Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

Then it finally dawned on him.

‘I’ll be damned. So this is why they needed this autopsy ASAP. This is a message.’

Dr. Morgan had been a pathologist for thirty-one years, twenty-one of them as the Chief Medical Examiner for Pima County. He had autopsied more than his fair share of bodies brought in from homicide crime scenes, some of them in an awful state, but he had never been the examining pathologist in a serial-murder case. In fact, as far as he knew, there had only been one serial killer active in Tucson, back in the sixties — Charles Schmid, also known as The Pied Piper of Tucson, who had murdered three people and buried them in the desert.

Dr. Morgan was now sure that this wasn’t just any serial-killer case. This was a serial killer who had apparently left a cryptogram carved into his victim’s flesh. That was something that happened plenty in Hollywood movies and crime-fiction books, but rarely in real life.

After photographing Timothy Davis’s back and the markings on it from a variety of angles, Dr. Morgan turned the body back around, ready for the Y incision and the internal organs examination. From the module behind him, he retrieved a long-handed scalpel and brought it to the body’s right upper chest, starting the cut about an inch below its shoulder. As the laser-sharp scalpel ruptured through skin and muscle with tremendous ease, Dr. Morgan frowned.

Something didn’t seem right.

‘What is going on here?’

He proceeded with the incision and opened up the body’s breastplate.

The doctor’s jaw dropped open.

‘This is... impossible.’

Once again, the man at the metal table scooted forward and placed his elbows on the tabletop.

‘Before we start with this proposal you’re talking about,’ he said, addressing Hunter, ‘how about a gesture of good faith? These handcuffs really are annoying. I would feel much more relaxed without them.’

‘That can be easily arranged,’ Hunter replied. ‘But first, we would need to confirm your identity. Can we have your real name?’

The man exhaled while he weighed the odds. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘My name is Owen. Owen Henderson.’

Hunter waited, but the man offered nothing else. ‘You’re going to have to give us a little more than that if you want those removed with any urgency. If you’re not bothered and you don’t mind keeping them on for another few hours, we can go with just Owen Henderson and hope for a quick match.’

The man now had four different faces to study instead of just one, which made the task infinitely harder. He concentrated his efforts on Hunter’s.

‘Before we go there,’ he began. ‘What sort of deal are we talking about? What are you offering and what do you expect back?’

Agent Fisher, who had turned her back on the man and was now facing Hunter, managed to ask him four different questions with a single look: ‘Yeah, what sort of deal are you talking about here? What are you offering? What do you expect back and under whose authority are you able to offer anyone a goddamn deal?’

Hunter disregarded Agent Fisher’s frosty look and approached the table. ‘Somehow you ended up at a crime scene even before the police got there.’

The man could already guess where this was going.

‘There are only two ways in which that would be possible,’ Hunter continued. ‘One: you really are the person we’re after, in which case you’re screwed and this case is over, or two: you were tipped off, in which case we need to know every detail about that tip.’

The man broke eye contact with Hunter while he scratched the back of his left hand. ‘OK, I see what you need from me, but what do I get in return?’

‘You’ll get more than enough information for a very credible news piece,’ Hunter said. ‘Victims’ names, locations, dates... you know how it goes.’

The man continued regarding Hunter with the utmost attention. So much so that he missed the angry look Agent Fisher gave the LAPD detective.

‘And I get my photos back,’ the man said. ‘All of them.’

‘You’ll get your photos back,’ Hunter accepted.

Agent Fisher looked like she was about to put a stop to the entire conversation, but Agent Williams signaled her to hold on for a while longer.

‘But there’s one condition,’ Hunter added.

‘Oh really?’ The man didn’t look very impressed. ‘And what condition would that be?’

‘You’ll have to give us a few days before the piece is published,’ Hunter revealed. ‘Or else you will jeopardize the entire investigation and there’s no way we will allow that to happen.’

The man drummed his fingers against one another. ‘How many days are we talking about here?’

‘We need a week,’ Hunter replied.

The man shook his head. ‘No. I can give you three days.’

‘This is not a negotiation,’ Hunter came back, his voice so commanding it made the man blink. ‘I will not put this investigation in harm’s way for you or anyone else. That’s the deal. It’s that or nothing. No information. No pictures. No anything. Good luck trying to find anyone who will publish your flimsy article.’ As Hunter made his way toward the door, everyone else turned their backs on the man and followed suit.

‘OK, fine,’ the man called out. There was a little defeat in his voice. ‘I’ll give y’all seven days from today. It will give me more time to write the article, anyway.’

Everyone stopped and turned to face him.

‘So how about we speed this up?’ Hunter said.

The man nodded once. ‘Owen Henderson, 531 West 17th Street in Clark Park, Phoenix, Arizona. I’m a freelance investigative reporter and photographer. I’ve had articles and photographs published by the New York Times , the LA Times , the Chicago Tribune , the Washington Post , and the Miami Herald , to name a few.’

From the corner of his eye, Hunter saw Agent Williams reach for his cellphone before exiting the room.

‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘Give us five minutes.’

‘Hey,’ the man called out. ‘How about my handcuffs?’

Hunter paused by the door. He was the last one of the group. ‘If everything checks out, Owen, I’ll take those handcuffs off myself. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

‘Seriously? C’mon, man. Why the hell would I lie now?’

Hunter wasn’t listening anymore.

Hunter, Garcia and both FBI agents had just returned to the observation room when Agent Williams received the callback from the FBI field office in Phoenix.

‘Great,’ he said into his cellphone after listening for all of ten seconds. ‘Just email me the lot.’ Once he disconnected he turned and addressed the rest of the group. ‘It’s a match.’ With a head gesture he indicated the man on the other side of the two-way mirror. ‘We are indeed looking at one Owen Henderson — thirty-six years old from Phoenix. He also didn’t lie about his address or profession. Right now, I have two agents on the way to his house. In the meantime, I should be getting an email with all his basic info any second now.’

‘Fine,’ Agent Fisher said, leaning against one of the corners of the table at the center of the room and looking at Hunter. ‘But you’re not giving this sack of shit any deals. You do not have the authority to do so. Not without Director Kennedy’s explicit authorization.’

‘I know,’ Hunter replied with an accepting nod.

Before Agent Fisher could say anything else Garcia jumped in.

‘There will be no deals, Special Agent Fisher.’ Garcia’s words came out slower than usual just to emphasize that he was stating the obvious. ‘He played us,’ he explained, but immediately took a second to rethink his words and decided to add a little dig. ‘Actually, he played you, but that’s beside the point. Now we play him.’