The Death Sculptor (44 page)

The man on the mattress took advantage of the distraction and reached for his Uzi for the second time, but his left hand was out of action. That forced him to twist his body and reach for it with his right. He grabbed the gun, but the position he was in was no good. He had to turn his body around the other way to be able to target Fallon. There was no way that would happen fast enough. As soon as he started turning his body back the way he came, Fallon’s aim was back on him.

‘Drop it,’ Fallon shouted, but the man was screaming in anger as he rotated his body, thirsty for blood.

Another squeeze of the trigger from Fallon, another double shot. Both hit Ponytail Man in his right shoulder, fracturing his clavicle and scapula bone before he could aim the Uzi. His arm went limp instantly.

The girl under him, now covered in his blood, let go of a petrified scream that had been gaining momentum in her throat since the girl from the bathroom had hit the floor, and then she became hysterical.

Ponytail Man dropped the gun and collapsed on top of the blonde girl. She started kicking and jerking, trying to get him off of her.

Without lifting his aim from the man and the girl on the mattress, Fallon moved purposefully towards the en-suite bathroom, stepping over the teenager’s body. The bathroom was clear.

‘I’ve got a man down,’ he yelled into his helmet-mic.

Two seconds later the door to the main bedroom burst open. Alpha team stepped inside, immediately followed by team Beta, each of their guns targeting a different quadrant of the room.

‘The room is clear,’ Fallon announced.

‘Whole house is clear,’ Toro said from the door.

The entire operation had lasted thirty-three seconds, and unfortunately had turned into a bloodbath.

While Robinson and Toro kept their aims on the mattress occupants, Fallon turned his attention to Grimshaw on the floor.

‘Grimshaw,’ he called, crouching down next to the boy.

No reply. His whole neck was covered in blood.

‘Fuck,’ he said, holding Grimshaw’s bloody head in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you check the bathroom? I had the room under control, kid.’

Fallon took Grimshaw’s pulse.

Nothing.

A 12-gauge shotgun releases lead pellets. They spread upon leaving the barrel. That means that the power of the burning charge is divided among the pellets, and they lose energy as they travel. From a distance, shotguns aren’t very useful, but the large number of spreading projectiles make it the perfect weapon for close quarters combat. By chance, the girl with the shotgun had aimed high. Most of the pellets missed Grimshaw’s bulletproof vest, hitting him in the back of the neck. They had torn through skin, muscle, artery and veins. Blood was pouring from his neck like an open faucet.

‘We need a medic in here,’ Fallow shouted down his mic, already starting to massage and pump Grimshaw’s heart, refusing to believe what he already knew. There was nothing any of them could do.

‘Fuck,’ Fallon shouted, still clutching at Grimshaw’s lifeless body. His eyes were still open.

Beta team had crossed to the mattress, where the blonde girl was still screaming. Robinson took one look at the bleeding man slumped on top of her.

They had got their man.

‘Drop the gun, Detective,’ the Sculptor said, staring deep into Hunter’s eyes and pressing the electric knife against Scott Bradley’s throat.

Hunter didn’t move. His aim didn’t flinch.

‘Are you sure you want to play this game, Robert? ’Cos I sure as hell am ready.’ The powerful electric knife was turned on, its whirr reverberating inside the room like a thousand dentists’ drills.

Scott was so terrified that only a feeble whimper left his lips. He wet himself.

Hunter still didn’t move.

‘Suit yourself.’ In a super-fast move, the Sculptor grabbed Scott’s right hand and swung the knife against his index finger. The blades sliced through skin and bone with tremendous ease. The finger dropped to the floor like a dead maggot. Blood spurted everywhere.

Scott let out a guttural cry and tried to jerk his hand away, but it was all too late. It was already a bloody mess, the finger gone. He looked like he was about to pass out.

‘OK,’ Hunter yelled, raising his left hand in surrender. ‘OK, you win.’ He thumbed the safety on, and placed the gun on the floor.

The Sculptor switched the knife off. ‘Kick it this way. And make it far away.’

Hunter did as he was told, kicking his gun towards the Sculptor. It slid against the concrete floor until it hit the wall.

‘The back-up too.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Really?’ The knife came back on.

‘Noooo!’ Scott screamed.

‘I don’t,’ Hunter yelled over the noise. ‘I’m not carrying a back-up weapon.’

‘OK, then. Strip . . . slowly. Take off your clothes and throw them to the side. You can keep your underwear.’

Hunter did as he was told.

‘Now lay on the floor, face-down, legs and arms spread, star position.’

Hunter knew he had to comply. Time was running out for him and Scott.

‘Do you know something?’ the Sculptor said, wrapping a piece of medical gauze around Scott’s hand. ‘I had no doubt you would figure it all out. I knew you would manage to piece everything together, to see the real meaning behind the sculptures, to see their shadows, and understand what I was telling you. I just didn’t think you would do it this quick. Not before I was done. Not with this last piece still missing. How did you do it? How did you figure it out?’

Hunter placed his chin on the concrete floor and looked straight into her eyes.

Olivia, Derek Nicholson’s oldest daughter, had finally moved from behind the metal chair. She was dressed all in black, wearing a jumpsuit made of some impermeable material zipped up to her neck. She pulled the jumpsuit’s hood back from her head, and Hunter saw she was wearing a black, silicone swimmer’s cap. Her shoes looked a couple of sizes too big for her feet. Hunter remembered what the lead forensics agent had said about the shoeprints found at the second crime-scene, Nashorn’s boat – that the distribution of weight from each step seemed to be unequal. That suggested that the killer either walked with a limp, or had deliberately worn the wrong-sized shoes. She was still holding the electric knife in her hand.

‘You really had me convinced,’ Hunter said, remembering the first day he saw her in her father’s house. ‘The way you acted . . . the tears . . . the uncontrollable shivering . . . the despair in your voice . . . I bought it all.’

Olivia didn’t even flinch. ‘So, how did you do it?’ she asked again.

Hunter swallowed. He would gain every second he could. ‘A friend of your mother’s,’ he said, and saw those words hit Olivia like a whip.

She paused, anger and sadness slushing around inside her eyes. She took a moment to compose herself. ‘Which friend?’

‘Someone she knew. I don’t have a real name. She called herself Jude.’

‘What did she tell you?’

Hunter coughed. ‘Nothing much.’

Olivia waited but Hunter said nothing else. ‘You better carry on talking or I will start cutting.’

‘She came to talk to us about the victims. Your victims.’

‘What about them?’

‘She was beat up by them, as a group. Just like your mother.’

Hunter saw rage recolor Olivia’s face. Her burning eyes focused on Scott, who was listening attentively, but still looked frightened and in tremendous pain.

‘We did figure out the shadow images,’ Hunter quickly added, trying to force her attention back to him. ‘But we read them wrong . . . partially wrong.’

It worked. Olivia turned and faced Hunter again.

‘It took us a little while, but we figured out the meaning behind the coyote and the raven. You were telling us that your father was a liar.’

‘He wasn’t my father,’ she spat out in disgust.

‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m sorry. You were telling us that Derek Nicholson was a betrayer, a liar,’ he corrected himself.

‘He was.’ Her voice quivered with anger. ‘I was three years old when my mother died. I was lied to for twenty-eight years. Tricked like a little dog to believe a lie.’

‘I’m so sorry for that,’ Hunter said and paused for a moment. His strained neck was starting to hurt. ‘But it took us forever to figure out that what you were doing was telling us a story, scene by scene, like in a puppet theater.’

Scott looked confused.

Olivia said nothing.

‘But we read your second sculpture and its shadow image wrong,’ Hunter continued. ‘We went through tens of interpretations, and in the end I was convinced that you were showing us a fight scene. A group of guys who used to hang out together, get drunk and high together. One day they got into a fight, things got out of hand and someone died. We also concluded that you were telling us that Andrew Nashorn was the group leader.’

‘He was a scumbag,’ Olivia said.

‘But it wasn’t a fight scene you were showing us, was it?’ Hunter said. ‘You weren’t showing us two people fighting on the floor, with the rest of the group watching. You were showing us a rape scene, with the rest of the group watching.’

‘They didn’t watch. They took turns.’ There was a glow burning in her eyes, like a storm building.

‘She was a street hooker.’ Scott had finally found enough strength to say something. ‘Andy picked her up on a dark corner on Sunset Strip. She was looking for it. That was what she did. She fucked people for a living. How was that rape?’

Olivia turned so fast she almost became a blur, and slammed her closed fist into Scott’s jaw, rupturing his lower lip and sending a spray of blood across the room.

‘You don’t get to speak until I tell you to, you sack of shit.’

Hunter twitched on the floor.

‘And you better not move until I tell you to.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

The moment was tensing up.

‘I’m listening,’ Olivia said. ‘How did you figure out it was a rape scene?’

‘Jude used to work the streets as well. When she got in contact with us, she told us how she got into the car with Nashorn one night, and he took her somewhere where the rest of the group was waiting for them. They ganged up on her, beat her up, and had their way with her.’ Hunter cleared his throat again. ‘Then she told us about this woman she met, Roxy.’ He looked up at Olivia to assess her reaction. Recognition was written all over her face, but she didn’t say anything. Hunter continued. ‘Roxy told Jude that she wasn’t a street worker. She’d never done it before, but she was desperate. She had a child, who was ill, and she couldn’t afford her kid’s medicine. Her idea was to work the streets for only one night so she’d have enough money. She was sacrificing herself for her kid.’ Hunter looked at Scott. ‘So no, she wasn’t a hooker, she wasn’t looking for it, and she didn’t fuck people for a living. She was desperate, out of options, and scared for her kid’s health.’

Tears welled up in Olivia’s eyes. ‘I used to suffer from asthma. I remember having terrible fits when I was a small kid. As I grew older, it all just cleared away.’

‘Jude told us that she saw Roxy get in the car with Nashorn one night. She tried to stop her, but she was too late. She never saw Roxy again.’

‘Her name was Sandra,’ Olivia said. ‘Sandra Ellwood. And my name is Olivia Ellwood.’ She moved behind Scott’s chair again.

Hunter couldn’t see what she was doing.

‘Tell him,’ she said to Scott through gritted teeth, parading the knife before his eyes. ‘Tell him how it happened.’ Anger was making her tremble.

Scott was looking at her wide-eyed, uncertain.

In a lightning-fast move, before Scott could react, Olivia grabbed his pinky finger and pulled it backwards until it snapped. The bone-cracking sound was loud enough for Hunter to hear it from across the room. Scott screamed in pain and Olivia slapped him across the face. ‘Tell him, or I’m going to carry on breaking every bone in your body before I start cutting you.’

Scott Bradley’s scared and confused gaze moved from Olivia to Hunter and then back to Olivia. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I have a family. I have a wife and two daughters.’

Olivia slapped him across the face again. ‘I had a mother.’

Scott saw something in her eyes that he’d never seen in anyone else’s. Something that scared him like nothing ever had. His cut lip was beginning to swell up. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva and blood, and fought the desire to vomit before speaking again.

‘We knew each other from bars and clubs in West Hollywood,’ he said. ‘You know, back then we were out all the time. We bumped into each other everywhere. Pretty soon we started hanging out together. Andy was the one who came up with the idea the first time. He would get a street hooker and take her to some isolated place somewhere. The rest of us would be waiting and hiding . . .’ He looked away.

‘Don’t stop talking,’ Olivia ordered.

‘Andy was LAPD, fresh out of cop school. His beat was West Hollywood. He knew the women who had no pimp, no protection.’

Hunter closed his eyes and let out a heavy breath. Without the protection of a pimp there wouldn’t be many consequences for the group if things ever got ugly.

‘This one night, Andy brought this skinny bi—’ Scott stopped himself before saying the word. ‘This skinny woman with him. She was pretty. Andy said her name was Roxy. She . . .’ He shook his head as he remembered. ‘She looked really scared when she saw all of us.’ He looked down, avoiding their eyes.

‘And you all liked that, didn’t you?’ Olivia asked. ‘You all liked it when they showed how scared they were.’

Scott didn’t reply.

Hunter’s eyes were tracking Olivia. She was still behind Scott’s chair. She had picked Hunter’s gun up from the floor, and he saw her flick the safety off. They were all running out of time.

‘That night things went wrong . . . really wrong,’ Scott continued. ‘We all had . . . had our fun, except Derek, Derek Nicholson. That night he didn’t want to do it. Maybe it was because he was just about to get married, or maybe it was because this Roxy chick kept on begging us not to hurt her . . .’