by Chris Carter
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.’
Twenty-Three
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.
Twenty-Four
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 wa
s 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.
‘Nothing?’ Garcia asked.
‘No dogs, no birds, no house pets, just a few fish in an aquarium in his law office. The connection is somewhere else.’
Right at that moment, Captain Blake pushed the door to their office open. She didn’t knock. She never did. She was in such a rush she didn’t notice the shadow puppets on the wall.
‘You’re not going to believe this, but he did it again.’
Everyone frowned.
The captain nodded at the cast replica. ‘We’ve got another one of those.’
Twenty-Five
Marina Del Rey is just a stone’s throw away from Venice Beach, near the mouth of the Ballona Creek. It’s one of the largest man-made small-boat harbors in the United States, and home to nineteen marinas. It can hold up to 5,300 boats.
Even at that time of night, with sirens and flashing police lights, it took them forty-five minutes to overcome the traffic and cross from the PAB to the harbor. Garcia drove.
They made a left into Tahiti Way, and took the fourth right to reach the parking lot just behind the New World Cinema, where several police vehicles were blocking the walkway access to Dock A-1000 in Marina Harbor. A large crowd had already gathered around the police perimeter. News vans, reporters and photographers seemed to be everywhere. To get closer Garcia had to slowly zigzag around all the cars and blast his siren at several pedestrians.
As they stooped under the crime-scene tape, the officer in charge approached them.
‘Are you from Homicide?’ The officer was in his late forties, about five eight, with a shaved head and a thick mustache. He spoke with a husky voice, as if he was fighting off a cold.
Hunter and Garcia nodded and showed the officer their credentials. He acknowledged them and turned to face the walkway access. ‘Follow me. The boat in question is the last one all the way to the left.’ He started walking towards it.
Hunter and Garcia followed.
The lampposts that lit the long walkway were few and far between, shrouding the whole path with shadows.
‘I’m Officer Rogers with the West Bureau. My partner and I were first at the scene,’ the officer continued. ‘We were responding to a 911 call. Apparently somebody had their stereo on full volume for quite a while, blasting out loud heavy-metal music. Someone from one of the neighboring boats decided to go knocking to ask if the music could be turned down. She knocked, got no reply, so she boarded the boat. The lights were off, but the cabin was lit up by a few candles. Like setting the mood for a romantic dinner, you know what I mean?’ Rogers shook his head. ‘Poor woman, she ended up walking into the worst nightmare of her life.’ He paused and ran a hand over his mustache. ‘Why would anyone do something like that to another human being? That’s the sickest fucking shit I’ve ever seen, and I’ll tell you, I’ve seen some disgusting crap
in my life.’
‘She . . . ?’ Hunter asked.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You said she ended up walking into the worst nightmare of her life.’
‘Oh yeah. Name is Leanne Ashman, twenty-five years old. Her boyfriend owns that yacht right there.’ He pointed to a large white-and-blue boat. The name on its freeboard read Sonhador. It was harbored two spaces from the last boat.
‘Boyfriend not around?’ Hunter asked.
‘He is now. He’s with her in his yacht. Don’t worry, there’s an officer with them.’
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘Yeah, but just to get the gist of what happened. Better if I leave that kind thing to you Homicide dicks.’
‘So she was on her boyfriend’s boat alone?’ Garcia asked.
‘Yep. She was preparing a romantic dinner – candlelight, champagne, soft music, you know what I’m talking about? He was coming over later tonight.’
They reached the last boat. Crime-scene tape blocked the entrance to the walkway plank leading onboard. Three other officers were hanging around the area. Hunter read the expression on their faces as pure anger.
‘Who turned off the music?’ Hunter asked.
‘What?’
‘You said that there was loud heavy-metal music playing. There’s none now. Who turned it off?’
‘I did,’ Rogers replied. ‘The stereo’s remote control was on a chair by the cabin door. And don’t worry, I didn’t touch it. I used my flashlight to press the button.’
‘Good work.’
‘By the way, the song was on a loop – track number three on the CD. I noticed it before turning it off.’
‘The song was on a loop?’
‘That’s right, playing over and over again.’
‘And you’re sure it was only one song, not the entire CD?’
‘That’s what I said. Song number three.’ Rogers shook his head again. ‘I hate rock music. The devil’s soundtrack, if you ask me.’
Garcia looked at Hunter and gave him a slight shrug. He knew how much his partner enjoyed rock music.
Rogers adjusted his cap. ‘So, who would you like us to allow up here?’
Hunter and Garcia frowned.