‘Is this place secluded and out of the way enough for you, or what?’ Garcia asked as he parked by a forensic-van at the top of the road.
Hunter had just checked his cellphone — still no news about Mathew Hade.
As they exited Garcia’s car, Hunter took a moment to study the building.
It was a relatively small, rectangular, wooden structure, with an old-style gable roof. Entrance was through large double doors at the eastern end of it. Both Hunter and Garcia’s first impression was that the building very closely resembled a barn, with the exception that its roof wasn’t as high as one would expect it to be. The outside had once been painted white but, after years of being battered by sun and rain, only small patches of color remained. Also, as a result of their harsh contact with the elements, a few planks of wood from the south wall, the one that they were facing, were either partially missing or broken.
Three police officers stood to the right of the double doors. All three of them looked like they’d just been sick.
As Hunter and Garcia approached the yellow crimescene tape that further restricted the entrance to the building, they were greeted by a peculiar smell that came from inside — a mixture of rotten food and a sweet, metallic odor. Both detectives recognized the smell immediately because they’d been around it too many times.
Blood.
And lots of it.
They flashed their credentials at the lone officer with the crime-scene log book, who handed them a Tyvek coverall and a pair of latex gloves each.
Hunter and Garcia suited up, stooped under the yellow tape and pushed open the doors. They’d taken only two steps inside before the force of the image that met their eyes sucked all the air from their lungs, and held them fast.
They now understood why the officers outside looked like they’d been sick.
But the savagery of what stood before them wasn’t what had driven Hunter and Garcia to a stunned silence, or made their hearts skip a beat.
It was the fact that they both knew who the victim was.
Seventy-six
Hunter and Garcia stood at the entrance to a large open area. Just like the impression they’d got from the outside, the inside also reminded them of a ranch barn, only to a smaller scale. The harsh sun in the sky outside, beating down on the building’s old wood walls and black gable roof, made its interior feel like an oven. They had been inside for less than ten seconds and beads of sweat were already starting to form on their foreheads and on the back of their necks.
Doctor Snyder was standing toward the back of the room, talking something over with one of his forensics agents. As he saw the detectives come through the doors, he made his way over to greet them. He had to travel around the edge of the room to avoid all the blood.
‘Robert. Carlos,’ he said with a small nod. His coverall was zipped up to the base of his neck but the hood was down, resting against the back of his shoulders. Once again, he had no nose mask.
Both detectives returned the gesture but kept their attention focused solely on the female victim before them. Her head was slumped forward, with her chin touching her chest, but her face was still visible. And that was what Hunter and Garcia seemed so transfixed by.
Doctor Snyder narrowed his eyes at them. Something wasn’t adding up. Despite the brutality of the entire scene and the amount of blood splashed around the place, their gaze was cemented firmly on the victim’s face. Why? The doctor spoke again.
‘Her name is—’
‘Alison,’ Hunter said almost robotically. ‘I don’t know her last name.’
Intrigue turned to surprise in Doctor Snyder’s eyes. ‘You know her?’
‘We both do,’ Garcia said. ‘She’s a waitress at Donny’s.’ He paused, closed his eyes, subtly shook his head and corrected himself. ‘Was a waitress at Donny’s, a diner two blocks away from the PAB. We sometimes eat there.’
Doctor Snyder processed that information in silence before adding, ‘Atkins. Her name was Alison Atkins. She was twenty-eight years old.’ He read the way Garcia looked at him and added, before he could ask the question, ‘The killer used her cellphone to make the nine-one-one call. Once he was done, he put the phone down by the door but never disconnected. He wanted it traced so we could find her.’
Hunter immediately made a mental note to get a copy of the 911 call as soon as they got back to the Police Administration Building.
‘She was a very sweet woman,’ Hunter said. ‘Always smiling. Always very polite. The type who loved life.’
There was a new emotion in Hunter’s voice that Doctor Snyder failed to properly identify. Sadness? Anger? He couldn’t tell.
‘Do you think that she became a victim because you knew her?’ he asked.
Hunter’s focus hadn’t yet diverted from Alison’s face. He gave Doctor Snyder the slightest of shrugs. Right at that moment, he really didn’t know the answer to that question.
The doctor looked again at the victim.
Alison had been stripped naked. Her arms had been shackled together at the wrists by a long metal chain, which in turn had been looped around the thickest of the three wood beams that ran across the ceiling. The loop was kept in place by a small padlock. Alison’s arms were fully extended above her head. Her feet grazed the floor beneath them just enough to stop her body from moving around.
There was so much blood on the floor directly under her body that, at first guess, Hunter would have said that she had bled to death. But what Hunter and Garcia knew had made the police officers outside lose their lunch by the side of the building was the way in which she had bled out.
A horizontal incision, which crossed her body from side to side, had been made across her lower abdominal area. Once the incision had been made, her lower gastrointestinal tract, or small and large intestines, had been removed from her abdominal cavity and left on the floor in front of her. But neither her small nor her large intestine had been completely severed from her body. They were still attached at the highest point — the stomach.
‘The killer disemboweled her?’ Garcia asked disbelievingly, his eyes now moving to the large pool of blood on the floor.
‘That’s exactly what he did,’ Doctor Snyder confirmed.
The killer had cut open the victim’s abdomen, reached inside and gutted her while she was still alive.
As Garcia breathed in, he felt his body shiver.
‘I’ve seen disemboweled bodies before,’ he said, his voice restrained, ‘but I’ve never seen one where the intestines have been completely stretched out this way. How long can it get to?’
Doctor Snyder kept his eyes on Alison Atkins’ eviscerated body for a moment longer before following Garcia’s.
‘Both intestines together will measure about twenty-five feet in length,’ he said, the tone of his voice matching the detective’s.
The killer hadn’t only dragged her small and large intestines out of her abdominal cavity. He had also stretched them to their full extent, twisting and looping them around at points. The visual result was as unbelievable as it was grotesque. As the victim hung in the air with her arms stretched out above her head, the entirety of her lower gastrointestinal tract could be seen exiting her body as if it were an oversized, alien, umbilical cord. It then lay extended, twisted and looped outside her body, splashed on to the floor, lying in an enormous pool of blood.
But what boggled the mind was that all this had been done while she was still alive and, most probably, conscious. Death would’ve come very slowly and in agonizing pain. Neither Hunter nor Garcia needed to ask. They both knew those facts very well.
‘I wanted both of you to see her in situ before we cut her down,’ Doctor Snyder said. ‘As you can tell, this place feels a like a sauna, which will speed up the decomposition process. Rigor mortis had just started to set in when we got here, which means that the killer waited for her to die before making the call. She died no more than three to five hours ago.’