The Killing Hands (3 page)

“No, sir. Quiet since I took over shift at eight. Officer Graves said there wasn't much action last night, either. Just a few curious citizens coming in for a closer look.”

We both nod. Same old story the world over. The thing is, one of those nosy citizens could be our killer. Killers often return to the scene of the crime. Sometimes it's just out of compulsion to see what's happening, but hardened killers will get off on it, reliving the moment of death. They see murder as the ultimate power over their victim, and they want that sense of power to run through them again and again. But that trait is more something we see in serial killers, or other types of sadistic killers. If it's a mugging gone wrong, or someone who took the victim's ID just to prolong our discovery of his identity, they'll keep a wide berth between them and the scene.

Ramos holds the tape up for me and I slip underneath it. Looks like he's old-school—I just hope he doesn't mind a woman on his homicide case. Women are still well and truly outnumbered in law enforcement and some of the older cops don't like our movement up the ranks. But so far there's nothing to indicate Ramos is one of those.

A few of the crime-scene markers are still on the asphalt, but most of the evidence has been removed and the corresponding markers with it. I recall some of the crime-scene photos and manage to fill in some of the blanks. Marker number six was a cigarette butt, and both the marker and butt are gone. Maybe the cigarette was the victim's, maybe the killer's or maybe some unrelated third party's. The butt will be swabbed for DNA and compared to the victim's. If that doesn't give us a match we can run it against CODIS, the national DNA database. Sometimes we get lucky and get a direct match on our perp.

Near the corner of the farthest parking space was marker number ten, which flagged the place where the witness urinated. It was from this point that he looked around and saw our vic.

I move back to the place where the glass from the light
fell. “Has the match been confirmed?” I ask, gazing up at the jagged edges on the light post.

“Initial visual confirmation, yes, but the lab's still going to run the glass and reconstruct the light to make sure. The light's being removed this afternoon.”

I nod. “You want to take me through it?” I jerk my head to the wire fence on my left.

“Sure.”

Ramos would have done an initial walk-through as soon as he arrived on site, assessing the crime scene and going through a few possible reconstructions in his head. And he's probably spent the past twenty-four hours going through it over and over again.

“How many people you got on this, by the way?”

“Me, my partner, a junior detective and I've got two uniforms at my disposal—Saxon and Graves. At the moment I've got them taking watches, but later on today I'll close up the crime scene and get them to follow up with the door-to-door canvassing.”

I nod. A murder investigation goes through cycles. It often starts off with a few cops working it, but then if nothing breaks, some of those resources might have to be directed elsewhere. Conversely, if it's a time-critical or high-profile case, the resources go up as time goes by.

“Okay.” He takes a breath. “I'm afraid we haven't got much at this point. Especially given we don't even know if the vic was here of his own accord or was brought here. His car might even be in the lot.” Ramos motions with his hand at the now-full lot over his shoulder. “The manager's keeping an eye out for cars that have been sitting here for a while. And we're running all the plates that were here at 5:00 a.m. yesterday to interview those people, too.”

“Big job.”

“Uh-huh.” Ramos goes back to the walk-through. “Let's start with the mugging angle. So let's say our vic is on his way back to his car, or walking along Second Street. Our attacker or attackers entice or drag him to the fence and take his wallet. Maybe our guy fights back or tells them he's seen
their faces and will make sure they go to jail, and the situation escalates. No word yet on what might have caused the throat injury, but there were no obvious teeth marks and the human hand's not capable of that sort of damage, so the killer must have been holding the guy at the neck with some sort of weapon.”

We really are working in the dark. At this stage we've got no ID, no witnesses to the crime itself and a highly unusual cause of death—although that will still have to be confirmed by the coroner. Our guy may have died of internal bleeding or something else and the throat wound was simply an additional injury.

“Is the area known for muggings?” I ask.

“Not really, no. But on a Friday and Saturday night there are also lots of people under the influence. Easier targets.”

“And also more likely to respond violently.”

“True. Again, no blood-alcohol results for our vic yet.”

“Just as a matter of interest, what did our two witnesses come out at?”

“The guy who saw the vic first blew 0.12 and his friend was 0.14.”

“I guess that's pretty sedate for two uni students out until 4:00 a.m.”

“Yeah. They're both on track scholarships and their college coach told the team members if they get in trouble, they're out.” He pauses. “I'm not convinced on the mugging theory. Seems to me maybe there'd be more of a scuffle, and more…” he searches for the word “…conventional injuries. Plus the light indicates premeditation.”

If someone took out the light, they may have picked this location well before the murder actually took place. Still, we should consider all possibilities.

I play devil's advocate. “He may have shot it out seconds before the murder, realizing it was too light, or he might have done it after the deed in an effort to delay the discovery of the body.”

“Also possible.”

“Find any bullets or rocks?” I ask.

“No. But the parking-lot manager said the light was operational until the night before last.”

“So take me through your premeditated reconstruction.”

Ramos rakes his hand through his hair. “Our killer and victim arrange to meet on Second Street or even here in the lot. So they know each other. The killer came by earlier in the night to take out the light, and set up the place for maximum darkness and privacy.”

“There are places a lot more private than this.”

He shrugs. “Maybe our victim would have been suspicious of somewhere even more isolated. Or this could be a regular Saturday-night drug deal and the killer picked this as the best time and place to take out our vic, who might have been his client or his supplier.”

“Any sign of drugs?”

“Waiting on trace evidence from his clothes and blood analysis to see if he was on anything himself.”

“Maybe the client owed our vic money,” I suggest. “Money's always good motivation for murder.” I think about the scene, the guy's clothes. “Our vic was very well dressed. All designer stuff, apparently. So he's probably quite well-off.”

“Which could tie in with drugs.”

I nod. “Either he's got the money to feed his habit or he's getting money from dealing.” I pause. “Let's circulate his picture to some of the cops and agents working gangs and organized crime.”

“Good idea. I'll send it to the DEA, too.”

I nod. Most drugs are run by gang members these days, and the DEA will have files of all known dealers in the area. Maybe our guy's picture will ring a bell.

Ramos opens his phone. “I'll get someone on it straightaway.” He calls the station and requests that an e-mail with a couple of pics be circulated to all DEA, organized crime and gang law enforcement personnel in L.A. I bet that's some e-mail list.

After he hangs up he puts his hands in his pockets and surveys the scene. “What do you think, Anderson?”

“Like you said, it's early days yet. A mugging is possible—if the guy had designer clothes on, maybe he had nice jewelry, too. Or it could be a staged mugging. Our killer wants us to think the primary motivation was robbery, not murder.”

Ramos nods. “The light.”

“Yeah. I agree that if the light was purposely cut out of the equation, we're definitely talking about premeditation and someone who's smart enough to do everything in his power to ensure there were no witnesses to his actions.”

“I'm hoping to hear back from the lab in the next day or two on the light.”

I nod. “In terms of a profile, I need to find out more about the victim and his injuries before I can even start to get a picture of the person who killed him. Especially in this case, where the cause of death may be hard to pinpoint.”

“Fair enough.”

“You worked with a profile before?”

“Yeah, on a few cases. I know how it works.”

A psychological profile gives investigators extensive information about their perpetrator, from age and sex to their educational level, likely occupation and personality traits. It doesn't give them a name, of course, but they can look at any suspects in light of the profile and use it to help zero in on the killer.

“I'm just going to take a look around.” I walk away from Ramos to the fence line, hoping he'll hang back and give me some privacy. I do want to look around the crime scene some more and get a feel for the place, but I'm also hoping to induce a vision. Thankfully, he stays put.

I stand next to the fence, gazing at the building site. There's still blood on the asphalt, but the rain forecasted for this evening will soon remove that evidence. The way the vic landed, it looked like he was standing close to the fence, looking out over Los Angeles Street and the city skyline. Then he fell back and to one side, so that his right shoulder was propped up, preventing his body from falling to the full horizontal. Blood drained from his neck to the building
debris and trickled down onto the ground. I kneel down to get closer to the place where he died and I'm instantly hit by dizziness.

A sharp jab of pain hits my throat, and I have to fight the urge to double over. My face is crumpled in agony, but I manage to stay upright and resist the urge to put my hand to my throat. I look up, relieved that Ramos is talking to Officer Saxon and both have their backs to me. The pain begins to subside and is replaced by a dull ache. With no one watching me, I act on the instinct to rub my throat.

I replay the vision. From the killer's perspective I saw the victim's shock and fear, but they don't tell me much—most victims of any sort of violent crime, or even nonviolent crime, experience these emotions. The shock could also be surprise about who his killer was, but that's impossible for me to know from what I saw.

I hate experiencing a violent crime from the victim's perspective because I feel their fear and their pain. But having a vision from the killer's perspective is even more disturbing because I often feel their excitement and adrenaline—I'm happy to be murdering my prey, to be inflicting unspeakable pain. I'm the predator and I enjoy it, just like he does. After a vision from the killer's point of view, it can take a long time to orientate myself back into the real world, and to release the repulsion I feel. It also leaves me with a sense of violation.

But this time, when I switched from victim to killer, I got no sense of excitement or fear.

I take a deep breath in and clear my mind in an effort to replay the vision and any important emotional elements, or
maybe even see something else. Nothing new comes to me, but I am able to visualize the last moments of the vision and experience the killer's emotions again. When he turned away from the dying man, he purposefully looked up at the light, pleased he'd dealt with it earlier. But there was no adrenaline, no happiness, no regret, no anger. His emotions feel very different from what I usually sense from a killer's perspective. It's almost…almost…

Indifference.

“H
i, Agent Anderson. It's been a while.” Forensic pathologist Lloyd Grove holds his hand out. I've worked with Grove on a couple of homicides since I've been at the L.A. field office.

“Yes, almost two months.” Unfortunately it hasn't been two months since I worked a homicide case, just since I sat in on an autopsy conducted by Grove.

“And Detective Ramos. It hasn't been so long for you.”

“No.” Ramos looks at me. “Drive-by shooting last week.”

I nod, remembering the news reports from last Wednesday, when a young male was caught in the crossfire between the Crips and MS-13.

“Well, let's get started.” Grove flicks on some surgical gloves. “I got my assistant to take blood yesterday, so I'll get those results from my office before you go.”

Grove moves toward the body and we follow. The autopsy procedure is always the same. The vic's clothes are removed, then the body is searched for any trace evidence before being washed. Finger, hand and footprints are also taken and sometimes initial blood is completed first, too, depending on when a forensic pathologist is available to do the full autopsy. While the procedure is usually conducted within twenty-four hours, law enforcement working the
case can push for blood sooner, to kick things off while their vic's waiting in the autopsy queue.

In the case of our vic, his head and pubic area have also already been shaved. The hair will be examined by forensic scientists looking for foreign matter, including hairs that do not belong to the victim. It's a technique that often reaps rewards in sexual homicide cases, where the victim has usually been raped pre- or postmortem. However, we can find traces of the killer on a victim's body from almost any crime.

I lean into the throat region to take a closer look. The flap of skin and tissue has been placed back in its normal position and I can make out two indentations on either side of the wound. These are the only “tool marks” from the weapon that was used to inflict the injury.

Grove flicks on the room's recording equipment and says the time, date and case number before leaning down with me. “Yes, it is an unusual wound, Anderson. We might not be able to narrow down a murder weapon.”

“I was hoping it would be more obvious once it was cleaned.”

“You and me both. Can't say I've seen anything like this before.”

Just what you don't want a forensic pathologist to say, especially when you've already got unknown identity in the mix.

After taking a swab for DNA from the inside of the victim's cheek, Grove methodically moves over the victim's body, looking for anything unusual. As always, he pays particular attention to the victim's hands, looking for defensive wounds.

“Anything?” Ramos peers over the body to the hand that Grove is examining.

“Slight discoloration of the knuckles, but it's an older bruise, not from the night he died.”

“A punch?” I ask.

“Probably. See how it spreads down from the top knuckles onto the fingers, like the fist was clenched?” Grove clenches his own fist to demonstrate.

I lean over to get a closer look. “Uh-huh.”

“So a punch seems likely. But no broken skin, and it doesn't feel like there are any broken bones, either.”

“So not a hard punch?”

“It depends where the punch was delivered. If our vic punched someone in the stomach or kidneys, for example, he would have had to hit them extremely hard to produce this bruising. But if the punch was to the face, it wouldn't take much to bruise the knuckles.”

Of course…striking soft tissue isn't going to cause as much damage as striking someone on the head or any other bony area.

“It's on our victim's right hand, so it seems likely he's a right-hander.”

Just then Grove's assistant enters. “Here are the X-rays.”

Grove takes his gloves off and inserts the X-rays into the light box. “Wow,” he says.

Ramos and I move closer.

Grove keeps his eyes on the film. “We've got one fresh break, the lower left rib.” He points to the floating ribs. The very bottom left rib is not just cracked, it's broken clean through.

“That's some break,” I say.

“Yes, but it's one of the floating ribs, so less force required than with the upper ribs.”

I nod. The bottom two ribs aren't attached to the sternum, hence the term
floating
. The upper ribs need a massive force to break clean through; even in a car accident, cracked ribs are more likely than a full break. Even so, you're still talking about significant force to break clean through a rib.

“My
wow
is about the old breaks…there's lots of them,” Grove continues. “This guy saw a lot of action, or maybe he was involved in a car accident or something.” He pauses. “No, the breaks aren't right. His fingers aren't broken at the moment, but they have been in the past. He's also had his nose altered—” Grove glances back at the cadaver “—and the surgery was masterfully performed. Visually, I wouldn't have guessed his nose had been altered. And he's even had hairline fractures to his lower jaw. His left little finger has
also been broken, but it's the kind of break you'd see if the finger was bent back.” He demonstrates on himself. “Maybe sporting, trying to catch a ball…or maybe purposefully inflicted.”

“Like torture?” Ramos asks.

“Yes.”

“Any other signs of his past?”

“Not in the bones, no. From the hips and cranium it looks like he's in his forties. I'd say somewhere between forty-two and forty-eight.”

Again, it's nothing concrete for ID, but it gives us a better understanding of the victim.

“Obviously Asian descent, but I'll have to plug his facial dimensions into the computer to give you an exact location.”

I nod, knowing that this technique is often done when a body has fully decomposed, leaving us only bones. The skull is measured and when these measurements are entered into a computer program, the software comes back with the most likely racial genotype.

“What about the scars on his face?” I ask.

Grove moves back to the body. “They're both well healed.” He pulls across a magnifying glass to take a closer look at the skin. “The one along the underside of the jaw has actually been stitched—again, extremely well. The stitch marks are hardly visible to the naked eye. I don't think they're childhood scars, but they're probably about fifteen to twenty years old.” He removes the magnifying glass. “See how this scar's jagged?” Both Ramos and I move in closer and nod. Grove holds a clenched fist under the victim's chin “Could be from a broken bottle held under the chin.”

“That's street fighting,” Ramos says. “Maybe this is gang related.”

I stand upright again. “Gangs would tie in with the drugs theory, too.”

“Yeah, and we have a lot of Asian gangs in L.A., plus the more organized crime structures like the many Chinese tongs and the Japanese Yakuza.”

“So this guy could be Chinese or Japanese?” I ask no one in particular.

“Leave it with me,” Grove answers. “But it might not be an easy question to answer. Particularly given I don't think he's full-blood anything.”

“You're thinking Eurasian?”

“I'm no expert, but maybe. Or maybe mixed Asian races.”

It can be hard to tell mixed racial features. Even full-blood siblings of a mixed race couple can look totally different, with one looking nearly completely Caucasian and the other completely Asian.

“You've got someone who's an expert?”

“Doctor Ramira over at California State University has been involved in a research project that looks at racial identification in melting-pot areas like L.A. You know, in two thousand years will we all look the same, as interracial marriages become the norm and our cultures blend into one?”

“Sounds interesting,” Ramos says. “But I know my mother would have disowned me if I brought home a woman who didn't have Latin blood running through her veins.”

Grove smiles. “Yeah, but what would
you
say to
your
children?”

“Point taken.” He pauses. “Mind you, I think my wife would prefer if both our sons married Latinas.”

“Your mum would have disowned you and your sons' mum would
prefer
Latino. That's a big leap in one generation. Imagine what it will be like in twenty generations' time.”

Again, Grove's got a good point. It's the same story in Melbourne, my home town and one of the most multicultural cities in the world. The mix is different to L.A.—mostly Asian, Greek and Italian—and although racial boundaries still exist they're fading with each generation. I'd say it'll only be a few generations' time before most people have some Asian, Greek or Italian heritage.

I look back at the body. “But this is no smashed bottle.” I point to the mushed throat.

“No. This wasn't caused by anything sharp.” Grove uses his gloved finger to point to the two indentations on either side of the throat. “Whatever caused this was blunt. The skin's perforated, but it's been torn using a forward force, rather than being punctured by a point or sharp implement. But the force…”

“So the killer's strong?” Ramos jumps to the logical conclusion.

Grove nods. “Whatever was used to damage the throat like this was wielded with great force.”

I instantly picture a big, thuglike attacker.

“The marks are cylindrical,” he continues, “but they don't match any weapon I know of.”

“Forceps?” I offer.

Grove shrugs. “It's possible, although I suspect forceps would leave a more elongated impression.” Grove pulls the large chunk of skin back, exposing the throat. “The force totally crushed the hyoid bone and damaged the trachea, as you can see.” He points to the windpipe and the once-horseshoe-shaped bone.

“So that's what killed him?”

“Not exactly. His airway was compromised, but he still would have been able to get some air. And if paramedics had arrived on scene within a few minutes of the attack, they could have eased his breathing further. No, blood loss is the primary cause of death. The weapon, whatever it was, ruptured the carotid artery.”

“So he bled out?”

“Looks like it. Pending anything else out of the ordinary. Let me finish the external examination and then I'll open him up. That will give us a closer look at the throat.”

Grove finishes the external sweep of the body, checking the victim's nose, mouth, ears and sexual organs as part of the exam. Twenty minutes later he pulls his surgical instruments toward the table and looks up at the microphone. “Okay.”

Once Grove has finished with the surgical examination of the head and brain, he moves on to the chest, cutting through the skin and muscle structures. But unlike surgery,
no blood seeps from the wounds—what was left of the victim's blood is drawn by gravity to his back. Once both incisions are finished, Grove peels back the whole area, revealing the organs and other internal workings of the body. The corpse is fresh, so fresh that rigor mortis is still in play, although it is beginning to wane. It begins in the eyelids a few hours after death and first spreads to the face and neck, then the limbs. After about thirty-six hours it starts to dissipate until the body is completely supple once more, about forty-eight to seventy-two hours after death. In another day our victim's body will be limp and pliable again.

Pulling the front section of skin forward doesn't shed any more light on the cause of death. We could already see the exposed windpipe and hyoid bone. However, congealed blood around the other layers of skin in the throat and neck confirm the force of the blow. If his throat hadn't been literally torn from his neck, the guy would have had a mighty bruise. But he died before the bruise could show up.

As Grove's examining the neck area, he uses one of his instruments to part the tissue around the vic's neck and points to a thin, ropelike structure. “See here…the vagus nerve is inflamed. Probably from the force applied to the throat before the weapon perforated the skin.”

Again, I picture a big strong man as our attacker.

“The vagus nerve runs in between the carotid artery and the jugular.” Grove uses one of his instruments to point to the carotid and jugular on either side. “And while the carotid has been totally perforated and the vagus shows signs of trauma, the jugular is intact.”

The three structures—artery, nerve and vein—are all very close to one another, but the weapon has managed to only affect two of them.

We hang around while Grove checks all the organs and takes samples as necessary, before putting them back in and closing our guy up.

“Let's go check the blood work,” he says, snapping off the gloves and taking off his medical gown before washing his hands and turning off the recording gear.