by Chris Carter
‘You said that they were a combination of two types of wounds,’ Hunter queried. ‘What do you mean, Doc?’
Doctor Hove shrugged and tilted her head to her left. ‘To be more precise, not two types of wounds, but wounds inflicted by two different instruments.’
Garcia repositioned himself by the foot of the examination table.
‘Some, like this one for example,’ she indicated a diagonal wound just above the body’s right nipple, which looked to be about three inches long, ‘were made by a laser-sharp instrument. Maybe a kitchen knife, or perhaps a surgical scalpel. Very clean. No serrated edges. Further analyses showed that some of the cuts created by such an instrument were made from right to left, some from left to right. The ones that aren’t horizontal in orientation also vary. Some were made starting at the highest point and moving down. Some, the exact opposite.’ Doctor Hove moved her index finger from the lowest point of the wound to the highest. ‘That makes it impossible for us to tell if the assailant was right or left-handed. To me, it looks like the killer was having fun. He enjoyed torturing her.’
Hunter and Garcia kept their full attention on the body.
‘He took his time,’ Hunter added, his eyes tracing the cuts. ‘To him it was almost like putting brush strokes on to a canvas.’
‘There’s no doubt that he took his time,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘As I’ve said, some of the cuts were made by a very sharp instrument, but not all of them.’ She directed their attention to the lower half of the body. ‘Like most of the wounds inflicted on her legs and back.’
Hunter took a step closer to examine the wounds to her thighs. Neither detective was surprised to hear that the victim also had lacerations to her back.
‘These cuts weren’t created by a sharp instrument,’ Doctor Hove continued.
‘So what was used?’ Garcia asked.
‘A whip.’ The answer came from Hunter. He had seen similar injuries before.
‘That’s correct,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But not the kind used for sexual play, or what have you. What was used here was a proper leather bullwhip. The kind used to tame animals. I counted and recounted them. She received sixty lashes. But they were expertly controlled. Hard enough to break the skin and cause extreme pain, but light enough so it wouldn’t cut too deep into her flesh and cause excessive bleeding. That would’ve no doubt driven the victim into unconsciousness too often. He didn’t want that to happen. The same level of control was applied to the laser-sharp cuts which, by the way, also amount to sixty – hard enough to break the skin and rupture flesh to cause pain, but light enough to not cause excessive bleeding.’ Doctor Hove lifted her finger to emphasize her next point. ‘The interesting thing here is, healing progress differs slightly from one batch of wounds to another.’
‘Batch of wounds? What do you mean, Doc?’ Garcia asked.
‘Front of the torso, back of the torso, front of the legs, back of the legs, and buttocks.’ The doctor paused, her words hanging in the air for a moment, like smoke. ‘And that means that they were inflicted upon her at different times, most probably daily. In my opinion, she was flogged and tortured for five days, give or take a day.’
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Hunter asked.
‘Repeatedly. But unfortunately for us the assailant was careful enough to protect himself. I could recover no trace of semen, foreign blood, or any other bodily fluids.’
As a sign of respect, the room went silent for a moment.
Hunter walked over to where Garcia was and bent over to have a closer look at the victim’s neck.
‘I found no signs that she was either strangled or suffocated,’ the doctor added, anticipating Hunter’s question. ‘X-rays also revealed no broken bones. Toxicology will be another day or two, and if the killer used any sort of drugs on her prior to her death we should get a result for traces of it soon enough, but we won’t get a positive result for poisoning. That’s not how she died.’
‘So what was the cause of death, Doc?’ Garcia asked.
‘I’ll get there in a minute, Carlos,’ Doctor Hove said, paused, and called their attention to the marks on the body’s wrists, ankles and cheeks. ‘First let me show you a peculiarity about these. These marks indicate that she was very tightly restrained, and for a considerable amount of time. Most certainly while she was being tortured and violated. The restraint used on her wrists was some sort of thin rope. Probably nylon. Probably very easy to obtain from a multitude of stores. But I found no residues to examine, so that’s just an educated guess.’
‘On her wrists?’ Garcia asked with a frown.
Doctor Hove nodded. ‘And that’s what I mean by peculiarity. Her captor used different restraints on her ankles – stronger, harder, thicker. From the pattern left on her ankles, I’d say he used a metal chain.’
‘And why would he do that?’ Garcia again. ‘I mean, why two different types of restraints?’
Doctor Hove allowed her gaze to move around the room aimlessly, almost as if she was trying to pass the question on.
‘More torture,’ she finally replied. ‘The kind that won’t show externally.’
‘Whoa.’ Garcia lifted a hand. ‘Are you saying that her internal organs were also damaged? I mean, due to torture?’
‘One was,’ Doctor Hove replied. ‘And that’ll finally bring us to the cause of death, which baffled me throughout the entire post mortem examination until I examined her brain.’
Doctor Hove’s words seemed to chill the air inside the autopsy room even further.
‘Her brain showed signs of being damaged?’ Garcia asked. His eyes moved to Nicole’s head. ‘With no visible external trauma? Was her cranium injured?’
‘No. Her cranium was intact.’
Garcia raised his eyebrow questioningly.
Doctor Hove retrieved two sheets of paper from the instrument table behind her and handed one to each detective. ‘What caused her death was oedema of the brain.’
Garcia frowned at the sheet. ‘Wait a second, Doc, isn’t oedema some sort of swelling?’
‘Well, swelling is a consequence of it,’ the doctor clarified. ‘More precisely, oedema is an excessive build-up of fluid in the body’s tissues, which will often cause swelling and can result in further damage. It’s most common in the feet and ankles, but it can occur anywhere in the body – the lungs, the eyes, the knees, the hands, and in rarer cases, the brain.’
‘So you’re saying that her brain swelled up because of fluid excess?’ Garcia again.
‘That’s correct.’
‘What sort of fluid?’
‘Her own blood.’
Thirteen
Garcia looked at Hunter, then at the body, then back at Doctor Hove.
‘She died due to an excessive build-up of her own blood inside her brain?’ he asked. ‘And that was induced by the killer? How?’
‘By keeping her upside down for long enough,’ Hunter answered in a subdued voice. ‘That would explain the difference in restraints from her wrists to her ankles. They needed to be stronger to be able to hold her body weight.’
‘Correct again, Robert,’ Doctor Hove agreed, moving closer to the head of the examination table, and resting her hands by Nicole’s ears. ‘If you understand the process, oedema of the brain isn’t very difficult to achieve. You see, it all rests on the difference between arteries and veins. Arteries are thick-walled vessels that carry blood away from the heart and into the organs of the body.’ Like a medical professor addressing her students, she pointed at Nicole’s chest, and then moved her hand away, spreading her fingers at the same time as she explained. ‘Even upside down, the heart will continue to distribute blood through the arteries just as strongly as it would right side up. That blood travels with a lot of pressure, due to it being forced into the arteries by the pumping of the heart. So, right side up, upside down . . . it makes no difference. Blood will always travel with the same force away from the heart. Veins, on the other hand, are thin-walled vessels that carry blood from the orga
ns of the body back into the heart for repumping. They have essentially no pressure in them, and they rely on gravity, inertia and the force of skeletal muscle contractions to help push blood back to the heart.’
Doctor Hove coughed to clear her throat before continuing.
‘With no skeletal muscle contractions happening inside the skull, if you reverse gravity by placing someone upside down for long enough, blood will still travel normally from the heart, through the arteries, and into the brain, but it will cease to travel through the veins back to the heart. So what you have is a build-up – blood coming into the brain, but not getting out.’
The doctor paused, the look on her face just a little more somber than a moment ago.
‘With a build-up of blood in the brain, after a while blood will start to leak from the capillaries, accumulating inside the cranium, increasing pressure, and causing the brain to swell. And with that comes a hell of a lot of pain – head, ears, eyes, nose . . . every heart pump would probably feel like thunder was exploding inside her head. All the killer had to do was suspend her by her feet, nothing else. Gravity does the rest. He didn’t even have to be in the room anymore. The pressure would’ve just kept on building up inside her head until it brought her gradual loss of consciousness, and then finally death as the brain would signal either respiration to fail, or the heart to stop pumping blood.’
Uneasily, Hunter shifted his weight from one foot to another.
‘How long?’ Garcia asked. ‘How long before she died? How long could one stand all that pain before the gradual loss of consciousness and death?’
Doctor Hove gave the detective a subtle, unsure headshake. ‘It would depend on several factors, Carlos, like strength and health of the victim. She appears to have been very healthy – good muscle tone, non-smoker, strong lungs, healthy liver and kidneys. But even if I’m wrong, the killer could’ve prolonged the whole process for as long as he wanted simply by returning her to a right-side-up position, decreasing the pressure in her brain, and then starting it all over again an hour or so later.’
‘Do you have an approximate time of death?’ Hunter asked.
‘Supposing that her body was always kept at room temperature after death,’ the doctor explained, ‘and I found no indication to the contrary, I’d say that she’s been dead for about thirty hours, give or take a couple.’
Hunter and Garcia knew that Nicole Wilson had been abducted seven days prior to her body being found, which meant that her killer could indeed have tortured her for five and a half consecutive days.
Before she spoke again, Doctor Hove took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds.
‘But that’s not all,’ she finally said.
Hunter and Garcia both looked at her, surprised.
‘Everything I’ve told you about this victim . . . about how she was tortured, about how she was murdered . . . I’d say none of it is scary in comparison to this.’
‘In comparison to what, Doc?’ Garcia asked.
The doctor turned and retrieved something else from the instrument table behind her – a clear plastic evidence bag containing a white piece of paper.
‘To this.’
‘And what is that?’ Hunter this time.
Doctor Hove looked down at the evidence bag for a couple of seconds before locking eyes with Hunter.
‘This is a note from the killer. He left it lodged inside her throat.’
‘Wait. What?’ Garcia asked, lifting a hand as if he hadn’t heard it properly.
Hunter didn’t move.
‘This piece of paper was first rolled up into a tube,’ the doctor explained, ‘then carefully inserted into the victim’s throat.’ She handed the plastic evidence bag to Hunter. ‘The note speaks for itself.’
The piece of paper inside it was about eight inches long by five wide. Plain white. No lines. Across the center of it, written in blood, were three words.
I AM DEATH.
Fourteen
After leaving the LACDC, it took Hunter and Garcia forty-eight minutes to reach the location where Nicole Wilson’s body had been found – a large, unoccupied green field just a stone’s throw away from Los Angeles International Airport. The field itself was half a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide. Most of it was densely populated by bushy trees like wax myrtles, white ash and California pepper trees, with the exception of two small areas occupied by untreated grass and a few small shrubs and bushes – one on its west side and a much smaller one on its southeast side, where the body had been left. Oddly enough, as if it had decided to run away from the forest-like field, a lonely tree stood in that southeast clearance. Nicole Wilson’s body had been placed just a few feet from it.
Neither detective said much throughout the entire trip. They were both lost in their own thoughts, silently running over everything Doctor Hove had thrown at them and trying their best to make sense of a senseless act.
But even in silence, they both shared one certainty – a killer who was bold enough to write a message in blood and carefully place it in his victim’s throat, knowing full well that it would be found during the post mortem examination, a killer confident enough to call himself DEATH – didn’t do it for fun. He didn’t do it just to tease the police, or to inflate his own ego. He did it for one reason. To let everyone know that this wouldn’t end here.
At the southwest end of the airport, Garcia turned right on to Pershing Drive, and geared down his car.
The area had been cordoned off and a perimeter had already been established by the police. Due to its semi-secluded location there were very few curious onlookers hanging around. The ones that had ventured their luck were being kept too far back to be able to catch a glimpse of anything interesting, and looked bored and ready to give up at any second.
A single reporter was trying his best to obtain any kind of information from the officers by the yellow tape that read: Police Line – Do Not Cross.
Despite decreasing numbers in recent years, murder in LA was still a very common occurrence – on average, one person was murdered every thirty-nine hours in the City of Angels. Though newspapers and TV news stations still covered a number of them, murder just didn’t constitute big news anymore, unless the crime was shrouded by some sort of attention-grabbing factor, like a celebrity being involved, extreme violence or it being attributed to a serial killer.
As Garcia approached the perimeter at the other end from where the reporter was, a uniformed officer signaled for him to turn left and move on, but instead Garcia simply slowed down further. Irritated, the officer shook his head and murmured something to himself before taking a couple of steps toward Garcia’s car.
‘Sir, as you can see the road is closed,’ the officer said in a bored voice, first indicating the police line, then gesturing to his left. ‘You need to go around the—’
Garcia lifted his left hand, interrupting the officer and displaying his credentials.
The officer stopped midsentence and nodded apologetically.
‘Sorry, sir.’
As he handed Garcia the crime-scene logbook so he and Hunter could sign it, a Boeing 777 finished its approach on the west route and touched down on runway 7R, its engine noise so loud and powerful Garcia’s car windows rattled.
‘You can park on the road right over there, sir, by that black and white unit,’ the officer said, collecting the logbook.
Garcia did exactly that.
Two other uniformed officers stood under the shade of a tall and leafy tree next to some more yellow tape that denoted a smaller, internal perimeter. A third officer was sitting inside his Ford Interceptor, apparently text messaging someone. Most activities, including crime scene forensics, had already ceased.
All the officers looked up as Hunter and Garcia stepped out of the car. They didn’t need to flash their badges; the officers knew that the only people allowed past the police line would be CSIs or detectives. With zero concern, they returned their attention to whatever it was that they were doing.
From where Hunter stood, just by Pershing Drive, he paused and studied his surroundings. Garcia joined him and did the same for several seconds.
The location had been very well picked out. The field was well away from prying eyes, sandwiched between the airport and a water treatment plant. There were no residential homes within a one-mile radius of it. The road they were on, which was parallel to the field and provided its only access route, served only as a shortcut between Culver Boulevard and Dockweiler Beach. Traffic would be minimal during the day, and even less so at night.
Only two yellow evidence-number placards had been placed on the field. The first, displaying the number 1, had been positioned in a direct line with the large tree by which the two officers were standing, about eight feet east of it. It marked the spot where Nicole Wilson’s body had been found. The second placard – 2 – was located not too far from where Hunter and Garcia stood, about fifteen feet in from the road. From the report they’d read, Hunter and Garcia knew that it indicated where forensics had found depressions on the grass – probably caused by a heavy vehicle, like an SUV, probably the one used by the killer. But the depressions were on grass, not dirt or mud, which meant that forensics had been unable to obtain any tire tracks. The best they could do, if they were correct in their assumption, was to identify where the killer had parked.
As both detectives started walking toward evidence placard number 1, an Airbus 320 took to the skies from runway 7R. Garcia cringed at the deafening sound, bringing his hands up to cover his ears.
The two officers who were standing by the tree, shading themselves from the sun, turned to face the detectives.
Hunter and Garcia would have preferred to view the body in situ, but since they had only been handed the case several hours after the body had been discovered, they had to content themselves with the photographs taken by the CSI team, and the odd, star-like shape created by white tape that forensics had used to outline the body’s exact position on the ground.
Despite the tape, Hunter retrieved a photo from the folder Garcia had with him, went down on his haunches and placed it on the grass, right at the center of the white outline.