Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘I swear to God, if you’re a reporter and you’ve done all this for a fucking story, I’ll make your life a living hell, you dickless moron. You fucked with the wrong agent here.’

The door to the interrogation room swung open and Hunter, closely followed by Agent Williams and Garcia, stormed in.

‘Erica,’ Agent Williams called, getting to her and placing his hands on her arms.

Agent Fisher hesitated.

The man waited. His eyes showed no concern.

‘Let him go, Erica.’

Agent Fisher breathed out, her stare glued to the man’s face.

Agent Williams applied a little more pressure to her arms, trying to move them.

Finally, the agent let go of the man’s shirt. She felt her whole body tremble with anger.

‘You’re so screwed,’ she whispered to the man, before standing up straight again and taking a step back from the table. ‘Somebody take this piece of shit out of my face before I teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.’

‘Not so fast, Special Agent Fisher,’ the man said, his eyes slowly moving from her to the three new arrivals. ‘I guess that this would be a good time for me to call my lawyer, don’t you think?’

‘Ha,’ Agent Fisher chuckled. ‘You won’t get shit. You’ve committed a federal offense, you moron.’

‘Have I?’ the man asked, pretending to be oblivious. ‘And which offense was that?’

Agent Fisher’s eyes widened. ‘You really are an idiot, aren’t you? You should’ve thought this through, because wasting the FBI’s time is a federal offense, you imbecile, and I will make sure you pay for this.’

‘Really?’ the man questioned, still in a carefree way. ‘And how exactly did I waste the FBI’s time, Special Agent Fisher? All I did was exercise my constitutional right to stay silent. When I spoke, I did not lie and I did not incriminate myself with any of my replies. If anyone has interpreted them wrongly, that isn’t my fault. I also never once admitted to being...’ His stare went back to Agent Fisher. ‘I believe the FBI is calling this killer The Surgeon or The Artist — apparently according to his skills. So no, Special Agent Fisher, I did not waste your or the FBI’s time. You did that all by yourself. All I did was sit here and listen.’ The man sat back on his chair, with a new victorious air about him. ‘Can I call my lawyer now? I’d really like to go home. I’m hungry, tired, and these handcuffs are quite annoying.’

Agent Fisher’s hands clutched into fists.

‘You are a freelance reporter, right?’ Hunter asked, taking a step forward. ‘Not really attached to any newspapers or news channels, correct? You just sell whatever story you have to the highest bidder.’

The man looked back at him curiously. ‘Sorry, but you are?’

‘My name is Robert Hunter.’

The man’s head tilted back slightly. He spent a moment studying Hunter.

‘You’re not an FBI agent, are you?’ His gaze moved around the room and paused on Garcia. ‘And neither is he. That’s easy to tell just by what you’re wearing. Something, shall I say, much more relaxed than what Special Agent Fisher and Special Agent “grumpy face” here are wearing.’ He nodded at Agent Williams.

‘You’re right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘We’re not FBI agents.’ He decided to leave it at that. ‘You’re very perceptive and your “silent” approach, together with your cold-reading technique, was quite an impressive trick. It did get you some information, but let’s be honest here — not enough for any reputable news piece, especially when you consider the fact that the federal government has seized your camera and the film in it. You’ll never get those pictures. You are aware of that, aren’t you?’

‘You have no right to seize my camera,’ the man replied. This time there was concern in his voice.

‘Unfortunately for you,’ Hunter said, ‘yes, we do. You can ask your lawyer when you call him.’

Once again the man’s stare bounced from person to person in the room.

‘But,’ Hunter said, lifting his index finger, ‘I have a proposal for you.’

Hunter’s words caught everyone by surprise, making his colleagues look back at him questioningly, but before Agent Fisher or Agent Williams could say anything, he signaled them both to give him a minute.

‘A proposal?’ the man asked.

‘That’s correct,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Kind of — you help us, we help you.’

The man regarded Hunter with the same resolve he had regarded Agent Fisher throughout their interview. Hunter was much harder to read than she had been.

‘OK,’ the man said with a nod. ‘I’m listening.’

Dr. Morgan took his time getting ready. By the time he finished scrubbing up and made his way to Autopsy Theater One, on the ground floor of the Pima County’s Office of Medical Examiner, the body of Timothy Davis had already been washed, disinfected and transferred to the stainless-steel examination table at the center of the spotlessly clean, white linoleum floor.

The body was lying on its back, with its arms loosely by its side. As Dr. Morgan approached it, he paused for a moment.

Just minutes after death, due to the ceasing of heart function and consequently the lack of blood flow, human skin will begin to tighten and discolor, acquiring a grayish pale tone. Within thirty minutes of death, post-mortem lividity, which is the pooling of blood in the parts of the body that are closest to the ground, will start to settle, turning the skin purple and giving it a waxy feel, but Timothy Davis’s body looked a lot paler than anyone would’ve expected for an African American subject. But that wasn’t all — in his case, post-mortem lividity was practically unnoticeable.

‘Interesting,’ the doctor whispered to himself, adjusting his glasses on his nose to have a better look at the discoloration of the skin. He wondered if Mr. Davis had suffered from any dermatological conditions while alive.

Dr. Morgan checked the module directly behind him just to make sure he had all the instruments he needed. With everything in place, he finally turned on his digital Dictaphone, ready to start the official post-mortem examination.

He began by stating the date and time, followed by the morgue’s internal case number. After that he described the general state of the body, detailing any wounds, marks, scratches, abrasions... anything that could be seen externally. Once Dr. Morgan flipped the body over to examine its back, something somersaulted inside his stomach.

‘What the hell?’

Immediately he reached for his digital camera.

The marks to Timothy Davis’s back practically sucked the air out of Dr. Morgan’s lungs.

Arizona was not the most racist state, but unfortunately racial hatred was still going strong in pretty much every corner of America, regardless of which state you found yourself in. It was with that knowledge in mind that Dr. Morgan first considered the possibility of this being a racially motivated attack. The marks to the victim’s back looked at first like some sort of castigation, applied to Mr. Davis by a whip, or similar instrument. But a closer examination made Dr. Morgan realize that was impossible. Not all, but several of the marks actually looked like letters. He could clearly identify a ‘T’, an ‘R’, an ‘F’, an ‘M’, and possibly an ‘E’. That certainly was no coincidence and no matter how proficient one could be with a whip, Dr. Morgan just couldn’t imagine anyone being so good as to be able to write letters with lashes. The rest of the marks looked random — just a mishmash of straight cuts.

‘What in the world is all this?’ Dr. Morgan asked himself, as adrenaline pumped his veins with excitement.