by Chris Carter
Hunter looked around the room as if searching for something. ‘What’s this other smell? I can smell something else, something like vinegar.’
‘You’ve got a good nose, Hunter,’ Doctor Winston said pointing to one of the corners of the room. ‘That jar over there, it was full of vinegar. You can also smell it over her body, predominantly on the top half. It looks like the killer poured it over her skinless face at set time intervals.’
‘Vinegar also works as a fly repellent,’ Hunter said.
‘That’s correct,’ Doctor Winston confirmed. ‘Now just imagine the sort of pain she had to go through. All the nerves around her face were completely exposed. Even a small gust of wind would’ve caused unbearable pain. She probably passed out several times, or at least tried to. Remember, she had no eye lids – no way of keeping the light away, no way of resting her eyes. Every time she regained consciousness, the first image she’d see would be her disfigured naked body. I’m not even gonna go into what sort of pain the acidity of vinegar poured over open flesh causes.’
‘Jesus!’ Garcia said taking a few steps back. ‘Poor woman!’
‘Was she conscious when she was skinned?’ Hunter asked.
‘Not without being anesthetized, but I don’t think she was. I’d say she was drugged, knocked unconscious for several hours while this psycho went to work on her face. After he was done, she was brought up to this house, tied to the posts and tortured some more until she died.’
‘What? You don’t think she was skinned in this house?’ Garcia asked, looking confused.
‘No,’ Hunter replied before Doctor Winston had a chance to do so. ‘Look around. Check any room you like. Not even a speck of blood anywhere except directly under her body. True, I’m sure the killer cleaned up after himself, but this isn’t the place. Correct me if I’m wrong, doc, but skinning a human being is a complicated process.’
Doctor Winston nodded in silence.
‘The killer would need surgical equipment, operating room lights, not to mention a lot of time and knowledge,’ Hunter continued. ‘We’re talking about one highly skilled psychopath here. Somebody with a great knowledge of medical practices. She wasn’t skinned in this house. She was tortured and killed here.’
‘Maybe the killer is a hunter. You know, knowledge of skinning animals?’ Garcia suggested.
‘Could be, but that wouldn’t have helped,’ Hunter replied. ‘Human skin doesn’t respond the same way animal skin does. Different elasticity.’
‘How do you know that? Do you hunt?’ Garcia asked intrigued.
‘No, but I read a lot,’ Hunter replied casually.
‘Plus animals are dead by the time they’re skinned,’ Doctor Winston carried on. ‘You can simply rip the skin off with no concern for the animal’s life. Our killer kept the victim alive and that is a very delicate procedure in itself. Whoever this person is, he knows medicine. In fact, he’d make a very good cosmetic surgeon, except for the job on her teeth. They were simply pulled out, no finesse, but maximum pain.’
‘The killer didn’t want us to identify her,’ Garcia concluded.
‘He left her fingers intact,’ Hunter shot back after quickly checking her hands. ‘Why take the teeth and leave the fingerprints?’
Garcia nodded in agreement.
Hunter walked around the two wooden poles to have a look at the woman’s back. ‘A performing stage,’ he whispered. ‘A place where the killer’s evil could come alive. That’s why she was brought here. Look at her, her position is ritualistic.’ He turned to face Captain Bolter. ‘This killer’s done this before.’
Captain Bolter didn’t look surprised.
‘No one could’ve handled this sort of pain in silence,’ Garcia commented. ‘This is the perfect place, totally secluded, no neighbors, no one to walk in on the killer. She could’ve screamed her lungs out and no one would’ve come.’
‘The victim, do we have anything on her? Do we know who she is?’ Hunter asked, still examining the woman’s back.
‘Nothing so far, but we haven’t run her prints through yet,’ Garcia answered. ‘Our first look through this house has given us zip, not even a piece of clothing. She obviously didn’t live here and searching the house for any clues on her identity is probably a waste of time.’
‘Do it anyway,’ Hunter said firmly. ‘How about missing persons?’
‘I’ve fed her initial description into the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit database,’ Garcia replied. ‘No matches yet, but without a face . . .’ Garcia shook his head as he considered the impossible task.
Hunter took a few seconds to look around the room before his eyes rested on a window on the south wall. ‘How about tire tracks on the outside? There looks to be no other way of getting to this place except for that narrow lane. The killer must’ve driven up here.’
Captain Bolter nodded slightly. ‘You’re right. That lane is the only access to this house and all the police and forensic units have driven up and down it. If we had anything, it’s been covered up. And I’ll be having some asses for this.’
‘Great!’
The room fell silent. They’d all seen it before. A victim that had no chance against a deranged opponent – a blank canvas painted with the striking colors of death – but this seemed different, it felt different.
‘I don’t like this,’ Hunter broke the silence. ‘I don’t like this at all. This isn’t your regular spur of the moment homicide. This was planned and for a fucking long time too. Just imagine the kind of patience and determination it takes to pull something like this off.’ Hunter rubbed at his nose. The stench of death now getting to him.
‘A crime of passion perhaps? Maybe someone just wanted revenge over a broken affair,’ Garcia offered a new opinion.
‘This is no crime of passion,’ Hunter said with a shake of the head. ‘No one that’d been in love with her would be able to do something like this. No matter how hurt he was, unless she was dating Satan himself. Just look at her, this is simply grotesque and that worries me. This ain’t going to end here.’
Hunter’s words sent a new chill into the room. The last thing the city of Los Angeles needed was another psychopath killer on the loose, someone wanting to be the next Jack the Ripper.
‘Hunter’s right, this isn’t a crime of passion. This killer has done this before,’ Captain Bolter said finally, moving away from the window. His statement stopped everyone in their tracks.
‘Do you know something we don’t?’ Garcia asked the question on everyone’s lips.
‘Not for long. There is one more thing I want you to see before I let the forensic boys in here.’
Hunter had been intrigued by that since his arrival. Usually the forensic team checks the scene before the detectives are allowed to walk all over the evidence, but today the captain wanted Hunter in there first. Captain Bolter rarely broke protocol.
‘On the back of her neck, have a look,’ he said tilting his head towards the body.
Hunter and Garcia exchanged a concerned look before approaching the dead woman once again.
‘Give me something to lift her hair up with,’ Hunter called to anyone in the room. Doctor Winston handed him a metal retractable pointer.
As his flashlight illuminated her now exposed neck Hunter’s mind went into a whirlwind of confusion. He stared at it in disbelief – the color drained from his face.
Garcia didn’t have a clear view from where he was standing, but what disturbed him was the look in Hunter’s eyes. Whatever Hunter was staring at, it had scared him soundless.
Six
Despite being thirty-nine years old, Robert Hunter’s youthful-looking face and impressive physique made him look like a man who’d just hit thirty. Always dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a beat-up leather jacket, Hunter was six foot with squared shoulders, high cheekbones and short blondish hair. He possessed a deliberate controlled strength that came across in every movement he made, but it was his eyes that were most striking. An intense pale
blue that suggested intelligence and an unflinching resolve.
Hunter grew up as an only child to working-class parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.
From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He’d finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and just for something to do he’d sped through seventh-, eighth- and even ninth-grade books. Mr Fratelli, the school principal, was amazed by the child prodigy and arranged an appointment at the Mirman School for the Gifted in Mulholland Drive, North West Los Angeles. Doctor Tilby, Mirman’s psychologist, ran him through a battery of tests and Hunter was pronounced ‘off the scale.’ A week later, he’d transferred to Mirman as an eighth-grader. He was only twelve.
By the age of fourteen he’d glided through Mirman’s high-school English, History, Biology and Chemistry curriculum. Four years of high school were condensed into two and at fifteen he’d graduated with honors. With recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a ‘special circumstances’ student at Stanford University. The top psychology university in America at the time.
In spite of Hunter’s good looks, the combination of being too thin, too young and having a strange dress sense made him unpopular with girls and an easy target for bullies. He didn’t have the body or the aptitude for sports and preferred to spend his free time in the library. He read – chewed up books with incredible speed. He became fascinated with the world of criminology and the thought process of individuals dubbed ‘evil’. Maintaining a 4.0 Grade Point Average during his university years had been a walk in the park, but he soon grew tired of the bullying and of being called ‘tooth-pick boy’. He decided to join a weights gym and started taking martial art classes. To his surprise, he enjoyed the physical pain of the workouts. He became obsessed with it and within a year the effects of such heavy training were clearly visible. His body had bulked up impressively. ‘Tooth-pick boy’ became ‘fit boy’ and it took him a little less than two years to receive his black belt in karate. The bullying stopped and all of a sudden girls couldn’t get enough of him.
By the age of nineteen Hunter had already graduated in Psychology and at twenty-three he received his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology. His thesis paper titled ‘An Advanced Psychological Study in Criminal Conduct’ had been made into a book and it was now mandatory reading at the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).
Life was good, but two weeks after receiving his PhD Hunter’s world was turned upside down. For the past three and a half years his father had been working as a security guard for the Bank of America branch in Avalon Boulevard. A robbery gone wrong turned into a Wild West gun-fight and Hunter’s father took a bullet to the chest. He fought for twelve weeks in a coma. Hunter never left his side.
Those twelve weeks sitting in silence, watching his father slip away little by little each day transformed Hunter. He could think of nothing else but revenge. That’s when the insomnia started. When the police told him that they had no suspect, Hunter knew they’d never catch his father’s killer. He felt utterly helpless and the feeling disgusted him. After the burial, he made a decision. He wouldn’t only study the minds of criminals anymore. He’d go after them himself.
After joining the police force, he quickly made a name for himself and moved through the police ranks at lightning speed making detective for the LAPD at the early age of twenty-six. He was soon recruited by the Robbery-Homicide Division, being paired up with a more senior detective – Scott Wilson. They were part of the Homicide Special 1 Division, dealing with serial killers, high-profile and other homicide cases requiring extensive time.
Wilson was thirty-nine at the time. His six-foot-two build was complimented by three hundred pounds of muscle and fat. His most distinctive feature was a shining scar that graced the left side of his shaved head. His menacing look had always played in his favor. No one would mess with a detective that looked like a pissed-off Shrek.
Wilson had been in the force for eighteen years, the last nine of them as a detective for the RHD. At first he’d hated the idea of being paired up with a young and inexperienced detective, but Hunter was a fast learner and his powers of deduction and analysis were nothing short of astounding. With every case they solved Wilson’s respect for Hunter grew. They became the best of friends, inseparable on and off the job.
Los Angeles had never lacked in gruesome and violent homicides, but it did lack in detective numbers. Wilson and Hunter frequently had to work on up to six different cases at once. The pressure never bothered them; on the contrary, they thrived on it. Then a Hollywood celebrity investigation almost cost them their badges and their friendship.
The case had involved Linda and John Spencer, a well-known record producer who’d made a fortune after producing three consecutive number one rock albums. John and Linda had met at an after-show party and it had been one of those flash romances, within three months they were married. John had bought a magnificent house in Beverly Hills and their marriage seemed to have come straight out of a fantasy book, everything looked and felt perfect. They loved entertaining, and at least twice a month they’d throw an extravagant party by their piano-shaped swimming pool. But the fantasy story didn’t last long. By the end of their first year of marriage the parties had started to die down together with the romance. Public and domestic rows became a common thing as John’s drug and alcohol addiction took over his life.
One August night, after another heated argument, Linda’s body was found in their kitchen with a single .38 caliber revolver shot to the back of the head, execution style. There was no sign of a struggle or break in, no defense wounds or bruises on Linda’s arms or hands. The evidence found in the crime scene together with the fact that he had disappeared after his argument with Linda made John Spencer the primary and only suspect. Hunter and Wilson were assigned to the case.
John was only picked up days later drunk and high on heroin. In his interrogation he didn’t deny he’d had another row with his wife that night. He’d admitted their marriage had been going through a rough phase. He remembered the argument and leaving the house angry, agitated and drunk, but what he couldn’t remember was what had happened to him for the past few days. He had no alibi. But he also sustained that he would never hurt Linda. He was still crazy in love with her.
Homicide investigations involving celebrities in Hollywood had always attracted a lot of attention and the media was quick to create their own circus – ‘FAMOUS AND RICH PRODUCER MURDERS BEAUTIFUL WIFE IN JEALOUS RAGE.’ Even the mayor was calling for a swift resolution to the case.
The prosecution showed that John did own a .38 caliber revolver, but it had never been found. They also had no problem getting witnesses to testify to all the public rows John and Linda used to have. In most cases, John did all the yelling while Linda just cried. Establishing that John Spencer had an aggressive temper had been child’s play.
Wilson was convinced of John’s guilt, but Hunter was sure they had the wrong man. To Hunter, John was just a scared kid who had got rich too fast, and with the money and fame came the drugs. John had no history of violence. In school he’d been just another regular geeky-looking kid – torn blue jeans, strange haircut, always listening to his heavy metal music.
Hunter tried reasoning with Wilson many times.
‘OK, so he had rows with his wife, but you find me a marriage without them,’ Hunter argued. ‘In none of those rows had he ever hit or hurt Linda.’
‘Ballistics proved that the bullet that killed her came from the same stash found in John Spencer’s office desk drawer,’ Wilson shouted.
‘That doesn’t prove he pulled the trigger.’
‘All the fibers found on the victim cam
e from the same clothes John was wearing the night we found him. Ask anyone who knew the couple. He had a foul temper on him, shouting at her all the time. You’re a psychologist. You know how these things escalate.’
‘Exactly, they escalate. Gradually. It doesn’t usually just jump from heated arguments to shooting someone in the back of the head in one single step.’
‘Look Robert, I’ve always respected your assessment of a suspect. It has guided us in the right direction many times, but I also like to follow my gut. And my gut tells me this time you’re wrong.’
‘The guy deserves a chance. We should carry on with the investigation. Maybe there’s something we missed.’
‘We can’t carry on.’ Wilson laughed. ‘It ain’t up to us to make that decision. You know better. We’ve done our part. We followed the evidence we had and we apprehended the suspect we were after. Let his attorneys deal with it now.’
Hunter knew what killers were made of and John Spencer simply didn’t fit the bill, but his opinion alone meant nothing. Wilson was right. It was out of their hands now. They were already behind on five other cases and Captain Bolter threatened Hunter with suspension if he wasted any more time in a case that was officially closed.
The jury took less than three hours to reach the verdict of guilty as charged and John Spencer was sentenced to life imprisonment. And life’s what he got. Twenty-eight days after his conviction John hung himself using his bed sheet. In his cell, next to his body a single note that read Linda, I’ll be with you soon. No more arguments, I promise.
Twenty-two days after John Spencer’s suicide, their pool cleaner was picked up in Utah. In his car they’d found John’s .38 caliber revolver together with some jewelry and lingerie that had belonged to Linda Spencer. Subsequent forensic tests showed that the bullet that had killed her had come from that same revolver. The pool cleaner later confessed to shooting her.