The Death Sculptor

Forty-Nine

It was past dinnertime when Hunter returned to Lennox and parked in front of Amy Dawson’s house. Once again, with a polite smile, Derek Nicholson’s weekdays nurse showed him into her house, but this time guided him into the kitchen.

The air was sprinkled with the pleasant smell of cooked tomatoes, basil, onions, chilies and spices.

‘My husband is watching the game in the living room,’ Amy explained. ‘He’s a big Lakers fan, and when he gets excited, he can be quite loud. You don’t mind if we talk in here, do you?’

‘Of course not,’ Hunter assured her. ‘I’ll be as brief as I can.’

Amy was wearing a light, floral dress and rubber flip-flops. Her cornrows had been undone, and her hair was now pulled back into a bushy ponytail. She offered Hunter a seat on one of the chairs around the foldout Formica table.

‘If you had come a little earlier, you could’ve had dinner with us.’

Hunter smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you to say, thank you. But it was probably a good thing. Get me near a nice, homemade pasta dish, and I could eat my bodyweight . . . maybe more.’

Amy paused and skeptically stared at Hunter. ‘How do you know I cooked pasta tonight?’

‘Umm . . . just a guess judging by the mouthwatering smell in your kitchen.’ He shrugged. ‘Homemade spicy tomato sauce?’

Amy couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘That’s right. My mother’s own recipe. We all like it with plenty of heat.’

‘Me too.’ Hunter nodded before having a seat. He waited until Amy sat across the table from him. ‘I just wanted to go back to that second person you said had visited Mr. Nicholson in his home after he was taken ill.’

‘I haven’t remembered anything else,’ she said, looking sincerely sorry.

‘That’s OK. What I really wanted was for you to have a look at a photograph, and tell me if there’s any chance the person in it is the same person who visited Mr. Nicholson that day.’

‘OK.’ She leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table.

Screamer, the family dog, started barking just outside the kitchen door. Amy pulled an annoyed face. ‘Excuse me for just a second, Detective.’ She stood up and opened the door, but didn’t allow the dog inside. ‘Delroy,’ she called out. ‘Could you take Screamer and maybe put him outside? I can’t deal with him now.’

‘I’m watching the game,’ a strong baritone voice replied.

‘Can you ask Leticia to take him upstairs then?’

‘Leticia,’ Delroy called in an even louder voice. ‘Come get your dog before I strangle it.’

Amy closed the door, shaking her head. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again as she returned to her seat. ‘Sometimes that dog drives me crazy. And so does my husband.’

Hunter smiled. ‘That’s OK.’ He placed an A4-sized photograph of Andrew Nashorn in front of Amy. ‘This is the person I was talking about.’

She picked it up and studied it hard for a long moment.

‘I’m sorry, Detective, that’s not him. The man looked younger and leaner, I’m sure.’ She returned the photograph to the table.

Hunter nodded, but left the picture where it was. ‘How about this person?’ He produced a second photograph. This time the mugshot of Ken Sands. He had contacted the California State Prison in Lancaster and managed to get a more recent picture of Sands, taken on the day he was released. His hair was long and messy, and he had allowed a bushy, scraggy beard to grow. None of his facial features were very visible.

‘This is the most recent picture we have of him,’ Hunter explained. He knew Sands had created that look deliberately. A lot of inmates serving medium to long sentences had a similar appearance. It was a common trick to stop the system from having an accurate, recent picture of them. The long hair and the bushy beard would be gone within an hour of their release. ‘I’m sure he won’t have so much hair around his face anymore.’ Hunter showed her one more picture – Sands’s arrest mugshot. ‘This is what he looked like ten years ago.’

Amy took the picture from Hunter’s hands. She kept her eyes on them for a long instant.

Hunter went quiet, allowing her to study it for as long as she needed to.

‘It could’ve been him,’ Amy finally said.

Hunter felt a tingle of electricity run through him.

‘But of course, I can’t be sure. The man who visited Mr. Nicholson that day didn’t have no beard or long hair. He was dressed in a suit and all.’

‘I understand.’

Amy’s stare never left the printout in her hands. ‘But it could’ve been him.’