The Death Sculptor

Forty-Five

DA Bradley motioned Alice into the office as if it were his own. He waited for her to close the door behind her.

‘So what have you got?’ he asked, throwing the autopsy-report copy on Captain Blake’s desk.

‘I’ve spent all morning going through the long list of names of criminals who were prosecuted by Derek Nicholson.’ She nodded at Hunter. ‘This time I went back fifteen years. I looked for links concerning the two victims. Mainly someone who’d been apprehended by Nashorn, and subsequently prosecuted by Nicholson.’ She fetched four sheets of paper from the green plastic folder she had with her and handed one to each person in the room. ‘Out of all the criminals Nashorn busted in the twelve years he was a detective, Nicholson prosecuted thirty-seven of them.’

Everyone’s attention moved to the names on the list.

‘Thirty-seven? There are only twenty-nine names here,’ DA Bradley said, his eyebrows rising slightly.

‘That’s because I did a preliminary check on the initial thirty-seven,’ Alice clarified. ‘Eight have already died. The problem is, all thirty-seven of them were just your average street criminal – armed robbery, mugging, drug dealing, sex exploitation, aggravated assaults, gang members, that kind of thing. When I checked their background, I got nothing but school dropouts and poorly educated people who came from broken homes and abusive parents. People with explosive tempers who just don’t fit the pattern.’

‘What pattern are you talking about?’ the DA asked.

‘The pathologist’s report from Nicholson’s autopsy suggested that the killer had some sort of medical knowledge,’ Alice explained.

‘That was further confirmed after Nashorn’s examination this morning,’ Garcia added.

‘So that would back up my argument,’ Alice proceeded. ‘The criminals on this list don’t have the level of education needed to be able to commit the kind of murders we’re investigating. They just wouldn’t have the knowledge, the patience, or the determination to dismember a victim and create the sculptures.’

‘So what you’re saying is that none of the names on this list is worth investigating?’ Captain Blake said with lilt in her voice. ‘So what’s the point in handing it to us?’ She dropped the list on her desk carelessly.

‘No,’ Alice shot back in the same tone. ‘What I’m saying is that that’s my opinion. I compiled the list because that was my job. In all the years I’ve worked for the DA’s office, one thing I’ve learned is that time is a precious commodity in any investigation. But if you have the resources and the time to investigate all twenty-nine names on that list, then please be my guest.’

DA Bradley smiled like a proud father as he looked at Captain Blake. The only thing missing was the sentence ‘That’s my girl’.

Hunter saw a muscle flex on the captain’s jaw. ‘But this isn’t what you’re excited about,’ he quickly intervened. ‘You found something else, didn’t you?’

A new glint brightened Alice’s eyes. ‘After I finished going over that list, I had an idea. I thought that maybe we could look at this from a different angle.’

‘And which angle is that?’ The captain’s voice was still dry.

Alice moved over to the edge of the captain’s desk. ‘What if the person we’re looking for is linked to only one of the victims, not both?’

Everyone considered it for a heartbeat.

‘But then why kill the other one?’ Garcia asked.

Alice lifted her right index finger, as if to say ‘That’s the key question.’

‘Because the link is somewhere else.’ She didn’t give anyone a chance to question her. ‘With that in mind, I quickly wrote an application that would search through the DA’s database – specifically cases handled by Nicholson. It would then try and link the results, in any way, to any criminals who had been apprehended by Nashorn over the years.’

‘What criteria did you use?’ Hunter asked.

Alice subtly tilted her head to one side and shrugged. ‘That was my problem. The scope can be quite wide, so I decided to start with something simple, something Robert had suggested before – family or relatives, prioritizing anyone who had been released or paroled recently.’ She paused and bobbed her head from side to side. ‘Well, not so recently, I went back five years for starters.’

‘And . . . ?’ Captain Blake placed her right elbow on the arm of her swivel chair and lightly rested her chin on her knuckles.

‘And I might’ve gotten lucky, because a very strong candidate came up.’