Seventy-Six
The second room was smaller than the one Hunter and Garcia were in, but identical in shape and state of deterioration – graffitied walls, windowless frames, piles of garbage on the corners and all sorts of debris scattered around the floor. Doctor Hove and Mike Brindle were standing by a door on the far wall that led into a third chamber. The same portable tactical X-ray unit they’d used in the basement of the preschool in Glassell Park had been set up on the floor next to them. Three paces to the left of the unit, lying on her back, was the naked body of a Caucasian brunette female. Hunter could see the thick black thread used to stitch her mouth and lower body from across the room. There was very little blood surrounding the body.
‘Where’s Carlos?’ Doctor Hove asked. ‘I thought he was waiting for you outside.’
Hunter didn’t reply, didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He just stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the brunette’s face. Her skin had turned a light shade of purple, indicating blood pooling. Like the two previous victims, the lower part of her face had swollen, due to the stitches to her mouth. But even so, there was something familiar about her. Hunter felt his skin burn as adrenalin ran through him.
‘Robert,’ the doctor called again.
Hunter’s eyes finally refocused on her.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Where’s Carlos? I thought he’d be with you.’
‘I’m here,’ Garcia said as he walked through the door behind Hunter. He looked a little paler than a moment ago. The strange, faint smell they’d picked up outside was more prominent in the room. Garcia brought his hand to his mouth and cringed as he fought to keep his stomach from erupting again.
Hunter approached the body in silence and crouched down next to it. Her face was starting to puff up. He didn’t need to touch her to know that her body was now in full rigor mortis. She’d been dead for at least twelve hours. Her eyes were closed, but everything about her features looked familiar. The nose, the cheekbone structure, the shape of the chin. Hunter moved closer still and had a look at her hands and fingers. Most of her fingernails were broken or chipped. Despite the purpling of the skin, at first glance Hunter could see no severe hematomas. There were no cuts or abrasions either. The swelling to her body wasn’t due to physical abuse.
Hunter moved around to the other side. She had a single-color tribal tattoo on her right shoulder.
Garcia was studying the body in silence from a standing position, his hand still covering his nose and mouth.
‘Do you know who she is?’ the doctor asked, noticing the way Hunter kept looking back at her face. ‘Is she another painter from your list of missing persons?’
Garcia shook his head. ‘I can’t place her. I know the face is a little swollen, but I don’t think she was on the lists.’
‘She’s not a painter,’ Hunter said, standing back up again. ‘She’s a musician.’
Seventy-Seven
Garcia’s eyes returned to her face and he frowned. He’d had a very good look at Katia Kudrov’s photographs since Hunter told him about her. The woman on the floor didn’t look like Katia.
‘It’s not Katia Kudrov,’ Hunter said, reading what his partner was thinking.
Garcia frowned harder.
‘You know her?’ he asked.
‘She looks familiar. I’ve seen her before, I’m just not sure where.’
‘So how do you know she’s a musician?’ Brindle this time.
‘She’s got calluses on all the fingertips of her left hand, except her thumb, where the callus is on the first joint.’
Brindle looked hesitant.
‘String instrument musicians get those,’ Hunter explained. ‘The fingertip ones from pressing down on the strings, and the thumb joint one from sliding their hands up and down the instrument’s arm, like a violin, cello, guitar, bass, whatever.’
Doctor Hove nodded. ‘One of my Forensics technicians is learning to play the guitar. He’s always complaining his fingertips hurt like hell and keeps on picking off the loose skin.’
Hunter turned around and looked in the direction of the room he came in from. ‘She was found in this room?’
Brindle nodded. ‘At the exact location she is right now. Unlike the victim from Glassell Park, we didn’t need to turn her over to use the X-ray machine. She was found on her back. There’s no indication that anyone has touched the body either.’
Hunter looked around at the ceiling and walls for an instant. ‘What’s in that room?’ He nodded towards the next chamber.
‘Same as in here and the previous room,’ Doctor Hove replied. ‘More graffiti and garbage.’
Hunter moved closer and pulled the creaking door open. The forensic light was strong enough to illuminate most of the next chamber.
‘There’s no bed, or table, or counter, or anything? She was just left in here on the floor?’
‘No,’ Brindle clarified. His head tilted back a fraction and his eyes moved towards the ceiling. ‘Upstairs.’
Hunter peeked inside the third room again. The staircase was to the left of the door, hugging the wall.
‘I’ve got two agents up there working the scene,’ Brindle continued. ‘It looks like she was left on a wooden table.’ He knew what Hunter would ask next and nodded before the question came. ‘The table was lifted about a foot off the ground by wooden blocks, just like in Glassell Park.’
‘The words . . . ?’
Brindle nodded again. ‘It’s inside you. Painted onto the ceiling this time.’
Garcia had a quick look inside the next room. ‘So she managed to get off the table, come all the way down those stairs, and out here before finally dying?’
‘Before collapsing,’ Doctor Hove said, grabbing both detectives’ attention again. ‘Death took a while to come, but not before tremendous suffering.’
‘And she probably crawled her way down here,’ Brindle took over. ‘She must’ve been a very strong woman, physically and mentally. Her will to stay alive was nothing short of exceptional. The kind of pain she went through, most people wouldn’t have been able to move at all, never mind make it all the way down here.’
Hunter’s stare moved to the X-ray unit on the floor and the laptop screen. It seemed to be turned off.
Brindle and Doctor Hove followed his gaze. ‘Given what we know and the fact that the MO and signatures are the same,’ the doctor said, ‘I’m sure the killer used the same trigger mechanism he used before, but this time it didn’t trigger a fan-out knife or a bomb. Let me show you.’
Garcia cleared his throat uncomfortably while the doctor brought the laptop back to life.
‘We’d just finished capturing this when you arrived,’ Brindle explained.
As the image of the object left inside her body materialized on the screen, both detectives moved closer.
No one said a word.
Hunter and Garcia squinted at the same time, trying to make sense of what they were looking at.
‘No way,’ Hunter said. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
Brindle and Doctor Hove nodded in unison. ‘We think so.’
A couple more seconds and Garcia finally saw it, his eyes widening in disbelief.