Gallery of the Dead

Thirty-One

The new photo Agent Williams placed on Hunter’s desk hadn’t come from Kristine Rivers’ crime scene. It came from her postmortem examination. Her body had been washed clean and moved onto a large stainless-steel autopsy table. It was lying on its front.

‘Looks familiar?’ Though Kennedy’s question was to everyone, his gaze landed on Captain Blake.

‘I’ll be damned,’ she replied.

Carved into Kristine Rivers’ back was what looked to be a carbon copy of the carvings the killer had made on Linda Parker’s back — a seemingly odd combination of letters and symbols, forming four distinct lines, though everyone in that room already knew that those symbols would turn out to be badly drawn letters.

There were six characters in the first line, five in the second, seven in the third, and five again in the fourth and last one. The killer had once again used only straight-line slashes to create his letters, no curves. The markings began approximately two inches below Kristine Rivers’ shoulders and ended about an inch above her buttocks. Just like the ones carved into Linda Parker’s back, each letter was about two to three inches high and about one and a half inches long.

‘The LA victim,’ Agent Williams asked. ‘When was her body discovered?’

‘She was murdered on Monday evening,’ Garcia replied. ‘But her body was only discovered late last night.’

Agent Williams paused. ‘Late last night? What time did you guys get to the crime scene?’

Despite failing to see the relevance of the question, Garcia looked at Hunter for confirmation. ‘About nine thirty, maybe a quarter to ten. Why?’

‘A quarter to ten? The surprise in Agent Williams’ voice was reciprocated on the look Agent Fisher gave the LAPD detectives.

Kennedy, on the other hand, knowing why both agents looked surprised, held back on a smile.

‘OK,’ Agent Williams began. ‘I know you have already figured out that despite these carvings looking like a strange combination of letters and symbols, they are actually just badly drawn letters that when put together correctly will form a sentence... in Latin. And the reason I know that is because someone from this office, at around two o’clock this morning, tried searching the VICAP database for a similar perpetrator signature — a killer who leaves messages, in Latin, carved somewhere on his victim’s body.’

Garcia and Captain Blake both looked at Hunter.

The guilty look on his face was accompanied by a subtle nod.

‘So the mystery is finally solved,’ Captain Blake said.

‘What mystery is that?’ Agent Williams enquired.

‘Well, since our victim’s body was only discovered late last night and we did not request any help from the Bureau, I was wondering how the FBI found out about it so fast. So this was how. You were monitoring the VICAP database.’

‘Correct,’ Agent Williams admitted. ‘Any searches containing certain words or combinations of them, get flagged up and we are notified immediately.’

‘Not only monitoring it,’ Hunter intervened. ‘They were also filtering its responses, because no matter how I phrased my search, I got zero matches.’

‘Correct again,’ Agent Williams agreed. ‘We suppressed the results coming out of VICAP. We didn’t want anyone else knowing that this guy had killed before.’

‘That’s one of the many perks of being with the Bureau, Robert,’ Kennedy cut in. ‘The power to do things that regular police departments cannot.’

Hunter gave him a sideways look.

‘Anyway,’ Agent Williams said, bringing everyone’s attention back to him. ‘So you’re telling me that you guys figured out that these carvings created a sentence in Latin in the space of just three, maybe four hours?’

‘Three or four hours?’ Garcia asked, making sure that the surprise in his voice was noted. ‘It took us about a minute.’ He looked at Hunter. ‘Maybe less. I think you called it at the scene in just a few seconds, didn’t you?’

Hunter didn’t reply.

‘What?’ Agent Fisher asked, turning around and looking at the picture board one more time. ‘At the crime scene? With all this dried-up blood on her back muddling everything up even more? Get real. There’s no way.’

Kennedy bit his bottom lip. The suppressed smile was still there.

‘Why?’ Garcia asked. ‘How long did it take you guys to figure that one out?’

Agent Fisher cleared her throat, but said nothing. Instead, she looked at Agent Williams.

‘About eight hours.’ The reply came from Kennedy.

‘Seven actually, sir,’ Agent Williams corrected the director as if he had made the gravest of errors.

Still, both FBI agents looked a little uncomfortable.

‘Well,’ Garcia said, staring straight at Kennedy. ‘That’s one of the many perks of being with a police department. We think faster.’

‘All right,’ Kennedy said, pinning Garcia down with a stare that could crack a mirror. ‘This kind of childish behavior has got to stop.’

‘Just saying.’

‘Now, Detective Garcia.’

‘Put a fucking lid on it, Carlos,’ Captain Blake said. ‘No more, do you hear me? Another sarcastic comment out of you and I will be transferring you into another unit, which means you’re out of this investigation. Is that clear enough for you?’

He lifted up both hands in surrender.

‘The dog-house keys are hanging just outside the door,’ Agent Fisher said.

‘How about we get back to what really matters here?’ Hunter suggested.

‘You took the words right out of my mouth, Robert,’ Kennedy said, before addressing Captain Blake. ‘So I guess this settles the argument that we are indeed talking about the same perpetrator here.’

The captain agreed with a nod.

From the way Hunter was looking at the photographs, Garcia and Kennedy could tell that in his mind he was already working everything out. As his eyes moved from knife slash to knife slash, Hunter first put the straight-line cuts together to form the missing letters before grouping them into each of the four lines.

‘Pulchritudo in coniunctio,’ he read out loud.

There was no disguising Agent Williams and Agent Fisher’s surprise.

As Hunter read the Latin phrase out loud, Garcia and Captain Blake squinted at the photo on his desk, trying to see what he’d seen.

Hunter moved his right index finger over the picture to show them how the lines connected, before linking the words.

‘You frighten me sometimes, Robert, do you know that?’ Captain Blake commented.

‘All right,’ Garcia said with a nod. ‘I see it but I don’t understand it. What does it mean?’

‘Beauty is in the... combination... relationship... connection...’ Hunter replied. ‘It could be any of those. The Latin language has a very limited vocabulary. A single word, when translated into English, could have five, six, seven different meanings. Sometimes more. It all depends on the context.’

‘That’s correct,’ Agent Fisher jumped in. ‘But we believe that in this case the killer meant “relationship” — “Beauty is in the relationship”.’

Garcia scratched his forehead. ‘Well, that sure as hell isn’t the same phrase we got.’ He indicated the board.

Everyone in the room turned to face it.

‘The truth is,’ Kennedy said, ‘we weren’t really expecting it to be. It seems like the killer changes the Latin phrase with each murder.’

Agent Fisher was staring at the pictures of Linda Parker’s back a lot harder than anyone else, clearly trying to make out the phrase the killer had carved into her body, but straight away she encountered one big problem. Hunter hadn’t had time to put up the official autopsy photographs yet. The ones on the board were taken at the crime scene, showing the carvings partially covered by dried blood, which made identifying the cuts, the letters and the words considerably harder. Still, she gave it her best try.

‘The first word is the same — Pulchritudo.’ She indicated with her finger. ‘Which means “beauty”. Then we have a “c” then an “r...” No. “C” then an “i” then a “p...” No.’

‘Pulchritudo Circumdat Eius,’ Hunter said.

Agent Fisher looked at him with fire in her eyes. ‘I was getting there. I just needed a little more time.’

‘My Latin is rusty,’ Kennedy said with a shrug.

‘It means “beauty is all around her”, sir.’ Agent Fisher translated it.

Immediately Kennedy seemed to enter pensive mode. His eyes focused on nothing at all as the gears inside his head began working overtime. Hunter recognized the blank look on his face.

‘Not now, Adrian,’ he said, dragging Kennedy away from his thoughts. ‘You guys were supposed to be bringing us up to speed, remember? Once we have everything, then we can all sit down and try to understand the connection between the Latin phrases the killer has used for each victim, if there really is a connection. But for now, we still have quite a lot of ground to cover.’ He addressed Agent Williams. ‘You said that Linda Parker was his third victim, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So let’s keep on going here. We’ll revisit everything once all the facts are out.’

‘Agreed,’ Kennedy said.

Everyone else in the room nodded.

‘All right.’ Agent Williams took over again. ‘So, moving on... as you can see from the photographs, her killer not only scalped her, but he also removed both of her eyes. According to Dr. Ramos, the pathologist who performed the autopsy back in Detroit — and this was later confirmed by one of our own pathologists in Quantico — this was no amateur job. The scalping isn’t a very difficult or technical procedure, but the extraction of the eyes is, and this killer has performed an exenteration to professional standards.’

‘Exenteration?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘The removal of the ocular globe together with all of the contents of the eye socket,’ Hunter explained. ‘Eyelids, muscles, lacrimal glands, optic nerves, everything. That’s why all that was left behind were two empty holes.’

Both FBI agents looked at Hunter curiously.

‘I read a lot,’ he clarified.

‘I’m sure you do,’ Agent Fisher commented.

Kennedy shuffled his weight from one foot to another in a fidgety way for two reasons. One — he wasn’t a man who was used to being on his feet for such a long time, and two — he could pretty much kill for a cigarette right then.

‘But that wasn’t the cause of death, right?’ Garcia asked. ‘She wasn’t alive when the killer took her eyes.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ Kennedy confirmed.

‘Let me guess,’ Garcia continued. ‘Asphyxiation, but not by strangulation. She was suffocated.’

‘Was it the same here?’ Agent Williams asked, his head tilting in the direction of the board.

Garcia nodded. ‘In our case, her hands, feet and skin were taken from her after she passed, not while she was still alive. According to Dr. Hove, the Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner, despite how brutal that crime scene looks, the victim wasn’t tortured. She didn’t suffer.’

‘That was exactly what the postmortem revealed in Kristine Rivers’ case as well,’ Agent Williams agreed. ‘No torture. No suffering. She was suffocated. The exenteration and the scalping came later.’ From his blue folder he retrieved Kristine Rivers’ autopsy report and placed it on the desk.

‘How about victim number two?’ Hunter asked. ‘I know we haven’t got there yet and I don’t want to jump the gun here, but was the victim also suffocated?’

‘Yes. Just like Kristine Rivers. No torture. No suffering.’

‘So we’ve made a wrong assumption,’ Hunter said.

‘Which assumption was that?’ Kennedy asked.

‘About the killer’s MO being different from one murder to the other. It’s not. It’s the same across the board. He suffocates his victims. What differs is his signatures, both in what he does to them after they pass and in the messages he leaves behind.’

Everyone paused for a heartbeat.

‘Did forensics find anything at the crime scene?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘Nothing that could give us any leads,’ Kennedy replied. ‘Kristine’s body was found inside an old and disused shed by the river. The shed had been out of operation for many years, during which it was used by hobos as a shelter, by addicts as a shooting-up spot, and God knows who else and for what else. There was a lot of debris, dirt and rubbish everywhere, which gave forensics a bucketful of fingerprints. They also recovered DNA from urine stains, discarded needles, used rubbers and other sources. Through those we were able to identify and track down several individuals. Through them we tracked down several more.’ He shook his head. ‘All of them were either homeless or junkies. No one with the kind of knowledge or skill required to pull off something of this magnitude.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Hunter asked.

Agent Fisher peeked at Kennedy before replying. ‘No. Miss Rivers wasn’t touched that way.’

‘Why?’ Kennedy asked, his voice full of concern. ‘Was the LA victim raped?’

Hunter locked eyes with the NCAVC director. ‘No, she wasn’t sexually assaulted either.’

The room went silent again for a couple more seconds.

‘Any more questions?’ Agent Williams asked. ‘Or am I OK to carry on?’

‘Let’s carry on,’ Hunter suggested.

‘All right,’ the agent continued, pushing all the photographs on Hunter’s desk to one side. ‘Our killer’s second victim.’ He returned to his blue folder.

‘Wait a second,’ Garcia interrupted him. ‘How about the rest of the photographs?’

‘What rest of the photographs?’ Agent Fisher asked.

‘The crime-scene ones from the disused shed? The blood on the walls?’

‘What?’

‘There was no blood on the walls, right?’ Hunter asked, reading their puzzled looks. Once again, he called everyone’s attention back to the picture board. ‘Unlike Kristine Rivers,’ he explained, ‘Linda Parker’s body wasn’t found inside a shed or any random abandoned place. She was murdered inside her own house. Her body mutilated inside her own bedroom. And as you can see...’ he indicated a specific group of photographs, ‘the killer made a point of smearing most of the walls and the furniture with her blood.’

Kennedy and his agents stepped closer to have a better look at the photos.

‘So the killer didn’t do the same at your crime scene?’ Garcia asked.

‘No,’ Agent Williams replied. ‘Kristine Rivers wasn’t murdered inside that shed. Her eyes and scalp weren’t taken there either. There was no blood anywhere. The only blood we found had dried on her skin.’

‘The pattern here is all wrong for these to be blood splatters from arterial spray or something similar,’ Agent Fisher said. She was the only one still staring at the board. ‘What they look like is “get away” smears. A victim trying to escape her attacker.’

‘Yes, we know what they look like. Thank you.’ Garcia didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. ‘But we don’t think that’s what they are.’

‘You think the killer put them there on purpose? Why?’

‘We’ll get to that later,’ Hunter said, stopping Garcia before he was able to explain. ‘Let’s carry on with the original sequence of events. We all know that serial murders follow a certain progression inside the killer’s mind. So for now we should stick with that as well, even if we don’t understand it. Covering things out of order, without having all the facts first, will just generate unnecessary questions and confusion. Let’s move on to the killer’s second victim before we get to the third, how about that?’

Everyone agreed and Agent Williams returned to his folder for a new eleven-by eight-inch photograph, a full-body shot.

‘OK,’ he said, placing the photo on Hunter’s desk. ‘The Surgeon struck again almost a month after Kristine Rivers, on March eleventh.’

If the photographs of Kristine Rivers had surprised Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake, the second victim shocked them.