The Death Sculptor

Seventeen

Hunter got to the PAB at 8:33 a.m., just minutes after Garcia.

‘Goddamn, did they get you too?’ Garcia asked.

‘The reporters outside, you mean?’

Garcia nodded. ‘Are they camping outside or what? I got out of my car and instantly had three of them shouting questions at me.’

‘Our victim was a prosecutor, who was dismembered in his own house, on his deathbed three days ago. That’s the stuff TV series are made of, Carlos. They could kill each other to be the first to get an insight from someone working the case. It will only get worse.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Garcia poured Hunter and himself a large cup of coffee each from the machine on the corner. ‘Any luck with those?’ he asked, handing his partner a cup and nodding at the books under Hunter’s arm.

Hunter had taken all the modern art and sculpture books he could find in Derek Nicholson’s study home with him last night.

‘Nothing.’ Hunter put the books down on his desk and took the cup. ‘Thanks. I also spent half of the night searching the net, reading about any and every Los Angeles sculptor I could find. Nothing there either. I don’t think our killer is trying to reproduce an already-existing piece.’

Garcia returned to his desk. ‘Me neither.’

‘I’ll drop by DA Bradley’s office today,’ Hunter continued. ‘I want to ask him if he knows anything about Nicholson wanting to make his peace with someone before dying, and if he has any idea who the other man who visited him was.’

‘Isn’t it easier to call?’

Hunter made a ‘maybe’ face, but he hated having to ask questions over the phone, regardless of who was on the other end. Face-to-face meetings allowed him to observe the movements, reactions and facial expressions of the person he was talking to, and to a homicide detective, that was invaluable.

The phone on Hunter’s desk rang. He checked his watch before picking up the receiver.

‘Detective Hunter.’

‘Robert, I just got the first batch of results back from the lab,’ Doctor Hove said. Her voice sounded a little heavier than usual.

Hunter fired up his computer. ‘I’m listening, doc.’

‘First let me tell you that the lab has done a great job with the replica you asked for.’

‘Is it ready?’

‘Yep, they worked overnight. It’s on its way to you now.’

‘That’s great.’

‘OK,’ Doctor Hove proceeded. ‘Forensics lifted five sets of fingerprints from the crime scene and other locations throughout the house – kitchen, bathroom, staircase handrail . . . you know the drill. As expected, no joy there. The fingerprints are confirmed to have come from the two nurses, both of the victim’s daughters and the victim himself.’

Hunter said nothing. He wasn’t really expecting anything to come from those.

‘The hairs retrieved from most of the same locations as the fingerprints were also matched to the same five people,’ Doctor Hove continued. ‘I don’t think we’ll need to DNA-test them. Analysis on some of the fibers found is still going on. The ones they’ve already analyzed came back as cotton, polyester, acrylic . . . the most common fibers found in everyday clothes. Nothing that will lead you anywhere.’

Hunter rested an elbow on his desk. ‘Any toxicology results yet, doc?’

‘Yes, I had to push for them, though. The lab is overworked.’ She paused for just a split second. ‘And here is where it gets interesting. And positively more evil.’

Hunter grabbed Garcia’s attention with a quick hand wave and motioned him to listen in on his extension.

‘What does the test say, doc?’ Hunter asked.

‘OK, we know that to prolong the victim’s suffering the perp clamped the brachial artery of the amputated right arm using medical forceps, keeping the victim from bleeding out. But even so, something was baffling me from the start.’

Hunter pulled out his desk chair and had a seat. ‘The victim’s fragile condition.’ He didn’t phrase it as a question.

‘That’s right. The victim was already in the very late stages of terminal pulmonary cancer. His body was as weak as a 90-year-old man’s. His resistance to pain, his stamina, had all been reduced to a fraction of what it should’ve been. A person in those conditions should’ve died of shock after losing a finger. He lost five of them, all ten toes, his tongue and an arm before dying.’

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a long worried look.

‘As I expected,’ the doctor continued, ‘he wasn’t sedated, but he was drugged to his eyeballs. Toxicology found high levels of a few drugs, but that was expected due to the victim’s ill health. But some of the high-level drugs are just plain wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘OK, we found high levels of propafenone, felodipine and carvedilol.’

Garcia looked at Hunter and shook his head. ‘Hold on, doc. Easy with the chemical jargon. Chemistry wasn’t my strongest subject in school, and school was years ago. What are those?’

‘Propafenone is a sodium-channel blocker. It works by slowing the influx of sodium ions into the cardiac muscle. Felodipine is a calcium-channel blocker, and very big on controlling high blood pressure. Carvedilol is a beta-blocker. It blocks the binding of norepinephrine and epinephrine to beta-adrenoceptors. The combination of those three drugs will also, most certainly, inhibit the body’s production of adrenaline.’

Garcia’s frown was so intense his forehead looked like a prune. ‘You did hear when I said that chemistry wasn’t my strongest subject in school, right, doc? OK, neither was biology. Pretend I’m a seven-year-old kid and tell me all that again.’

‘In a nutshell, that’s a very strong cocktail of drugs to slow anyone’s heart rate down, control blood pressure and inhibit the production of adrenaline by the adrenal glands. As you know, adrenaline is released whenever a person senses danger. It’s the fear and pain hormone. It increases heart rate and dilates air passages, getting the subject ready to fight or flee.’

Garcia still looked a little puzzled.

‘So the killer reduced the victim’s blood flow,’ Hunter said, ‘and sedated his production of adrenaline.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘When the body senses danger or feels pain, like when having a finger, toe or tongue cut off, adrenaline is released and the heart speeds up, pumping more blood to the affected area, brain and muscles. Those drugs wouldn’t allow that to happen. They’d keep the heart in rest pace, if not even slower. That way, smaller amounts of blood were distributed throughout the victim’s body. He would’ve bled a lot less than expected. But none of those drugs have a sedating effect.’

‘Meaning he would’ve felt all the pain,’ Garcia caught on. ‘But held on for longer.’

‘Correct,’ the doctor agreed. ‘When a victim is severely cut, but no vital organs are damaged, there are mainly two ways the victim can die. Bleed to death, or the heart gets overworked to such an extent that it fails. In an unorthodox way, this killer addressed both of those problems with his drug combination. He didn’t want the victim to die too soon. And he certainly wanted the victim to feel as much pain as he could endure. But without a surgical team to help him, the killer would’ve had to work a lot faster to be able to perform the amputations and contain the hemorrhaging before the victim bled out. Well, his cocktail of drugs helped him a lot.’ She paused, dwelling on the severity of her own words. ‘I think all this strengthens our suspicion that this killer knows medicine, Robert. And I’d say he knows it well.’