Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

As the doctor read that piece of information, her interest increased. She leaned forward and placed her coffee cup on her desk.

Dr. Hove and Detective Hunter’s professional relationship went back several years and she was yet to meet a more enigmatic man than the head of the LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit, but that wasn’t the only characteristic that differentiated Hunter from every other homicide detective inside the LAPD, and every other law-enforcement agency she had ever worked with. In twenty-one years as a pathologist, Dr. Hove had never come across anyone who could read a crime scene or get inside the mind of a killer quite the same way Detective Hunter could.

Even without seeing the body, Dr. Hove was sure that this would be an interesting postmortem examination.

Due to the fact that the female body in question had only been discovered in the early hours of last night, the file Dr. Hove was looking at held a limited amount of information — victim’s name and address, a basic description of the crime scene, the name of the unit and the detectives assigned to the case, and the name of the lead forensics agent who had attended the scene. There were no CSI photographs. Not yet. Those would be added later, together with several different forensics lab reports.

Dr. Hove’s attention returned to her computer screen and she rechecked her roster. Level Zero autopsies always took priority over absolutely everything.

After rescheduling a private postmortem examination and postponing a late-morning meeting, she was able to slot the new entry into her first autopsy of the day. Half an hour later, she had suited up and was ready to start.

Autopsy Theater Zero was more than just a postmortem examination room. It was a completely self-contained pathology examination area, with its own cold-storage chamber and an individual lab facility. Its restricted access database also sat separate from the Department of Medical Examiner’s main databank, which meant that the results of any postmortem examinations conducted inside Theater Zero couldn’t be accessed by general personnel and therefore could be kept a secret, at least for some time.

Linda Parker’s body, still sealed inside a body bag, was brought down to Theater Zero by one of the autopsy technicians, who also helped Dr. Hove move it from the gurney to one of the three stainless-steel examination tables inside the large white-tiled room.

‘Would you be needing anything else, Doctor?’ the athletic-looking technician asked as his gaze moved around furtively. He’d never been inside this room before. ‘Would you like me to help you wash and prepare the body?’

‘No, I’ll be fine on my own,’ the doctor replied, pushing her dark-framed glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘If I need anything else I’ll call.’

She waited until the technician had exited the theater before unzipping the body bag.

Despite all her experience, despite the hundreds and hundreds of murdered bodies she’d examined throughout her career, the brutality of certain cases that ended up on her autopsy table still had the capacity to disturb her. This certainly was one of those.

The full examination lasted just a little under two hours and as Dr. Hove finally identified the cause of death, she took a step back from the table and regarded the savagely mutilated and skinned body on it one more time.

‘This doesn’t make any sense.’

Hunter and Garcia’s office was at the far end of the Robbery Homicide Division’s floor, inside the famous Police Administration Building in downtown LA. The office was a claustrophobic twenty-two-square-meter concrete box, with barely more than two desks, three old-fashioned filing cabinets and a large white magnetic board pushed up against the south wall, but it was still a completely separate enclosure to the rest of the RHD, which, if nothing else, kept prying eyes and the loud buzzing of voices locked out.

Hunter had received an email from Kevin White less than an hour ago, enclosing a copy of the crime-scene forensics report together with a.zip file containing all the images captured by the official photographer. Hunter had spent the last half-hour printing them all out and pinning them to the magnetic board, when Captain Blake pushed open their office door and stepped inside.

Barbara Blake had taken over the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division’s leadership several years ago, after the retirement of its long-standing captain, William Bolter. Elegant, attractive, with long black hair and mysterious dark eyes that could make most people shiver with a single stare, Captain Blake wasn’t easily intimidated. After so many years and so many different roles within the force, very little ever unsettled her, but for the next full minute she didn’t say a word to either of her two detectives. All she did was study the pictures on the white board with a disbelieving look.

‘The victim was skinned?’ she finally asked in a breath that nearly failed her.

‘Almost entirely, Captain,’ Garcia replied, letting himself slump back on his chair.

‘Alive?’

‘Couldn’t be determined at the scene.’ This time the reply came from Hunter. ‘We’re still waiting for the autopsy report to confirm it. If we’re lucky, we might still get it this morning.’

‘The killer also took her hands and feet,’ Garcia added.

The captain’s stare paused on him for an instant before returning to the board. She stepped closer and her eyes found the close-up photograph of what the killer had carved into the victim’s back.

‘What the actual hell?’ Among the carvings, Captain Blake was able to identify a few letters. ‘Is this supposed to say something?’

Garcia got to his feet. ‘It’s actually Latin, Captain.’ He approached the board and showed her how several of the lines should have connected but didn’t. When he was done, Captain Blake shook her head as if she had been temporarily stunned. Her eyes narrowed, trying to make out the words.

‘It means — “beauty is all around her”, Captain.’

Blank turned into skeptical.

‘I don’t get it,’ she finally said.

Garcia didn’t suffer from insomnia but, just like Hunter, he too had had very little sleep overnight. After returning from Linda Parker’s crime scene, he had spent most of the early hours of the morning trying to understand at least a fraction of the madness he had seen inside that house... the blood, the carvings, the skinned body, the missing feet and hands... No matter which path he tried to follow inside his head, they all seemed to end up at the exact same well.

‘It’s early days, Captain,’ Garcia said, walking back to his desk. ‘But a half theory sort of emerged last night at the crime scene.’

‘All right,’ the captain said with interest. ‘And what is this half theory?’

Garcia knew that he was about to enter Crazyland. He sat back on his chair, rested his elbows on the armrests and touched fingertip against fingertip.

‘That maybe this killer thinks of himself as an artist.’ He paused and indicated the photos on the board. ‘And that craziness you see there would be nothing more than his “art piece”, which he considers to be a work of beauty.’

The captain’s gaze had returned to the photos on the board, but it slowly moved back to Garcia.

‘Are you joking?’ She almost choked on her next words. ‘An artist? A work of beauty? What?’

Garcia nodded. ‘To the killer — maybe — yes.’

‘That’s absurd.’

Garcia looked at Hunter for help.

He got none.

‘Indeed it is,’ Garcia agreed. ‘And to be honest, no matter how inventive we might believe we are, we would never have come up with such a crazy theory if not for the message the killer carved into this poor girl’s back.’