Chris Carter - I Am Death

Hunter and Garcia’s interest grew.

‘Now tell me if this sounds familiar,’ Sanders continued. ‘She was found fully clothed, positioned in a human crucifix shape, with her legs fully extended but close together and her arms wide open, palms up. Ligature marks were found on both of her wrists and ankles.’

Hunter and Garcia both lifted their head to look at the Missing Persons detective.

‘Her picture follows,’ Sanders said expectantly, nodding at the file.

One more page flip and both detectives were held fast.

Sandra Oliver was a petite woman with very similar features to Nicole Wilson. Just like Ms. Wilson, she had a round face, which was also framed by shoulder-length dark-brown hair.

Hunter checked the next photograph along. It was a crimescene snapshot, showing the position in which Sandra Oliver’s body had been found. If her legs had been spread apart, she would’ve been left in the exact same position Nicole Wilson was found in, on a similar patch of green grass.

To better compare them, Hunter looked at Nicole Wilson’s crime scene photograph pinned to the picture board. This had indeed got interesting.

Sanders’ gaze followed his before he added, ‘The post mortem concluded that Ms. Oliver was tortured for several days prior to her demise,’

‘What sort of torture?’ Garcia asked.

‘She was severely beaten up. The skin under her clothes was black and blue, covered in bruises and hematomas, but no lacerations. For some reason, her torturer punished her body but left her face completely intact, as you can see from the photographs. According to the coroner, the blunt traumas to her body were inflicted by hand alone — punches to be more precise — by someone with relatively big fists.’ Sanders paused for breath. ‘Also, whoever punished her was kind of an expert. Superficial injuries only. No broken bones or internal organ damage.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Garcia again.

‘Repeatedly, but the assailant was smart enough to use a rubber. No semen was found. Unfortunately, the autopsy examination uncovered nothing else that could be construed as a clue to her killer’s identity. The investigation hit a wall.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘She suffocated. The coroner couldn’t be any more specific as to how it happened but it wasn’t by strangulation.’

Sanders gave Hunter and Garcia a moment to read over the autopsy report.

‘But it doesn’t end there,’ he proceeded. ‘A year after Ms. Oliver’s body was found, Mathew Hade relocated to Sacramento. Six months after the relocation, a twenty-year-old woman named Grace Lansing went missing in River Park, on the east side of the city. She was taken from inside her parents’ house while they were away on a weekend break. Just like Tracy Dillard, the college student who went missing in Fresno, Grace has also never been found.’

‘Did Mathew Hade make the POI list in Sacramento again?’ Garcia asked.

‘He did,’ Hunter was the one who answered, reading from the file.

‘Working in the proximities?’ Garcia half questioned, half guessed.

Sanders nodded. ‘He had found a job with a roofing company. The company was making repairs to one of the houses in the same street as Grace Lansing’s parents’. Once again, Mathew Hade had no alibi for the night Ms. Lansing went missing but, once again, the police couldn’t get anything concrete on him to justify an arrest.’

Hunter continued reading the file.

‘I know that all of this might mean absolutely nothing,’ Sanders said, lifting up both palms. ‘It could all be just a coincidence, but I wanted to bring the file to you and let you decide. Especially because of the last photograph.’

Hunter and Garcia turned to it. It was a mugshot of Mathew Hade. With the exception of maybe a wrinkle or two, he looked exactly the same as he did in the file’s first photograph.’

‘A mugshot?’ Garcia said.

Sanders nodded. ‘That mugshot was taken seven months ago. Mathew Hade was taken in because he got involved in an altercation at a bar... ’ Sanders paused.

‘OK,’ Garcia said.

‘In East Los Angeles,’ Sanders added. ‘Mathew Hade isn’t in Sacramento anymore. He’s here.’

‘The Monster’ is lying.

That had been Squirm’s first thought after hearing the man’s words.

He must be lying. Of course my father reported me missing.

The man could see the boy’s demeanor changing. He returned to his seat, placed his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers together, his hands directly in front of his chin.

‘You don’t believe me, do you, Squirm?’ he said, looking at the kid. ‘I don’t blame you. Why would you? But let me tell you a quick story which might change your mind.’

Squirm kept his gaze on ‘The Monster’.

‘A few months ago, I was having a quiet drink in this rundown joint not that far from your school. It was late, sometime between one and two in the morning, I think. The place wasn’t busy at all. I’d say maybe five or six people, max. I was just there, sitting at the bar, minding my own business, when one of the regulars walks in. The reason I know he was a regular was because the bartender greeted him by name — Pete. Well, this guy, Pete, already looked to be pretty hammered, but since he was a regular, the bartender didn’t seem to mind it.

‘Pete ordered a bourbon, neat, and took the stool next to where I was sitting. Strange, as the bar was pretty fucking empty, but hey, it’s a free country and a man has the right to sit wherever he likes, as long as he isn’t bothering anyone.’

Keeping his fingers interlaced, the man used his thumbs to rub his chin.

‘Once the bartender brought Pete his drink, he looked at me, probably because I was the only other person sitting at the bar, lifted his glass and in a stroppy way mumbled the word “Cheers”. Now I’m a polite guy, so in return I raised my glass and we both had a sip of our drinks. Pete then put his glass down, turned on his stool and slowly looked at me from head to toe. In a seedy bar like that, full of drunken people, that was all that was needed to either start a fight or a conversation. Well, I wasn’t in the mood for a fight so that night it was a conversation.

‘We shot the breeze for a while, then ended up moving the conversation from the bar to one of the tables, all the while Pete is drinking neat bourbon and I’m drinking cheap whiskey. Once we took the table, Pete began telling me how he hated his life, how his wife had left him years ago for no good reason, and how she had left him stuck with this boy.’

The man was tracking Squirm’s reactions, but the boy looked as if he had gone into some sort of trance, with his good eye wide open staring back at his captor. The man continued without missing a beat.

‘Pete went on and on, telling me how much of a pain in the ass the boy was, that he had been a mistake that should never have happened and so on. In short, Pete blamed this boy for everything bad that had happened to him in his life. I’m telling you, Squirm, this guy hated his son with a divine passion. He told me that there’d been many nights that he’d gotten back home and almost strangled the boy in his sleep. I asked him “Why hadn’t he?” and he told me that if he thought he could get away with it, he would.’

The man paused, reached for the bacon rasher that Squirm had failed to eat and placed the whole thing in his mouth. He continued only when he was done chewing.

‘That was when I told Pete that there were plenty of ways one could get away with murder. One just needed to know what to do.’

Those words seemed to fill the room with a cold, discomforting air.