Chris Carter: Gallery of the Dead

As soon as he’d stepped out of his car, Hunter had noticed a female officer kneeling by the opened passenger door of the black-and-white unit furthest from them. The officer wasn’t alone. A very distressed woman in her late forties, maybe early fifties, sat in the passenger seat in front of her.

‘That’s right,’ Lieutenant Jarvis replied. ‘At least you won’t have to go through the ordeal of informing the parents. She’s the victim’s mother.’

Hunter and Garcia paused, their eyes going from the lieutenant to the woman sitting in the cruiser. Neither detective could think of a more soul-destroying experience for a mother to go through than to discover the brutally murdered body of her own daughter.

‘Understandably, she’s in shock,’ the lieutenant explained. ‘And not making a lot of sense right now, but from what we understand she used to speak to her daughter on a daily basis, either in person or on the phone.’ He rechecked his notes. ‘Last time they spoke was two days ago — on Monday afternoon. That was a phone conversation. They were supposed to have met for lunch yesterday, but her mother had to call and cancel. According to her, she called her daughter at around nine in the morning, but got no reply. The call went straight into voicemail. She left a message, but her daughter never called back. The mother tried calling again about forty-five minutes before they were supposed to meet, just to make sure her daughter had gotten the message and didn’t waste the trip. Again, straight into voicemail. She tried again last night and then again this morning and in the afternoon.’ Lieutenant Jarvis gave the detectives a confirming nod. ‘Voicemail every time. That was when the mother got worried. She said that, though unlikely, maybe her daughter had gotten upset because she had to cancel their lunch meeting yesterday, but according to her, even if that had been the case, her daughter would’ve called back by now. The mother called again and left one last message saying that she would drop by tonight.’

‘So what time did she get here today?’ Hunter asked.

‘Around seven o’clock.’

‘How did she get in?’ Garcia this time. ‘Was the door unlocked?’

‘No, the door was locked, but her mother kept a spare key with her.’

Hunter turned toward the CSI agent dusting the front door.

‘Break-in?’ he asked.

‘If it happened at this door, it wasn’t forcefully,’ the agent replied, looking back at Hunter. ‘The lock, the doorframe, nothing here has been tampered with, but this door has got a simple deadlock. It wouldn’t really take an expert to breach it.’

Hunter and Garcia pulled their hoods over their heads and zipped up their coveralls.

‘Through the living room,’ Lieutenant Jarvis explained, gesturing as he did. ‘Onto the hallway on the other side and into the bedroom at the end of it. If you get lost, just follow the smell of blood.’ The lieutenant didn’t phrase his last sentence as a joke. ‘And if I were you, I wouldn’t disregard the nose mask.’

Linda Parker’s front door opened straight into a spacious living room, pleasantly decorated with a mixture of shabby-chic and traditional furniture, all of it complemented by pastel curtains, which matched the room’s rugs and cushions. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing suggested a struggle.

Another forensics agent, also searching for latent prints, was working her way through the many surfaces in the room. She acknowledged the detectives with a subtle nod.

The wooden-floor corridor that led to the rest of the house was short and wide, with a single door on the right-hand side, two on the left and one at the end of it. Only the second door on the left-hand side was shut. The walls were adorned by several framed photographs — fashion-magazine-cover style. They all showed the same striking model — slender and toned with a heart-shaped face, full lips, a delicate nose, upturned eyes that were almost aquamarine in color and cheekbones most women would pay a fortune for.

Hunter and Garcia made their way toward the room at the end of the hallway.

A quick peek into the open door on the right — bedroom.

The open door on the left — bathroom.

They would check the shut door later.

As they finally got to the crime-scene room, they paused at the door in flustered silence.

Of one thing Hunter and Garcia were both absolutely sure — Lieutenant Jarvis’s wish would never come true. He would never be able to unsee what was inside that room.

The man was jolted awake by the loud sound of a motorcycle in the streets outside. For a while he lay on his back, immobile, staring up at the ceiling. The room he was in was illuminated only by the weak moonlight that came in through the large window on the wall to his left, but he didn’t mind the darkness. Actually, he preferred it. The way he saw it, it matched the color of his soul.

The man concentrated on his breathing, trying to calm it down. In through your nose, he mentally told himself as he breathed in. And out through your mouth. He exhaled. In through your nose. Breathed in. And out through your mouth. Exhaled.

Slowly his rapid breathing began to steady itself again.

The man was soaking wet, drenched in cold sweat, just as he always was when he woke up from ‘the nightmare’. The visions were always the same — violent... grotesque... painful — but he didn’t want to think about them. He never did. So while focusing on his breathing, he banished the images back to the darkest places in his mind, with one certainty — sooner or later they would come back again. They always did.

It took him ten minutes to finally move from lying down to sitting up. Most of the cold sweat had dried against his skin, making him feel sticky and filthy. He needed a shower. He always needed a shower after ‘the nightmare’.

In the bathroom he turned on the water and waited until steam began clouding the room before stepping under the strong and warm jet. The man closed his eyes and allowed the water to splash against his face... his skin. He could practically feel his pores dilating, welcoming the cleansing.

He adored that sensation.

The man thoroughly washed his entire body twice over before retrieving a razorblade and a bottle of baby oil from the shower caddy. He poured some of the oil onto the palm of his right hand and slobbered it all over his left leg. The process was then repeated — left hand, right leg. It was always done in that sequence. He placed the razorblade under the water jet for a couple of seconds before bending down and bringing it to his right shin.

Years ago, a prostitute had told him that to avoid skin rashes when shaving off body hair, especially underarms and around his groin area, he should use baby or coconut oil.

‘You should try it,’ she had told him. ‘Rashes and skin burns will be a thing of the past, trust me.’

She was right. It really did work. Not only did it free him from rashes and skin burns, but it also made his skin feel smoother than ever.

The man shaved his body daily, sometimes even twice a day, from his head all the way down to the little hairs on his toes. He did it not because he was irrational, or a fanatic, or because voices told him to. He did it simply because he enjoyed the way his skin felt in the absence of hair. How so much more sensitive it became. The only part of his body he wouldn’t shave was his eyebrows. He’d tried it once before, but he didn’t like the result. It made him look odd... creepy even, and he was yet to find fake eyebrows that looked as good as real ones, unlike wigs and fake beards, which he had quite a collection of.

The man finished the long shaving process, turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry. Back in the bedroom, he stood naked in front of a full-sized mirror, admiring his own body.