by Chris Carter
Thirty-Two
The house was in a pleasant-looking cul de sac down a small private road in Venice, just a couple of blocks away from Venice Beach. It was painted white, with blue-framed windows, a hipped roof, and a small front yard that seemed to be in urgent need of some attention. A knee-high, white wooden fence surrounded the property, which was set back from the road, isolating it even more from its neighbors. But the fence was there simply for decoration, not security. It wouldn’t stop anyone from getting to the house, or moving around toward its backyard. Access to every door and window was kid’s play.
There was a single garage to the right of the house, but the only cars on the driveway were a police vehicle and a forensics van. Despite the house being tucked away at the end of a private and very quiet road, the crowd of curious onlookers that had gathered outside the police perimeter was already substantial and seemed to be growing fast.
Garcia pulled up by one of the three black and white units that were parked on the street, just outside the house. The press was also there, crowding up the area even more.
A couple of reporters recognized the UV Unit detectives as they stepped out of Garcia’s car and immediately started shouting questions from across the road.
They fell on deaf ears. Without even turning to acknowledge them, Hunter and Garcia simply flashed their credentials at the two policemen guarding the perimeter’s edge and stooped under the yellow crime-scene tape.
A third police officer who was standing to the left of the house’s front porch saw the two new arrivals and began making his way toward them.
‘You guys from the UV Unit?’ he asked as he got closer.
The officer was in his early forties, with natural suntanned skin, a cleft chin and a thick, black horseshoe mustache, which he clearly dedicated a lot of upkeep time to. His eyes were as dark as night, but the look in them was hesitant, scared even.
‘Yes, that’s us,’ Garcia replied, indicating the badge clipped to his belt. Hunter did the same.
‘I’m Sergeant Perez, with West Bureau,’ he said, extending his hand.
Both detectives shook it and introduced themselves.
‘West Bureau took the nine-one-one call earlier today,’ the sergeant informed them. ‘I was first response. First through the door.’
They began moving toward the house.
‘OK, so what do we have in there?’ Garcia asked.
Sergeant Perez stopped walking and allowed his worried expression to shift from Garcia to Hunter.
‘I’m not actually sure I know how or what to call it.’ His tone of voice was cautious. His gaze settled on the house before him and he gave both detectives a subtle, disbelieving headshake. ‘I’ve been an officer for over twenty years, all of them with the LAPD. God knows I’ve attended crime scenes words wouldn’t be able to describe, and nothing can erase them from my memory. But in there –’ he nodded his head again in the direction of the house – ‘nothing I’ve ever seen comes close. Inhumane is the only word I can think of. Way beyond sadistic.’
That explains the heavy press presence, Hunter thought. Word of the sort of violence used by the perpetrator had obviously been leaked to the media, which wasn’t surprising. Not only did they scan police radio frequencies 24/7, but they also paid informers inside the force for that sort of intelligence, and they paid well.
They reached the front porch, where a couple of forensic agents were hard at work. The first was checking the wooden floorboards for footprints or any sort of residues that could’ve been left behind. The second one was dusting the door handle and frame. A couple of bloody handprints were clearly noticeable against the door’s light-blue color.
‘Anonymous nine-one-one call?’ Hunter asked.
To their surprise, Sergeant Perez shook his head.
‘Nope. The victim’s housemate found the body,’ he said, tilting his head toward the black and white unit parked in the driveway. The unit’s passenger door was open. Sitting on the passenger seat with his feet on the ground, his elbows resting on his knees and his face buried in the palms of his hands was a tall, thin man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. His short, dark-brown hair was completely disheveled, and he was wearing what was undoubtedly an air steward’s uniform. Part of his white shirt and the front of his dark-blue jacket seemed to be covered in blood.
‘His name is Thomas Hobbs,’ Sergeant Perez continued, reading from the notepad he’d retrieved from his police belt. ‘Twenty-three years of age. Born and raised here in Los Angeles, Pomona Valley. He shares this house with one other person, Sharon Barnard, who, according to Mr. Hobbs, and he had to base this conclusion purely on the jewelry she wore, appears to be the victim. They both work for US Airways.’
‘Wait a second,’ Garcia interrupted. ‘Appears to be the victim?’
Garcia was six-foot two. Perez was five-foot six. The sergeant had to look up to meet the detective’s stare.
‘I guess you’ll understand when you walk in there.’
Garcia shot a worried glance at Hunter.
‘Mr. Hobbs had been away for a day and a half,’ Sergeant Perez explained. ‘This morning he was head steward on a flight from San Francisco back to LA. He wasn’t feeling too well, so after he landed he decided to leave his car at LAX and take a cab home. He found the victim as soon as he opened his front door.’
The sergeant shifted his weight from foot to foot.
‘Unsurprisingly, the sight was way too much for him and he collapsed. That was before he made the nine-one-one call.’ Perez flipped a page on the notepad. ‘As he passed out, he fell forward and into his living room. That explains the blood on his clothes. He’s still in shock so getting any coherent information out of him at the moment is a monstrous task, but you’re welcome to try it if you like. It took me half an hour to get these few details.’ He wiggled the notepad he was holding.
‘Any information on the “possible” victim?’ Hunter asked.
‘Very little,’ Perez replied, consulting his notepad again. ‘Name is Sharon Barnard. Twenty-two years old. Also born and raised here in LA. We did a quick check with US Airways. She finished her last shift – a return flight to Kansas City – yesterday afternoon. She landed at LAX at seventeen twenty-five. We have no indication that she went anywhere else once she left the airport, so we’re assuming that she came straight home. With rush-hour traffic and without stopping anywhere for groceries or anything, she would probably have got home some time between eighteen thirty hours and nineteen hundred hours.’
Hunter and Garcia nodded their understanding.
‘Any signs of a break-in?’ Hunter’s question was directed more at the forensic agent checking the front door.
The agent stopped dusting the doorframe, looked back at the detective and shook his head.
‘Nothing here. The frame isn’t broken or cracked. The lock hasn’t been picked or tampered with. We’ve got a couple of fingerprints from the door handle. Judging by size alone, one of them is definitely female. The bloody hand-prints –’ he indicated the one just above the doorknob, and the one on the outside frame – ‘belong to the guy who found the body.’ He nodded toward the police unit on the drive-way. ‘He used the door and the frame to steady himself as he got up from the floor after fainting.’
‘Have you found a breaching point?’ Hunter asked. ‘Any idea of how the perpetrator got in?’
‘No, nothing yet. Apparently the front door was unlocked when the housemate got home,’ the agent revealed. ‘All the windows are unbroken, and they were all closed and shut from the inside. The back door was also locked.’
‘Here,’ Sergeant Perez said, handing Hunter and Garcia two brand new Tyvek coveralls inside sealed plastic bags.
Both detectives took the bags, ripped them open and started suiting up. When they were done, they pulled the hoods over their heads and each slipped on a pair of latex gloves.
‘I would sincerely suggest that you go for the nose masks too,’ Sergea
nt Perez commented.
Nose masks in place, they stepped up to the front door. The forensic agent who had been dusting the door handle and frame took a step to his right and pulled the door open.
‘Mind the blood,’ Sergeant Perez said as he turned and walked away.
At last Hunter and Garcia stepped into the living room and immediately paused. Their eyes tried to take everything in, but their brains struggled to comprehend the scene in front of them.
Garcia breathed out, and his words came out as a whisper.
‘What the fuck?’
Thirty-Three
The front door of the house opened straight into a small and sparsely decorated living room, with an open-plan kitchen at the back. A square table was positioned about four feet in front of the stove, which centered the cooking counter. The refrigerator was on the far left, just by the door that led into a short hallway and then deeper into the rest of the house. No windows were open, and all the curtains had been drawn shut, but the room was bright with light courtesy of the two high-powered crime-scene lamps that had been mounted on to tripods and placed at opposite corners of the room.
The living room area was covered with a beige, loop pile carpet. A tall, black-wood module occupied most of the west wall. On it were a few decorative items. No TV. A dark-blue fabric sofa with a matching armchair and a black coffee table had been positioned a few feet from the module, toward the center of the room.
Hunter and Garcia breathed out almost at the same time, but neither said a word, their gaze still taking in the entire space, which had been completely bathed in blood – the furniture, the decorative items, the walls, the ceiling, the curtains . . . everything was covered in splatters of crimson red.
The carpet under their feet had soaked a large amount of blood, but it was now covered by a thick, protective, see-through plastic sheet, which indicated that forensics had already photographed and vacuumed the floor for fibers, hairs, traces and residues. The protective sheet was to avoid any forensic agent, detective, or whoever else entered the crime scene from spreading their bloody footprints, since it was practically impossible to move around the living room without treading on a pool of blood.
Even with the nose masks on, the nauseating smell of human flesh in the early stages of decomposition still filled the room, forcing both detectives to breath mostly through their mouths.
The words I AM DEATH had been written in huge bloody letters across the carpet, just a few feet in front of what was undoubtedly the centerpiece of the sickening canvas that the living room had become. That centerpiece was Sharon Barnard.
She was naked and tied to a metal-framed chair, which was facing the front door. Her ankles had been securely fastened to the chair’s legs by plastic zip ties. Her arms had been pulled behind the chair’s backrest and zip-tied at the wrists. Her whole body was covered in blood. Blood that had come from her face and cascaded down her torso and legs before soaking the carpet beneath her feet. A face that simply wasn’t there anymore.
‘Her face was sanded off.’
The words came from the forensics agent who was by the high-powered lamp at the east end of the room. He was about six-foot one, with an athletic body, high cheekbones and a strong jaw. Unlike Hunter and Garcia, he wore no nose mask. The smell of putrid flesh didn’t seem to bother him.
Garcia turned to face him, but Hunter kept his attention on the victim in front of him.
‘I’m Doctor Brian Snyder,’ the man said, moving toward the detectives. ‘I’m the lead forensic agent assigned to this scene.’
‘Detective Carlos Garcia, LAPD UV Unit. You’re new,’ Garcia added, without any malice. Mike Brindle was the lead forensic agent who attended most UV crime scenes. Hunter and Garcia had worked with him for years.
‘To LA maybe,’ he replied. ‘But I’ve been a forensic agent for over ten years. I just got transferred from Sacramento.’
With an apologetic face, Garcia said, ‘Welcome to Los Angeles. This is Detective Robert Hunter.’
Hunter finally faced the forensic doctor, his expression asking a silent question.
Doctor Snyder read it and nodded to confirm his previous statement. ‘Yes, you heard it right, Detective. The perpetrator used a powerful random circular sander on her face,’ he said, as he indicated the machine inside a large plastic evidence bag that was resting on the kitchen counter. ‘The type used to sand off hard wood and metal,’ he added. ‘That explains the blood splatter pattern around this room, and why it reaches as far as the ceiling, the walls, and the curtains.’
The machine on the kitchen counter was gray in color, with a strong, rubber-coated grip handle. The on/off button sat on the upper part of the handle, just level with the operator’s thumb. Very easy to control. Like most items in that living room, the handheld sander was also drenched in blood.
‘If the killer used a handheld sander on her face,’ Garcia cut in, ‘that means he would’ve been covered in blood himself.’
‘Oh, there’s no doubt about that,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘And that would explain the several footprints you can see around the living room and in the kitchen.’ He indicated a few of the footmarks that littered most of the beige loop pile carpet and the kitchen’s tiled floor. ‘Given the footprint pattern,’ the doctor moved on. ‘I’d say that the killer was wearing some sort of protective clothing. At least around his feet. His shoe size seems to be eleven.’
Garcia looked at his partner and pulled a face. He and Hunter knew that around sixty-eight percent of the male population in the USA wore size eleven shoes.
Hunter cautiously stepped forward and approached the body. Garcia and Doctor Snyder followed. With each step, the blood-soaked carpet squished under their weight and against the thick plastic sheet, creating a squealing sound reminiscent of rubber flip-flops walking on a wet floor.
Because the victim’s head was slumped forward and downwards, hiding most of what would’ve been her face, Hunter had to squat down in front of her to have a better look. What he saw was truly grotesque. Her face had been almost entirely scraped off, from her forehead all the way down to her chin. All that was left was a gooey mess of flesh, muscle, cartilage and blood. Most of her facial bones were fully exposed. Her left eyeball had come into contact with the sander. Her cornea, pupil, iris, and ciliary body had been obliterated, releasing the jelly-like substance that makes up most of the ocular globe, deflating the eyeball, and leaving the eye socket lined with nothing more than a gelatinous matter and the exposed optic nerve. Her right eye, on the other hand, had been completely spared. It lay intact, speckled with blood, and wide open, with a dead, soul-chilling stare. It seemed that all the suffering she had been put through and all the agonizing terror she had felt had been immortalized on the surface of her right eye like a snapshot.
Her nose was also completely gone. It had been sanded down all the way to the nasal bone. Her lips weren’t there anymore, and in their absence the victim’s superior and inferior dental arcs had been fully exposed. Some of her frontal teeth had also come into contact with the sander’s surface.
Garcia squatted down next to Hunter. All he managed was a couple of wide-eyed seconds before his guts forced him to look away.
‘Jesus Christ.’
He got back on to his feet.
Doctor Snyder gave Hunter a moment before he spoke again.
‘Rigor mortis has started to set in, but it’s not in its full stage yet.’
Both Hunter and Garcia knew what that meant – the victim had been dead for less than twelve hours.
Hunter checked his watch.
‘So she died some time in the early hours of this morning, not last night.’
‘I’d say so, yes,’ the doctor agreed. ‘But you’ll have to wait for the autopsy report for a more precise timeframe.’
Hunter finally pulled his gaze away from the victim’s disfigured face and slowly began checking the rest of her body – torso, stomach, legs and feet. Standing up, he also studied her nape,
shoulders and upper back. Unlike Nicole Wilson, this victim didn’t seem to have any cuts or abrasions to any other part of her body. The killer hadn’t sliced her skin with a sharp or blunt instrument, nor had he flogged her with a bullwhip like he had done to the first victim.
‘It doesn’t seem like any vital organs have been affected.’ Garcia addressed Doctor Snyder. ‘Any guesses as to the cause of death? Did she bleed out from her facial wounds?’
The doctor’s gaze moved around the room, pausing for an instant on the largest pool of blood directly underneath the victim’s chair, before meeting Garcia’s questioning look.
‘Without a proper post mortem I can’t be one hundred percent sure, Detective, but it’s likely to have been a combination of the amount of blood she lost and the tremendous pain she was put through. Her heart would’ve been working three times as fast as normal to try to replace the lost blood. As you can see, all the nerves around her face were completely exposed, which means that her brain would have been receiving pain signals by the truckload every second. That would’ve stressed out her heart and her brain even more. In situations like these, it’s not uncommon for the heart to just give up, or for the brain to signal respiration to cease, and the lungs to simply stop taking in oxygen.’
‘And how long would that have taken?’ Garcia spoke again.
‘That’s impossible to tell,’ Doctor Snyder replied. ‘It depends on two main factors – the victim’s physical and mental strength. First impression is that physically she was strong enough, as you can see for yourself. Young. Good muscle tone. Not overweight. How strong her heart was is also a key factor, but mental strength is pretty much what dictates your fate in circumstances like these. How badly did she want to live after having her face ripped from her? Your brain can keep on willing your body to fight, or simply tell it to give up. For her, death could’ve come within five minutes or after several hours.’
Hunter approached the kitchen counter and the evidence bag containing the circular sander. It wasn’t a brand new model, but it also wasn’t a dated one, which made identifying the store in which it had been bought a lot harder. Hunter checked the underside of the handle. The serial number had been filed off.