Carter Chris - The Death Sculptor

This time the arms had been severed from the body just below the shoulders, and then again at the elbow joints to produce four distinct pieces. Both forearms had been bundled together with wire, inside wrist against inside wrist, and placed in an upright position. The hands were opened outwards awkwardly, palms up, giving the impression that they were ready to catch a flying baseball. The thumbs were twisted out of shape, clearly broken. All the other fingers were missing. They’d been severed at the knuckles and tightly bundled together two by two, using wire and a strong bonding agent to form four separate pieces. But the killer made the pieces look almost identical by carving them into strange figures – chunky and round at the top, curved at the center, and skinny at the bottom. They were then placed on the breakfast bar, about a foot away from the hands. Two of the figures were standing upright. The other two were lying down, one on top of each other.

‘So what you think that is this time?’ Garcia asked, stepping closer. ‘A crocodile?’

Doctor Hove’s eyebrows arched, surprised. ‘This time . . . ? You figured out what the first sculpture means?’

‘We haven’t figured out its meaning yet,’ Hunter said.

‘But we now know what the sculpture is supposed to create,’ Garcia added.

‘Create . . . ?’

Garcia stole a peek at Hunter before pulling a face. ‘The sculpture creates shadow puppets on the wall.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Garcia nodded. ‘Yep, you heard it right, doc,’ he confirmed. ‘Shadow puppets. Quite neatly done, too. The one from the first crime scene cast a dog and a bird shadow onto the wall.’ He paused. ‘Or something to that effect.’

Doctor Hove looked like she was waiting for one of the detectives to burst out laughing.

Neither did.

‘We discovered it by chance,’ Hunter said. ‘Just minutes before we got the call to come to the marina. We haven’t had a chance to properly analyze it yet.’ He quickly ran Doctor Hove through what had happened back in his office.

‘And it looks like a dog and a bird?’

‘That’s right.’

Her green eyes moved to the sculpture on the breakfast bar. ‘And you’re sure that wasn’t just a fluke?’

Both detectives shook their heads.

‘The images are too perfect for it to have been a fluke or a coincidence,’ Hunter said.

‘So now you have to figure out what this dog and this bird mean?’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia said. ‘The killer is playing charades with us, doc. Giving us a riddle within a riddle. Something that could mean absolutely nothing. He could be laughing at us right now. Making us go around in circles trying to figure out if there really is a meaning behind Scooby-Doo and Tweety Bird. Meanwhile, he’s off on his dismembering rampage.’

‘Wait.’ Doctor Hove lifted a hand. ‘The images look like cartoons?’

‘No they don’t,’ Garcia clarified. ‘I apologize for my crap sense of humor.’

The doctor looked at Hunter and pointed at the sculpture. ‘So if you’re right, that thing should give us another shadow puppet.’

‘Probably.’

If there were a device inside that boat cabin that could measure tension, its gauge would have gone through the roof.

‘OK, let’s check it out right now, then,’ the doctor said, her curiosity so intense it was almost visible. She clicked her flashlight back on before walking over to the light switch and flicking it off.

Hunter and Garcia also turned their Maglites back on. They spent the next few minutes going around the sickening sculpture, illuminating it from all sides and checking the shadows it projected against the wall.

They got nothing – no animals, no objects, no words.

That was when Hunter’s gaze went back to Nashorn’s head on the coffee table. Something about the way it had been positioned caught his attention. It was looking directly at the sculpture, but from a low, diagonal angle, looking up at it.

‘Let me try something.’ Hunter turned his Maglite back on and repositioned himself, directing his flashlight beam back at the sculpture but from the exact same angle as Nashorn’s stare.

‘Maybe the killer is showing us how to look at it.’

‘By positioning the victim’s head?’ the doctor asked, looking a little dubious.

‘Who knows? I wouldn’t put anything past this monster.’

They all paused and contemplated the strange shadows that were now cast onto the wall behind the sculpture.

Doctor Hove’s entire body tingled as if it’d been electrified, turning her skin into gooseflesh.

‘I’ll be damned.’

Twenty-Nine

There must’ve been at least a dozen police vehicles parked around the lot behind the New World Cinema building in Marina Harbor. The curious crowd that had gathered was now substantial, and the number of news vans and reporters had doubled in the last hour.

‘Excuse me,’ a young woman in her mid-twenties asked the mechanic, who was standing towards the back of the crowd, leisurely observing the police and media circus unfold. ‘Do you know what happened here?’ She spoke with a Midwestern accent. Maybe Missouri or Wisconsin. ‘Has a boat been stolen?’

The mechanic chuckled at the woman’s naivety and turned to face her.

‘I don’t think you’d get this many cops and TV vans around here just for a stolen boat. Not even in Los Angeles.’

The woman’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘Someone was murdered?’ Her voice lifted with excitement.

The mechanic held the suspense for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yeah. Inside that last boat right at the end of the dock.’

The woman went on tiptoe in an effort to catch a glimpse of the boat. She saw nothing other than the backs of the heads of fellow curious onlookers. ‘Have they brought the body out yet?’ she asked, moving from side to side, still trying to see something.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Have you been here long?’

The mechanic nodded. ‘I guess you could say that.’

‘Gee, I wonder what happened.’

The mechanic had read somewhere once that most people were fascinated with death. The more vicious and gruesome, the more they wanted to know about it and the more they wanted to see. Some scientists attributed it to a violent primal instinct – dormant in some, but very active in many. Some psychologists believed it was related to the obsession humans have with trying to understand death and what happens afterwards.

‘I heard he was decapitated,’ the mechanic said, testing the woman’s morbid curiosity.

‘No way.’ She got more agitated, going up on the tips of her toes and craning her neck like a meerkat as she tried to see beyond the crowd.

‘That’s what I heard,’ the mechanic continued. ‘And that the whole boat was washed with blood. Pretty sick, apparently.’

‘Mother of God,’ the woman said, bringing a hand to her mouth.

‘Yeah, welcome to LA.’

She looked disgusted for a couple of seconds, until her eyes caught a glimpse of a police officer just ahead of them. She then bounced on her toes with enthusiasm like a kid who’d just been told she’d be going to Disneyworld for the first time. ‘Oh, there’s a cop, let’s go ask him.’

‘No, I’m OK. My work here is done. I’ve got to go anyway.’

‘I can’t believe you’re not curious.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything that cop can tell me that I don’t already know.’

The woman frowned at the words but seemed too excited to give them much thought. ‘Well, I’ll ask him anyway. I wanna know.’

The mechanic nodded and stepped back into the crowd.

The woman pushed through and approached the officer.

Neither she, the officer, nor anyone else in the crowd noticed the tiny bloodstains on the mechanic’s trouser hems.