He searched the channels for late-night sports or cartoons, but without cable or satellite TV his choice of channels was somewhat limited. He settled for a rerun of some old World Wrestling Federation show. Entertaining, but not enough to keep sleep from taking over. Slowly, his body and mind gave up the fight and eased into a restless sleep.
It didn’t take long for the nightmares to start. And they came at him in waves – an empty room, bare brick walls, a single, dim light bulb dangling from a wire in the center of the ceiling, weak enough to keep all the corners in a shadow. Everything was so vivid he could smell the room – damp, moldy, stinking of sweat, vomit, and blood. In his dream he was merely a spectator, watching everything unfold before his eyes without being able to intervene.
First he saw Garcia lying unconscious on a dirty metal table while someone slowly dismembered him with a kitchen knife. No matter how much he tried, Hunter could never see the assailant’s face.
In a blink of an eye, the victim on the metal table changed. Garcia was nowhere to be seen. This time, the faceless killer was using his knife on Anna, Garcia’s wife. Her terrified screams reverberated through the room in an endless loop.
Hunter twitched on the sofa.
Another change of scene.
This time the victim was Alice Beaumont, and the dismembering started all over again. The floor of the room was thick with blood. Hunter was helpless, watching these people he knew, people he cared for, being slaughtered in front of his eyes, like a second-rate horror film.
Moments later the killer proceeded to use the body parts like Play-Doh, molding and sculpting them into grotesque, shapeless sculptures. All Hunter could hear were the animated laughs the killer let out every so often, like a kid having the best of times with his new toys.
Hunter’s eyes shot open all of a sudden, as if somebody had shaken him awake. His forehead and neck were drenched in cold sweat. He was still in his living room, the TV was still on, now showing some black and white film. Somehow, while still locked inside his nightmare, Hunter remembered something Garcia had said to him at the bar, and his brain made a crazy connection.
He jumped up and checked his watch – 6:08 a.m. He had been asleep for close to six and a half hours. Despite the horrendous dreams, his headache was gone, and his brain felt fresh and rested, but he needed to get back to his office. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.
Ninety-Seven
By the time Garcia arrived at the PAB, Hunter had been sitting in front of the pictures board for about an hour and a half. His mind had run through dozens of scenarios, trying desperately to answer the questions his brain ceaselessly asked. He hadn’t managed to answer all of those questions, but one scenario made more sense than all the others, and he wanted to run the idea past everyone.
Captain Blake was the last one to join the group in Hunter’s office. Alice had arrived five minutes earlier.
‘I’ve come up with a theory,’ Hunter said, drawing their attention to the pictures board. He had repositioned several of the photographs in a different order. ‘Please bear with me and hear me out, because it might sound a little crazy at first.’
Captain Blake pulled a face. ‘We’ve got a killer who dismembers his victims and uses their body parts to create sculptures and shadow puppets, Robert. Any theory behind those actions, truth or not, has got to be at least a little crazy. I don’t think any of us is expecting a lot of reason here. What have you got?’
‘OK,’ Hunter began. ‘We all know how much effort we’ve put into trying to understand and identify the meaning behind those sculptures and shadow images. Since we got our third victim four days ago, and consequently, our third sculpture and shadow image, we’ve been trying every combination we could think of to make any sense of this mess. Carlos and I even tried looking at the images as a group, instead of individually.’
Garcia nodded. ‘We thought that maybe the images linked into each other in some way to form something else, maybe a larger image. This whole thing felt like a jigsaw from the beginning. So maybe that was what the killer wanted us to do. Slot the pieces he’d given us into the correct position to complete the puzzle.’
Captain Blake cocked an interested eyebrow.
‘We got nothing, Captain,’ Garcia said, curbing her enthusiasm with a shake of his head. ‘No matter which way we pieced it together, we came up with zilch. Each sculpture casts an individual shadow image, and that’s that. They aren’t linked.’
Hunter agreed. ‘We came to the conclusion that they were independent from each other, not smaller pieces of an incomplete picture.’
‘OK,’ the captain said. ‘So you went back to try and figure out their individual meanings.’
‘Yes,’ Hunter admitted. ‘But with the discovery yesterday that the second victim, Andrew Nashorn, and the third one, Nathan Littlewood, also knew each other – possibly since their late teens – I started pondering new possibilities.’
‘Such as?’ the Captain queried.
‘Carlos said something yesterday that didn’t click until sometime in the middle of the night, but I should’ve thought of it before.’
Captain Blake and Alice’s attention moved to Garcia, who in turn looked back at Hunter.
‘What did I say?’
‘That you never liked puppets. And you told me about your fifth-grade teacher.’
Captain Blake tightened her stare.
Garcia shrugged as if it were nothing. ‘Puppets used to freak me out. They still do, in a way.’
‘What about your fifth-grade teacher?’ Alice asked.
‘He came up with a theater class, and made us stage a puppet play every month.’ Garcia scratched his left cheek nervously. ‘Boy, I hated that class. I hated that teacher. I hated that whole year.’
‘And that’s an angle I never considered before,’ Hunter said.
‘What angle are you talking about, Robert?’ Captain Blake said. ‘Because I don’t think any of us see it either.’
‘A theater, Captain. A puppet theater.’ Hunter positioned himself next to the replica of the sculpture from the first crime scene, Derek Nicholson’s house. ‘Puppets are used in theaters for one reason only.’
Just a fraction of confusion lifted from everyone’s faces.
‘To stage a play?’ Alice said.
‘To tell a story,’ Garcia commented a second later.
Hunter smiled. ‘Exactly.’
Ninety-Eight
Captain Blake’s eyes quickly browsed Garcia and Alice’s faces; neither of them seemed to be on the same page as Hunter yet either.
Hunter didn’t wait to be asked. ‘I think we’ve been going down the right track all along, we were just knocking on the wrong door. There is a bigger picture here.’ He pointed at the board. ‘But it isn’t one single image. And the shadow puppets were the clue.’ Hunter cleared his throat before proceeding. ‘I think the killer is staging a play. Just like a puppeteer. He’s telling us a story, giving us a scene at a time.’
Stunned silence.
Simultaneously, everyone’s uncertain eyes left Hunter and moved back to the pictures on the board. Alice started chewing her bottom lip. Hunter had noticed she did that when she was concentrating on something. He could tell that they were trying very hard to stay with him.