The Death Sculptor

Sixty-Nine

Corbí and Ellison stepped into apartment 311, followed by Hunter and Garcia. Together with the four forensic agents, the already-crowded living room became a sardine can.

‘What’s in the box?’ Hunter asked, nodding at the silver box on the dining table.

‘Now, nothing,’ Corbí said. ‘But it did contain drugs – cocaine, to be more precise. A very fine cut. Probably very high-quality stuff. The lab will confirm it. Initial signs indicate that whoever whacked him took the drugs.’

‘You think this was a drugs hit?’ Garcia asked.

‘Who knows at this stage?’ Ellison replied.

‘Who called it in?’

‘Some terrified girl. Didn’t leave a name. She sounded very young.’

‘When was this? When was the call made?’

‘This morning. We checked the recording. The girl said that she came to visit a friend. Most probably she came here to score some drugs. From the door-to-door so far, no one knows who this young friend could be.’ Ellison’s eyebrows arched. ‘Actually, people barely knew the tenant in this apartment. No one is talking. And in a project like this, I’d be more surprised if they ever did. But forensics has already retrieved several sets of prints. Who knows, we might get lucky.’

Hunter’s eyes swept the room in a matter of seconds; no blood anywhere. The living room looked a mess, but no different than it had the day before, when they’d paid Tito a visit. No visible disturbance. The chain lock and the inside doorframe were also intact. Nothing indicated a forced entry.

‘Are you guys through in there?’ Corbí asked the lead forensic agent, indicating the tiny corridor that led to the bathroom and bedroom.

‘Yeah, we’ve got everything. You’re clear.’

They crossed the living room.

‘There’s no way all of us will fit in there,’ Corbí said as they got to the bathroom door. ‘I thought there couldn’t be a smaller bathroom than the one in my house. I was wrong. You guys go ahead. We’ve seen it.’ Corbí and Ellison stepped back, allowing Hunter and Garcia to take lead.

Hunter slowly pushed the door open.

‘Oh crap.’ The words dribbled out of Garcia’s lips.

Hunter said nothing, his gaze taking everything in.

The floor, the walls and the sink in the tiny bathroom were splattered with blood. Arterial spray from a knife being swung across someone’s throat or body. Tito was naked, sitting on the floor inside the blood-soaked shower cubicle. His back was against the tiled wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, his arms loosely slumped by his side. His head was tilted back, as if he was looking at something on the ceiling. The problem was, he had no eyes. They both had been pressed back into his skull until they sunk in. One of them seemed to have busted in its socket. What looked like blood tears had run down the corners of the sockets, past his ears, and down the side of his shaved head. His mouth was opened, and half filled with thick, clotted blood. His tongue had been ripped from his mouth.

‘We found the tongue at the bottom of the toilet,’ Corbí offered from the door.

Tito’s throat had been slit the whole length of his neck, and blood had cascaded down his torso and onto his lap and legs.

‘According to the forensics guys,’ Ellison said. ‘There are no visible traumas to the body, which means he wasn’t beat up. He was simply brought to the bathroom and slaughtered like cattle. No blood was found anywhere else in the house.’

‘Drugged?’ Garcia asked.

‘We’ll need to wait for the autopsy for confirmation. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he was as high as my captain’s ego when this happened. There’s coke residue on the small square mirror on the table in the living room.’

‘The bedroom is a damn mess,’ Corbí took over. ‘And it stinks of dirty clothes, unwashed body parts and pot. But judging by the rest of the apartment, I don’t think that was a disturbance. I think he lived like a pig out of choice. We also found marijuana in the bedroom, a kilo of it, together with a few crack-cocaine pipes. If whoever did this was after something, that something was probably inside that silver box in the living room, drug or not.’ He waited for Hunter and Garcia to exit the bathroom. ‘I’m not gonna ask you what kind of information you requested out of this Tito character. That’s your business, and I know better than to butt in into another cop’s investigation, but is there anything you can tell us about the victim that might facilitate our investigation?’

Hunter knew he couldn’t give Corbí and his partner Ken Sands’s name. Corbí would start searching for him, asking around. The heat on the streets to find Sands would increase, and so would the chances of him hearing about it and disappearing. Hunter couldn’t risk that. He had to lie.

‘Unfortunately there’s nothing I can give you,’ he said.

Corbí studied Hunter’s face and demeanor and saw nothing that belied his answer. If that was a poker face, it was the best poker face Corbí had ever seen. A moment later his gaze reverted back to Ellison, who shrugged.

‘OK,’ Corbí said, adjusting his tie. ‘I guess there’s nothing else I can show you here.’