Gallery of the Dead

Forty-Five

For five silent and unblinking seconds, Hunter and Garcia stared at the photo Agent Fisher had in her hand. From a distance, despite her facial mutilations, the colorful picture where Kristine Rivers’ body could be seen against a backdrop of graffitied walls and a floor full of debris looked more like an art-gallery painting than a crime-scene photograph. In fact, the missing eyes and the scalped head added a macabre layer to the image.

‘Holy shit!’ Garcia felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Hunter stayed quiet, but he did feel a rush of adrenaline run through him.

‘Now you might be thinking that there’s no way we’ll get a similar effect with the second crime scene — Albert Greene’s bedroom,’ Agent Williams said, taking over from Agent Fisher. ‘If you remember, there was nothing on the walls, nothing on the floor. No blood absolutely anywhere.’

Agent Fisher returned to the three groups of photographs she had arranged over the retractable table and selected two new images from the ‘crime-scene’ pile — both wide-angle shots taken from two separate perspectives, showing Albert Greene’s body on the bed inside his bedroom. Once again she put some distance between the photos and the group, but the effect was nothing like the one they got with the previous image she’d showed them. Even from a distance, neither picture looked anything like a painting. They looked exactly like what they actually were — crime-scene photographs.

‘Definitely not the same effect, right?’ Agent Williams pushed.

‘Definitely not,’ Garcia agreed.

‘But what if the killer wasn’t looking for the same effect?’ Hunter suggested.

‘Our thoughts exactly,’ Agent Fisher said, her voice lifting with excitement.

‘I don’t follow,’ Garcia said. ‘Wouldn’t that contradict the idea that the killer wants his crime scenes to look like paintings, like works of art?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Agent Fisher replied, the smirk on her lips revealing how much she was about to enjoy schooling the detective. ‘If you think about it, it’s impossible to create the same piece twice, but what you really have to remember here is that art is subjective.’ She winked at Garcia, knowing full well that he had been the one who had brought that knowledge to the table in the first place. ‘Now keep that in mind and tell me what you think of this.’

Agent Fisher once again took a few steps back, stopping halfway through the Middle cabin. This time she showed everyone two pictures side by side. On the left, the same photo she had showed them a minute earlier — Kristine Rivers’ crime scene — and on the right, one of the two wide-angle shots from Albert Greene’s bedroom.

Garcia’s stare moved from one picture to the other a couple of times.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said as he finally saw it. ‘They’re practically opposites of each other.’

‘Indeed they are,’ Agent Fisher confirmed. ‘There’s hope for you yet, Detective.’

It was Garcia’s turn to scratch his nose using only his right middle finger.

Agent Fisher ignored the gesture. ‘So what if for his first piece, the killer selected a place where he didn’t need to paint the walls, or the floor, or anything else because the location, a disused shed by the river, already provided all the crazy “modern art” he needed — food wrappers, dirty rags, discarded drug paraphernalia, graffitied walls and so on. All he needed to do to make it his own was place the main piece — the victim’s body with a disfigured face — at the center of it.’

She once again indicated the printout with the perfectly made bed at the center of a messy room.

‘Then,’ she continued, ‘for his second “piece”, the killer moved from a dirty shed to a squeaky-clean room and from a young female victim to an old male one; can you see?’ She did not give Garcia any time to reply. ‘If you disregard the fact that these are crime scenes, the two “pieces”, just like you’ve said, are practically opposites of each other. Maybe that was the effect that the killer was going for.’

Garcia had to chew on all that for a second.

This time it was Agent Williams who selected a picture from the crime-scene pile. Another wide-angle shot, but this one from the Los Angeles crime scene, where Linda Parker’s skinned body could be seen on blood-soaked sheets, against a background of blood-smeared walls.

‘His third “piece” needs no introduction,’ the agent said. ‘Here he ups the shock factor, skinning the body and smearing the walls with blood.’

He handed the photo to Agent Fisher, who once again took a few steps back. Just like with the photo of the first crime scene she had shown everyone, from a distance, the picture she had in her hand looked almost like a gallery painting, where crimson red clashed headfirst with brilliant white walls and bright bed sheets.

‘But the best part,’ Agent Fisher said, reclaiming Hunter and Garcia’s attention, ‘is still to come.’