‘I’m not sure yet.’
They all paused as they heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. A couple of seconds later a crime lab agent also dressed in white Tyvek coveralls pulled the door open. He brought with him a large, black plastic flight case.
‘It’s OK, Tom,’ Brindle said, reaching for the case. ‘I know how to set it up.’
The agent left the case with Brindle and exited the room.
‘This is why we had to turn her body over,’ Doctor Hove explained as Brindle undid the locks to the case and started unpacking its contents. ‘That’s a portable tactical X-ray unit. It’s mainly used for the investigation of small- to medium-sized objects like parcels, boxes and luggage. The picture it produces is not of the same quality as you’d get from a proper hospital X-ray machine, but it’ll serve our purposes here. We’re pretty confident that whatever was placed inside her has, as Robert said, gone off, and that’s what killed her. But we all know what this killer is capable of.’ She looked at Captain Blake. ‘I don’t wanna move her before I have an idea of what we’re dealing with.’
They all watched as Brindle set up the equipment. ‘Since we don’t have a tripod,’ he said, ‘can somebody hold the camera over her?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Garcia said, returning to the body and once again carefully avoiding the pools of blood. He took the small digital camera from Brindle.
‘Just keep it directed at her stomach. Two to three feet away will do,’ Brindle explained before approaching the laptop he’d set up on top of the black plastic flight case. ‘That’s all there is to it. The camera connects wirelessly to the computer and produces an X-ray image. You can press the on button now, Carlos.’
He did, and all eyes reverted to the laptop screen as the image materialized.
Brindle and Doctor Hove’s eyes widened in amazement and confusion, and they both craned their necks a little closer.
Hunter squinted, trying to understand what he was looking at.
Captain Blake’s jaw dropped and her mouth went instantly dry, but she was the only one who managed to ask the question in everyone’s mind.
‘In the name of God, what . . . the hell . . . is that . . . inside her . . . ?’
Forty-Four
Hunter knew that with everything his brain was trying to process, sleep just wouldn’t come. And he’d have to wait until morning for any sort of answer. Forensics were still processing the basement room in the old preschool, though he didn’t hold out any great hopes about what they’d find. Doctor Hove would expedite the body’s autopsy, but that’d only be at first light.
He collected some files from his office before making his way back to his place and then onto Jay’s Rock Bar, a joint just two blocks away from his apartment. It was one of his favorite drinking spots. Great Scotch, fantastic rock music and friendly staff. He ordered a double dose of Glenturett 1997 with a single cube of ice and sat at a small table towards the back.
Hunter sipped his drink slowly for a minute, allowing its strong flavor to take over his palate. In front of him, spread out on the table, were all the photographs they’d received from Missing Persons. He scanned through them carefully, and despite the disfigurement to the new victim’s face caused by the rough stitches, he knew she wasn’t among them.
He needed to search the MPU database again, go back four, maybe five weeks, but as before, with the stitches and swelling, the face recognition software wouldn’t work. Doing it manually again would take too long. Hunter would have to wait until the end of the autopsy and use the new face close-ups once the stitches have been removed from the victim’s mouth.
He finished his drink and debated if he should have another one. His eyes rested on the wall closest to him and all its paintings and decorations. He observed them for a moment. That’s when a new thought entered his mind.
‘It can’t be . . .’ he whispered as he shook his head.
Hunter gathered all his files together and rushed back to his apartment.
Sitting at the table in his living room, he fired up his computer and accessed the MPU database. He knew the criteria he used for the new search would reduce the output result considerably. He wasn’t expecting any more than three, maybe five matches.
He was wrong.
Seconds later the screen flickered and the displayed table showed that his search had produced a single match. Hunter double-clicked it and waited for the file to upload.
As the new photograph materialized on his screen, Hunter let out a heavy breath.
Forty-Five
Special autopsy room one was located down a different corridor, separate from all the other chambers. It was usually used for postmortem examinations of bodies that could still pose some sort of contamination threat – highly contagious viral diseases, exposure to radioactive materials and so on. The room, with its own cold storage facility and separate database system, was sometimes used during high-profile serial killer cases, like the Crucifix Killer investigation a few years ago – a security precaution to better contain sensitive information.
The image they got from the portable tactical X-ray unit in the basement of the disused preschool in Glassell Park didn’t reveal much, but whatever it was that the killer had placed inside his second victim, it sure as hell wasn’t a bomb, Doctor Hove had no doubt of that. The picture showed a solid, triangular shape with a rounded base. Something that resembled a large but very thin slice of pizza. She’d never seen anything like it, and the only way she could find out any more about it was by extracting it from the body.
Doctor Hove had had almost no sleep, and turned up at the LACDC even before the crack of dawn. She just wanted to get on with things. At that time in the morning she had to perform the autopsy of the new victim on her own, no assistant. It would take longer than usual.
It was just past 7:00 a.m. when Doctor Hove called Hunter’s cell.
During the short trip from Hunter’s apartment to the morgue, he heard a report of shots fired in Boyle Heights and another of an armed robbery in progress in Silver Lake through the police radio. He drove past three light-flashing, siren-wailing police cars and two ambulances. The day had barely started. How could such an incredible city be so saturated with insanity?
The main coroners building at the LACDC was an intriguing piece of architecture with hints of Renaissance styling. Terracotta bricks and light gray lintels gave it an Oxford college look. Its business hours were the same as any city office – Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Except under special request, no autopsies were ever carried out in the evenings or weekends. This was certainly one of those.
Hunter had called Garcia from the car and he wasn’t surprised to find him already waiting in the empty parking lot.
‘You got here quick,’ Hunter said, stepping out of his old Buick.
‘I got no sleep. I was waiting for this call.’
Hunter looked at him suspiciously. ‘How about Anna?’
Garcia bobbed his head to one side. ‘She got no sleep either. She insisted on staying up with me. She said that at least we could spend a few hours together since we haven’t had much time for each other lately. But you know how perceptive she is. She’s already picked up that the case we’re working on isn’t just a regular one. She never says anything, but you can see the worry in her face.’