Gallery of the Dead

Sixty-Seven

Twenty-eight minutes. That had been how long it had taken Agent Brandon to drive from their hotel in downtown Tucson to Timothy Davis’s house in Catalina Foothills. By most standards the house was certainly impressive, but still modest when compared to the other four on East Miraval Place.

Owen Henderson hadn’t lied. Timothy Davis’s property was surrounded by thick, overgrown vegetation. There was no way anyone could have seen into the house or grounds from a neighboring window, never mind witness someone breaking into the place.

On the driveway, two white forensics vans were blocking a silver Buick Encore. Leaning against one of the vans, a forensics agent, dressed up in a blue Tyvek coverall, was just finishing a cigarette. Her charcoal hair was bunched up into a messy bun at the top of her head. She too looked like she’d been up for most of the night. As Agent Brandon parked the black SUV on the road outside, the forensics agent stubbed out her cigarette, cleared a couple of loose hair strands from her face and walked back into the house.

Hunter, Garcia and all three FBI agents stepped out of the SUV, signed the crime-scene manifest and followed the footsteps of the forensics agent, rounding the driveway to the house’s front porch, but as they got to it, Hunter paused, turned around and regarded the area before him.

‘Something wrong?’ Agent Fisher asked, noticing the intrigued look on Hunter’s face.

Hunter’s gaze moved left, in the direction they had come from. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see the road, the entrance to the driveway, or any of the vehicles parked on it.

‘Have forensics checked the live fence?’ he asked Agent Brandon, indicating the thick, desert-like shrubs that surrounded the house.

‘The fence?’ Agent Brandon asked in reply. ‘You mean like — in the bushes?’

‘Yes, in them.’

‘I know they’ve processed the outside of the house, including the driveway, but I don’t think they’ve gone as far as checking in the live fence. Why?’

‘I think it would be a good idea if they did,’ Hunter replied before explaining. ‘The killer placed the 911 call pretty much the second Owen Henderson entered this house.’ He pointed to the driveway. ‘The problem is, this front porch cannot be seen from the road, the driveway, or any of the neighboring houses.’ He turned to face the live fence. ‘But to make that “second-perfect” call, the killer would’ve needed eyes on this door.’ He shrugged. ‘Where would you have hidden?’

‘I’ll be damned,’ Agent Fisher said, her eyes, just like everyone else’s, slowly running the length of the live fence in front of them. The thick bushes would have provided anyone with a perfect hiding place, while allowing them a clear view of the house’s front door.

‘I’ll get them to start on it straight away,’ Agent Brandon said.

Once they entered the house, they lost no time exploring any of the rooms, moving straight down into the basement and the crime scene. They’d been correct in the impression they’d had from the photographs Owen Henderson had taken — the entire space had indeed been transformed into a shrine to Timothy Davis’s late wife, Ronda. What no one could’ve guessed from the photos was that the nauseating smell of death that inevitably accompanied most crime scenes didn’t linger in that room. Instead, a light lavender scent graced the air, as if every object in that basement had been infused with Ronda Davis’s favorite perfume — a fact that somehow seemed to add an extra layer of sadness to an already heartbreaking scene.

‘I hate to admit it,’ Garcia said, coming up to Hunter, who had spent the last ten minutes studying the photograph-covered wall to the right of the entrance door. ‘But Agent Fisher was right. This room slowly swallows you into this choking combination of love and sadness, as if both feelings really did reside side by side on these walls. It elates you and rips you apart at the same time.’ Garcia looked around, as if he were searching for something. ‘It’s like some strange soul-draining quicksand. The longer you stay in here, the more divided you get.’

‘And do you think that was done on purpose?’ Hunter asked. ‘I mean, do you think that the killer knew about this room beforehand? This... love and sadness sanctuary?’

Garcia pondered the thought for a minute. ‘If we’re correct about this whole “crime scene as a canvas” theory, if the meaning behind the killer’s Latin phrase used here — “beauty lives on the inside” — really refers to the beauty that lived inside Timothy Davis, maybe even inside this room, like Agent Fisher suggested, then he had to have known about it. No way this could’ve happened by chance, Robert.’

‘That’s the problem, Carlos,’ Hunter said, his eyes still on the photographs that hung from the wall. ‘How could he have known?’