The Death Sculptor

One Hundred and Three

Those words fell over Hunter and Garcia like slabs of rock, almost knocking the breath out of them.

Garcia shook the surprise off his face. ‘You were beaten up by them?’

For the first time Jude broke eye contact with the detectives. Her gaze moved down to her unfinished coffee cup. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I’m also not ashamed of my life. We’ve all done things we wished we never did.’ She paused, collecting her thoughts. Hunter and Garcia respected her breathing space. ‘When I was a lot younger, I worked the streets down in Hollywood Boulevard, the low end of the Strip.’

The east end of the famous Hollywood Boulevard used to be LA’s best-known red-light district.

‘I was new to the area. My usual spot used to be around Venice Beach, but back then the Strip was a much more popular place. If you could handle the numbers, you could make some serious cash.’ There was no shame in her words. She couldn’t change her past, and she accepted that with tremendous dignity. ‘Anyway, I was picked up one night by this guy. It was really late, past midnight, I think. He was quite good-looking, and funny. He took me to this place out by Griffith Park, but what he’d never told me in the car was that there were another three guys waiting for us.’

Jude’s gaze moved past both detectives and up into the distance, as if she was trying to see what was coming.

‘Well, I told them right then that I didn’t do gangbangs. Not for any money.’ She stopped talking and reached for her cold coffee.

‘But they didn’t care,’ Hunter said.

‘No they didn’t,’ she replied after having a sip. ‘They were all high on something, and they were drinking a lot. The problem wasn’t really having sex with four drunken men at once. The problem was that they liked it rough.’ She paused and thought better of her words. ‘Well, two of them did, more than the other two. By the time they were done, I was so bruised I wasn’t able to work for a week.’

It was pointless asking Jude if she’d gone to the police. She was a working girl, and the sad truth was that the police would’ve barely lent an ear to her story. She might even have been arrested for prostitution.

‘But things like that happened. It came with the job,’ Jude said in a resigned tone, without bitterness. ‘And they still do. It was a risk us girls took when we chose to work alone. I was beaten up before, worse than that. The reality is that, out on the streets, you never really know what kind of jerk is going to roll down his window and call you over.’

By ‘work alone’ both detectives knew Jude meant she didn’t have a pimp. Pimps provided protection for their girls. If anyone laid a rough hand on them, or decided they didn’t want to pay, they would have their legs broken, or worse. The problem was, the girls had to work for peanuts. Pimps would take 80 to 90 per cent of all the money their girls made, sometimes more.

‘The driver,’ Jude continued. ‘The one who picked me up and took me to his friends, that was the guy in the picture in the paper. Nashorn, rhinoceros man.’

‘He told you his name?’ Garcia asked.

‘No, but while he was on top of me, slapping my face with his animal hands, I heard one or two of the others cheer him on. First I thought it was a joke or something. That they were calling him rhinoceros in German for fun. But then I realized it couldn’t be. I remember thinking that he wasn’t the only rhinoceros in that room. They were all animals. But when you hear a name being called while someone is on top of you, beating you up, you tend to remember it forever.’

‘And you’re sure about the others? I mean the other two victims you saw in the paper – Derek Nicholson and Nathan Littlewood?’

‘I never heard their names being called that night. But I remember their faces. I made a point of never closing my eyes. Never giving them the satisfaction of my fear. I know that’s what dominant men thrive on, right? The submission. That night I did all I could to not submit to them, at least not mentally. While they were on me, I looked straight into their eyes. Every single one of them.’ Jude looked up at Garcia. ‘So yes, I’m very sure the other two men I saw in the paper were there that night.’

Hunter was still studying her. There was anger in her words, but it sounded dead, something that was now in the past, something that, just as she’d said, was a risk that came with what she did. And she had accepted it.

‘You said that two of them liked it rough more than the others,’ Hunter said. ‘Which two, do you remember?’

Jude ran a hand through her hair. Her stare returned to Hunter. ‘Of course I do. Rhinoceros man and the Littlewood guy. They pretty much did all the beating. The other two joined in for the sex, but they weren’t violent. In fact, I think they even asked the other two to take it easy.’

Hunter’s eyes dropped to the plastic tablecloth and he thought about Jude’s last words. He’d seen that sort of situation many times when young, and countless times in his adult life – peer pressure. It happened everywhere, even inside the LAPD. People would do things they didn’t agree with, or didn’t want to do, simply to be accepted, to feel part of a group. It ranged from common behavior like smoking and bullying, to terrible and damaging acts like committing a crime – even murder.

‘How long ago was this?’ Hunter asked.

‘Twenty-eight years,’ Jude confirmed. ‘A few months after that, I quit the streets.’