by Chris Carter
‘Find something, Nick?’
‘Just checking against the light,’ Holden replied without deviating his attention from his work, his nose mask bobbing up and down as he spoke. ‘But I’d say that so far we’ve got about three different sets of prints here, and I’ve just got started.’
Hunter nodded his understanding. ‘Could you do us a favor and also dust the fire exit door when you’re done there? I’d like to run a comparison test between the fingerprints found on both doors.’
Holden glanced at the fire exit. ‘Sure. No problem.’
Both detectives finished suiting up and pulled the hoods of their coveralls over their heads; a second later they stepped into apartment 305.
Five
Karen Ward’s front door opened into a small entrance hall with a couple of large flower prints hanging from its white walls. A warm-red anti-slip rug greeted everyone as they walked through the door. Separation between the hall and the rest of the apartment came via a makeshift chimed beaded-curtain that dropped from the ceiling in uneven strands.
Hunter hadn’t seen one of those since he was a young kid. His grandmother used to have one in her kitchen.
The chimes rang noisily as he pulled the curtain to one side and he and Garcia stepped through into the apartment’s living room. Before following them inside, Sergeant Velasquez crossed himself, murmuring a few Spanish words as he did so.
The living room was relatively spacious and it had been pleasantly decorated with just a few well-chosen pieces of modern furniture, but its main feature was no doubt the large, glass sliding doors behind another beaded-curtain at the far end of the room, leading out into a corner balcony. A compact open-plan kitchen sat against the north wall. Strategically positioned to separate the kitchen from the living room area was a dark pinewood, four-seater dining table. On the other side of the table, by a dark wood display cabinet, there was a full length mirror. Both detectives paused as they entered the room, their attention immediately drawn to the chair at the head of the table and to the horribly mutilated body sitting on it.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed as his brain picked up the pace to try to understand the savagery he was looking at.
The victim had been stripped naked. Her arms had been pinned down to the sides of her body by a thin nylon rope, which tightly looped several times around her torso, just under her breasts, and around the back of the chair. Two separate pieces of rope had been used to securely restrain her ankles to the legs of the chair. She was sitting upright, with her head slightly slumped forward, as if she had fallen asleep, bringing her chin to less than an inch from her chest. But what made Hunter doubt his eyes were the many shards of thick, mirrored glass that had been violently rammed into the woman’s face, disfiguring it into an unrecognizable mess of skin, glass and flesh. Blood had cascaded from her facial wounds in heavy sheets, covering her entire torso and thighs in crimson red before dripping down on to the wooden floor and pooling up under the chair. Part of the tabletop, just by where the victim had been sitting, had also been sprinkled by blood.
From where Hunter and Garcia were standing, what once was her face now looked like a grotesque human pincushion, with numerous glass spikes protruding from it in all different directions.
‘I’m guessing you two are with the UVC Unit.’
Those words came from the forensics agent who had been carefully collecting hairs and fibers from the large rug in the main living room area, just past the dining table.
A couple of silent seconds went by before Hunter and Garcia finally managed to drag their attention away from the body.
‘I’m Dr. Susan Slater,’ the agent said, getting up from her kneeling position. ‘I’m the lead forensics agent assigned to this scene.’
Neither Hunter nor Garcia had ever worked with Dr. Slater before. She was about five-foot seven and looked to be in her early thirties, with a slim body, high cheekbones and a delicate nose. Her head was covered by the hood of her Tyvek jumpsuit, but a thin sliver of blonde hair could still be seen cutting across the top of her forehead. Her makeup was subtle and work-like, but effective enough to keep her attractiveness and femininity even under the unappealing white coverall. Her voice had an odd tone to it – soft and jovial, but at the same time giving the impression of being full of experience and knowledge.
‘Detective Robert Hunter, LAPD UVC Unit. This is Detective Carlos Garcia.’ They both greeted the doctor with a simple head nod before reverting their attention back to the victim.
‘It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?’ Dr. Slater commented. ‘How can anyone do something like that to another human being?’
‘The killer stabbed her in the face with glass shanks?’ Garcia asked, his expression clearly revealing his disbelief in his own words.
‘Might’ve done, Detective,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘That’s impossible to tell without a proper autopsy examination but, if that’s the case, that’s only part of the story.’
‘So what’s the other part?’ Garcia asked.
She took a couple of steps towards the victim. ‘Let me show you.’
Hunter and Garcia followed her. Sergeant Velasquez stayed by the chimed curtains.
Being careful to avoid the pool of blood on the floor, Dr. Slater squatted down by the side of the chair and beckoned Hunter and Garcia to do the same. Up close, the injuries to Karen Ward’s face were even more disturbing.
Several different-sized shards of mirrored glass had sliced through her skin and muscle tissue, practically tearing her face from its skeleton structure. Slabs of skin and flesh dangled loosely from her cheeks, her forehead, and her chin, where bone had also been exposed.
‘You see,’ Dr. Slater began, ‘if you look only at the large shards of glass . . .’ She indicated the ones protruding from the victim’s right and left cheek, left eye socket, and the one that had completely traversed the victim’s under-chin soft tissue, pinning her tongue to the lower part of her mouth. ‘The impression that you get is that the perpetrator violently stabbed the victim with improvised glass shanks, leaving each and every one embedded in her face as he did. Some were rammed into her face so hard, they have either fractured bone, or implanted themselves into it.’ She called their attention to two other pieces of glass – one sticking out of the victim’s lower jawbone, the other from her forehead. ‘But that’s not all we have here, Detectives. There’s an even larger number of smaller pieces of glass entrenched in her flesh.’ She indicated a few of them as she spoke. Some were as small as a pea. ‘These pieces are small enough to make it physically impossible for anyone to be able to use them as some sort of stabbing weapon. They are impact residue. Broken pieces from larger ones.’
Hunter tilted his head left then right as he studied the victim’s face. Despite all his experience, he still couldn’t help but cringe at the ferocity of her wounds. Each one would’ve brought with it a whole new dimension of pain. What that young woman must’ve suffered was almost unimaginable.
Dried blood covered most of her body, making it hard to be certain, but the impression Hunter got was that she carried no other wounds or bruises anywhere else. The killer’s rage had been exclusively directed at her face.
After several seconds, Hunter stood up and repositioned himself behind the chair to have a better look at the back of the victim’s head.
‘So what are you saying, doc?’ Garcia asked. ‘That the killer tied her to this chair and then slammed glass sheets into her face?’
‘No,’ Hunter was the one who replied, turning to look at the floor behind the victim’s chair – no glass residue. ‘The inverted motion, Carlos,’ he explained. ‘The killer rammed her face into glass.’
Six
A few hours earlier
‘This is stupid,’ Tanya Kaitlin said with a jittery giggle. ‘Give me a second and I’ll get her number for you.’
‘I gave you five,’ the demonic voice replied. ‘And those five seconds are up.
‘You wanted to know what happens when y
ou give me a wrong answer . . . watch this.’
All of a sudden and to Tanya’s surprise, the person standing behind Karen’s chair grabbed hold of the leather gag around Karen’s mouth and, in one violent movement, yanked it down and off her lips so hard, it tore a gash to the right side of her bottom lip. Speckles of blood flew up into the air.
Tanya’s eyes were filled with shock as she struggled to understand what was really going on.
Before Karen could let go of a scream that must’ve been locked inside her throat for God-knows-how-long, Tanya saw her assailant place a gloved hand on the back of her head. A split second later, she heard a crushing noise as Karen’s head and face were firmly pushed forward and slammed down against something that had been previously placed in front of her.
Tanya couldn’t quite see what it was.
‘Oh my God!’ she screamed, her own head jerking back in horror. Despite how spooked she was, she never let go of her phone. ‘What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?’ Her tone lifted with a mixture of anxiety and fear.
The same gloved hand grabbed Karen by the hair and brought her head back up to its starting position. As her face filled the small screen on Tanya’s phone again, Tanya felt vomit travel up from her stomach and stand fast at the base of her throat.
Three large shards of glass had embedded themselves on to Karen’s face. The first one, about three inches long, had sliced through Karen’s left cheek. Its tip, which was now sitting inside Karen’s mouth, had also severed a small section of her tongue. The second piece of glass, this one much smaller than the one in her left cheek, had penetrated Karen’s right nostril, ripping a whole at the top of her nose. The third and last piece, which was about one and a half inches long, was protruding from her bloody forehead.
Tanya was no expert, but she was sure that the glass had hit bone. ‘Oh, my God, no . . . what the hell are you doing?’ Tanya’s words were drowning on tears. ‘Karen . . . no . . .’
‘Look . . .’ the demonic voice said threateningly, moving Karen’s face from left to right ever so slightly to better display the extent of her injuries. ‘Look . . .’
Tanya was staring straight at the camera in her phone.
‘Look . . .’ the demon said again.
‘I am looking . . .’ Tanya’s voice squealed with agony, as if she could physically feel her friend’s pain. ‘Oh, my God, Karen . . .’ With her left hand, she desperately began wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks.
‘She’s your best friend, Tanya,’ the demonic voice came back. ‘She has been so for many years. You should know her number by heart. What kind of friend are you, really?’
‘I know . . . I know . . .’ Tanya could do nothing but sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry. What you need to do is answer me. You have five seconds.’
‘No . . . ple- . . . please don’t do that.’
‘Five . . . four . . . three . . .’
Tanya sobbed as her fingers ferociously attacked her touchscreen. ‘I’ll get it. Just give me a moment. I’ll get it.’ Tears blurred her vision. Fear made her hands unsteady.
‘Two . . .’
‘Please . . . Don’t.’
‘One . . .’
In her panic, Tanya dropped her phone. It fell down on to her bed with the screen facing down.
‘Oh no, no, no.’
‘Time’s up.’
SLAM.
As she fumbled for her phone, Tanya heard the same crushing noise as before, only louder. She flipped the phone over just in time to see the gloved hand bring Karen’s head back up again.
Tanya froze.
Karen’s face was utterly unrecognizable. The new head-smash had caused several new shards of glass, big and small, to lodge themselves into her flesh, shredding her face into a horror mask. But what brought Tanya to a hair away from fainting was the new piece of glass that had punctured Karen’s left eye, eviscerating her ocular globe. A viscous substance had begun oozing from it, but the glass piece hadn’t traveled deep enough to reach her brain. Tanya could tell that Karen was still conscious.
‘Her number,’ the demon demanded yet again, but Tanya’s nerves had turned to mush. Her fingers were trembling uncontrollably. Her vision was blurred by a barrage of never-ending tears. Her breathing had become labored and erratic. She tried to speak but her voice got caught somewhere between her throat and her lips.
The countdown began again. Tanya didn’t even hear it get from five to one. All she heard was – ‘time’s up’ – then . . .
SLAM.
SLAM.
SLAM.
Three times in quick succession, each harder than the previous one. The last crunch noise was followed by a faint gasp from Karen.
The gloved hand brought Karen’s head back up, and everything went silent for a while. Her lips had been so severely sliced they were hanging off to one side awkwardly. Her nose had been slashed from the bottom up, rupturing most of its cartilage. Its tip was now held in place only by a thin piece of skin. Her right eye had now also been punctured. Blood seeped out of it in wide sheets. The three head slams had driven the piece of glass that had penetrated Karen’s left eye deeper into her eye socket.
Though Tanya felt faint, she found herself unable to look away, her eyes paralyzed by the grotesque images.
On the screen, Karen convulsed twice. With the second one, her head went completely limp. The gloved hand held it in place for another twenty seconds before finally letting go of her hair.
Her lifeless body slumped forward one final time.
‘I guess this game was exciting after all,’ the demon said. ‘And just look at what you’ve done, Tanya. You’ve killed your friend. Congratulations.’
‘Nooooooo!’ Tanya’s scream came out as an undecipherable shriek.
‘You can now go back to your pathetic life.’
The demon moved from behind the chair and reached for Karen’s smartphone to end the call, but as he grabbed it, the phone panned upwards just enough.
Tanya’s body went rigid.
For a second, she was given a glimpse of the demon’s face, and what she saw made vomit explode from her mouth.
Seven
Garcia’s gaze first moved to the pool of blood under the chair then to the sprinkles on the tabletop. He’d been so taken aback by the ferocity of the victim’s wounds that until then he had failed to notice that except from the ones projecting out of the victim’s face, there were no pieces of glass anywhere else.
‘That’s the exact same conclusion I came to,’ Dr. Slater agreed, as she joined Hunter behind the victim’s chair. ‘The way in which she’d been tied up, with the rope looping around the mid-section of her abdomen, would’ve easily allowed the perpetrator to grab her head and slam her face forward and downward.’ She pretended to grip the victim by the hair on the back of her head and simulated the movement. ‘The slam-down would’ve been fast and hard.’
Garcia walked around the table to the other side, his eyes still searching the floor. ‘So the speculation is that the killer placed some sort of container filled with glass pieces in front of her, maybe on the table, maybe on her lap, grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into it?’
Sergeant Velasquez, who was still standing by the beaded curtain, grinded his teeth as he readjusted his weight, shifting from one foot to another.
‘As absurd and sadistic as that might sound, Detective,’ Dr. Slater replied, ‘that theory is right at the top of the list at the moment.’
‘Have you found this . . . container?’ Garcia asked.
‘No, not yet,’ the doctor admitted. ‘But I can certainly tell you where the glass came from.’
Eight
Hunter, Garcia and Sergeant Velasquez followed Dr. Slater through the short hallway that led deeper into apartment 305. The corridor offered three new doors – one on the left, one on the right, and one at the far end of it. She guided them into the door on the left.
The apart
ment’s only bathroom was of a comfortable size and tiled all in white. A beige ceramic bathtub hugged the south wall, with a showerhead directly above it on the right-hand side. A see-through shower curtain, which had been pushed to one side, dropped down from a metal rail. No explanation was needed. As soon as they entered the bathroom they immediately understood what Dr. Slater had meant when she’d said that she knew where the glass had come from. The entire south wall, spanning all the way from the ceiling down to the edge of the bathtub, was a huge wall-to-wall mirror. It had been completely smashed. Most of it was now gone. All that was left were a few shattered pieces still stuck to a couple of corners.
‘The supply was vast and plenty,’ the doctor said. ‘The killer didn’t have to look far.’
From the bathroom door, Hunter and Garcia regarded what was left of the mirror before stepping forward to have a look inside the bathtub. Nothing. It was completely clean. Not even minor splinters of mirrored glass had been left behind. The killer had either been very meticulous while collecting the pieces of broken mirror that had surely fallen into the bathtub, or had very carefully lined it with some sort of protective sheet.
Garcia took a step back and studied the rest of the bathroom. The washbasin was positioned to the right of the door, the toilet to the left. A six-shelf unit, which held a multitude of toiletry items and perfume bottles, sat between the bathtub and the toilet. A digital scale was propped against the unit. A pink bathrobe hung from the single hook behind the door.
‘Any guesses as to the time of death?’ Hunter asked.
‘The first signs of rigor mortis are just beginning to set in,’ Dr. Slater answered. ‘So I’d say more than two and a half hours ago, but less than four.’
Hunter consulted his timepiece – 2:42 a.m. ‘Has her cellphone been found?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Doctor Slater replied. ‘Inside the microwave, nuked to high heaven.’