One by One (7 page)

‘Robert, Carlos,’ she greeted each detective with a nod. Her voice was velvety but firm, the kind that was always in control.

Both detectives returned the gesture in silence.

‘Mike told me the whole story,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘So the killer called your office and made you watch?’ She moved toward the autopsy table closest to her. The other two were mercifully empty.

Hunter and Garcia followed.

‘Made us choose how the victim would die first,’ Garcia replied.

‘Any idea why?’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘Mike also told me that the killer created some sort of . . . torture chamber?’

‘Something like that,’ Hunter answered.

‘You can watch the footage if you like, Doc,’ Garcia said. ‘Maybe you can pick up something that we missed.’

She gave them a hesitant nod. ‘Sure, if you send it to me, I’ll have a look.’

There was a moment of silence before their attention moved to the corpse on the steel table. The skinless and faceless victim lay there like an androgynous creature. Nothing more than a distorted lump of flesh. The infamous Y incision, decorated by thick, black stitches, now added one more layer of grotesqueness to the body.

Doctor Hove put on a new pair of latex gloves, switched on the lights on the island overhead and looked down at the victim. ‘All these years as a forensics doctor and I still don’t understand it. How can a person do this to another human being?’

‘Some people are capable of worse, Doc,’ Garcia replied.

‘As far as pain goes, there isn’t anything worse, Carlos.’ Her tone sent a chill up Garcia’s spine. ‘Sodium hydroxide is a strong base substance,’ she explained. ‘It sits right at the opposite end of the pH scale from strong acids like sulfuric and hydrochloric. Everyone knows what sort of damage strong acids can do if they came in direct contact with human skin, right? But what few people are aware of is that strong bases, like sodium hydroxide, are over forty times more painful and destructive to the human body than strong acids.’

Garcia’s eyes widened. ‘Forty?’

Doctor Hove nodded. ‘Sulfuric acid feels like lukewarm water when compared to sodium hydroxide. What this killer has done was create an alkali bath with the victim in it.’ Her eyes returned to the body on the table. ‘For him, it was like he was being burned alive, but his brain would’ve carried on working for longer . . . a lot longer, so he felt every single burning pain that happened to his body. The solution ate through the two first layers of his skin in absolutely no time.’

‘And then the real pain started,’ Hunter said in a subdued voice.

‘That’s right,’ Doctor Hove agreed.

Garcia looked a little doubtful.

‘The main reason why sodium hydroxide is used in so many industrial cleaning products,’ the doctor explained, ‘is because of its incredible ability to dissolve grease, oils, fats and protein. The third layer of the human skin, the subcutaneous, is made mostly of fat. When that’s gone, you get muscle tissue, which is made mostly of protein. Are you starting to get the picture now?’

Garcia cringed.

‘Add to that the fact that the alkalosis in the solution would’ve kept overexciting the nerves, causing them to become terribly inflamed, and you have every single nerve in his body screaming in agony. The pain causes all the major muscles to spasm, lock and cramp. If he weren’t tied down in a sitting position, he would’ve probably broken his spinal cord from contorting. And his brain was still working, registering everything as his body literally dissolved, layer by layer.’

‘I think I get the picture now, Doc, thanks,’ Garcia said, looking green.

‘Luckily for him,’ the doctor said. ‘His heart gave up the fight early.’

‘Not early enough,’ Hunter said. ‘He was in that alkali bath for eleven minutes before he died.’

Doctor Hove agreed, tilting her head to one side. ‘Still, his heart gave in faster than it should have. Have you identified him yet?’

‘We’re still working on that,’ Hunter said.

‘So this might help.’ She retrieved a document from the counter behind her and handed it to Hunter. ‘The reason his heart failed earlier than a healthier one would have was because he suffered from mitral stenosis, which is a narrowing of the mitral valve in the heart. This forces the heart to work harder to pump blood from the left atrium into the left ventricle. With the immense pain he was put through, his heart would’ve had to speed up to supply his body with more blood. Because of his condition, his heart was fatally overworked sooner.’

‘How much sooner?’ Garcia asked.

‘I’d say about forty to fifty percent.’

‘He could’ve lasted double what he did?’

The doctor nodded. ‘A healthier person like you probably would.’

Garcia shook away the chilling sensation that trickled down the back of his neck.

‘A person with his condition would, most probably, be checking in with a cardiologist every few months just for precaution,’ Doctor Hove said.

‘Thanks, Doc,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll start checking right away.’

‘Unfortunately the body is a forensics black hole,’ the doctor concluded. ‘If there were anything to be found, the sodium hydroxide ate it away. Not even bacteria would’ve survived.’ She coughed to clear her throat. ‘If you are considering looking at this from a drug angle, I can tell that he wasn’t a drug user, or if he was it was purely recreational and he hasn’t touched anything in at least a week.’

Hunter knew that would be the case, but he sensed a flicker of hesitation in the doctor’s demeanor. ‘Is there something else, Doc?’

‘I’m confused about something,’ she said. ‘Even though the victim went into cardiac arrest quicker than a person with a healthier heart would have, the sodium hydroxide solution should’ve carried on eating away at the tissues and dissolving his body until there was nothing left. It didn’t. It stopped just as it was reaching muscle tissue.’

‘Just as he died,’ Hunter said.

‘I would say so, yes. Which suggests the killer emptied the torture tank and got the victim out of there as soon as he passed away.’

‘That’s probably what he did,’ Hunter agreed.

‘But why? And why dump the body in an alleyway? If the killer had left the victim in the tank it would’ve dissolved the body. Evidence problem solved. Why give the police something to work with?’

‘Because the killer wants to make sure we take him seriously,’ Hunter replied. ‘Without a body, we have no proof that what we saw over the Internet wasn’t just a graphics trick.’

‘Or someone acting it out,’ Garcia added. ‘The water inside the tank went bloody really quick, Doc. All we could see was the victim’s face, nothing else. We assumed he was in tremendous pain, that his body was dissolving, but it could’ve been somebody acting it out, playing a big “you-got-punked” hoax on the LAPD.’

‘The intention was also for the body to be found fast,’ Hunter said. ‘Hence the location where it was dumped – a back alleyway used by several shops. Garbage collection was today, early morning. I’m sure the killer knew that.’

‘So he gives you the body to prove that the whole thing wasn’t staged,’ Doctor Hove said.

‘That’s the idea,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Because now we know he’s for real.’

Fifteen

Christina Stevenson opened the door to her single-story house in Santa Monica and switched on the lights. The brightness that flooded her living room made her wince, and she quickly used the dimmer to bring the intensity down. Her headache had started in the middle of the afternoon, and after several long hours in front of her computer screen it had now reached torturing phase.

She placed her bag on the floor by the door and rubbed her tired blue eyes for a moment. It felt as if her brain was melting inside her skull. Headache pills had had no effect. What she needed was a long shower, a large glass of wine and a lot of rest.

‘Actually,’
she thought better of it,
‘champagne would be much more appropriate.’
After all, all the effort she’d put into her work in the past few weeks had finally paid off.

In the now dim light of her living room, her eyes found the portrait of her mother on the shiny black console by the window, and she gave a smile full of sadness.

Christina had never met her father, and she never wanted to. She had been conceived in the men’s restroom of a nightclub in West Hollywood. Her mother was drunk. The guy she had sex with was high on drugs. They had met that night. He was good-looking and charming. She was lonely. After they left the restroom, she never saw him again.

When Christina was old enough to understand, her mother told her the whole story. She also told her that she couldn’t even remember his name. But her mother wasn’t a bad person. Against all her friends’ advice, she decided not to have an abortion. She had her baby daughter, and she brought her up on her own, in the best way she could. She saved every spare cent, and when Christina graduated from high school her mother had enough put away in a savings account to send her daughter to university. When, four years later, Christina received her diploma, there was no one prouder in that graduation ceremony than her mother.

That same night, her mother died in her sleep from a brain aneurysm. That had been seven years ago. Christina still missed her like crazy.

Christina walked into her open-plan kitchen and checked the fridge. She had a bottle of Dom Ruinart 1998 she’d been keeping for a special occasion. Well, this sure as hell was one. She pouted her lips, pondering.

‘Should I open it or not?’

It seemed a shame that she had no one to share it with.

Christina wasn’t married, and though she’d had plenty of affairs and flings, she wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. She thought about it for a second longer and decided that right now there was no one she would’ve wanted to share that bottle of champagne with anyway. She reached for it, undid the wire seal and popped the bottle open.

Christina had been told plenty of times that good wines needed to breathe. She had no idea if the same applied to champagne, but she didn’t care either. She poured herself a glass and had a large sip – heaven. Her headache was already starting to fade.

Kicking off her shoes, Christina crossed the living room and took the corridor that led deeper into the house, and to her bedroom at the end. Her room was large and a lot more girly than she would like most people to know. Pale peach walls were complemented by a light pink ceiling skirting. Long floral curtains covered the glass sliding doors that led to her backyard and swimming pool. A pink dresser, complete with a mirror and dressing room-style lights, sat in the corner of the room. Her king-size bed, pushed up against the north wall, was overflowing with cushions and stuffed toys.

Christina placed her glass and the champagne bottle on the bedside table, attached her MP3 player to the portable stereo on the dresser and started dancing to the sound of Lady Gaga while undressing. Off came the shirt, followed by her jeans. She returned to her champagne and poured herself another glass, drinking half of it down before pausing in front of the mirrored wardrobe doors. The champagne was starting to have the desired effect, and she began dancing again while undoing her bra and slipping off her purple panties. Naked, she ran her hands over her breasts, pulled a sexy pose and blew herself a kiss in the mirror before bursting into laughter.

She unclipped the clasp on her diamond Tag Heuer watch, a present from an old lover, and as she pulled it off her wrist it dropped to the floor, hit her foot and slid under her bed.

‘Damn, that hurt,’ she said, bending over to massage her right foot. Without looking, she quickly swept a hand under the bed. Her fingers found nothing. ‘Shit.’

Christina got down on her hands and knees and brought her face about an inch from the floor.

‘There you are.’

The watch had slid toward the wall against the headboard. To reach it, she had to slide halfway under the bed. As she did, for no reason at all, her gaze wandered across the floor to the other side, and all the way to the glass sliding doors and the bottom edge of her long floral curtains. And that was when she saw them.

A black pair of male shoes with their heels pushed tight against the glass door.

Shock and fear caused her eyes to slowly glide up the curtains, and she noticed that at that exact spot the folds didn’t sit right. For Christina, the next few seconds passed in slow motion. Her gaze moved up a little more before stopping dead.

From inside her room, through the break in the curtains, someone was staring straight back at her.

Sixteen

After managing four and a half consecutive hours of sleep, fantastic by his standards, Hunter got to his office at 8:10 a.m. Garcia was already at his desk reading through all the overnight emails – nothing interesting.

Hunter had taken off his jacket and powered up his computer when the phone on his desk rang.

‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special.’

‘Robert, it’s Mike Brindle. I’ve got the result from that partial tire print we got in the alleyway.’

‘Anything good?’

‘Well, we’ve got a match.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘The print came from a Goodyear Wrangler ATS tire. Specifically, a P265/70R17.’

‘And that means . . .?’

‘That we’ve got a common pickup truck tire,’ Brindle explained. ‘The ATS range is used by several truck manufacturers as the original equipment tire on new vehicles. The one in question has been used by Ford for their F-150 and F-250 trucks for the past four years, and by Chevrolet for their Silverado for the past three.’

‘Damn!’

‘Yep, I’ve asked someone to check. Even with the recession, in the whole of the USA Ford sold about 120,000 F-150 and F-250 trucks in the past year alone. Chevrolet sold around 140,000 Silverados. What percentage of those is dark in color, or has been purchased in California, is something you and your team will have to find out.’

‘We’ll get on to it,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m guessing that those tires aren’t very hard to come by either.’

‘That’s problem number two,’ Brindle told him. ‘They’re readily available, which means that anybody with an older or even a different brand of truck could drive into a shop and equip their trucks with those specific tires. But they’re an expensive option, so chances are most people would go for a cheaper make if they are buying new tires for an older truck.’