Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

On the board, Captain Blake found the picture that showed the carvings.

‘Beauty is all around her?’ she asked. ‘Is that what you said all that nonsense translates to?’

‘That’s it. And I know how crazy it all sounds, Captain, but it also makes some sort of crazy sense.’

Glaring at her detective, the captain threw her hands up. ‘Well, I’m all ears, Carlos. Please, by all means, enlighten me.’ She grabbed a fold-up chair that was leaning against one of the walls and took a seat.

Garcia got up and walked back over to the picture board.

‘Have a look at these, Captain,’ he began, indicating the photographs taken of the walls, the furniture and the floor inside Linda Parker’s bedroom, all of it completely smeared in blood.

Captain Blake shrugged. ‘Yeah, so? This is the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit, isn’t it? Ninety-eight percent of all crime scenes you investigate look like that or worse.’

‘That’s true. But in all of them there’s an obvious reason for all the blood.’ He shook his head. ‘Not here.’

‘What? You’re telling me that you can’t find a reason to justify all those blood smears?’ Her questioning stare ran from Garcia to Hunter then back to Garcia. ‘How about a struggle?’ she suggested. ‘A desperate victim, covered in blood, trying to get away from her attacker and stumbling everywhere: the walls... the furniture... isn’t that a possibility?’

‘Our first thought too,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But have a closer look at these pictures.’ He indicated a group of three photographs showing furniture pieces inside Linda Parker’s bedroom — a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a bedside table — the pieces all had blood smeared against them. ‘If all this blood was the result of our victim desperately running away from her killer, then what’s missing from these photos?’

The captain studied the images for a long moment.

‘A mess,’ she said, finally understanding what Garcia was referring to. ‘There’s no mess.’

‘Precisely,’ Garcia confirmed. ‘Nothing was out of place. Nothing had been knocked over anywhere. The vase, the alarm clock, the reading lamp, the picture frames, her makeup, her jewelry... every object in that room seemed to be exactly where it was supposed to be. There was nothing on the floor, either. Not even a hairclip. Trust me, we looked. If she’d been running for her life, leaving bloodstains all over the place while colliding with her furniture, her stuff should’ve been all over the room.’

The captain couldn’t fault Garcia’s logic, which right then began to scare her a little bit. ‘So what you’re saying is you think that all those blood smears and smudges everywhere were done on purpose? To transform the room into a... piece... a sculpture... a canvas... whatever.’

Once again, her stare played between her two detectives.

This time, Hunter finally replied.

‘Right now, that’s what it looks like, Captain.’

The man had always preferred to travel at night. The low temperatures were a lot kinder, not only to the car’s engine, but also to its tires, not to mention how so much lighter traffic was everywhere, but that was only part of the reason.

Ever since he was a little kid, the man had always been a creature of the night. There was no denying that. He had always loved its sounds, its smell, its mystery. He loved the way nighttime scared and liberated him at the same time, but most of all, he loved the darkness and how perfectly it was able to hide him.

The man could easily remember when his mother used to order him to bed — 9:00 p.m. on the dot, every day. No exceptions. Ever.

The man would never argue, either. There was no point because there would never be an argument. If he ever tried talking back to her, or contradicting her in any way, the gates of hell would open before him. So instead of arguing, as soon as the clock struck nine o’clock, the man would quietly and calmly retire to his bedroom. His mother didn’t even need to say anything. The trick was — he wouldn’t really go to sleep. All the man would do was lie on his bed and pretend. Pretend that he was somewhere else. Pretend that he was someone else.

And his imagination was powerful.

A lot more powerful than the gates of hell.

A lot more powerful than hell itself.

But that had been a long time ago. Those particular gates were now forever shut.

Unfortunately, newer, improved and a lot more powerful ones had opened.

The man was dragged away from his memory by a barking dog somewhere down an alleyway. The nighttime drive had made a seven-hour trip last just under five and a half and he had made it to his destination with plenty of time to spare.

The man checked his watch. The center would open in a few hours.

Still sitting in the driver’s seat, he stretched his back and massaged his neck. The movement of people on the streets was starting to pick up, as regular office hours were just around the corner. Bus stops were filling up, strolls were becoming more hurried and traffic noise seemed to be doubling by the minute.

The man sat back and thought about what to do. Maybe he would go get some breakfast in a café somewhere and strike up a conversation with the person behind the counter or at the next table. It would give him a chance to test his new character: Mike — that was the name he had chosen for this particular one.

Yes , he thought. That was a good plan.

After that, he would get back to his car and start bandaging his arm.

Captain Blake took a moment, allowing her thoughts to try to catch up with what Hunter and Garcia were suggesting. It didn’t take an expert to read the hesitation in her demeanor.

‘As Carlos has pointed out, Captain,’ Hunter said, grabbing her attention again. ‘It’s way too early in the investigation to assume anything with any degree of certainty. All this really means is that we’ll all have to keep an open mind here. Someone who is capable of something like this, will, I’m sure, also have a very distorted vision of reality.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ the captain said. Very little ever made sense at the LAPD’s Violent Crimes Unit.

‘So who is she?’ Captain Blake asked, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Do we have any background info on her yet?’

‘We do, but nothing in great detail,’ Garcia replied, reaching for the notepad on his desk. ‘Her name was Linda Parker, born on March ninth, 1994 in Harbor City. She was the only child of Emily and Vincent Parker. Emily was a housewife and Vincent an accountant running his own private firm in Rolling Hills. Linda went to Newport Harbor high school, where she graduated in 2011. Apparently she managed to escape most of the downfalls of puberty because she started modeling for catalogs when she was only thirteen years old. In school, she was voted Newport Harbor Prom Queen for three consecutive years. As a senior she was also voted “most likely to become a supermodel”. By the time she graduated from high school, she was doing quite well as a catalog model, bringing in nearly as much money as her father. After high school, she decided to skip going to college to concentrate on her modeling career. I guess the main idea was to move on to international modeling and big-name designers. She managed to land a few catwalk spots on some well-known international fashion shows, all of them in Europe, but the big top-model career was still to materialize.’

‘When you say catalogs,’ Captain Blake asked, ‘what do you mean?’

Garcia flipped a page on his notepad. ‘Clothes, shoes, swimwear, sportswear, lingerie, jewelry — that sort of thing. Like I said, we don’t have anything in much detail at the moment, but we have a team working on it.’