Chris Carter - The Crucifix Killer

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Last Friday night. She was out partying with the boss and a few other girls; she went to the bathroom to retouch her makeup, and that was it.’

‘She might’ve been arrested and she’s just cooling off in a cell somewhere.’

‘She would’ve called if that was the case and I don’t know what she’d be arrested for, but I guess you better check that out too.’

‘Can I get you anything?’ The question came from a young brunette waitress who’d approached their table.

‘No, I’m OK thanks,’ Culhane said with a dismissive hand gesture and waited until the waitress was out of earshot. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’ His attention was back on Jerome.

‘Nope, I guess that’s all.’

‘Did she steal any money or something that would’ve given her a reason to disappear?’

‘Not from us.’

‘Gambling debts?’

‘Not that we know of.’

‘Was she involved with anyone else, maybe one of D-King’s competitors?’

‘Nah-ah,’ the reply came with a shake of the head. ‘She was a good girl, probably his best girl. She had no reason to run away.’ He had another sip of his root beer.

‘The good ones are usually the worst.’ Culhane’s comment failed to amuse Jerome. ‘How long has she been with D-King?’

‘Almost three years.’

‘Maybe she’d had enough and she wanted out.’

‘You know the boss doesn’t mind if any of his girls want out. If she’d had enough all she had to do was say it. Plus as I’ve said, she didn’t take any of her stuff with her.’

‘OK, give me twenty-four hours and I’ll see if I can come up with anything.’ Culhane got up ready to leave.

‘Culhane.’

‘Yeah,’ he said turning to face Jerome.

‘D-King wants to keep this quiet, so don’t go flashing her picture around like a pair of tits.’

Culhane nodded and made his way to the door while Jerome reopened the menu on the desserts page.

Sitting inside his car, Culhane had another look at the picture Jerome had given him. The girl was stunning, the sort of girl he’d have to pay a lot of money to sleep with. He tapped the other envelope inside his pocket. Hello, new car , he thought with a wide smile.

Culhane guessed the girl in the photograph was in trouble. D-King was good to his girls, the nice apartments, the expensive clothes, the free drugs, the superstar lifestyle. He’d never heard of any of them running away.

He could start with a hospital search, but that would take way too long. After thinking about it for a few seconds he reached for his cell phone and dialed Peter Talep, a good friend of his who worked for the missing person’s department of the LAPD.

‘Pete, it’s Mark from Narcotics, how’re you doing? I need a small favor…’

The LAPD Missing Persons Unit was established in 1972. The unit has citywide responsibility for the investigation of adult missing persons with over twenty-five investigative detectives. Peter Talep was one of them.

Peter met Culhane at the lobby of the South Bureau Police Department in 77th Street. Culhane needed a good story to get Peter to search the missing person’s database without raising any eyebrows or putting in an official request. He claimed Jenny was one of his major narcotic informers and sometime in the past seventy-two hours she’d gone missing. Culhane wanted Peter to use his department’s access to check the hospital files.

‘So, do you have a picture of this girl we’re looking for?’ Peter asked.

‘Unfortunately I don’t, that’s why I have to go through the records with you, keeping pictures of informers can lead to a lot of trouble,’ Culhane lied. If D-King wanted to keep this quiet, handing Jenny’s picture to Peter wasn’t a great idea.

‘OK, so what am I looking for?’

‘Caucasian female, around twenty-three, twenty-four, blond hair, blue eyes, stunning looking, if you see her picture you’d probably know,’ Culhane said with a malicious smile.

‘When was the last time you had contact with her?’

‘Last Friday.’

‘Do you know if she has any family around, someone that might’ve reported her missing?’

‘No, I don’t think so, she lived alone. Family are from out of town.’

‘Boyfriend, husband?’

‘No.’

‘So nobody would’ve reported her missing? You’re the first one?’

‘Yep,’ Culhane agreed.

‘So if she went missing on Friday, it’ll be too soon,’ Peter said, shaking his head.

‘What do you mean? What’ll be too soon?’

Peter rolled his chair away from his computer. ‘All the records we have in our database are from missing persons that have been reported in by someone – family, boyfriend, whatever. People will usually bring in a picture and fill in a missing person’s report, you know the protocol. Anyway, that record is then fed into the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit database. If no one’s reported her missing, there will be no record.’

‘Yes, but how about hospital patients, you know, Jane Doe’s?’

‘Well, those are quite rare.’

‘Yeah, but they do happen?’

‘Yes, but she needs to be either unconscious or have lost her memory. If that’s the case the hospital would usually wait anywhere between seven to fifteen days before considering the patient a proper Jane or John Doe and reporting them to us. We then compare the picture the hospital sends us with what we have in our database and check for a match. If there isn’t one the patient is then inserted into the MUPU database as unidentified. If she went missing on Friday and no one has reported her missing, that’s way too soon. If she is unconscious in a hospital somewhere or has lost her memory, you’ll have to wait until she regains consciousness, check hospital by hospital for a Jane Doe or wait up to two weeks and check back here with me.’

‘Shit!’

‘Sorry, Mark, there isn’t much I can do for you.’

‘That’s OK, thanks anyway.’

Outside the South Bureau Police Department, Culhane sat in his car pondering his options. He sure as hell wasn’t about to go on a hospital tour of LA just to find some hooker for D-King. The past weekend arrests’ report he’d requested had just been sent to his car fax machine. Six girls matched the description. Three had already made bail. He had a hunch none of the remaining girls would be the one he was looking for, but he had to check them.

It took around five minutes for the pictures to come through. As he’d suspected none of them was Jenny. There was one more thing left to do – check for a dead body.

He could try and ask for information from the Homicide Division, but there has always been animosity between Homicide and Narcotics detectives. More often than not one type of investigation would lead into the other. In LA, drugs and murder walked side by side.

Screw the Homicide division , Culhane thought. If Jenny was dead, there was only one place she’d be – the morgue.

The technicians at the County Department of Coroner had used a software program specially developed to reconstruct full images from partial ones. The program is similar to the ones used by film studios on the latest computer-animated motion pictures. The basics are simple – in the animation process, the designer first creates a wire frame of the character as a base and then covers it with a ‘skin’ layer. The process used by the Coroner’s technicians followed the same steps, although no wire frame was needed. Their base was the victim’s skinless face image.

This process is mostly used to re-create an image out of bone structure – a body that has been discovered in a very advanced or complete state of decomposition. In the case of last night’s victim, the process was made easier because the muscle tissue around her face was almost intact. The computer didn’t have to calculate the fullness of her cheeks or the shape of her chin and nose. It only needed to apply a skin layer over the already existing lean tissue, calculate skin age and pigmentation and Hunter and Garcia had a face.