The Death Sculptor (28 page)

‘That’s right,’ Alice agreed. ‘But this confirms that he more than likely had the specific knowledge required to carry out the amputations that were performed on both victims, and to properly minimize the bleeding.’

Hunter was still silent, still reading the list of book titles.

‘In my view,’ Alice moved on, ‘if Sands is our man, then he obviously started developing his revenge plan while inside. But that wouldn’t have happened straight away. A plan like that takes a while to solidify in anyone’s mind. And if this was really retaliation not only for himself, but for Alfredo Ortega as well – who, you will remember, was the closest thing to a brother Sands ever had – then the plan would’ve only started taking real shape after Ortega’s death penalty was carried out, five years ago.’

‘It makes sense,’ Garcia agreed after debating it in his head for a moment.

Hunter looked over the books’ checkout dates before flipping back the page.

‘There are no checkout dates on the more-advanced medical books,’ Alice said, anticipating what Hunter was looking for. ‘The reason is because those books didn’t belong to the library at first. They were the prison’s concession to Sands, to help him with his studies. He put in a request for them, and was allowed to keep them in his cell until he completed his degree. Upon his release, the books were taken by the library. And if you remember from my previous report, he only started both of his long-distance college degrees after Ortega’s execution.’

Hunter carried on reading through the list.

Alice was still tracking his gaze. ‘The next bunch of books are all on psychology – his other degree. Again, a concession from the prison warden to allow Sands to conclude his studies. But one book in particular grabbed my attention. Something that hadn’t even crossed my mind until I saw it.’

Hunter’s eye movement paused halfway down the page. She knew he had recognized it.

Standing behind Hunter, Garcia was reading as fast as he could, but nothing stood out. ‘OK, what am I missing?’

Hunter tapped his finger over a title – ‘Principles of Rorschach Interpretation’.

Garcia pulled a face. ‘Pardon my dumbass question, but what’s Rorschach?’

‘Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s best known for developing a psychological projective test – the Rorschach
inkblot
test.’

They could almost hear Garcia thinking. ‘I’ll be damned. Isn’t that that crazy test when you get shown a white card with just a big ink smudge on it? They ask you to tell them what you think you can see. A little like looking at clouds’ shapes in the sky.’

‘In a nutshell, that’s the test, yes,’ Hunter agreed.

‘And in a
not
-nutshell way, what
is
the test?’ Garcia pushed.

Hunter left the list on his desk and leaned back on his chair. ‘The official test consists of ten cards. Each of the blots on them has near-perfect bilateral symmetry. Five inkblots are of black ink, two are of black-and-red ink and three are multicolored. But over the years psychologists have modified the test, creating their own cards with their own inkblots. Some even completely disregard the original bilateral symmetry of the blots.’

‘OK, but what the hell is it for? What does it test?’

Hunter’s head tilted slightly to one side as if not totally convinced. ‘The test is
supposed
to measure a multitude of personality traits and psychological ills like sense of self-worth, depression, inadequate coping, problem-solving deficits . . .’ He gestured with his hand to indicate that the list went on and on. ‘Basically the test tries to assess an individual’s intellectual functioning and social integration.’

‘From an inkblot?’ Garcia questioned.

Hunter shrugged and nodded once. He completely understood his partner’s skepticism.

‘Yes, but forget what the test is supposed to measure,’ Alice cut in, ‘and think of what we have. The shadows cast by the sculptures could be seen as Sands’s own inkblot type of test.’

Hunter shook his head firmly. ‘The killer is testing us, that’s for sure, but not with inkblots.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘As Garcia said, the inkblots are exactly that, blots, smudges with no real shape. What the killer has given us has perfect shape. A coyote and a raven on the first one, and though we’re still not entirely sure of the meaning of the second image, it certainly isn’t a shapeless blot.’

‘OK, I’ll go with that, but it still comes down to interpretation, doesn’t it? What we think we can see,’ Alice countered. ‘Most people would never have known that, mythologically, a coyote and a raven together mean a betrayer, a liar.’

‘We didn’t know that either,’ Hunter said. ‘Until you looked it up, remember? To a certain extent, most images are open to interpretation. The way someone looks at a piece of art might well be very different from what the artist intended.’

‘That isn’t art, Robert.’ Alice pointed at the replica sculpture.

‘To us it isn’t, but to the killer . . . ?’ He left the sentence hanging in the air for a second. ‘It’s his work, his creation, his art, gruesome or not. And I bet you he saw something completely different from what we are seeing when he put that thing together. Different frame of mind makes you see different things.’

Alice stared at the sculpture. ‘Different frame of mind?’

Hunter stood up and approached the pictures board. ‘Interpretation is directly related to a person’s frame of mind. Looking at the same image, a person could see two completely different things depending on the mood that person is in at the time. And that’s the problem with the Rorschach test.’

‘How can the same person see two different things?’ Alice’s gaze had moved to the shadow photograph pinned to the board. ‘Every time I look at that, I see exactly the same thing – a devil figure looking down at what might possibly be his victims.’

‘Then you’re not keeping your options open,’ Hunter came back. ‘Look, let’s say you have a shapeless image that resembles a face with its mouth wide open. You then show it to someone who, at that moment in time, is feeling happy. That person might interpret that image as someone laughing out loud.’

Garcia immediately caught on. ‘But if that same person were in a darker frame of mind for some reason, that same image could be seen as someone screaming in agony.’

‘Correct. Your mood alters your outlook. And that’s always been the biggest argument against the Rorschach test. Many say that it measures a subject’s frame of mind at that point in time more than anything else. But I agree with you, Alice. Whatever the meanings behind those images are,’ Hunter pointed to the shadow photograph. ‘It has all to do with how
we
interpret it, and that’s the key to this jigsaw. If we read it wrong, if we don’t figure out exactly what the killer is trying to tell us through those shadows,’ Hunter shook his head, ‘I don’t think we’ll ever catch him.’

She had been jittery all night, needing a hit more than she needed food. Regina Campos didn’t care what kind of drug she took, she just needed to get high on something – anything. She had no money, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. She knew exactly what to do to get her fix. By the age of sixteen, Regina had already learnt that any man would melt like butter if you knew what to do to him in bed.

Regina was only eighteen, and if you asked the few people who knew her, they’d probably describe her as average. She was of average height, with an average body and average looks. In a crowd, no one would give her a second glance. Her hair was neither long nor short, and in high school she’d been an average student, until she dropped out. But she was charming, and she sure knew how to get what she wanted out of people.

Regina had had a string of good-for-nothing lovers and casual encounters. Actually, they were good-for-one-thing lovers – drugs. Her newest good-for-one-thing lover, if she could even call him a lover, was a slob, an ex-convict, who lived in a housing project in Bell Gardens. He was overweight, had the stamina of a 90-year-old man in bed, and got his kicks by wearing women’s panties. Regina couldn’t give a dry spit for how he got turned on. All she knew was that he could get her drugs.

She’d called him late last night, desperate, but he told her over the phone he wouldn’t be in all night. She could come over in the morning if she wanted to.

It had been a long night of waiting for Regina.

She took the stairs up to the third floor like a marathon runner. By now she was so frantic for a hit she was grinding her teeth like a bunny. She didn’t even think twice about the fact that the door to apartment 311 was unlocked, although her lover never left his door unlocked.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside the smelly apartment.

‘Hello, babe,’ she croaked. She’d been smoking so much crack lately it’d started damaging her vocal cords.

There was no response.

She was about to start searching the apartment for him when she saw something that was much more appealing – a silver box sitting on the small dining table. Next to it was a square mirror, and on it Regina could see residues of a white powder. Her little brown eyes lit up like a 4th-of-July sky.

‘Babe?’ she called again, with a lot less enthusiasm this time. Who cared where he was when her payment was already there, waiting for her?

Regina approached the table and ran her middle finger along the mirror, collecting all the leftover residue. She quickly brought the finger to her mouth and rubbed it against her gums before licking it, as if it’d been dipped in honey. Instantly her gums went numb and she shuddered with delight from the strength of the drug. That was very good stuff. She opened the box and looked inside. There were five hand-folded paper wraps. Regina knew exactly what was in them. She’d seen plenty of those before. Her lips spread into a huge smile.

For once Christmas had come early.

She grabbed one of the wraps, unfolded it and tapped some of its white powder onto the mirror. Her eyes searched the table for something she could use as a snorting tube.

She found nothing.

Regina took a step back and looked around. Under the table she saw a rolled-up five-dollar bill.

This was turning out to be a fantastic day.

She picked it up, tightened the roll-up, and brought it to her nose. She didn’t care for arranging the powder in a straight line or anything, she just needed some of it to reach her bloodstream, and fast. Closing one of her nostrils with her finger, Regina sucked in a deep breath through her nose.

The drug-high hit her almost instantly.

‘Wow.’

That was the best thing she had ever tried. No stinging or burning effect, just pure bliss.

She moved the rolled-up bill to the other nostril and sucked in a second deep breath.

This had to be what paradise felt like.

She put the bill down on the table and stood still for a moment, simply enjoying heaven.

Outside the day was already hitting 86°F. Regina felt beads of sweat starting to form at the top of her forehead. The drug had also bumped her body temperature up. She undid the top button of her shirt, but she needed to splash a little cold water on her face. She turned around and made her way to the bathroom. As she reached the door, she was engulfed by a strange sensation, like something crawling up the back of her neck. It made her shudder on the spot.

Her hand paused momentarily over the doorknob and she looked around herself, almost feeling a second presence.

‘Babe, are you in here?’ she called, moving her face closer to the door.

Again, no reply.

The tingling sensation at the back of her neck quickly ran down her spine, spreading through her whole body.

‘Wow, that really was some good shit,’ she whispered to herself.

Regina twisted the handle and pushed the door open.

Paradise became hell.

By the time Hunter and Garcia got to apartment 311 in Bell Gardens, the forensic team’s investigation was in full swing. Four people dressed in hooded white coveralls were stepping over each other inside the tiny flat, doing their jobs. In the living room, a young forensic agent was dusting a wooden sideboard for prints. A woman armed with a handheld vacuum was collecting fibers and hairs from the floor. An older agent with a spray bottle and a portable ultraviolet light was looking for blood droplets on a silver box that was sitting on the dining table. All the while, the official crime-scene photographer was snapping away at everything.

Detective Ricky Corbí and his partner, Detective Cathy Ellison, were standing in the corridor just outside the apartment. Another three uniformed police officers were busy conducting the standard door-to-door.

‘Are you Detective Corbí?’ Hunter asked, coming from the badly lit stairwell.

The tall black man turned around and faced Hunter. He was around fifty years old, with a scowling face topped with tight-cropped hair sprinkled with just a little gray. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, a brown suit, and, judging by his physique, he’d probably played football when younger, and was still very physically active.

‘That’d be me,’ he said in a baritone voice. ‘And by the looks of you two, you’re Homicide Special.’ He offered his hand. ‘Detective Hunter, I presume.’

Hunter nodded. ‘Call me Robert.’ Corbí’s handshake was firm and strong. His palm was slightly tilted downwards, which Hunter knew from experience was usually a sign of an authoritative person or a controlling personality. From the word ‘go’ Corbí was indicating that he was the one in charge there. Hunter had no intention of opposing that authority.

‘Call me Ricky. This is my partner, Detective Cathy Ellison.’

Ellison stepped forward and shook Hunter and Garcia’s hand with almost the same firmness as Corbí. She was about five feet six in height, trim but slightly stoop-shouldered, with short dark hair, cut in a textured, graduated style. Her eyes carried the intensity of someone who took her job very seriously. ‘Call me Cathy,’ she said, quickly studying both detectives.