Carter Chris - The Death Sculptor

‘I’m not. I just read a lot.’

Hunter had only gone into Derek Nicholson’s study very briefly. That was the room Melinda Wallis was sitting in when he got to the house for the first time yesterday morning. In the evening, when he revisited the crime scene, he would focus all his attention on the room upstairs.

It took them only ten minutes to drive to Cheviot Hills from Olivia’s place in Westwood. They unlocked the door and stepped into a house that Hunter was sure one day had been home to a happy family. Now, that building was forever tainted with the stains of a brutal homicide. Every single happy memory that those walls once held completely erased by one act of unthinkable evil.

The air inside the house was warm and stale, and it carried a distinct mixture of unpleasant smells. Garcia rubbed his nose, cleared his throat a couple of times and allowed his partner to lead the way.

Hunter opened the door to a long, wood-paneled room where bookshelves lined two of the walls. The space was reminiscent of a court-of-law judge’s chambers, with a large twin desk, comfortable armchairs and the musty odor of old, leather-bound books. They spotted the four sculptures Olivia had mentioned straight away. Two were on the bookshelves, one was on Derek Nicholson’s desk, and one was on a side table next to a whisky-colored leather armchair. Unconventional-looking as they were, however, none of them even remotely resembled the grotesque piece left behind by the killer.

‘Well, at least we know that the killer wasn’t trying to mimic any of these,’ Garcia said, placing the sculpture he was holding back down on the side table. ‘God knows what he was trying to do or mimic.’

Hunter had looked at all the sculptures and was now studying some of the books on the shelves. Almost all of them were criminal-law related, but a handful were about pottery and ceramics. Two of them were about modern sculpture. Hunter pulled one out of the shelf and flipped through its first few pages.

‘Do you think his murder could really be related to what he said to his nurse?’ Garcia asked. ‘Something about making his peace with someone and telling them the truth about something?’

‘I’m not sure. But I know we all have secrets, some more important than others. One of Derek Nicholson’s secrets was so important to him . . . it bothered him so much, that he didn’t want to leave this life without clearing things up, without “making his peace”.’ Hunter used his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air.

‘And that’s gotta mean something, right?’ Garcia said.

‘It’s gotta mean something,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But we don’t know if he did or not. Make his peace, that is.’

‘According to his nurse, he told her about this making his peace business sometime between her first and second week here. Since then, other than the weekend nurse and his two daughters, it looks like he’d only talked to two other people.’

Hunter nodded. ‘DA Bradley and our mysterious, six foot tall, brown-eyed visitor.’ He replaced the book on the shelf and reached for the second volume on sculpture. ‘Maybe the DA knows who he is. I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow.’

‘The weekdays nurse used the room upstairs,’ Garcia commented. ‘But Melinda had the one above the garage outside. It’s no coincidence the killer picked a weekend night for the murder, is it?’

‘No.’ For no reason Hunter’s eyes darted towards the ceiling and then the walls. ‘Somehow the killer knew the habits of this house. He knew when people came and went. He knew Derek Nicholson’s daughters would visit him for a few hours every day and then leave. He knew when he would be alone and the best time to strike. He might’ve even known that the burglar alarm wasn’t usually engaged, or that Derek Nicholson didn’t like air conditioning and the balcony door that led into his room would probably have been unlocked at this time of year.’

‘So that means that the killer staked out the house,’ Garcia said. ‘And not for just a day.’

Hunter moved his head as if pondering Garcia’s words.

‘You think it’s more than that, don’t you?’ Garcia asked.

Hunter nodded. ‘I think the killer has been in here before. I think the killer knew the family.’

Sixteen

‘So, do you know what the problem is?’ Andrew Nashorn asked the mechanic, who was hunched over the inboard engine pit inside the cabin of his midsized sailboat.

Nashorn was fifty-one years old with a full head of light brown hair, a thick chest and arms, and a swagger that told everybody that he still knew how to handle himself in a fistfight. The scar above his left eyebrow and the crooked nose came from his early boxing days.

Nashorn spent the entire year waiting for the official start of the summer. It’s true that in Los Angeles, and most of southern California, summer is an almost endless season, but those first few official weeks were considered by many boat owners as the best for sailing. The winds were kinder and practically unceasing. The ocean calmer than ever. The water was clearer, and clouds seemed to go paint the sky somewhere else for a couple of weeks.

Nashorn always filed for his two-week holiday at the beginning of every year. The period was always the same – the first few weeks of summer. He’d been doing so for the last twenty years. And for the last twenty years his vacation had been exactly the same, he’d pack a few clothes, some supplies, his fishing gear, and disappear into the Pacific for fourteen days.

Nashorn didn’t eat fish; he didn’t like the taste of it. He fished simply for sport, and because it relaxed him. He’d always throw his catch back into the water as soon as he unhooked it from his line. He used only circle hooks, because they were kinder to the fish.

Despite having many friends, Nashorn always sailed alone. He’d been married once, over twenty years ago. His wife, Jane, suffered a heart attack in their kitchen one afternoon while he was out working. It happened so quickly she never managed to get to the phone. They’d only been married for about three years. Nashorn never even knew she had a heart condition.

Jane’s death devastated him. To Nashorn, she simply was the one. From the first day they met, he knew he wanted to grow old with her, or so he hoped. The first two years after her death were torturous. More than once Nashorn thought about ending his life so he could be with Jane again. He even had a special bullet set aside for the occasion – a .38 hollow point – but that day never came. Little by little, Nashorn managed to step out of his dark depression. But he never remarried, and since then, not a day went by that he didn’t think of her.

Officially, summer had started yesterday, and Nashorn had planned to set sail this afternoon, but when he tried engaging his 29 h.p. diesel engine, the motor coughed and rattled a few times before stalling. He tried it again, but the engine just wouldn’t start. Some sailors might’ve considered taking off with a dead engine – after all, it was a sailboat – but that would’ve been careless, and careless was something Nashorn was not.

He was lucky, though. He was about to call Warren Donnelly, his usual mechanic, when another mechanic, who had just finished servicing the boat right next to his, heard the engine coughing like a dying dog and asked if Nashorn needed any help. That saved Nashorn at least a couple of hours, maybe more.

The mechanic had been looking over the small engine for just over five minutes now.

‘So,’ Nashorn said again, ‘how bad is it? Can it be fixed today?’

Without looking up, the mechanic lifted a finger, asking for one more minute.

Nashorn moved closer, trying to look over the mechanic’s shoulder.