‘What do we have?’ Hunter asked in a calm voice.
‘We just started. We got here fifteen minutes ago, so at the moment I know just about as much as you do, with one exception.’ Brindle pointed to the body. ‘It looks like that used to be Father Fabian.’
‘Looks like?’ Hunter instinctively allowed his eyes to search the area. ‘You haven’t found the head yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Brindle answered, casting a questioning look towards the two other crime-lab agents, who shook their heads.
‘Who found the body?’
‘The altar boy, Hermano something. When he came into the church this morning he was greeted with what you see here.’
‘Where’s he?’
‘In the back,’ Brindle answered with a head tilt. ‘There’s an officer with him, but not surprisingly he’s in a bit of a shock.’
‘Approximate time of death?’
‘Rigor mortis is well on its way. I’d say somewhere around eight to twelve hours ago. Definitely sometime last night. Not this morning.’
Hunter kneeled down and studied the body for a while longer. ‘No defensive wounds?’
‘Nope.’ Brindle shook his head. ‘It looks like the victim has no other wounds of any nature. He was killed quickly.’
Hunter switched his attention to the trail of blood that started at the body and moved up the steps leading to the altar.
‘It doesn’t get any better once you get up there,’ Brindle commented as he followed Hunter’s stare. ‘In fact, I’d say it gets more complicated for you guys.’
Six
Garcia tore his eyes away from the body and faced the forensic agent. ‘What do you mean?’
Brindle scratched his nose and faced him. ‘Well, you’re the ones who’ll have to figure out what all this means. The pattern of blood splatters up there-’ he shook his head, considering ‘-it doesn’t seem random.’
‘Human blood?’ Hunter asked.
‘As opposed to dog’s blood?’ Brindle countered, pointing to the dog’s head.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Can’t say for certain yet. Very hard to tell just by looking at it. Their properties are very similar.’
Hunter climbed up the altar steps in one smooth movement. Garcia and Brindle followed. The place was covered in blood, but Brindle was right – there was definitely a pattern. Some sort of symmetry. On the floor, a thin continuous crimson trail created a circle all around the altar. On the wall directly behind it, there was a long, uneven diagonal splash, as if someone had dipped a paintbrush in the blood and flicked it against the wall. Hundreds of smaller splatters littered the once-crisp white altar cloth.
‘Usually when the distribution of blood covers such a large area, it’s due to one of two types of struggle,’ Brindle explained. ‘A fight, where both parties involved run around punching each other and bleeding all over the place, or an injured victim struggling to get away from his attacker.’
‘The splatters aren’t consistent with a fight scenario or a runaway struggle,’ Hunter said, analyzing the pattern. ‘The distance between them – the shapes – it’s all too symmetric, almost calculated. This blood trail was intentionally created by the killer, not the victim,’ he added calmly.
‘I agree,’ Brindle said, folding his arms over his chest. ‘This wasn’t a fight, and Father Fabian didn’t get a chance to run away from anything.’
‘What gets me is, if the priest was killed down there-’ Garcia pointed to the body ‘-how did all this blood get up here?’
Brindle shrugged.
Hunter approached the altar and carefully walked around it, studying the thin blood trail on the floor. He stopped when he’d completed a full circle.
‘How tall are you, Mike?’
‘Six-four, why?’
‘How about you, Carlos?’
‘Six-two.’
‘Come here.’ Hunter motioned Garcia closer. ‘Walk with me slowly,’ he said as his partner joined him. ‘Stay about a foot away from the trail. Take one step at a time and walk naturally. Start from right here.’ He indicated a point on the floor directly behind the center of the altar.
The two other crime-lab agents stopped what they were doing and joined Mike Brindle by one of the powerlights.
Garcia had taken only four steps when Hunter asked him to stop. Bending over, he quickly checked Garcia’s foot position in relation to the trail before allowing him to continue. Four steps later, Hunter stopped Garcia once again. Four steps after that, the circle was completed.
‘Twelve steps in total,’ Garcia said with an intrigued look.
Hunter called Brindle over and asked him to do exactly the same as Garcia had just done.
‘Eleven steps from me,’ Brindle said when he reached his starting point after a full circle.
‘I’d say the killer’s Garcia’s height,’ Hunter concluded. ‘Six-two, give or take half an inch.’
Seven
Brindle’s inquisitive stare stayed on the blood trail for a moment before moving to Hunter. ‘And how did you come to that?’ he asked.
‘Because of these breakaway splatters over here.’ Hunter pointed to two separate points on the floor around the altar where several drops of blood created a foot-long, outbound, breakaway line from the circular trail.
Brindle was joined by the two other crime-lab agents.
‘I don’t follow,’ one of them said.
‘If you had to draw a circle of blood around this altar, but you had no paintbrush, what’d you do?’ Hunter asked.
‘With this much blood,’ the crime-lab agent offered, looking at the pool that surrounded the body, ‘you could fill a cup with it and pour it onto the floor.’
‘Too messy,’ Hunter disagreed. ‘You wouldn’t be able to control the pouring, unless you had a container with a beak.’
‘It’s a drip trail, anyway,’ Brindle said confidently. ‘Blood wasn’t poured onto the floor. It dripped onto it.’
‘That’s also my understanding.’ Hunter nodded.
‘OK. Still, how does that give you the UNSUB’s height?’ The crime-lab agent pressed.
‘Imagine someone walking around the altar holding a small object saturated with blood,’ Hunter explained, moving to the front of the altar. ‘The excess dripping onto the floor.’
‘A small object like a candle?’ the shorter of the two agents asked, lifting a half-melted altar candle by its wick. Its bottom half was stained red as if it’d been dipped in a shallow glass of blood. ‘I found it to the left of the altar.’ He brought it closer, allowing both detectives and Brindle to have a look at it.
‘This is it,’ Hunter agreed.
‘Bag it,’ Brindle commanded.
‘So the killer dips the end of the candle into some blood and uses it to create the circular trail,’ the agent said, dropping the candle into a cellophane bag. ‘What about the breakaway splatters?’
‘A candle isn’t absorbent enough,’ Hunter explained. ‘It can hold only a very limited amount of blood before it stops dripping.’
‘So the killer had to re-dip it,’ Garcia confirmed.
‘Exactly.’
Brindle thought about it for a few seconds. ‘So you figured the killer managed only four steps before having to re-dip the candle in blood.’
Hunter nodded. ‘I’d say he was holding the blood container close to his body. The breakaway lines are the drips from the blood container back to the trail.’
‘And they come at exactly four of Garcia’s steps apart,’ Brindle concluded.
Another nod from Hunter. ‘Your steps overshot it and mine fell short of the mark. I’m six foot tall.’
‘But why create the circle around the altar?’ Garcia asked. ‘Some sort of ritual?’
There was no answer. Everyone went quiet for a while.
‘As I’ve said-’ Brindle broke the silence ‘-you’re the ones who’ll have to figure out what all this means. The blood splatters, the dog’s head shoved down the priest’s neck… It looks like the killer is trying to get a message out.’