Gallery of the Dead

Fifteen

Captain Blake took a moment, allowing her thoughts to try to catch up with what Hunter and Garcia were suggesting. It didn’t take an expert to read the hesitation in her demeanor.

‘As Carlos has pointed out, Captain,’ Hunter said, grabbing her attention again. ‘It’s way too early in the investigation to assume anything with any degree of certainty. All this really means is that we’ll all have to keep an open mind here. Someone who is capable of something like this, will, I’m sure, also have a very distorted vision of reality.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ the captain said. Very little ever made sense at the LAPD’s Violent Crimes Unit.

‘So who is she?’ Captain Blake asked, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Do we have any background info on her yet?’

‘We do, but nothing in great detail,’ Garcia replied, reaching for the notepad on his desk. ‘Her name was Linda Parker, born on March ninth, 1994 in Harbor City. She was the only child of Emily and Vincent Parker. Emily was a housewife and Vincent an accountant running his own private firm in Rolling Hills. Linda went to Newport Harbor high school, where she graduated in 2011. Apparently she managed to escape most of the downfalls of puberty because she started modeling for catalogs when she was only thirteen years old. In school, she was voted Newport Harbor Prom Queen for three consecutive years. As a senior she was also voted “most likely to become a supermodel”. By the time she graduated from high school, she was doing quite well as a catalog model, bringing in nearly as much money as her father. After high school, she decided to skip going to college to concentrate on her modeling career. I guess the main idea was to move on to international modeling and big-name designers. She managed to land a few catwalk spots on some well-known international fashion shows, all of them in Europe, but the big top-model career was still to materialize.’

‘When you say catalogs,’ Captain Blake asked, ‘what do you mean?’

Garcia flipped a page on his notepad. ‘Clothes, shoes, swimwear, sportswear, lingerie, jewelry — that sort of thing. Like I said, we don’t have anything in much detail at the moment, but we have a team working on it.’

‘Any X-rated material?’ the captain asked.

‘Not from what we found out so far.’

‘Nevertheless, she was a model,’ the captain said. ‘That was her profession.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So I’m assuming that she probably had fans.’

‘Yes, and quite a lot of them,’ Garcia confirmed, checking his notes once again. ‘She had a very prominent online presence. All the usual suspects — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even a YouTube channel where she gave viewers tips about makeup, hair styling and fashion. In total, over a quarter of a million followers.’

Captain Blake used two fingers to massage her left temple. She could already feel a headache coming on.

‘Over a quarter of a million followers?’ she said, making a face. ‘That blows the scope wide open, doesn’t it? Because correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t a murder where the killer specifically disfigures the victim, especially the face, suggest an obsession with her? More specifically, with the way she looked, with how pretty she was.’ Her eyes paused on Hunter for confirmation.

‘Theoretically, yes,’ he agreed.

‘So with that many followers,’ the captain continued, ‘with all her social-media exposure, photos, videos, catalogs and who knows what else, any number of those followers could’ve developed such an obsession; isn’t that so? And out of those, any number of them could’ve been psychopathic enough to carry out a murder of this magnitude. We all know how crazy fans can get.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed again. ‘Because the victim was a celebrity in her own right with so many fans, the scope for who the killer might be is wide open. An obsessed but disillusioned fan with psychopathic tendencies could’ve very well been capable of something like this. And since the advent of the internet, with more and more social-media websites popping up everywhere, developing obsessions, not only toward celebrities but anyone, really, has become a lot easier.’

‘Great!’ Captain Blake said. ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand possible suspects spread all around the world. You guys should have this wrapped up in no time, then. Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend? A lover?’

‘She wasn’t married,’ Garcia replied. ‘And according to her mother, she wasn’t seeing anyone either, but we’ll dig a little deeper into it.’

The captain stood up and took a couple of steps back to get a wider view of the board.

‘Beauty is all around her,’ she said to herself, now fully considering the half theory Garcia had suggested.

‘That’s what the killer wrote,’ Garcia reaffirmed. ‘Which means that he’s clearly trying to tell us something.’

‘I get that,’ Captain Blake agreed. ‘But why write the message in Latin?’

‘We’re not sure,’ Hunter replied.

‘Care to venture a guess?’

Hunter stayed quiet, but Garcia didn’t.

‘It could be a clue to where he’s from,’ he said.

The captain turned to face him, pondering that idea for a second. ‘In which way, Carlos?’

‘You’ve said so a moment ago — over two hundred and fifty thousand fans spread all over the world. A hurt, disillusioned and psychotic enough fan could’ve flown in from anywhere, killed her, and since her body wasn’t discovered for a couple of days, be back to where he came from by now. In which instance, we’ll probably never catch him.’

Captain Blake’s thoughtful look deepened.

‘A less pessimistic scenario,’ Hunter added, ‘is that this is LA, one of the most diverse cities on the planet when it comes to its residents’ nationalities. Maybe her killer lives here, but isn’t an American citizen.’

‘But Latin isn’t spoken anywhere anymore,’ the captain came back. ‘So to follow this line of thought, by carving his message in Latin he’s telling us what? He’s from Italy? Latin America?’

‘It could be,’ Hunter said.

Captain Blake brought her right thumb and index finger to her forehead. Yes, she thought. A headache is definitely on its way. She considered not asking her next question, but her curiosity proved too strong. ‘So why the message? Just to give us a hint of where he’s from?’

Both detectives stayed quiet.

‘Anybody?’ she pushed.

‘Delusions of grandeur,’ Garcia suggested.

‘I’m sorry?’ Captain Blake turned to face him.

‘Delusions of grandeur, Captain. One of the main traits of psychopaths. You know this. They see themselves as superior to everyone else. They think they are more intelligent, better looking, stronger, more talented, more creative, smarter, and so on. Due to such delusions, a great number of them also believe that whatever it is that they’re doing... whatever it is that they’re trying to achieve with their murders, just can’t be understood by us, mere mortals, because our vision and intellect doesn’t reach as high as theirs.’ He paused, once again giving the captain a moment. ‘The killer knew, and rightly so, that no one in their sane mind would see that crime scene as a work of art, unless he told us to.’

Garcia indicated a couple of photos on the board.

‘These carvings on her back,’ he continued. ‘This is him telling us that those aren’t just blood smears on the walls. They are brush strokes. The message on the victim’s back could be more than just a taunt. It could be his signature on a canvas. He could be gloating. Praising his own work.’

Captain Blake let go of a heavy breath. The more she looked at the photos on the board, the less crazy the art-piece theory appeared. She knew that if this had been an absurd crime of passion, a murder for revenge, a robbery gone wrong, an explosion of bad temper, even a sick and sadistic rape act, with a little stretch of the imagination, maybe the bloody mess around the room could have been expected — but not the carvings on the victim’s back.

In silence she walked the length of the board, her eyes moving from photograph to photograph.

‘Cause of death?’ she asked.

‘Probably bled out,’ Garcia replied. ‘But that’s not official.’

‘So that’s why you requested a Level Zero autopsy.’ Captain Blake addressed Hunter. ‘Because if this nut-job has really done all this just to create some demented art, then one thing is for sure: this guy didn’t jump on a plane and go back to where he came from. If this freak thinks he’s creating art, then we all know that this isn’t going to be his solo “piece”, don’t we? If we don’t stop him soon, this isn’t going to end here. This is going to turn serial.’

Hunter’s concerned stare met his captain’s.

‘That’s what worries me. There’s a possibility that it already has.’