he couldn’t see his feet, as his knees were slightly bent back, hiding the bottom half of his legs under the chair seat. What he did see, to his horror, was a pool of blood coming from beneath the chair. His feet seemed to be resting in it. He tried moving his body forward so he could look down at his own legs, but his effort produced nothing. He didn’t move an inch. Nothing in his body responded to his command.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nashorn saw movement and his breathing held tight.

A person stepped out of the shadows, walked around the chair and stopped directly in front of him.

Nashorn’s gaze found the person’s face. His eyes narrowed questioningly for an instant. It took him only a moment to recognize who it was. The mechanic who came to have a look at his faulty engine.

‘It must be really weird not being able to feel your own body,’ the mechanic said, looking straight into Nashorn’s eyes.

Nashorn breathed out, and involuntarily let go of the terrified but weak groan that had hatched in his throat.

The mechanic smiled.

‘Uhhh, ahhhg.’ Nashorn tried to speak, but without the power to articulate his jaw, the best he could do was mumble unintelligible sounds.

‘Sorry about your jaw. I didn’t mean to break it. I was supposed to hit you at the back of the head, but you turned around right at the last minute. It’s my loss though, because now you can’t speak, and I really wanted you to.’

If fear had a smell, Nashorn was drenched in it.

‘Let me show you something, I wanna see how you feel about it, OK?’

Nashorn tried to swallow again. He was so scared, he didn’t notice the pain this time.

The mechanic pointed to a piece of dirty cloth that was covering something on the small bar slightly to the left of Nashorn’s field of vision.

His attention shifted to it.

‘Are you ready?’ the mechanic asked and waited a few seconds just to up the tension. ‘Of course not. No one is ever ready for this.’

With a quick pull, the dirty rag dropped to the floor.

Nashorn gasped and his eyes widened in sheer horror.

Set on the bar, completely covered in blood, was a pair of human feet.

The mechanic paused, enjoying the moment. ‘Do you recognize them?’

Fear and tears filled Nashorn’s eyes.

‘Let me help you with that, then.’ The mechanic pulled a thirty-by-twenty-inch mirror from behind the bar, held it up, and tilted it just enough so Nashorn could see his legs reflected in it.

He finally understood why there was so much blood under his chair.

Alice’s eyes were squinting at the replica sculpture. The expression on her face was a mixture of confusion and surprise. She had no idea what Hunter had seen.

Garcia still hadn’t moved. His questioning eyes had shifted from the replica to Hunter, and then to the digital display window at the back of his camera. He flicked back and forth through the last three pictures he’d taken, looking at each one carefully. He saw nothing different.

‘OK, I’m officially confused,’ he said. ‘What did you see, Robert?’ He looked at Alice and saw the surprise stamped all over her face as well. ‘What
did
you see that the rest of us didn’t?’

‘You’ll have to see it for yourself. I’ll show you.’ Hunter walked over to his desk and retrieved an LAPD standard-issue Maglite before crossing to exactly where Garcia was still standing. He clicked the flashlight on, held it at waist height and pointed it at the sculpture.

Garcia and Alice turned to look at it. Their confusion thickened.

‘OK, and . . . ?’ Alice asked.

‘Don’t look at the sculpture,’ Hunter said. ‘Look at the wall behind it. At its shadow.’

Simultaneously Garcia and Alice looked at the wall.

Confusion was replaced by surprise.

Alice’s jaw dropped open.

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ Garcia said.

The shadow that the sculpture cast when a light was shone on it from that particular angle formed two distinct shapes. Two distinct shadow puppets.

‘A dog and a bird?’ Alice said, stepping closer. She turned and looked at the replica again. ‘What the hell?’ From where she was standing, the bundled-together body parts looked nothing like a dog or a bird. No wonder no one had seen it before.

Hunter placed the flashlight on the bookshelf just behind him, keeping its beam at the same height and angle. The shadows shifted a little but were still there. He stepped closer to the wall to have a better look.

‘So the killer dismembered the victim to create shadow puppets?’ Garcia asked. ‘It makes even less sense now.’

‘He’s communicating, Carlos,’ Hunter replied. ‘There’s got to be a hidden meaning behind those images.’

‘You mean . . . like a riddle within a riddle? First the sculpture, now the shadow puppets; who knows what will come next. He’s given us a jigsaw puzzle?’

Hunter nodded. ‘And he wants us to piece it together.’ His eyes studied the shadows for a moment longer. He then turned and looked at the cast replica before walking over to the pictures board and retrieving two crime-scene photos of the original sculpture. After analyzing them for a long while, he faced the wall once again. ‘What kind of bird do you think that is?’ he asked.

‘What . . . ? I don’t know. A dove probably,’ Alice said.

Hunter shook his head. ‘A dove doesn’t have that kind of beak. That one is longer and rounder. That’s a bigger bird.’

‘And you think that was intentional?’

Hunter looked back at the sculpture. ‘The killer went through a lot of trouble to put this thing together. See the way he severed this finger just at the joint?’ He indicated it on the cast replica and then on a photo. ‘He then bent it in a specific way just to create that beak? That wasn’t by chance.’

‘A dove is probably the easiest shadow puppet anyone can create,’ Garcia added. ‘Probably the first one anyone learns. Even I know how to make one.’ He laced his thumbs together, spread his fingers outward while keeping them tightly together, and flapped them like wings. ‘See? Robert is right. That’s not a dove.’

Alice paused and studied the shadow puppet for a few seconds. ‘OK, so if you’re right about the beak, then it can’t be an eagle or a hawk either. Both of their beaks bend sharply down at the tip, like a hook.’

‘That’s right,’ Hunter agreed.

‘It could be a crow,’ Garcia said.

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Hunter said. ‘A crow, a raven or even a jackdaw.’

‘And you think the type of bird will make a difference?’ Alice asked.

‘It will.’

‘So then, maybe that dog isn’t a dog either,’ Alice pushed. ‘It looks like it’s howling at something. The moon, maybe?’

The dog-looking shadow puppet had its head tilted up, with its mouth semi-open.

‘That’s right. It could be a dog, a wolf, a jackal, a coyote . . . we don’t know yet. But those two figures are there for a reason, and we need to find out exactly what they are to understand their meaning. To understand what the killer is trying to tell us.’

Everyone returned their attention to the wall and the shadow images.

‘You checked Derek Nicholson’s backyard, right?’ Hunter asked Garcia.

‘Yeah, you know I did.’

‘Do you remember seeing a dog house?’

Garcia looked away for a moment while pinching his bottom lip. ‘No I don’t.’

‘Me neither,’ Hunter said and checked his watch. He walked back to his desk and started rummaging through the various notes and scraps of paper on it. It took him a minute to find what he was looking for. He reached for his cellphone and dialed the number on the piece of paper in his hand.

‘Hello,’ a tired female voice answered.

‘Ms. Nicholson, this is Detective Hunter. I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you, I’ll be as brief as I can. I just need to ask you a quick question concerning your father.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Olivia replied, sounding a little more alert.

‘Did your father own a dog?’

‘Sorry . . . ?’

‘Did your father have a pet dog?’

There was a quick two-second pause while the question registered with Olivia.

‘Um, no . . . he didn’t.’

‘Did he ever have one? Maybe when you were younger or after your mother passed away?’

‘No. We never had a dog. Mom liked cats more than dogs.’

‘How about a bird?’ Hunter could almost hear Olivia frown.

‘A bird . . . ?’

‘Yes, any sort of bird.’

‘No we never had a bird either. In fact, we never really had a pet in our house. Why?’

Hunter rubbed the point between his eyebrows with the tip of his finger. ‘Just checking up on a few things, Ms. Nicholson.’

‘If it helps, my dad used to have an aquarium with a few fish in his office downtown.’

‘Fish?’

‘Uh-huh. He used to say that watching them swim around was psychologically soothing. It calmed him down before, during and after a big trial.’

Hunter had to agree with that statement. ‘OK, thank you very much for your help, Ms. Nicholson. I might be in touch again soon, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course.’

He disconnected.