The Death Sculptor (46 page)

Hunter was confused for a moment, until he saw the shadow image projected onto the far wall. It showed the silhouette of Scott’s head, tilted back, with his mouth open like he was mid-scream. The finger on the wire, a few feet from him, cast a shadow that looked like some sort of crooked cylindrical tube, positioned at an angle. Because of the absence of perceptible depth, it looked like one shadow was right in front of the other. The cylindrical tube was pointing down at Scott’s head-shadow – directly at his open mouth.

Right at that moment, the sound of distant sirens reached them. Hunter had called for backup before entering the warehouse, but from the sound, he knew they were at least three-to-five minutes away. Too long.

Olivia looked at Hunter. Her face displayed reassuring calmness. ‘I knew they were coming,’ she said, pointing the gun at Hunter again. ‘But you being alive when they get here will depend on how fast you can figure this last piece out.’

Hunter kept his eyes on the gun.

‘Don’t look at me. Look at the shadow.’

Hunter concentrated. His first impression was that the whole image looked like someone waiting with his mouth open under some sort of liquid dispenser, ready to drink from it. Was she going to pour something down his throat? Kill him that way? That would be a complete change from her entire MO so far. Confusion was all that was going on inside Hunter’s head.

The shot that came out of the gun in Olivia’s hand sounded like a nuclear explosion. The bullet hit the wall inches from Hunter’s head and he winced defensively, dropping the flashlight.

‘C’mon, c’mon, Robert,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be the clever one. The experienced cop. Can’t you work under pressure?’

The sirens were getting closer.

‘The shadows,’ she said. ‘Look at the shadows. Read them. ’Cos you’re time is about to run out.’

Hunter picked up the flashlight again. He was looking but he couldn’t see it. What the hell did all that mean?

Bang!

The second shot hit the wall to Hunter’s left. This time even closer to his face. Concrete shrapnel flew in all directions. Some of it grazed Hunter’s cheek, burning and ripping through his skin. He felt warm blood starting to run down his face, but he didn’t let go of the flashlight. His eyes were still on the shadows.

‘I promise you, Detective, the next shot
will
find your head.’ She took a step closer to him.

Hunter’s brain was trying to cope with the threat of dying in the next few seconds, while throwing possibilities around.

From the corner of his eye he saw Olivia aim the gun again.

He couldn’t think.

And then he saw it.

‘Recording,’ he said, as Olivia’s finger tightened on the trigger. The image was showing a microphone pointing down at Scott’s mouth, not a drinks dispenser. ‘You recorded it. While he was telling the story, you recorded the whole thing. A confession.’

Olivia lowered the gun. A smile almost stretched her lips. She raised her left hand, showing Hunter the mini digital-recording device. ‘I recorded them all. I made them tell me what happened every time. The stories are all identical. Their voices are all here, telling how they all took turns beating and raping my mother, before dismembering her, shoving her mutilated body into a box, and dumping her in the ocean. All except Andrew Nashorn. His jaw was broken. He couldn’t speak. But none of it matters anymore.’

Hunter couldn’t think of what to say.

Scott mumbled something incomprehensible and his eyes slowly flickered open.

‘Catch,’ Olivia said and threw the recording device to Hunter.

He caught it in mid-air. He stared at it for a moment, doubtful, before looking back at her.

‘You can keep it,’ she said.

‘This might help, but I won’t lie to you,’ Hunter said. ‘In our less-than-perfect justice system, it won’t make much difference, Olivia.’

‘I know. I already made the difference I wanted to make. I’ve had my justice.’ She gestured towards the recording device in Hunter’s hand. ‘I thought I would send that to the press, expose the whole thing. Not for me – I know what’s going to happen to me – but for my mother.’ Olivia wiped a tear from her eye before it could run down her cheek. ‘She deserved justice. Do whatever you think you should do with it.’ She placed Hunter’s gun on the floor and kicked it towards him.

‘Arrest that fucking bitch,’ Scott yelled from his seat. ‘And get me the fuck out of here, you moron.’ He started jerking his body in his chair. ‘That slut cut my fucking finger off, did you see that? I’m gonna make sure you fry in the chair, you hear me, you motherless bitch. My brother will rip you into little whore pieces in court.’

This time Hunter was faster than Olivia. The powerful punch he threw hit Scott square in the temple. He slumped to one side, knocked out cold for the second time.

‘He talks too much,’ Hunter said, facing Olivia and shrugging. ‘I have to arrest you. It’s my duty as a detective. But I won’t cuff you.’

This time the confusion was stamped on Olivia’s face.

‘We’re going to walk out of here, and you can hold your head up high.’ Hunter looked at Scott Bradley. ‘But I
will
cuff this slimeball.’

The rage was gone from Olivia’s eyes. ‘You are a good man, Robert, and a good cop. But I had this all planned out in my head from the start. There would only be one ending to my story. The director’s cut. And it doesn’t include an arrest.’

Hunter saw her throw something the size of a nickel inside her mouth, saw her jaw tense, and heard the crunching sound as she crushed it between her teeth before swallowing it down. He dashed towards her, but Olivia was already collapsing. She had taken fifty times the lethal dosage of cyanide.

By the time the LAPD took the warehouse, her heart had long stopped beating.

Hunter spent ninety minutes taking Garcia, Captain Blake, and Alice through everything that had happened since last night.

‘I must admit,’ Alice said to Hunter. ‘When you called me and asked me to get into the California Department of Social Services’ database and search for adoption files for Olivia, I thought it was quite a strange request, but her being a suspect never, ever crossed my mind. The only odd thing I found was how fast the whole process took. California adoption laws are very lenient,’ Alice explained. ‘The only true prerequisite is that the adoptee has to be at least ten years younger than the adopter. Derek Nicholson had just graduated from law school. He’d made many friends in the judicial system and he knew a great many people.’

‘Judges,’ Garcia said.

‘Them too. With his contacts and knowledge of the law, he was able to fast-track everything. A typical adoption process in California can last anywhere from six months to a year. Derek Nicholson got all the documentation and everything approved in less than ninety days, no questions asked, everything seemingly above board.’

‘To circumvent the law, one needs to know the law,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s true,’ Alice agreed. ‘And with powerful friends, anything is possible.’

‘OK, but how did you know Olivia would go after the next victim tonight?’ Garcia asked.

‘I didn’t. All I had were suspicions, so I gambled.’ Hunter ran the tip of his fingers over the two cuts on his left cheek. He’d refused any bandaging.

‘Gambled?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘I dropped by Olivia’s house this morning unannounced, with the excuse that I had some new information, and I wanted to ask her a few more questions. When Garcia and I talked to Olivia and her sister last night, I asked them for a photograph of their father when he was younger. Allison had an old wedding picture, which was on a sideboard in her living room.
Olivia
handed it to me. As she held the frame and looked at the picture, I saw something in her eyes. Some strong emotion, which I’d thought was grief. This morning when I dropped by her house, I handed the picture back to her, and her eyes burned with it again. It wasn’t grief. It was something much deeper, much more pained.’ Hunter rubbed his eyes for an instant. ‘That was when I asked her if her father ever played shadow puppets with her or her sister when they were kids.’

‘You were letting her know that we knew about the real meaning behind the sculptures,’ Alice said.

Hunter nodded. ‘But Olivia played it really cool. She pretended to be surprised by the odd question, but she gave me nothing else. Then I asked her if her mother ever had, and her coolness wavered for just an instant. Her eyes focused on nothing at all, and for a split second her expression softened to something tender, before hardening in a way I hadn’t seen before. And that was when I decided to gamble. I told Olivia that during the night we had come across a new development. We were now sure that the killer had only one more name on his list. I told her that we would have that last victim’s name in twenty-four hours. And when we did, we would put him under constant surveillance.’

Garcia smiled. ‘In other words, if you were right and she was the Sculptor killer, you’d just told her that she had to act in the next twenty-four hours if she wanted to get to the next victim before we did. You forced her to move things forward.’

Hunter nodded again. ‘But I had no time to come back to the PAB and file a request for a surveillance team. I had no grounds to justify that request, either. All I had were suspicions and a nickname.’

‘So you decided to break protocol again and become the surveillance team yourself,’ Captain Blake said; but there was no harshness in her tone.

‘For twenty-four hours,’ Hunter agreed.

‘So what did she do?’ Alice asked.

‘Olivia didn’t leave her house for most of the day.’

‘She was probably re-planning,’ Captain Blake said.

‘When she left, she drove straight to Woodland Hills, where she met up with Scott Bradley in a parking lot. He left his car and jumped in with her.’

Everyone frowned.

‘My guess,’ Hunter said, ‘is that Olivia had already made contact with Scott in the last few days. He is married, but he has a weakness for pretty women, especially if they tell him they are submissive. Olivia knew how to entice him. I’m sure she’d been grooming him for days.’

‘And that explains her change in MO,’ Garcia said. ‘All the previous murder scenes had been a place where the victim felt comfortable and secure – Nicholson’s house, Nashorn’s boat, and Littlewood’s office. Scott Bradley had a wife and two daughters, which made using his house that much harder. He didn’t have a private office either. He was a market broker, working from a large open-plan floor with tens of other people.’

Hunter agreed.

‘So all she had to do was call him and tell him she wanted to meet him tonight,’ Alice said. ‘I’m sure he would’ve dropped whatever he had planned for the evening.’

‘She never intended to walk out of this alive, did she? Even if she hadn’t been caught,’ Captain Blake said. ‘She knew she wasn’t going to prison. She knew she wasn’t going to carry on living either.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘When Derek Nicholson told her the truth,’ Alice said. ‘He condemned her psychologically, giving her much more than she could cope with. If you were suddenly told you’d been lied to your entire life, that your mother was brutally murdered, dismembered, and disposed of like unwanted trash – if you were told the names of everyone responsible, but knew that they’d never been punished, and that they never would be, what would you do? How could you ever have a normal life again with that knowledge swinging back and forth in your head? For her, to carry on living would’ve been a torture, in prison or not.’

‘Olivia gave up her life so her mother could have justice,’ Hunter said. ‘A justice that our system would never have given either of them. In the end, those men killed mother
and
daughter.’

Thorned silence spiked the air.

‘I know we did what was expected of us,’ Captain Blake said, shaking her head. ‘But maybe we should’ve moved a little slower. If Olivia Nicholson had succeeded in taking out all four victims, I wouldn’t have minded it. Not in the least. That scumbag Scott Bradley got away easy, minus a finger. He deserves worse. And he’s saying that you knocked him out cold.’

Hunter stayed silent.

‘Well, the way I see it,’ the captain proceeded. ‘He was under immense stress. Things can easily get distorted under those circumstances. What happened was that he simply imagined you punching him.’ She paused and her eyes moved around the room. ‘Yep, that answer sounds great to me.’

Garcia then told Hunter what had happened in Pomona. Ken Sands had been arrested, and Garcia would now contact Detective Ricky Corbí, the detective running the investigation into Tito’s murder. Sands was the prime suspect.

It was the middle of the night by the time Hunter finished all the paperwork. He went downstairs and placed everything on Captain Blake’s desk, ready for her the next morning.

His cellphone rang in his pocket and he reached for it.

‘Detective Hunter.’

‘Robert, it’s Alice.’

Hunter had been so busy filling out reports, he hadn’t seen Alice pack all her things and leave hours earlier.

‘I’m just calling to say that it was nice seeing you again,’ she said. ‘And that it was quite an experience working with you.’

‘Yeah, it was great seeing you again too.’

‘Even though you didn’t remember me at all.’

Hunter was quiet for a couple of seconds. ‘Hey, you’re not going to be a stranger, are you? You’re still working for the Los Angeles DA, right?’

‘Yeah, I’m still working for the DA.’

Awkward silence.

Hunter checked his watch. ‘Are you busy? Would you like to go get a drink?’

‘Now?’ The surprise in Alice’s voice wasn’t due to the late hour.

‘Yeah. I’m almost done here. And I could really use a drink.’

Hesitation.

‘And the company,’ Hunter added.

‘Yes, I’d love to get a drink.’

Hunter smiled. ‘How about we meet at the Edison in the Higgins Building on 2nd and Main?’