Chris Carter: Gallery of the Dead

In the eye tug-of-war the man could see he was losing.

‘Two...’

Fingers tightened against triggers.

‘One...’

The man let go of the girl’s neck.

Three days later

‘Agent Fisher is out of danger,’ Adrian Kennedy announced to Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake. He had flown in from Washington again that morning. ‘She lost her hand. It was amputated at the elbow.’ His eyes moved to Garcia, who didn’t shy away from the tough stare.

‘How about her daughter?’ Hunter asked. He was sitting back on his chair, fingers laced in front of his chin, elbows resting on the chair’s arms.

‘Have you met her?’ Kennedy asked.

‘No, unfortunately not.’

‘You should. She’s the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet, plus you were the one who saved her life.’

‘I would like to one day,’ Hunter replied. ‘Anyway, how is she doing?

‘She’s all right. Obviously a little shook up and a bit upset because her mother has lost her hand, but she’ll be fine.’

‘Since we’re on that subject,’ Captain Blake cut in, ‘what’s the full story on that, Robert? How did you go from pretty much being ambushed to finding out the killer’s address?’

Hunter shrugged. ‘I was trying to put some facts together and an idea came to me,’ he explained. ‘We knew that this killer traveled. He had already taken four victims in four different states. With that in mind, we were trying to sieve through airlines’ passenger manifests, looking for a name that repeated itself arriving or leaving those four cities in the vicinity of the murder dates.’

‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘You told me about that long shot, but you got nothing from it.’

‘You’re right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘We didn’t get a single name from those manifests, but that was because the idea we had was right, but the method was wrong.’

‘How so?’

‘When the searching through passenger manifests was suggested,’ Hunter replied, ‘we didn’t know that Arthur Weber was a collector. We were still working with the art-piece theory then, but once we figured out what he was actually doing, some of the parameters on that search had to be altered. Arthur Weber was collecting body parts, which meant that after murdering his victims and harvesting the selected piece, he would have to transport them back to wherever he kept that collection — his gallery, so to speak.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘There was just no way he would be doing that through any means of transport that would involve more than one passenger — himself. He just couldn’t risk getting those body parts past airport security, or into a bus or a train. What if something went wrong with the luggage? Or there was an accident? Or whatever? Too many unknown factors, and someone like Arthur Weber would never risk that.’

‘So he would’ve driven everywhere,’ Captain Blake concluded.

‘That’s right,’ Hunter agreed. ‘The second factor that got me thinking was that to obtain the pieces for his collection, Arthur Weber would’ve driven absolutely anywhere in the country, no matter how far, which suggested that he would have a good and strong roadworthy vehicle. Probably quite comfortable, too — something like a mid-sized to large SUV.’

The captain didn’t find it hard to follow Hunter’s logic.

‘In possession of those new parameters,’ Hunter continued, ‘I called Adrian, who called the US Department of Transportation. They were the only ones who would already be equipped to run the sort of search I had in mind.’

‘Traffic cameras,’ Captain Blake said. She had now clearly tapped into Hunter’s thread of thought.

Hunter nodded. ‘The ones that covered all the entries and exits to those four cities. I asked him to start with the murder dates and then move forward a day at a time, not backward. The way I figured, the killer could have arrived in any of those cities on the day of the murders or any time prior to them — days, weeks, even longer — that would depend on how much preparation he would’ve needed for each murder, which I’m sure varied from victim to victim. But once he had his piece, chances were that he had nothing else holding him to the city in question and he would’ve probably wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.’

‘So the search was only looking for license plates registered to SUV vehicles,’ the captain sai, ‘leaving those cities on specific days, which probably reduced the amount of data considerably.’

‘It certainly did,’ Hunter replied. ‘But it still took us two days to get a match. Arthur Weber’s SUV, an Infinity QX80, was picked up on the I-94 leaving Detroit a day after Kristine Rivers’ murder. It was picked up again on US Route 400, on its way out of Wichita, the day after Albert Greene’s murder. Then again on the I-5 leaving Los Angeles in the direction of San Diego the day after Linda Parker’s body was found, and one last time on the I-19 leaving Tucson the day after Timothy Davis was killed. Too much coincidence, but we still took a huge risk, because we had no time to make any proper checks. I received that information on the day of the ambush, about an hour or so after the paramedics got to us, and that was when I called Adrian with an address and a name.’

‘I didn’t care if we had had the proper checks or not,’ Kennedy took over. ‘A little girl’s life was now at stake and I wasn’t about to risk it due to a technicality, so I immediately dispatched FBI’s top SWAT team. Given the limited intel they had on the location and on the subject, they did an amazing job.’

‘And this Arthur Weber really did have a human-body-parts gallery in his house?’ Captain Blake asked.

‘He did,’ Adrian confirmed. ‘Down in his basement. You haven’t seen the pictures yet? I’ve sent them to Robert and to Detective Garcia.’

‘No,’ the captain replied. ‘And to be honest I’m not sure I really want to. I did read the file we now have on Arthur Weber. His mother homeschooled him, right? She forced him to learn Latin and Greek and she was obsessed with perfection — physical, that is.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ Garcia said. ‘Though her homeschooling was more like a prison than a school. Arthur Weber wasn’t allowed outside. He grew up completely isolated and until the age of twenty-two, his only human interaction had been with his mother, who was a totally domineering and overzealous woman, completely obsessed with physical perfection, an obsession that drove her insane. By the age of forty-five, she’d already had thirty-eight cosmetic surgeries.’

‘Thirty-eight?’ Captain Blake cringed.

Garcia nodded before continuing. ‘But unfortunately her insanity didn’t stop with her. She also wanted her only son, Arthur, to be physically perfect, or at least what she considered to be physically perfect. Remember when I said that until the age of twenty-two, Arthur Weber’s only human interaction had been with his mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘His first non-mother interaction was with a cosmetic surgeon.’

‘She forced him to have surgery?’ Captain Blake asked in bewilderment.

‘Fifteen of them,’ Garcia confirmed, before showing the captain a portrait photograph of Arthur Weber. ‘This is him at the age of eighteen.’ He showed her a second photo. ‘And this is him at the age of thirty.’

Captain Blake’s jaw dropped open. ‘Are you for real? This is the same person?’

There wasn’t a single facial feature on Arthur Weber’s first picture that was recognizable on the second one. His eyes, nose, jawline, cheekbones, brow, mouth, lips, chin, teeth and ears all looked different.

‘He looked much better before all the procedures,’ Captain Blake commented.