The Death Sculptor (2 page)

Hunter finished his iced tea, walked into the bathroom and checked his reflection in the mirror. He also needed a shave. As he reached for the shaving gel and razor, his cellphone rang in the bedroom.

Hunter picked it up from his bedside table and checked the display – Carlos Garcia, his partner. Only then he noticed the small red arrow at the top of the screen indicating that he had missed calls – ten of them.

‘Great!’ he whispered, accepting the call. He knew exactly what ten missed calls and his partner on the phone that early on their day off meant.

‘Carlos,’ Hunter said, bringing the phone to his ear. ‘What’s up?’

‘Jesus! Where were you? I’ve been trying you for half an hour.’

A call every three minutes
, Hunter thought. This was going to be bad.

‘I was out, running,’ he said, calmly. ‘Didn’t check my phone when I walked in. I only saw the missed calls now. So what have we got?’

‘A hell of a mess. You better get here quick, Robert. I’ve never seen anything like this.’ There was a quick, hesitant pause from Garcia. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything quite like this.’

Even on a Sunday morning, it took Hunter almost an hour to cover the fifteen miles between Huntingdon Park and Cheviot Hills.

Garcia hadn’t given Hunter many details over the phone, but his evident shock and the slight trepidation in his voice were certainly out of character.

Hunter and Garcia were part of a small, specialized unit within the RHD – the Homicide Special Section, or HSS. The unit was created to deal solely with serial, high-profile and homicide cases requiring extensive investigative time and expertise. Hunter’s background in criminal-behavior psychology placed him in an even more specialized group. All homicides where overwhelming brutality or sadism had been used by the perpetrator were tagged by the department as ‘UV’ (ultra-violent). Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia
were
the UV unit, and as such, they weren’t easily rattled. They had seen more than their share of things that no one else on this earth had seen.

Hunter pulled up next to one of several black-and-white units parked in front of the two-story house in West LA. The press was already there, crowding up the small street, but that was no surprise. They usually got to crime scenes before the detectives did.

Hunter stepped out of his old Buick LeSabre and was hit by a wave of warm air. Unbuttoning his jacket and clipping his badge onto his belt, he looked around slowly. Though the house was located in a private street, tucked away in a quiet neighborhood, the crowd of curious onlookers that had gathered outside the police perimeter was already substantial, and it was growing fast.

Hunter turned and faced the house. It was a nice-looking two-story red-brick building with dark-blue-framed windows and a hipped roof. The front yard was large and well cared for. There was a two-car garage to the right of the house, but no cars on the driveway, except for more police vehicles. A forensic-unit van was parked just a few yards away. Hunter quickly spotted Garcia as he exited the house through the front door. He was wearing a classic white hooded Tyvek coverall. At six foot two, he was two inches taller than Hunter.

Garcia stopped by the few stone steps that led down from the porch and pulled his hood down. His longish dark hair was tied back into a slick ponytail. He also promptly spotted his partner.

Ignoring the animated herd of reporters, Hunter flashed his badge at the officer standing at the perimeter’s edge and stooped under the yellow crime-scene tape.

In a city like Los Angeles, when it came to crime stories and reporters, the more gruesome and violent the offence, the more excited they got. Most of them knew Hunter, and what sort of cases he was assigned to. Their shouted questions came in a barrage.

‘Bad news travels fast,’ Garcia said, tilting his head in the direction of the crowd as Hunter got to him. ‘And a potentially good story travels faster.’ He handed his partner a brand new Tyvek coverall inside a sealed plastic bag.

‘What do you mean?’ Hunter took the bag, ripped it open and started suiting up.

‘The victim was a lawyer,’ Garcia explained. ‘A Mr. Derek Nicholson, prosecutor with the District Attorney’s office for the State of California.’

‘Oh that’s great.’

‘He wasn’t practicing anymore, though.’

Hunter zipped up his coverall.

‘He was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer,’ Garcia continued.

Hunter looked at him curiously.

‘He was pretty much on his way out. Oxygen masks, legs weren’t really responding the way they should . . . The doctors gave him no more than six months. That was four months ago.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Fifty. It was no secret he was dying. Why finish him off this way?’

Hunter paused. ‘And there’s no doubt he was murdered?’

‘Oh, there’s absolutely no doubt.’

Garcia guided Hunter into the house and through the entry lobby. Next to the door there was a security-alarm keypad. Hunter looked at Garcia.

‘Alarm wasn’t engaged,’ he clarified. ‘Apparently, arming it wasn’t something they did often.’

Hunter pulled a face.

‘I know,’ Garcia said, ‘what’s the point of having one, right?’

They moved on.

In the living room, two forensic agents were busy dusting the staircase by the back wall.

‘Who found the body?’ Hunter asked.

‘The victim’s private nurse,’ Garcia replied and directed Hunter’s attention to the open door in the east wall. It led into a large study. Inside, sitting on a vintage leather Chesterfield sofa, was a young woman dressed all in white. Her hair was tied back. Her eyes were raspberry red and puffed up from crying. Resting on her knees was a cup of coffee that she was holding with both hands. Her stare seemed lost and distant. Hunter noticed that she was rocking her upper body back and forth ever so slightly. She was clearly in shock. A uniformed officer was in the room with her.

‘Anybody tried talking to her yet?’

‘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.

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.’

‘And if the killer took the time to put it together,’ Garcia added, moving closer, ‘it’s gotta mean something.’

Hunter took a few steps back and stared at the macabre piece from a distance. It meant nothing to him.

‘Do you think your lab could create a life-size replica of this?’ he asked Doctor Hove.

Under her surgical mask, she twisted her mouth from side to side. ‘I don’t see why not. It’s already been photographed, but I’ll call the photographer back in and ask him to get a snapshot from all angles. I’m sure the lab can get it done.’

‘Let’s do it,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re not gonna figure this out here and now.’ He turned towards the far wall and froze. It was so covered in blood that he almost didn’t notice it. ‘What in the world is that?’