The Crucifix Killer (3 page)

Hunter stood there for a moment as if debating what to do. He bit his bottom lip and shook the thought from his head. His headache reminded him not to do that again.

‘I promise you, if I could stay, I would.’ He was now fully dressed and ready to go.

‘I understand. Was that your wife on the phone?’

‘What? No, I’m not married. That was work, trust me.’ The last thing Hunter wanted was for her to think he was a cheating husband.

‘OK,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Hunter’s eyes ran the length of her body once again and he felt an exciting tingle. ‘If you give me your number, maybe we could meet up again sometime.’

She studied him for a long moment.

‘You’re thinking I won’t bother to call right?’ Hunter said sensing her reluctance.

‘Oh, you read minds as well? That’s a neat party trick.’

‘You should see what I can do with a deck of cards.’

They both smiled.

‘Plus, there’s nothing I like more than proving people wrong.’

She reached for the notepad on her bedside table with a smirk on her face.

Hunter took the piece of paper from her hand and kissed her right cheek. ‘I gotta go.’

‘That will be one thousand dollars, babe!’ she said gently running her fingers over his lips.

‘What?’ he asked with a shocked look. ‘But . . .’

She was already smiling back at him. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t resist after you called me a hooker.’

Outside her apartment Hunter unfolded the piece of paper in his hand. Isabella! Sexy name, he thought. He searched the street for his old Buick Lesabre. The car was nowhere to be seen.

‘Shit! I was too drunk to drive,’ he cursed himself before flagging down the first cab he saw.

*

The directions Garcia had given him took Hunter to the middle of nowhere. Little Tujunga Canyon Road, in Santa Clarita, is eighteen miles long running from Bear Divide to Foothill Boulevard in Lakeview Terrace. Almost all of it is within the Angeles National Forest. At times the woodland and mountain views are simply breathtaking. Garcia’s directions were precise and soon the taxi was driving down a tiny, bumpy, dirt road surrounded by hills, bushes and rough terrain. The darkness and nothingness was overwhelming. Twenty minutes later they finally came to an uneven lane that led up to an old wooden house.

‘I guess this is it,’ Hunter said handing the driver all the money in his pocket.

The lane was long and narrow, just wide enough to fit a standard-size car. Surrounding it were dense, impassable shrubs. Police and official vehicles were crammed everywhere making it look like a traffic jam in a desert.

Garcia was standing in front of the wooden shack talking to an agent from the crime lab, both of them holding flashlights. Hunter had to negotiate his way through the carnival of cars before joining them.

‘Jesus, talk about a place out of the way – any further and we’d be in Mexico . . . Hi there, Peter,’ Hunter said, nodding at the crime lab agent.

‘Rough night, Robert? You look just like I feel,’ Peter said with a sarcastic smirk.

‘Yeah, thanks, you look great too. When is the baby due?’ Hunter asked tapping his hand over Peter’s beer gut. ‘So what have we got here?’ He turned to face Garcia.

‘I think you better see it for yourself. It’s hard to describe what’s in there. The captain’s inside, he said he wanted to talk to you first before letting the boys tag and bag the place,’ Garcia said looking unsettled.

‘What the hell is the captain doing here? He never comes out to crime scenes. Does he know the victim?’

‘I’m as much in the dark as you are, but I don’t think so. She’s not exactly recognizable.’ Garcia’s statement made Hunter’s eyes squint with a new worry.

‘So it’s a female body?’

‘Oh, she’s female alright.’

‘Are you OK, rookie? You look a little shook up.’

‘I’m fine,’ Garcia reassured him.

‘He’s been sick a couple of times,’ Peter commented with a new sneer.

Hunter studied Garcia for a moment. He knew this wasn’t his first murder scene. ‘Who found the body? Who called it in?’

‘Apparently it was an anonymous call to 911,’ Garcia answered.

‘Oh great, one of those.’

‘Here, take this,’ Garcia said handing Robert his flashlight.

‘Would you like a barf bag as well?’ Peter joked.

Hunter paid no attention to the comment and took a moment to study the house from the outside. There was no front door. Most of the wooden planks from the front wall were missing and grass had grown through the remaining floorboards, making the front room look like a private forest. He could tell the house had once been white from flecks of peeled paint on the remains of windowsills. It was obvious that no one had lived there for a long time and that bothered Hunter. First-time killers didn’t go to the trouble of finding such a secluded place to commit murder.

Three police officers stood to the left of the house discussing last night’s football game, all three holding steaming cups of coffee.

‘Where can I get one of those?’ Hunter asked pointing to the coffee cups.

‘I’ll get you one,’ Garcia replied. ‘The captain’s in the last room on the left, through the corridor. I’ll see you in there.’

‘Working hard, guys?’ Hunter shouted to the three officers who glanced at him indifferently before carrying on discussing the game.

Inside the house a peculiar smell hung in the air, a mix of rotten wood and raw sewage. There was nothing to see in the first room. Hunter turned on his flashlight and moved through the door at the far end into a long and narrow corridor that led to four other rooms, two on each side. A young police officer was standing outside the last door on the left. As Hunter made his way down the corridor, he quickly peeked inside each room he passed. Nothing except for spider webs and old debris. The creaking floorboards gave the house an even more sinister feel. As Hunter approached the last door and the officer standing guard he felt an uncomfortable chill. The chill that comes with every murder scene. The chill of death.

Hunter produced his badge and the officer stepped to one side.

‘Go right ahead, detective!’

On a table just outside the door Hunter found the customary overalls together with blue plastic shoes and head covers. Next to them a box of latex gloves. Hunter got himself ready and opened the door to face his new nightmare.

The shocking image that met his eyes as he stepped into the room sucked all the air out of his lungs.

‘Jesus Christ.’ His voice was just a weak whisper.

Hunter stood at the door of a large double room illuminated only by two moving flashlights – Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston. Surprisingly the room was in much better condition than the rest of the house. A giant pit welled in his stomach as he stared at the image before him.

Directly in front of the bedroom door and about three feet from the back wall, the naked body of a woman hung from two parallel wooden posts. Her arms spread as wide as they’d go, her knees bent as they touched the floor placing her in a kneeling Y position. The rope restraining her wrists against the top of the poles had cut deep into her flesh and dark lines of dried blood now decorated her thin arms. Hunter stared at the dead woman’s face. His mind struggling to understand what his eyes were seeing.

‘Sweet God in heaven!’

An incessant swarm of flies were swirling around her body creating a relentless buzzing sound, but they left her face alone. Her skinless face. A shapeless mass of muscle tissue.

‘Hunter! You finally decided to show up.’ Captain Bolter was standing across the room next to Doctor Winston, the Chief Medical Examiner.

Hunter stared at the woman for a few more seconds before diverting his attention to the captain. ‘Somebody skinned her?’ he questioned from the doorway, his voice carrying a tone of disbelief.

‘Alive . . . someone skinned her alive,’ Doctor Winston’s calm voice corrected Hunter. ‘She died hours after her skin had been ripped off her face.’

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ Hunter studied the faceless woman. The absence of skin made her eyes puff out of their sockets and they seemed to be staring straight at him. Her mouth hung open. No teeth.

Hunter guessed her age to be no older than twenty-five. Her legs, stomach and arms had defined muscle tone and it was clear she’d taken pride in her appearance. Her hair was golden blond, long and smooth, falling halfway down her back. Hunter was sure she’d been a very attractive woman.

‘There is more. Have a look behind the door,’ Doctor Winston said.

Hunter stepped into the room, closed the door and stared at it confused for a couple of seconds.

‘A full-length mirror?’ he said quizzically staring at his reflection. Suddenly he stepped out of the way and the woman’s body came in full view on the mirror.

‘God! The killer made her watch.’ Her body had been positioned directly in front of the door.

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Doctor Winston agreed. ‘She probably spent her last living hours staring at her disfigured reflection in the mirror – mental torture as well as physical.’

‘This mirror doesn’t belong on this door . . .’ Hunter said looking around, ‘ . . . or in this room. It looks brand new.’

‘Exactly, the mirror and those wooden posts were placed in here for a reason – to increase her suffering,’ Doctor Winston confirmed.

The bedroom door swung open in front of Hunter breaking his stare from the mirror. Garcia walked in holding a cup of coffee. ‘Here you go,’ he said handing it to Hunter.

‘I think I’ll pass, rookie, my stomach has seen better days and I’m very much wide awake now,’ Hunter replied with a dismissive gesture.

Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston both shook their heads indicating they didn’t want any either. Garcia reopened the door.

‘Here you go,’ he said to the young officer standing outside. ‘You look like you could use a drink.’

‘Uh! Thank you sir.’ The officer looked surprised.

‘Don’t mention it.’ Garcia closed the door and approached the victim with Hunter. A pungent smell filled their nostrils forcing Hunter to place a hand over his nose. The woman had been kneeling in a pool of urine and faeces.

‘She was kept tied to those posts for several hours, maybe even an entire day. That was her toilet,’ Doctor Winston explained pointing to the floor.

Garcia grimaced in disgust.

‘How long has she been dead for, doc?’ Hunter questioned.

‘It’s hard to be precise at this moment. The human body drops approximately 1.5 degrees in temperature every hour after death. Her body has dropped around twelve degrees which could mean that she’s been dead for eight hours, but that depends on the circumstances. The summer heat would’ve no doubt slowed the process down and during the day I’m sure this room feels like a sauna. I’ll have a better idea of the time of death once I get her into my autopsy room.’

‘There are no cuts, no bullet wounds, no strangulation marks. Did she die from her facial injuries?’ Hunter asked, looking at the woman’s torso and waving his hands to get rid of some of the flies.

‘Again, without an autopsy I can’t be certain, but my guess would be heart failure induced by pure pain and exhaustion. Whoever did this to her, kept her in this position inflicting more and more pain until she was gone. The killer wanted her to suffer as much as possible, and suffer she did.’

Hunter looked around the room as if searching for something. ‘What’s this other smell? I can smell something else, something like vinegar.’

‘You’ve got a good nose, Hunter,’ Doctor Winston said pointing to one of the corners of the room. ‘That jar over there, it was full of vinegar. You can also smell it over her body, predominantly on the top half. It looks like the killer poured it over her skinless face at set time intervals.’

‘Vinegar also works as a fly repellent,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s correct,’ Doctor Winston confirmed. ‘Now just imagine the sort of pain she had to go through. All the nerves around her face were completely exposed. Even a small gust of wind would’ve caused unbearable pain. She probably passed out several times, or at least tried to. Remember, she had no eye lids – no way of keeping the light away, no way of resting her eyes. Every time she regained consciousness, the first image she’d see would be her disfigured naked body. I’m not even gonna go into what sort of pain the acidity of vinegar poured over open flesh causes.’

‘Jesus!’ Garcia said taking a few steps back. ‘Poor woman!’

‘Was she conscious when she was skinned?’ Hunter asked.

‘Not without being anesthetized, but I don’t think she was. I’d say she was drugged, knocked unconscious for several hours while this psycho went to work on her face. After he was done, she was brought up to this house, tied to the posts and tortured some more until she died.’

‘What? You don’t think she was skinned in this house?’ Garcia asked, looking confused.

‘No,’ Hunter replied before Doctor Winston had a chance to do so. ‘Look around. Check any room you like. Not even a speck of blood anywhere except directly under her body. True, I’m sure the killer cleaned up after himself, but this isn’t the place. Correct me if I’m wrong, doc, but skinning a human being is a complicated process.’