I Am Death

Eight

Hunter and Garcia flipped open the murder file that Captain Blake had given them. This one also began with a photograph, but this time it wasn’t a portrait. It showed Nicole Wilson’s body as it had been found in the early hours of the morning. She was dressed in blue jeans, a black T-shirt under a half-unzipped light-gray California State University sweatshirt and black sneakers — no socks. She had no makeup on, and her hair looked wet, with the fringe plastered against her forehead. There was no blood on her, on her clothes, or on the ground surrounding the body. No cuts or wounds were visible either. No apparent cause of death, but Hunter and Garcia immediately understood why Captain Blake was so concerned. The body had been left lying on its back on an empty green patch of grass. The arms were stretched out to her sides in a horizontal line, palms facing up. The legs had also been stretched out and pulled apart as far as they would go, creating a V shape. The overall image was of a human star and that was what sent alarm bells ringing. From experience, they all knew that specific body positioning hinted strongly at one thing — ritual. And ritual killers rarely struck only once.

The next photograph was a close-up of Nicole’s face. Her skin had turned a light shade of purple and acquired a waxy, semi-shiny texture. Her lips had gone white from the lack of blood circulation, and even though her eyes were closed Hunter could tell that they had already begun to sink a little deeper into her skull. But what most caught the LAPD detective’s attention were the abrasions at the edges of her mouth, together with the small patch of skin that began at the corner of her lips, ran across her cheeks and disappeared behind her neck. It showed a very slight change of color, a little darker than the rest of the skin on her face, and that indicated that she’d been gagged with an overly tight restraint.

Hunter slowly flipped through the next few pictures and paused when he came to the ones showing a close-up of Nicole’s hands and feet. The skin around her wrists and ankles showed abrasions and a change of color that were similar to the ones on her face, but the marks were a lot more prominent around her ankles, which was a little strange. She had obviously been gagged, tied up and kept that way for a considerable amount of time, but for some reason the restraints around her ankles seemed to have been a lot tighter than the ones around her wrists or mouth.

The last photograph was a wide-angle shot of the location. Only then could Hunter and Garcia see that Nicole’s body had been left in the shade of a tall and bushy tree, with large, bright-green, heart-shaped leaves.

Hunter checked his watch — 7:48 a.m.

‘When is the autopsy being performed?’ he asked. ‘Has anyone expedited it?’

He knew that if the body had been found in the early hours of the morning there was no way it would still be on location. The heat of summer would speed up the decomposition process and vital clues, if any had been left on the body, ran a severe risk of being lost.

‘Yes,’ Captain Blake replied. ‘As you know, heinous crimes, or anything that belongs to the UV Unit, take priority with the coroner. As far as I know, it will be top of the list this morning with Doctor Hove.’