I Am Death (8 page)

‘She died due to an excessive build-up of her own blood inside her brain?’ he asked. ‘And that was induced by the killer? How?’

‘By keeping her upside down for long enough,’ Hunter answered in a subdued voice. ‘That would explain the difference in restraints from her wrists to her ankles. They needed to
be stronger to be able to hold her body weight.’

‘Correct again, Robert,’ Doctor Hove agreed, moving closer to the head of the examination table, and resting her hands by Nicole’s ears. ‘If you understand the process,
oedema of the brain isn’t very difficult to achieve. You see, it all rests on the difference between arteries and veins. Arteries are thick-walled vessels that carry blood away from the heart
and into the organs of the body.’ Like a medical professor addressing her students, she pointed at Nicole’s chest, and then moved her hand away, spreading her fingers at the same time
as she explained. ‘Even upside down, the heart will continue to distribute blood through the arteries just as strongly as it would right side up. That blood travels with a lot of pressure,
due to it being forced into the arteries by the pumping of the heart. So, right side up, upside down . . . it makes no difference. Blood will always travel with the same force away from the heart.
Veins, on the other hand, are thin-walled vessels that carry blood from the organs of the body back into the heart for repumping. They have essentially no pressure in them, and they rely on
gravity, inertia and the force of skeletal muscle contractions to help push blood back to the heart.’

Doctor Hove coughed to clear her throat before continuing.

‘With no skeletal muscle contractions happening inside the skull, if you reverse gravity by placing someone upside down for long enough, blood will still travel normally from the heart,
through the arteries, and into the brain, but it will cease to travel through the veins back to the heart. So what you have is a build-up – blood coming into the brain, but not getting
out.’

The doctor paused, the look on her face just a little more somber than a moment ago.

‘With a build-up of blood in the brain, after a while blood will start to leak from the capillaries, accumulating inside the cranium, increasing pressure, and causing the brain to swell.
And with that comes a hell of a lot of pain – head, ears, eyes, nose . . . every heart pump would probably feel like thunder was exploding inside her head. All the killer had to do was
suspend her by her feet, nothing else. Gravity does the rest. He didn’t even have to be in the room anymore. The pressure would’ve just kept on building up inside her head until it
brought her gradual loss of consciousness, and then finally death as the brain would signal either respiration to fail, or the heart to stop pumping blood.’

Uneasily, Hunter shifted his weight from one foot to another.

‘How long?’ Garcia asked. ‘How long before she died? How long could one stand all that pain before the gradual loss of consciousness and death?’

Doctor Hove gave the detective a subtle, unsure headshake. ‘It would depend on several factors, Carlos, like strength and health of the victim. She appears to have been very healthy
– good muscle tone, non-smoker, strong lungs, healthy liver and kidneys. But even if I’m wrong, the killer could’ve prolonged the whole process for as long as he wanted simply by
returning her to a right-side-up position, decreasing the pressure in her brain, and then starting it all over again an hour or so later.’

‘Do you have an approximate time of death?’ Hunter asked.

‘Supposing that her body was always kept at room temperature after death,’ the doctor explained, ‘and I found no indication to the contrary, I’d say that she’s been
dead for about thirty hours, give or take a couple.’

Hunter and Garcia knew that Nicole Wilson had been abducted seven days prior to her body being found, which meant that her killer could indeed have tortured her for five and a half consecutive
days.

Before she spoke again, Doctor Hove took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds.

‘But that’s not all,’ she finally said.

Hunter and Garcia both looked at her, surprised.

‘Everything I’ve told you about this victim . . . about how she was tortured, about how she was murdered . . . I’d say none of it is scary in comparison to this.’

‘In comparison to what, Doc?’ Garcia asked.

The doctor turned and retrieved something else from the instrument table behind her – a clear plastic evidence bag containing a white piece of paper.

‘To this.’

‘And what is that?’ Hunter this time.

Doctor Hove looked down at the evidence bag for a couple of seconds before locking eyes with Hunter.

‘This is a note from the killer. He left it lodged inside her throat.’

‘Wait. What?’ Garcia asked, lifting a hand as if he hadn’t heard it properly.

Hunter didn’t move.

‘This piece of paper was first rolled up into a tube,’ the doctor explained, ‘then carefully inserted into the victim’s throat.’ She handed the plastic evidence bag
to Hunter. ‘The note speaks for itself.’

The piece of paper inside it was about eight inches long by five wide. Plain white. No lines. Across the center of it, written in blood, were three words.

I AM DEATH.

After leaving the LACDC, it took Hunter and Garcia forty-eight minutes to reach the location where Nicole Wilson’s body had been found – a large, unoccupied green
field just a stone’s throw away from Los Angeles International Airport. The field itself was half a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide. Most of it was densely populated by bushy trees like
wax myrtles, white ash and California pepper trees, with the exception of two small areas occupied by untreated grass and a few small shrubs and bushes – one on its west side and a much
smaller one on its southeast side, where the body had been left. Oddly enough, as if it had decided to run away from the forest-like field, a lonely tree stood in that southeast clearance. Nicole
Wilson’s body had been placed just a few feet from it.

Neither detective said much throughout the entire trip. They were both lost in their own thoughts, silently running over everything Doctor Hove had thrown at them and trying their best to make
sense of a senseless act.

But even in silence, they both shared one certainty – a killer who was bold enough to write a message in blood and carefully place it in his victim’s throat, knowing full well that
it would be found during the post mortem examination, a killer confident enough to call himself DEATH – didn’t do it for fun. He didn’t do it just to tease the police, or to
inflate his own ego. He did it for one reason. To let everyone know that this wouldn’t end here.

At the southwest end of the airport, Garcia turned right on to Pershing Drive, and geared down his car.

The area had been cordoned off and a perimeter had already been established by the police. Due to its semi-secluded location there were very few curious onlookers hanging around. The ones that
had ventured their luck were being kept too far back to be able to catch a glimpse of anything interesting, and looked bored and ready to give up at any second.

A single reporter was trying his best to obtain any kind of information from the officers by the yellow tape that read: Police Line – Do Not Cross.

Despite decreasing numbers in recent years, murder in LA was still a very common occurrence – on average, one person was murdered every thirty-nine hours in the City of Angels. Though
newspapers and TV news stations still covered a number of them, murder just didn’t constitute big news anymore, unless the crime was shrouded by some sort of attention-grabbing factor, like a
celebrity being involved, extreme violence or it being attributed to a serial killer.

As Garcia approached the perimeter at the other end from where the reporter was, a uniformed officer signaled for him to turn left and move on, but instead Garcia simply slowed down further.
Irritated, the officer shook his head and murmured something to himself before taking a couple of steps toward Garcia’s car.

‘Sir, as you can see the road is closed,’ the officer said in a bored voice, first indicating the police line, then gesturing to his left. ‘You need to go around
the—’

Garcia lifted his left hand, interrupting the officer and displaying his credentials.

The officer stopped midsentence and nodded apologetically.

‘Sorry, sir.’

As he handed Garcia the crime-scene logbook so he and Hunter could sign it, a Boeing 777 finished its approach on the west route and touched down on runway 7R, its engine noise so loud and
powerful Garcia’s car windows rattled.

‘You can park on the road right over there, sir, by that black and white unit,’ the officer said, collecting the logbook.

Garcia did exactly that.

Two other uniformed officers stood under the shade of a tall and leafy tree next to some more yellow tape that denoted a smaller, internal perimeter. A third officer was sitting inside his Ford
Interceptor, apparently text messaging someone. Most activities, including crime scene forensics, had already ceased.

All the officers looked up as Hunter and Garcia stepped out of the car. They didn’t need to flash their badges; the officers knew that the only people allowed past the police line would be
CSIs or detectives. With zero concern, they returned their attention to whatever it was that they were doing.

From where Hunter stood, just by Pershing Drive, he paused and studied his surroundings. Garcia joined him and did the same for several seconds.

The location had been very well picked out. The field was well away from prying eyes, sandwiched between the airport and a water treatment plant. There were no residential homes within a
one-mile radius of it. The road they were on, which was parallel to the field and provided its only access route, served only as a shortcut between Culver Boulevard and Dockweiler Beach. Traffic
would be minimal during the day, and even less so at night.

Only two yellow evidence-number placards had been placed on the field. The first, displaying the number 1, had been positioned in a direct line with the large tree by which the two officers were
standing, about eight feet east of it. It marked the spot where Nicole Wilson’s body had been found. The second placard – 2 – was located not too far from where Hunter and Garcia
stood, about fifteen feet in from the road. From the report they’d read, Hunter and Garcia knew that it indicated where forensics had found depressions on the grass – probably caused by
a heavy vehicle, like an SUV, probably the one used by the killer. But the depressions were on grass, not dirt or mud, which meant that forensics had been unable to obtain any tire tracks. The best
they could do, if they were correct in their assumption, was to identify where the killer had parked.

As both detectives started walking toward evidence placard number 1, an Airbus 320 took to the skies from runway 7R. Garcia cringed at the deafening sound, bringing his hands up to cover his
ears.

The two officers who were standing by the tree, shading themselves from the sun, turned to face the detectives.

Hunter and Garcia would have preferred to view the body
in situ,
but since they had only been handed the case several hours after the body had been discovered, they had to content
themselves with the photographs taken by the CSI team, and the odd, star-like shape created by white tape that forensics had used to outline the body’s exact position on the ground.

Despite the tape, Hunter retrieved a photo from the folder Garcia had with him, went down on his haunches and placed it on the grass, right at the center of the white outline.

Garcia squatted down next to him.

Nicole’s body had been left with her extended right arm pointing west, in a straight line with the lone leafy tree. Her right leg pointed southwest. Consequently, her left arm and leg
pointed east and southeast respectively. Her head pointed north.

Hunter’s eyes flicked from the picture to the tree and the surrounding vegetation several times.

Garcia ran his palm against the grass around him. Despite it being untreated, it wasn’t very high – about two to three inches long, maybe four in some places. It felt dry, which was
understandable because Los Angeles had seen nothing but cloudless skies and a beating sun for the past two weeks. Not a drop of rain.

‘There’s no give on the ground whatsoever,’ Garcia said, his fingers still moving back and forth on the grass. ‘That’s why forensics got no footprints
anywhere.’

Across the road at LAX, another airplane approached and touched down.

Garcia stood up, his eyes searching the vicinity once again. Something didn’t sit right with him.

‘Why would the killer dump her body right on this spot?’ he asked.

He was facing west, looking at the leafy tree. There were dense clusters of trees north, south and further west, past the lonely tree. Pershing Drive and the airport were east, directly behind
him.

‘I was just asking myself that same question,’ Hunter said.

‘The killer clearly wasn’t attempting to hide the body,’ Garcia added. ‘Just look around. There are thicker clusters of trees just about everywhere on this field. He
could’ve hidden the body behind any of them. Why place it here, in the most exposed spot there is? Plus, this guy was arrogant enough to write us a note just to tell us his chosen name
– DEATH. And I say “us” because he knew the note would be found during the autopsy examination. Not to mention the whole role-playing abduction game that he played with the
victim. This guy’s got an ego, Robert, and it’s a big one. He’s confident, seemingly intelligent and knowledgeable. He knows it, and he wants us to know it as well. If such a
person wanted to hide a body, he wouldn’t dump in a city field. He would’ve simply made it disappear. No traces. No witnesses. Nothing. He dumped the body here because he wanted it
found.’

Hunter agreed with a nod. ‘But something still isn’t right,’ he said.

Garcia looked around again.

‘One thing we know,’ Hunter continued, ‘is that perpetrators who place their victims’ bodies into specific positions or shapes, with the intention of them being found
that way, are very particular about everything, every detail. Most of them to the point of OCD.’ Hunter indicated the photograph of the body
in situ.
‘The position of the hands,
feet, head, the hair, the clothes and the makeup, if any, the surroundings . . . it all has to perfectly match the picture in the perpetrator’s head.’