The Death Sculptor

Ninety

Captain Blake was just finishing a phone call when Hunter and Garcia knocked on her door.

‘Come in,’ she called, after placing a hand over the mouthpiece. As both detectives stepped into her office, she gestured for them to take a seat.

Neither did.

‘Well, I don’t care how you deal with it, Wilks, just deal with it. You’ve got lead on this, so lead, goddammit.’ Captain Blake slammed the phone down and pinched the bridge of her nose while shutting her eyes for just a moment.

Hunter and Garcia waited in silence.

‘OK.’ The captain looked up at them and exhaled a weighted breath. ‘Tell me we’ve got at least a sniff of something new.’

He reached inside his breast pocket and retrieved an old six-by-four-inch photograph, placing it on the captain’s desk.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘A sniff of something new,’ Hunter replied with no sarcasm in his voice. ‘I found it in Nathan Littlewood’s apartment.’

Garcia stepped forward, craning his neck.

Captain Blake picked up the photo and stared at it for several seconds. ‘What the hell am I looking at here, Robert?’

‘Could I have a look, Captain?’ Garcia asked, extending his hand.

She handed him the photo and sat back on her swivel chair.

The picture wasn’t of fantastic quality, but it clearly showed a skinny man barely in his twenties, standing outside by a tree, holding a bottle of beer. It was a bright sunny day and he had no shirt on. His hair was dark and curly. He was smiling. The beer bottle in his right hand was angled towards the camera, as if he was toasting something. It didn’t take Garcia long to place him.

‘A very young Nathan Littlewood,’ he said.

Captain Blake look at Hunter, unimpressed. ‘Hardly surprising since you found that picture in his apartment.’

‘Not him,’ Hunter replied. ‘The other person in the picture.’

Captain Blake stole another peek at the photograph in Garcia’s hands, and then looked back at Hunter as if he’d lost his mind. ‘Are we talking about this picture? ’Cos if we are, you might need to see an eye doctor, Robert. There’s only one person in it.’

Garcia was already searching the picture’s background for any secondary characters. He knew Hunter well enough to know that he’d seen something that most people would’ve missed. But there was no one. Littlewood was standing by that tree alone. There was nothing in the background but empty space.

‘Look closely,’ Hunter said.

That was when Garcia noticed part of someone’s left arm at the right-hand edge of the picture. Due to its proximity to the camera, it was out-of-focus, but it was easy to tell that the arm was bent at the elbow. Most of the forearm was out of shot.

‘The arm?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter nodded. ‘Stay with it.’ He watched as Garcia concentrated on the picture again. His stare went from confusion, to doubt, to surprise, and then finally it clicked.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Garcia said, his eyes darting towards Hunter.

‘No, I’ll be damned,’ the captain said, zapping both detectives with a laser stare. Her voice pitch went up a notch. ‘Do you see me sitting here? What about the arm?’

Garcia stood directly in front of her desk and showed her the picture. ‘This isn’t just somebody’s arm.’ He addressed Hunter. ‘That’s why you were checking the photos upstairs again.’

Hunter agreed and placed the picture he took from the pictures board on the captain’s desk. The picture showed a few body parts lying side by side on a stainless steel table. He pointed to one of the two arms in the photograph. Specifically, to a point high up on the triceps.

‘See those?’ he asked.

The captain cocked her head forward and squinted at it. ‘I see them all right; what are they?’

‘Moles,’ Garcia replied, placing the picture he was holding next to the one the captain was looking at. ‘Birthmarks.’ He indicated the same cluster of six small, oddly-shaped dark-red moles on the triceps of the person who had inadvertently got in front of the camera. Despite the arm being out-of-focus, there was no mistaking it. They were exactly the same.