Written in Blood

by Carter Chris

  As they joined Santa Ana Freeway heading northwest, Hunter placed a call to Garcia.

  ‘Carlos, how is it going over there?’

  ‘Slow,’ Garcia replied. ‘But all the equipment is finally in place and they are just about to start digging. How about you? How is Angela?’

  Hunter gave him a quick update. ‘I’m on my way to her place right now, but forensics won’t be there until much later, if they can actually manage it today.’

  ‘All right. Keep me posted.’

  Five seconds after Hunter disconnected from his call to Garcia, his phone rang on his dashboard. It was Dr. Carolyn Hove, the Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.

  Hunter took the call, but this time he used a Bluetooth ear-piece instead of his car speakers. ‘Good morning, Doc.’

  ‘Robert, this is just a quick call to let you know that I’ve just finished autopsying the female body that we received yesterday. The one linked to the investigation that you are heading. Case file . . .’ The doctor gave Hunter the fifteen-digit file number.

  She was referring to Elizabeth Gibbs’s body. Hunter knew that, but it was common practice all over the country among anyone who dealt directly with homicide victims, especially the ones with a heavy workload like Dr. Hove, to stick to case numbers rather than names. The less personal they got, the less their emotions came into play.

  ‘Despite being buried for over two years,’ the doctor continued, ‘most of the body’s internal organs were still in a good enough condition for me to be able to at least perform a partial post-mortem examination.’

  ‘OK, and has it given you anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Not really. Nothing that you weren’t probably already expecting.’

  Hunter heard the sound of pages being turned.

  ‘Death occurred due to lack of oxygen – cerebral hypoxia from suffocation. Though I was able to examine the body’s internal organs, unfortunately, due to the deterioration of the epidermis and muscle tissue, I couldn’t one hundred percent determine if there was any physical torture or not, but it doesn’t appear so.’

  Hunter stayed quiet, but he was sure that Dr. Hove was right – Elizabeth Gibbs hadn’t been tortured. If she had, the killer would have mentioned it in his diary, just like he’d mentioned his torturing of Cory Snyder.

  ‘How about sexual assault?’ Hunter asked. From the corner of his eye, he saw Angela looking at him.

  ‘Impossible to tell after two years inside a box.’ Dr. Hove replied. ‘Even with a well-sealed coffin like your report suggests. Like I’ve said, due to the deterioration of the epidermis, no flesh bruises can be correctly identified. Internally, the body shows no signs of forced penetration, but they very rarely do, unless the perpetrator makes a specific point of using some sort of abrasive object that would leave internal scars.’

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said, nodding at the road in front of him.

  Some more pages turning.

  ‘There isn’t much else I can tell you, Robert,’ Dr. Hove concluded.

  ‘Thanks, Doc.’ Hunter veered right onto El Camino Real. ‘Unfortunately it looks like I’ll be sending you quite a few more bodies linked to the same investigation. Carlos and Dr. Slater’s forensics team are digging another one up as we speak. The problem that we might have is that it appears that these bodies will all be unique.’

  ‘They always are, Robert.’

  ‘Not in the way that you’re thinking, Doc,’ Hunter leveled with her. ‘Though we’re talking about a single perpetrator, the MO seems to completely differ from crime to crime. They might be digging up another body. But unlike the one you’ve just autopsied, this one wasn’t buried alive.’

  ‘Well,’ Dr. Hove said back, ‘whatever you get, I’ll be waiting for it.’

  Hunter thanked the doctor and disconnected from the call. Twenty-five minutes later, they arrived at Angela’s apartment building on Colfax Avenue. As they reached the landing on the third floor, Hunter turned and addressed Angela.

  ‘Wait here. Let me go in first.’ He drew his weapon.

  Angela’s head jerked back.

  ‘Are you serious right now? Do you really think that this psycho will be sitting inside my apartment, waiting for me?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think?’

  Angela watched as Hunter walked down the corridor and paused at her door before carefully pushing it open.

  Inside, the lights were off, but the curtains on both living room windows had been drawn back, allowing plenty of light to bathe the medium-sized room.

  Weapon ready, and moving as quietly as possible, Hunter stepped into the apartment.

  Knowing that the killer had been in there blindly searching for his diary, Hunter was fully expecting to find the place trashed, with upturned furniture, smashed objects and the floor littered with household debris, but in that first room he saw none of it.

  To his right there was an old, blue-fabric, two-seater sofa. A severely worn leopard-print throw had been nicely folded and placed at one end of it. Behind the sofa there was a tall bookcase, which held a few colorful jars and boxes, potted plants, several paperbacks and four picture frames. If any of it had been disturbed, Hunter wasn’t able to tell.

  On the square, glass coffee table in front of the sofa, there were two scented candles and a TV remote control. The television itself sat on a unit that matched the bookcase, across the room from it.

  Hunter took two steps to his right and angled his body to check behind the sofa – nothing – no broken objects on the floor either. There was nowhere else in that room where a person could hide, so Hunter stealthily moved on to the kitchen, which was to the right of the TV. In there, once again, he encountered no mess other than a few dirty dishes in the sink and a couple of pans on the stove. The cupboards under the sink were too small for someone who was around six foot to hide inside. Still, operating on pure instinct, Hunter checked them all.

  Once he exited the kitchen, he crossed the living room to the other side and entered Angela’s bedroom. Contrary to the rest of the apartment, this room did seem a little messy, with an unmade bed and several items of clothing thrown carelessly on the floor and on the bed. A few hung from a full-length mirror that sat by a two-door, wooden wardrobe. Both wardrobe doors had been left open, exposing a small collection of T-shirts, blouses, hoodies, and trousers – mostly black. On the wardrobe’s top shelf, Hunter saw a see-through plastic bag containing a few different wigs. He didn’t need to disturb any of the wardrobe items to know that there was no one hiding behind them. Four pairs of shoes untidily occupied the floor between the full-length mirror and the wall to the left of it. To the right of the wardrobe, there was a small dressing table with a three-way folding mirror. A multitude of makeup items and bracelets were scattered all over the tabletop.

  From where Hunter was standing – several feet away from the bed – he bent down to check under it. There was nothing there but a large red suitcase.

  Angela’s bedroom was an en-suite, with the bathroom located to the right of the bed. Its door was ajar, but not enough for Hunter to be able to see inside. It took him five noiseless steps to get to it. With his back against the wall to the left of the door, he used his left hand to carefully push it open. The hinges were old but not rusty. The door opened without a squeak.

  Hunter took a deep breath and in one quick movement, rotated his body into the small bathroom – his gun searching for a target.

  A faint smell of mold and mildew attacked his nose.

  Hunter looked left – nothing.

  Right – nothing.

  That was when, from the corner of his eye, he caught some sort of movement reflected on the rectangular mirror above the washbasin to his left.

  His heart froze.

  A split second later, he heard a noise come from directly behind him.

  Thirty-Four

  It all happened faster than a pin drop.

&n
bsp; Hunter’s eye caught a shadow of movement coming from his left, but he knew that the movement wasn’t coming from inside the bathroom. There simply wasn’t enough space between Hunter and the sink for someone to hide. The shadowy movement coming from his left, he knew, was a reflection. In a flash, Hunter’s heart tripled its rhythm inside his chest. All of his senses heightened, as extra blood was pumped to every corner of his body.

  Survival instinct kicked in. His eyes found the target and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Angela yelled, jumping back, blood draining from her face.

  Hunter’s eyes widened in total surprise and his finger immediately eased from the trigger. For a moment neither of them were able to speak. All they could do was look at each other with semi-terrified eyes.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’ Hunter finally asked, lowering his weapon. ‘Do you have some sort of death wish or something?’

  ‘Me?’ Angela challenged back.

  ‘Yes, you. Didn’t I tell you to wait outside until I gave you the all-clear to come in?’

  ‘Well,’ Angela shrugged Hunter’s irritation off. ‘You were taking way too long.’

  Hunter breathed out, waiting for his nerves to calm down. ‘So you knew that there was an armed cop inside your apartment, looking for a killer who could be hiding anywhere in here, and still you decided to sneak up on me like that.’

  ‘I didn’t really sneak up on you. I simply came in here to try to find out what the hold-up was all about. It’s not a very big apartment, you know?’

  Hunter shook his head. ‘I almost blew your face off.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Angela said, still making light of what had just happened. ‘But you didn’t, so let’s just . . .’ She paused mid-sentence, allowing her stare to move straight past Hunter and refocus on the shower curtain behind him. Her eyes narrowed and her forehead creased, while she angled her body to the right just a touch.

  Hunter saw the look in Angela’s eyes and his muscles tightened. Instantly he turned around, his weapon ready once again, his finger back on the trigger, but Angela wasn’t looking at an intruder. It took Hunter another fraction of a second to realize that. She was looking at something that she could see through the gap in the curtain.

  Hunter angled his body to match her line of vision. That was when he finally saw it too.

  Thirty-Five

  It took the forensics excavation team up in Burbank almost four hours of solid digging before they finally came across what they were looking for. The body had been buried a little deeper than the one that Hunter and Garcia had unearthed back in Deukmejian Wilderness Park two nights ago.

  ‘Doctor,’ Miguel Rodriguez, one of the four agents who’d been working with a shovel, called with a hand gesture. ‘I think we’ve got something here.’

  Dr. Slater and Garcia moved closer.

  Miguel put down his shovel and grabbed a brush before going down on his knees to carefully dust a patch of earth measuring about two square feet. Several seconds later, he uncovered a piece of heavy-duty plastic, black in color.

  ‘It seems to be wrapped around something,’ he announced, as he retrieved a medical scalpel from his equipment bag, before cautiously tearing an opening in the plastic. It exposed the lower end of a tibia, with very little flesh or muscle tissue attached to it.

  ‘This is human, all right,’ Miguel said, using the scalpel to tear some more of the plastic away. This time it revealed an ankle bone, which was still attached to the tibia.

  Garcia stayed with the excavation expedition until Cory Snyder’s entire body had been unearthed and moved into a forensics van, ready to be transported to the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. The operation took longer than expected because the body had been buried whole, as opposed to having been dismembered. Doctor Slater wanted to keep it that way for the examination, which meant uncovering the entire body first before extracting it from the ground.

  ‘I’m not sure if we’ll be able to reveal that much more in the lab,’ Dr. Slater told Garcia, as he was getting into his car. ‘We already know the cause of death and just by looking at the bone development out here, I can tell that the victim was still in his teenage years, which matches the information we got from the diary.’

  ‘Whatever help you can give us, Doc, it will be very much appreciated,’ Garcia said in return.

  On his way back to the Police Administration Building, Garcia called Hunter and was surprised to hear that he was still at Angela Wood’s apartment on Colfax Avenue. Instead of asking for more details about what was going on, Garcia took a detour and headed that way.

  Thirty-Six

  In the afternoon, a crime scene forensics team, consisting of two field agents, was finally dispatched to Angela Wood’s apartment. Since this was a latent crime scene – no body – there was no need for a forensics doctor to attend or for the LAPD to implement full scene-containment protocol. Garcia got there not that long after forensics had arrived.

  In the living room, one of the agents was dusting for prints. Garcia greeted him with a nod and quickly checked the kitchen before moving over to the bedroom, where he saw Angela sitting on her bed with her back against the headboard. Her head was buried in her arms, which were hugging her knees.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Garcia asked, pausing at the door, his tone concerned.

  Angela slowly lifted her head to meet the detective’s eyes, revealing how pinkish hers were. Garcia couldn’t tell if she’d been crying, or if they looked that way from lack of sleep, but he did identify something else in them. Something he’d seen plenty of times before – fear.

  ‘Carlos,’ Hunter called from inside the en-suite bathroom. ‘In here.’

  Without saying a word, Angela buried her head back in her arms.

  Garcia adjusted his ponytail and stepped into the bathroom. As he did, he paused. ‘What the hell?’

  Hunter was standing to his left, by the sink. The toilet was to his right. Directly in front of Garcia was a small shower stall, where the curtains had been drawn back all the way. Standing inside the enclosure, on the acrylic shower plate, was the second forensics agent. He was carefully examining the white tile wall at the back of the shower.

  Garcia glanced at Hunter with troubled eyes.

  ‘It’s from him,’ Hunter confirmed with a nod, answering Garcia’s silent question. ‘When I got here,’ he explained, ‘I was expecting to find the place completely trashed. He was looking for his diary . . . but nothing seems to have been disturbed. It looks like our guy didn’t touch a thing, except for a lipstick from Angela’s dressing table.’

  Garcia’s stare returned to the tiled wall.

  The forensics agent who had started dusting the wall for prints stepped out of the way so Garcia could read the full message.

  He didn’t need to be a graphologist to see that the handwriting was identical to the one in the diary.

  The girl is already dead. You can’t protect her. You can’t save her. She will pay for what she’s done, but there’s still time to save yourself. Give me back my diary. Cease and desist and I’ll forget that this whole thing has happened. Don’t, and your fate will be worse than hers.

  Garcia read the message twice over before looking back at Hunter.

  ‘Is this psycho threatening us?’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Hunter replied.

  Garcia shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. Now he understood why Angela looked so perturbed.

  ‘I’m guessing Angela has read this,’ he said.

  Hunter nodded. ‘She didn’t wait for me to give her the all-clear before coming in here.’

  He never would’ve allowed her to read it.

  ‘So what’s next now?’ Garcia asked, his attention back on the message.

  ‘We need to get Angela to a safe house,’ Hunter replied. ‘I’ve already called Captain Blake with the request.’

  The LAPD kept several secret locations in and around Los Angeles, which were mainly used for
victim and witness protection.

  ‘This . . .’ Garcia said, pointing at the message. ‘This takes some guts. Threatening not only Angela, but also the detectives investigating the case?’ Another disbelieving shake of the head. ‘Who the hell is this guy? Don Corleone?’

  ‘He’s someone with tremendous self-control,’ Hunter said.

  ‘Self-control?’

  The forensics agent dusting the wall also looked back at Hunter, intrigued.

  ‘From what I understand,’ Hunter clarified, ‘when the perpetrator called Angela, he was in here. He was standing inside her apartment. In the call, he asked her to tell him where she had hidden the diary.’

  ‘And Angela told him that it wasn’t here,’ Garcia said. ‘I know, you told me.’

  ‘That’s right. She told him that she had handed it over to the police. Now let me ask you a couple of questions.’ Hunter lifted his right index finger to emphasize his point. ‘If you were him and you’ve put yourself through the risk of coming here . . . the risk of exposing yourself just to retrieve your diary and then you were told that it wasn’t here . . . that you had put yourself through all that risk for absolutely nothing and that the diary had been handed over to the police. First question, would you really believe that?’

  Garcia grimaced. ‘No, probably not.’

  The forensics agent agreed with Garcia by shaking his head.

  ‘Neither would I,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘So my most logical move would be to—’

  ‘Search the place.’ Garcia beat Hunter to the punch.

  Hunter agreed again. ‘We’ve seen places that have been searched by perpetrators before. Have you checked the living room, the kitchen and the bedroom?’

  Garcia nodded. ‘Nothing trashed.’

  ‘Which suggests that he either searched this apartment with the utmost concern for keeping everything exactly the way he found it, or he did believe Angela and decided not to search the place at all.’