The Death Sculptor (20 page)

‘Sorry to interrupt.’ Her eyes circled the room, making sure she had everyone’s attention. ‘But I think I finally got something.’

DA Bradley motioned Alice into the office as if it were his own. He waited for her to close the door behind her.

‘So what have you got?’ he asked, throwing the autopsy-report copy on Captain Blake’s desk.

‘I’ve spent all morning going through the long list of names of criminals who were prosecuted by Derek Nicholson.’ She nodded at Hunter. ‘This time I went back fifteen years. I looked for links concerning the two victims. Mainly someone who’d been apprehended by Nashorn, and subsequently prosecuted by Nicholson.’ She fetched four sheets of paper from the green plastic folder she had with her and handed one to each person in the room. ‘Out of all the criminals Nashorn busted in the twelve years he was a detective, Nicholson prosecuted thirty-seven of them.’

Everyone’s attention moved to the names on the list.

‘Thirty-seven? There are only twenty-nine names here,’ DA Bradley said, his eyebrows rising slightly.

‘That’s because I did a preliminary check on the initial thirty-seven,’ Alice clarified. ‘Eight have already died. The problem is, all thirty-seven of them were just your average street criminal – armed robbery, mugging, drug dealing, sex exploitation, aggravated assaults, gang members, that kind of thing. When I checked their background, I got nothing but school dropouts and poorly educated people who came from broken homes and abusive parents. People with explosive tempers who just don’t fit the pattern.’

‘What pattern are you talking about?’ the DA asked.

‘The pathologist’s report from Nicholson’s autopsy suggested that the killer had some sort of medical knowledge,’ Alice explained.

‘That was further confirmed after Nashorn’s examination this morning,’ Garcia added.

‘So that would back up my argument,’ Alice proceeded. ‘The criminals on this list don’t have the level of education needed to be able to commit the kind of murders we’re investigating. They just wouldn’t have the knowledge, the patience, or the determination to dismember a victim and create the sculptures.’

‘So what you’re saying is that none of the names on this list is worth investigating?’ Captain Blake said with lilt in her voice. ‘So what’s the point in handing it to us?’ She dropped the list on her desk carelessly.

‘No,’ Alice shot back in the same tone. ‘What I’m saying is that that’s my opinion. I compiled the list because that was my job. In all the years I’ve worked for the DA’s office, one thing I’ve learned is that time is a precious commodity in any investigation. But if you have the resources and the time to investigate all twenty-nine names on that list, then please be my guest.’

DA Bradley smiled like a proud father as he looked at Captain Blake. The only thing missing was the sentence ‘That’s my girl’.

Hunter saw a muscle flex on the captain’s jaw. ‘But this isn’t what you’re excited about,’ he quickly intervened. ‘You found something else, didn’t you?’

A new glint brightened Alice’s eyes. ‘After I finished going over that list, I had an idea. I thought that maybe we could look at this from a different angle.’

‘And which angle is that?’ The captain’s voice was still dry.

Alice moved over to the edge of the captain’s desk. ‘What if the person we’re looking for is linked to only one of the victims, not both?’

Everyone considered it for a heartbeat.

‘But then why kill the other one?’ Garcia asked.

Alice lifted her right index finger, as if to say ‘That’s the key question.’

‘Because the link is somewhere else.’ She didn’t give anyone a chance to question her. ‘With that in mind, I quickly wrote an application that would search through the DA’s database – specifically cases handled by Nicholson. It would then try and link the results, in any way, to any criminals who had been apprehended by Nashorn over the years.’

‘What criteria did you use?’ Hunter asked.

Alice subtly tilted her head to one side and shrugged. ‘That was my problem. The scope can be quite wide, so I decided to start with something simple, something Robert had suggested before – family or relatives, prioritizing anyone who had been released or paroled recently.’ She paused and bobbed her head from side to side. ‘Well, not so recently, I went back five years for starters.’

‘And . . . ?’ Captain Blake placed her right elbow on the arm of her swivel chair and lightly rested her chin on her knuckles.

‘And I might’ve gotten lucky, because a very strong candidate came up.’

Alice let a subtle smile curve the ends of her lips before retrieving four copies of a printed mugshot from her green plastic folder.

‘This is Alfredo Ortega.’

She handed everyone a copy. The photo looked old. Its subject had an asymmetrical face with a squared jaw, a pointy nose, ears that looked too small for his head, crooked teeth, and thick lips – not exactly an attractive man. His hair was midnight black and long, falling past his shoulders.

‘OK,’ the captain said. ‘He’s sinister-looking enough. What’s his story?’

‘Well, Mr. Ortega was an American citizen of Mexican origin. He used to work as a stacker and forklift driver in a warehouse in southeast LA. He was a big guy – six foot four, and two hundred and forty pounds. The kind of guy you don’t really mess with. One rainy day in August, he wasn’t feeling too good, apparently something he ate. In the afternoon, his boss took pity on him and told him to take the rest of the day off. Ortega had been married for two years then – no kids. He got home earlier than usual to find his wife, Pam, in bed with another man. Actually, a drinking buddy of his.’

Garcia screwed up his face. ‘Damn, that can’t be good.’

Alice shifted her weight from foot to foot before continuing. ‘Instead of freaking out and losing his temper, he left them alone, drove several towns over to his wife’s family’s house in San Bernardino, killed her mother, her father, her grandmother, and her younger brother. He didn’t touch their dog. After the bloodbath, he decapitated them and left their heads on the dining table.’

Four pairs of concerned eyes moved from the photo printout to Alice. She let the suspense stretch for a moment.

‘Ortega then drove back to LA and to his friend’s house, the one who’d been sleeping with his wife. By then, his friend was back home with his own wife and kid, who was only five.’ Alice paused and took a deep breath. ‘He killed them all the same way he killed his wife’s family – with a machete. Left their heads on the kitchen worktop. After that, he calmly took a shower in their house and had some food from their fridge. Only then did he return home. He made love to his wife before hacking her head off.’

Everyone was staring at Alice almost catatonically.

‘Wow . . . that’s an
inspiring
story,’ Garcia said with a deflated breath. ‘How long ago was this?’

‘Twenty-one years ago. He didn’t resist the arrest or anything. When he was caught, he pleaded innocent by reason of temporary insanity. That’s why there was a jury court. Derek Nicholson was the prosecutor.’

Stunned silence.

‘I remember the case,’ DA Bradley announced.

‘Was Nashorn the arresting officer?’ Garcia asked.

‘He couldn’t have been,’ Hunter said, shaking his head. ‘That was twenty-one years ago, Carlos. Nashorn wasn’t a detective then.’

‘Wait a second.’ Captain Blake placed the printout down on her desk. ‘You said that in your search criteria you requested people released or paroled in the past five years. Are you telling me that this charmer has been released? How?’

‘No.’ Alice shook her head. ‘The jury was unanimous. Ortega got the death penalty. He was on death row for sixteen years. He died by lethal injection five years ago.’

Puzzled looks all round.

That was the last of Captain Blake’s patience. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ She slammed the printout against her desk as she got up, her gaze making rounds between Alice and the DA. ‘First a list of names that you think we shouldn’t really look into, now a photo of someone who’s already dead. What the hell is this, “waste the LAPD’s time” day? What sort of morons do you have working for you, Dwayne?’

‘The kind that could dance circles around the morons you have in your department, Barbara.’ DA Bradley motioned his head in Hunter and Garcia’s direction.

‘Alfredo Ortega is the link I found on Nicholson’s side,’ Alice replied in an even voice, not allowing the argument to heat up any further, and fetching a new photo printout from her folder. She handed a copy around to everyone once again. ‘Now let me introduce you to Ken Sands.’

The new mugshot looked a lot more recent than the one from Ortega. The man on it looked to be in his mid-twenties. His skin had a golden tone attributed more to heavy sunbathing than ethnicity. His cheeks were pitted like a sponge from acne scars, probably dating back to his teens. His eyes were so dark they were almost black. He had the spaced-out stare of an intravenous drug user, but there was something else in those challenging eyes – something cold and frightening. Something evil. His dark hair was cropped short, and he had the confident smile of someone who knew he’d get revenge some day.

‘OK, and what does this Ken Sands bring to the party?’ Garcia asked.

Alice smiled a cheeky smile. ‘Quite a lot.’

‘Sands grew up with Ortega in Paramount,’ Alice read out of a new document. ‘They were best friends. Neither had any brothers or sisters, and that brought them even closer together. They both came from poor families. Sands’s father drank a lot, so life in his house wasn’t exactly perfect. Sands hated being home. He hated his father and the beatings he used to get from him. He spent most of his time out on the streets and with Ortega. Soon they started getting involved with drugs, gangs, fights – you know the drill.’

The phone on Captain Blake’s desk rang and she reached for it. ‘Not now.’ She slammed the phone back down. ‘Carry on.’

Alice coughed to clear her throat. ‘Sands and Ortega went to Paramount High School. Ortega was a below-average student, but Sands, despite being disruptive, had better grades than most would expect. Getting accepted into college wouldn’t have been a problem if he had wanted, and had the means. But their street life was already escalating into a criminal one, and when they were seventeen they both got busted for auto theft and possession of marijuana. That cost them a year in juvie hall.

‘Their quick spell inside rattled Ortega. He decided he didn’t really want to carry on with that life. He met Pam soon after he was released. They got married a couple of years later. Though he was still a drug user, he got a job at the warehouse, as I said, and everything indicated that he was leaving the street life behind.’

‘But not Sands,’ Hunter deduced.

A quick headshake. ‘Not Sands. He carried on as a petty criminal for a while after he was released, but in juvie he made quite a few contacts. Before you knew it, he was dealing drugs in a major way.’

‘How did you come by all this information so fast?’ Garcia asked.

‘The DA’s office keeps extensive files on everyone we prosecute,’ Alice replied, nodding at Bradley and flipping a page on her report. ‘One night, Sands got back home drunk and high, had
another
row with his girlfriend, Gina Valdez, and things got out of hand. He lost his head, grabbed a baseball bat, and put Gina in hospital with a beating that left her a breath away from death. She had a few broken bones, a fractured skull, and she lost the sight in her left eye.’

‘What a pleasant guy,’ Garcia said, leaning against the window.

‘You said your application was looking for links between family and relatives,’ Hunter cut in. ‘How did you manage to link Sands to Ortega?’

‘With his wife murdered, Ortega listed Ken Sands as his next of kin after he got the death penalty,’ Alice clarified. ‘As I said, they were like brothers when young. You suggested that we searched for family members, gang members, anyone on the outside who could seek revenge on someone else’s behalf. Well, Ken Sands certainly fits that category.’

‘No arguments there,’ Garcia said.

‘But here’s where it gets good,’ Alice added. ‘Andrew Nashorn was the detective who arrested Sands.’

It felt as if static electricity had been let loose in the room for a moment.

‘Sands’s girlfriend, Gina, was petrified of him, and rightly so. He’d beaten her up before, many times, it transpired. Nashorn was the one who managed to convince her to press charges when she was well enough. Sands was charged with aggravated battery to a live-in partner with the use of a deadly weapon.

‘Which is a felony according to California Penal Code 245,’ DA Bradley added.

Alice nodded. ‘Add to that the fact that when he was apprehended he was high and carrying over a kilo of heroin, and you get a nine-and-a-half-years prison sentence. He went to the California State Prison in Lancaster.’

‘How long ago was that?’ the captain asked.

‘Ten years. And apparently, after his sentence was read out, and before being taken away by the court officers, Sands had time to look back at Nashorn, who was sitting just behind the state prosecutor, and utter the words – “I’ll be coming for you”
.
’ Alice placed the report on Captain Blake’s desk. ‘He was released six months ago.’

Time seemed to halt for several seconds.

‘Do we have an address for him?’ Hunter asked.

‘Just his old home address. Sands wasn’t paroled, he served his sentence – clean release, no need to report to a parole officer, or a judge, or anything. No restrictions either. He can even leave the country if he wants to.’

‘OK,’ Captain Blake said, looking back at the printout on her desk. ‘Let’s find him ASAP and have a little chat with him.’ She motioned for Alice to hand over her folder and the report.

‘Until we find him,’ DA Bradley said, ‘let’s keep this as quiet as possible. I don’t want any of this leaking to the press, or anyone.’ He looked at Hunter and Garcia as if they’d publicize the new finding as soon as they left the room. ‘And I mean
anyone
. We’ve got a prosecutor and a cop murdered. Every police officer, every law-enforcement agency in Los Angeles, is itching to get their hands on any suspect we may have. This gets out, and we’re going to have a fucking manhunt on a scale none of us has ever seen before. So not a goddamn word to anyone. Am I clear?’