Gallery of the Dead

Sixty-One

‘The markings to his back,’ Agent Fisher asked Hunter as soon as they stepped outside the main building. ‘You deciphered them, didn’t you? You did it in there.’

Hunter paused at the top of the first flight of stairs and looked back at her with fatigued eyes. ‘I think I did, yes.’

‘You think?’

‘It’s been a long day,’ Hunter clarified. ‘I’m tired, my brain is tired, my eyes are tired.’

‘Nevertheless, while in there, you did make out the Latin phrase that the killer carved into the victim’s back, right?’

Hunter’s silence was a resounding ‘Yes’.

‘Do you think you might’ve gotten it wrong? Made a mistake?’

This time his silence meant the opposite of his first. Agent Fisher heard them both loud and clear.

‘OK, so what was it? What was the Latin phrase the killer used this time?’

Hunter looked around. Despite them being alone, he didn’t think that the top of the stairs at the Pima County’s Office of Medical Examiner in Tucson was the best place for them to have that conversation.

‘Shall we maybe talk in the car?’ he suggested.

‘Yes, I think that would be best,’ Agent Williams agreed.

As they all got back into the SUV, Agent Brandon looked like he was about to tell the group something, but he never got the chance.

‘Could I have a quick look at that?’ Hunter asked Agent Williams, referring to the large envelope Dr. Morgan had handed him inside Autopsy Theater One. From it, Hunter retrieved one of the Polaroid photographs that showed the carvings to Timothy Davis’s back.

Agent Fisher scooted over toward Hunter to study the image, but gave up within seconds. If Hunter had already connected the lines and letters to create the new Latin phrase the killer had carved into the back of his fourth victim, what was the point in racking her brain to put that sick puzzle together? She certainly could do without the stress, especially considering the nuclear headache she’d been carrying around with her since she stepped out of that private jet.

‘So what does this one say, Robert?’ This time the question came from Garcia, who was sitting to Hunter’s left.

Hunter scratched his chin before looking at Agent Fisher. As he pronounced the Latin words, he indicated on the Polaroid with his index finger, as if asking her to double-check he hadn’t made a mistake.

‘Pulchritudo habitantem in interius.’

Agent Fisher’s eyes followed Hunter’s finger like a duckling following its mother. The lines connected perfectly to form the letters. The letters connected perfectly to form each of the four words.

Once he showed it to her, it seemed so easy.

‘That seems to be correct, yes,’ she finally agreed.

‘And in English that means what?’ Garcia asked. ‘Beauty... where this time?’

‘Resides on the inside?’ Agent Fisher phrased her reply as a question while her gaze settled on Hunter. This time, she was the one asking for confirmation.

He nodded. ‘Pulchritudo habitantem in interius translates as “beauty resides — or beauty lives, or beauty is — on the inside”. The exact wording may vary, but I guess the meaning is pretty much the same.’

‘Beauty lives on the inside?’ Agent Williams repeated the phrase, adding to it a bucket of doubt.

Hunter faced Agent Brandon, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. ‘How are we doing on that film we retrieved from Owen Henderson’s camera? Anything?’

‘Yeah,’ Agent Brandon replied, handing Hunter a new envelope. ‘It’s all done. I went to pick it up while you guys were in there. I just haven’t had the time to hand it over.’

Hunter tore open the envelope and pulled out a thick bunch of colored eight-by ten-inch photographs.

Everyone leaned toward him as he began flipping through the photos.

The first fourteen images were all full-body shots of Timothy Davis lying on the hospital-style bed in the basement of his house. The pictures were taken from a variety of angles and distances. Hunter didn’t linger on any of them for too long.

The next eleven photos were close-up shots of the victim’s face and the odd wound to his left leg. Again, Hunter flipped through those seemingly without too much concern, until he got to the last five photographs.

The impression that everyone got with the final five shots was that Owen Henderson had started going through the motions of documenting the room where the body had been found. He had taken a photo of each of the four walls.

It looked like Timothy Davis had made his basement room into a shrine to his late wife, Ronda.

The first photo was of the wall to the left of the entrance door. Pushed up against it was an antique-looking, white dressing table with a matching tri-fold vanity mirror on it. Hanging from the corners of the mirror were a couple of gold necklaces. Both of them had crucifixes as pendants. Fixed to the leftmost corner of the mirror was a four-by five-inch colored photograph of Timothy and his wife on their wedding day. He was standing behind her with his arms around her waist. Their smiles seemed brighter than the sun up in the sky above them. At the opposite end of the mirror was another photograph of the couple, this time showing Timothy and Ronda as they cut their wedding cake. Their faces were the definition of happiness.

On the dressing table, a few items had been meticulously arranged, almost to the point of OCD. There was a hairbrush, a comb, a small jewelry box, a chrome eyelash curler, two nail files and two clear glass jars. The first one held a multitude of makeup pencils in several different colors and shades. The second one was overflowing with makeup brushes of all different shapes and sizes. At the center of the dressing table, pushed up against the base of the mirror, were three half-full perfume bottles.

Hunter flipped to the next photograph. It showed the basement room’s far wall. Four female garments hung from hooks that had been fixed to it. A thin, see-through protective plastic cover kept all four items from getting dusty. The first garment, on the far left, was Ronda’s wedding dress. The second and third items were two very elegant long evening gowns. The last item was a severely worn blue jeans jacket with two small rips on the right sleeve and a missing front pocket. Next to each of those items was a framed photograph of Ronda Davis wearing them.

Hunter moved on to the next photo. It showed the wall to the right of the entrance door. It was covered from floor to ceiling in more framed photographs of Timothy and Ronda at various locations — the beach, the mountains, dinner parties, their home... everywhere. Some of them were from a long time ago, when the two of them were still in college. A few individual ones showed them as kids.

The next photo was of the fourth and last wall, the one with the entrance door. Pushed up against it, to the right of the door, was a wooden console table. On it, a single portrait photograph of Ronda, a blue vase with a bouquet of red roses and a small open jewelry box with just one item inside it — her wedding ring.

The last photograph in the whole set showed the ceiling. It was painted white, just like the walls. At the center of it, a flat chrome lamp with three spotlights supplied the small room with more than enough light. A few water infiltration spots could be seen against two of the corners, which had caused some mold to grow around them.

‘Is this it?’ Agent Fisher asked Agent Brandon.

‘That’s all we’ve got, yes. The film in the camera was a thirty-six-exposure roll. The last six frames were blank.’

Hunter flipped through those last five photographs one more time, his brain working overtime to try to piece things together.

‘Beauty lives on the inside,’ Garcia said. ‘So how does that link to the crime scene as a canvas or work of art? Beauty lives inside of what? Inside that room? Is the killer now trying to be philosophical, saying that beauty lives inside us all, we just need to find it, so we can understand his work? Does he consider blood a beautiful thing? What...?’

‘Maybe the killer is talking about the room,’ Agent Fisher said, nodding at the photos. ‘He could be talking about what the room symbolizes.’

‘What the room symbolizes?’ Garcia asked.

‘The undying love between the victim and his late wife.’ Agent Fisher’s tone was calm, totally lacking annoyance. ‘Just look at these pictures. Once you’re inside that room, you’re surrounded by that love. There’s no way you can escape it. Love and sadness reside side by side in there. It practically drips from those walls. Now think about it for a moment — not only murdering Mr. Davis inside that room, but also leaving his body there, surrounded by this “shrine” he created for his wife... the shrine he created for their love — that is probably what the killer considers a work of art. Once again, I think his Latin phrase is talking about the entire composition here, like a tribute to love — a love that after Mr. Davis’s wife passed away, lived only on the inside: on the inside of that room — on the inside of him. Like the blood that ran through his veins. That’s why he killed him by draining his blood. It’s all, just like before, symbolism. And you might also be correct about what you suggested — “beauty lives inside us all”.’

Garcia’s eyebrows lifted.

‘If the killer is using this murder to symbolize love,’ Agent Fisher explained, ‘then it’s true that love lives inside us all, just like the blood that runs through our veins.’

‘What about the victim selection?’ Hunter asked.

Both agents looked back at him curiously.

‘Why did the killer pick these four people as his victims?’

Agents Fisher and Williams were back at the same question they had been asking themselves in their new office.

‘There has to have been a reason why the killer knocked on those four doors,’ Hunter concluded.

‘Sure there has,’ Agent Fisher replied. ‘But it doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to understand it or even explain it. Maybe in the killer’s eyes these four victims were the ones who better suited his work. Remember, he’s not after them as people; he’s after them as objects — the best match for the big picture, for whatever sadistic art piece he’s creating. That’s why he doesn’t hurt them. So yes, there probably was something quite specific about the victims that drove the killer to them, but that’s something we might never understand. We might never be able to explain it because it could be something that is specific only to the killer and no one else. No matter how hard we try, we might never see things through his distorted eyes.’

Hunter knew that that was very true. Catching murderers didn’t necessarily mean that they would understand the way they thought, their motives, their reasoning...

‘How about the traveling?’ Garcia asked. ‘Even if the killer had a specific type of person in mind, let’s say, one who best matched whatever crazy art piece he wanted to create, like you suggested, why pick them from four different cities... four different states?’

Agent Fisher went quiet.

‘The killer’s first murder was committed in Detroit,’ Garcia added. ‘A city with a population of almost 700,000 people. I’m sure he would’ve had no problems finding an eighty-four-year-old ex-janitor who also lived in Detroit for his second outing, or a young and attractive model for his third, or an African American male for his fourth. Why go from Michigan to Kansas, to California and now Arizona? What was so special about these four people that made him cross state lines just to get to them?’

‘Maybe it’s not about them being special,’ Agent Fisher suggested. ‘Maybe traveling is just part of what he does as a job. He could be a sports scout, or a pharmaceutical salesman, or something along those lines. Something that forces him to hop from city to city. He would then use the convenience of his job to choose his victims, picking them from different locations, knowing full well that that fact alone would make finding him a hell of a lot harder.’

Garcia thought about it for a moment, but his brain was too tired and everything was still too fresh for him to be able to think logically. In the space of less than twenty-four hours they had gone from a single victim back in LA, to four, spread over four different states. Absolutely nothing made sense at the moment and the craziest of all theories was the one that best matched the facts they had.

Hunter stayed quiet, but he couldn’t help thinking that the murders seemed too elaborate for the killer to be picking his victims due to the convenience of a traveling job.

All of a sudden Agent Fisher’s eyes widened, as a new thought exploded inside her head.

‘Passenger manifests,’ she said, addressing Agent Williams. ‘If the killer really is traveling because of the job he does, then there’s a chance he flies to wherever he’s got to go, including the murder cities. If that’s the case, his name will be on passenger manifests. We need to get in touch with every airport in Detroit, Wichita, LA and Tucson, maybe even Phoenix. Let’s get a team checking every airline’s passenger manifests and cross-checking them all with each other. We’ve got to search at least three weeks each side of the murder date, inclusively. If we’re lucky, we might get a name repeating itself flying in and out of all these four cities.’

‘It’s a hell of a long shot,’ Agent Williams agreed. ‘But it’s definitely worth a try. I’ll get a team on it first thing in the morning.’