Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘The first word is the same — Pulchritudo .’ She indicated with her finger. ‘Which means “beauty”. Then we have a “c” then an “r...” No. “C” then an “i” then a “p...” No.’

‘ Pulchritudo Circumdat Eius ,’ Hunter said.

Agent Fisher looked at him with fire in her eyes. ‘I was getting there. I just needed a little more time.’

‘My Latin is rusty,’ Kennedy said with a shrug.

‘It means “beauty is all around her”, sir.’ Agent Fisher translated it.

Immediately Kennedy seemed to enter pensive mode. His eyes focused on nothing at all as the gears inside his head began working overtime. Hunter recognized the blank look on his face.

‘Not now, Adrian,’ he said, dragging Kennedy away from his thoughts. ‘You guys were supposed to be bringing us up to speed, remember? Once we have everything, then we can all sit down and try to understand the connection between the Latin phrases the killer has used for each victim, if there really is a connection. But for now, we still have quite a lot of ground to cover.’ He addressed Agent Williams. ‘You said that Linda Parker was his third victim, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So let’s keep on going here. We’ll revisit everything once all the facts are out.’

‘Agreed,’ Kennedy said.

Everyone else in the room nodded.

‘All right.’ Agent Williams took over again. ‘So, moving on... as you can see from the photographs, her killer not only scalped her, but he also removed both of her eyes. According to Dr. Ramos, the pathologist who performed the autopsy back in Detroit — and this was later confirmed by one of our own pathologists in Quantico — this was no amateur job. The scalping isn’t a very difficult or technical procedure, but the extraction of the eyes is, and this killer has performed an exenteration to professional standards.’

‘Exenteration?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘The removal of the ocular globe together with all of the contents of the eye socket,’ Hunter explained. ‘Eyelids, muscles, lacrimal glands, optic nerves, everything. That’s why all that was left behind were two empty holes.’

Both FBI agents looked at Hunter curiously.

‘I read a lot,’ he clarified.

‘I’m sure you do,’ Agent Fisher commented.

Kennedy shuffled his weight from one foot to another in a fidgety way for two reasons. One — he wasn’t a man who was used to being on his feet for such a long time, and two — he could pretty much kill for a cigarette right then.

‘But that wasn’t the cause of death, right?’ Garcia asked. ‘She wasn’t alive when the killer took her eyes.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ Kennedy confirmed.

‘Let me guess,’ Garcia continued. ‘Asphyxiation, but not by strangulation. She was suffocated.’

‘Was it the same here?’ Agent Williams asked, his head tilting in the direction of the board.

Garcia nodded. ‘In our case, her hands, feet and skin were taken from her after she passed, not while she was still alive. According to Dr. Hove, the Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner, despite how brutal that crime scene looks, the victim wasn’t tortured. She didn’t suffer.’

‘That was exactly what the postmortem revealed in Kristine Rivers’ case as well,’ Agent Williams agreed. ‘No torture. No suffering. She was suffocated. The exenteration and the scalping came later.’ From his blue folder he retrieved Kristine Rivers’ autopsy report and placed it on the desk.

‘How about victim number two?’ Hunter asked. ‘I know we haven’t got there yet and I don’t want to jump the gun here, but was the victim also suffocated?’

‘Yes. Just like Kristine Rivers. No torture. No suffering.’

‘So we’ve made a wrong assumption,’ Hunter said.

‘Which assumption was that?’ Kennedy asked.

‘About the killer’s MO being different from one murder to the other. It’s not. It’s the same across the board. He suffocates his victims. What differs is his signatures, both in what he does to them after they pass and in the messages he leaves behind.’

Everyone paused for a heartbeat.

‘Did forensics find anything at the crime scene?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘Nothing that could give us any leads,’ Kennedy replied. ‘Kristine’s body was found inside an old and disused shed by the river. The shed had been out of operation for many years, during which it was used by hobos as a shelter, by addicts as a shooting-up spot, and God knows who else and for what else. There was a lot of debris, dirt and rubbish everywhere, which gave forensics a bucketful of fingerprints. They also recovered DNA from urine stains, discarded needles, used rubbers and other sources. Through those we were able to identify and track down several individuals. Through them we tracked down several more.’ He shook his head. ‘All of them were either homeless or junkies. No one with the kind of knowledge or skill required to pull off something of this magnitude.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Hunter asked.

Agent Fisher peeked at Kennedy before replying. ‘No. Miss Rivers wasn’t touched that way.’

‘Why?’ Kennedy asked, his voice full of concern. ‘Was the LA victim raped?’

Hunter locked eyes with the NCAVC director. ‘No, she wasn’t sexually assaulted either.’

The room went silent again for a couple more seconds.

‘Any more questions?’ Agent Williams asked. ‘Or am I OK to carry on?’

‘Let’s carry on,’ Hunter suggested.

‘All right,’ the agent continued, pushing all the photographs on Hunter’s desk to one side. ‘Our killer’s second victim.’ He returned to his blue folder.

‘Wait a second,’ Garcia interrupted him. ‘How about the rest of the photographs?’

‘What rest of the photographs?’ Agent Fisher asked.

‘The crime-scene ones from the disused shed? The blood on the walls?’

‘What?’

‘There was no blood on the walls, right?’ Hunter asked, reading their puzzled looks. Once again, he called everyone’s attention back to the picture board. ‘Unlike Kristine Rivers,’ he explained, ‘Linda Parker’s body wasn’t found inside a shed or any random abandoned place. She was murdered inside her own house. Her body mutilated inside her own bedroom. And as you can see...’ he indicated a specific group of photographs, ‘the killer made a point of smearing most of the walls and the furniture with her blood.’

Kennedy and his agents stepped closer to have a better look at the photos.

‘So the killer didn’t do the same at your crime scene?’ Garcia asked.

‘No,’ Agent Williams replied. ‘Kristine Rivers wasn’t murdered inside that shed. Her eyes and scalp weren’t taken there either. There was no blood anywhere. The only blood we found had dried on her skin.’

‘The pattern here is all wrong for these to be blood splatters from arterial spray or something similar,’ Agent Fisher said. She was the only one still staring at the board. ‘What they look like is “get away” smears. A victim trying to escape her attacker.’

‘Yes, we know what they look like. Thank you.’ Garcia didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. ‘But we don’t think that’s what they are.’

‘You think the killer put them there on purpose? Why?’

‘We’ll get to that later,’ Hunter said, stopping Garcia before he was able to explain. ‘Let’s carry on with the original sequence of events. We all know that serial murders follow a certain progression inside the killer’s mind. So for now we should stick with that as well, even if we don’t understand it. Covering things out of order, without having all the facts first, will just generate unnecessary questions and confusion. Let’s move on to the killer’s second victim before we get to the third, how about that?’