The Death Sculptor

Forty-Two

Alice finished reading through another file and checked her watch. She’d been at it for three and a half hours and she still hadn’t found a path she thought was worth pursuing further. She’d already read through thirty-eight of the forty-six initial documents her application had flagged.

She shook her head disapprovingly as she studied the two untouched case-file boxes on her desk. She had no doubt that this time she’d bitten off a lot more than she could chew. She needed a team of readers, and maybe one or two other programmers, to get through those documents by the end of today. Maybe she should go back to searching for a meaning to the shadow image cast by the new sculpture. Maybe she’d have better luck there.

Alice poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and leaned back against the wall. Her eyes rested on the pictures board for a moment, and the brutality of it all made her shiver. How could anyone be this evil? This disturbed? And still be clever enough to come up with the sculptures and the shadow images? Still be clever enough to walk into someone’s house or boat, spend hours torturing them, rip them to pieces, and then walk out without being noticed? Without leaving any clues behind, except the ones he wanted the police to find?

Alice forced herself to look away, trying to shut the images out of her mind. Her attention returned to the documents on the floor. The cover pages carried the case number and the accused or convict’s name. She stared at them for a while, her brain throwing thoughts around, rummaging through possibilities. She’d already scanned through several cases where Andrew Nashorn had been the lead detective, and a handful where he’d been involved in the investigation, either in a detective capacity, or as a support officer. Almost all of them concerned gang members, muggers, thieves and petty criminals. Individuals who, in her opinion, didn’t have what it took to be this killer. She doubted very much she’d find a relation there. But she hadn’t even started on the list of victims who might’ve personally blamed Derek Nicholson and the State of California for losing their case.

She sipped her coffee too quickly, burning the roof of her mouth. Suddenly she paused as her brain spat out a new idea, instigated by the very lack of relation between the lists of names she had.

Back at her computer, Alice called up the code screen for the application she’d written earlier. All she needed were a few alterations here and there and she’d have a new search-and-compare tool. It took her thirty minutes to make all the necessary modifications. She used her security-clearance password to allow her new application to gain access to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s database. Hunter had also provided her with a password that allowed her to connect to the LAPD and the national criminal database.

While the program searched away, Alice went back to the files. The application had to connect to, and search, two different databases in two different locations – she was expecting it to take a while. The first results, using her initial search criteria, came back after thirty-five minutes. Thirty-four distinct names. Alice called up their individual case-summary pages and printed them out. She read through them, jotting down notes in the margins as she went along. As she started reading the summary page for search result number twenty-four, she felt a chill envelop her body. She put the page down and quickly shuffled through the remaining pages, looking for the match her application had indicated.

Alice sucked in a startled breath, and it rushed into her lungs like a cold wind.

‘OK, now this is very interesting.’