The Death Sculptor (10 page)

Miguel was in his mid-forties, tall, slim, with straight midnight-black hair that came all the way down to his chest. Immaculately dressed in a D&G suit, he had a chic three-day beard and smelled of expensive cologne. He hugged Alice as if he’d just found his long lost sister, before kissing her on both cheeks.

‘Thanks for seeing us at such short notice, Miguel,’ Alice said, breaking away from his embrace. ‘We really appreciate it.’

‘Darling, anything for you, you know that.’ The high-pitch had vanished from his voice, but not the femininity. His eyes moved to Hunter and his eyebrows arched in a curious way. ‘And who is this? More importantly, where have you been hiding him?’

‘This is Robert Hunter. He’s a friend of mine.’

Hunter smiled and nodded at Miguel.

‘Robert Hunter . . . ? Now that’s a strong, masculine name. I like that. And by God, look at those broad shoulders and those biceps. I bet you work out like a bodybuilder.’

So that’s what Alice meant by ‘eccentric’
, Hunter thought.

‘Oh,’ Miguel’s attention moved to the package Hunter was carrying, ‘is that the piece you’d like me to have a look at?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, follow me into my office.’

Miguel’s office was a clash of eras. Modern art and antique pieces mingled together in a way that shouldn’t have worked, but did. Sculptures of all shapes and sizes were absolutely everywhere. There were masks on the walls, zebra-print rugs on the floors, and a black leather couch with a tiger throw and leopard cushions.

‘Let’s put it over here,’ Miguel said, pointing to a coffee table. He removed the two statues that were standing on it. Hunter placed the package down and took off the black plastic cover.

‘Oh, my!’ Miguel reached inside his suit pocket for his glasses. ‘Wow. This is . . .’ He paused and looked at Hunter questioningly. ‘Did you create this, darling?’

‘No, it wasn’t me.’

‘OK, in that case this is simply grotesque.’ Miguel walked around it, studying the piece from every angle. He paused and cringed. ‘Do these represent human body parts?’

Alice nodded. ‘I guess so.’

‘I’ve never seen anything so sick and horrendous in all my life. But one thing is for sure . . . it’s very creative. I have to give the artist that. This is one of those crazy, “what-the-hell-is-this” pieces that could win the Turner Prize in London. Hell knows what those judges look for.’

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Hunter asked.

‘Only in nightmares, darling.’ Miguel had crouched down and tilted his head to one side. He was looking at one of the feet at the edge. ‘Who’s the artist?’

‘Not sure we can call him that,’ Alice commented, but immediately regretted it.

Miguel looked up at her.

‘We don’t know,’ Hunter cut in, ‘but I’d really like to find out.’

‘Are you a collector?’

‘I guess you can say that,’ Hunter said, matter-of-factly. ‘I’m just starting, though.’

‘Maybe we should get together one night and talk about art and . . . other things.’ Miguel smiled. ‘I would really like that. I would gladly give you a few tips.’

‘It’s a very intriguing piece,’ Hunter said, moving the subject along. ‘In your experience, Miguel, what do you think the artist is trying to say?’

Miguel returned his attention to the piece. ‘Well, I’m in two minds. I’m inclined to say that, whoever the artist is, this is not his first piece.’

‘Why not?’

‘The way it’s put together, the crazy imagination and creativity of it all strikes me as . . . someone who has a great deal of experience in sculpting. Someone who doesn’t care what others think, who isn’t afraid to show his art, whoever it might offend. But on the other hand, the sculpture was done in cast, which simply screams amateurism. No one does anything in cast anymore. And if he wants to sell this, he might consider adding some color. Maybe some blood red to go with the theme.’ Miguel stood up, took a few steps back and rested his hands on his hips. ‘But he is a daring, defiant artist who isn’t scared of breaking conventions. And I like that. He’s clearly telling us something here.’

‘And what do you think that is?’ Alice asked.

Miguel returned his glasses to his pocket. ‘The way that the artist has simply toyed with the human body, rearranging it in his own way – he’s challenging creation.’ He shrugged. ‘Hell, this is so bold that, in his mind, he might even be challenging the creator himself.’

Alice felt a shiver run down her spine. ‘Miguel, you’re saying that this artist thinks he’s God?’

Miguel nodded. His attention didn’t shift from the strange piece. ‘That’s exactly what that’s telling me, darling. I am God and I can do whatever I want.’

On his way back to the PAB, Hunter dropped by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office in West Temple Street. He was lucky; DA Bradley had just come out of a three-hour-long meeting with a team of attorneys.

Bradley’s office was the size of a small apartment. Long, pristine bookshelves lined two of the walls. The other two were covered in diplomas, awards, certificates and framed photographs depicting the DA doing all sorts of important things – shaking hands with politicians and celebrities, posing with lawyers at bar meetings, standing behind podiums during speeches, and so on.

Hunter was shown into the DA’s office by his PA, a very young and attractive brunette dressed in an elegant and tight-fitting black suit. Bradley was sitting behind an imposing mahogany pedestal desk, unwrapping a sandwich that could probably feed three people.

‘Detective,’ Bradley said, motioning Hunter to have a seat at one of the three fine leather armchairs in front of his desk. ‘Do you mind if I eat while we talk? I’ve had no lunch today.’

‘It doesn’t bother me.’ Hunter shook his head, taking the chair on the left.

Bradley took a mammoth bite of his sandwich. Mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard dripped down onto the wrapper.

‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’ Bradley spoke while he chewed.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Alice,’ Bradley clarified. ‘The girl I sent over to you. She’s a fine piece of ass, isn’t she? And she’s as bright as diamonds. Hard combination to find these days. But don’t you go getting any ideas. She’s totally out of your league.’

Hunter said nothing, and watched as the DA used a paper napkin to wipe away a blob of mustard at the corner of his mouth.

‘So,’ Bradley continued, ‘what do you have for me, Detective? And please form full sentences.’

‘I’ll try. I’ve got a few questions for you.’

The DA looked at Hunter. That certainly wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

‘We’re piecing a few things together.’

‘OK, ask away, Detective.’ Bradley took another bite of his sandwich and chewed with his mouth open.

‘I was told that you visited Mr. Nicholson in his home a few months ago, after he was diagnosed with his illness.’

‘That’s right. I drove down to his place after I left the office. I wanted to let him know that if he needed anything, he could count on me. He’d been with this office for twenty years. It was the least I could do.’

‘Do you recall exactly when that was?’

Bradley twisted off the cap on a bottle of Dr Pepper and drank half of it down in large gulps. ‘I can easily find out.’ He stared at Hunter skeptically.

‘Could you, please?’

Bradley reached for the intercom on his desk phone. ‘Grace, I dropped by Derek Nicholson’s house a few weeks ago. Do you have an entry in my schedule? Could you check and tell me what day that was?’

‘Sure, DA Bradley.’ There was a short pause, sound-tracked by the clacking of a keyboard. ‘You visited Mr. Nicholson on the seventh of March. That was after hours.’

‘Thanks, Grace.’ He nodded at Hunter.

Hunter wrote it down on his notebook. ‘Around that same time someone else visited Mr. Nicholson in his home. Do you know anything about that? Do you know if it’s someone from your staff, someone he was good friends with, perhaps?’

DA Bradley chuckled. ‘Detective, I have over three hundred able-bodied prosecutors working for me, and about the same number of people working for the office in various other capacities.’

‘About six foot, around the same age as Mr. Nicholson, brown hair . . . if it was someone from your office I thought he might’ve mentioned it to you.’

‘No one has mentioned anything to me about visiting Derek, but I can easily enquire around and find out.’ Bradley reached for a pen and wrote something down on a piece of paper. ‘Derek was a nice and decent person, Detective. Everyone got along with him. Judges loved him. And his circle of friends went beyond this office.’

‘I understand, but if his other visitor was someone from your office, I wouldn’t mind asking him a few questions.’

Bradley studied Hunter for a long silent moment before chuckling derisively. ‘Are you saying that you think somebody from this office could be a suspect, Detective?’

‘Without information everyone is a suspect,’ Hunter replied. ‘It’s right there in the detective’s manual. We gather information and use it to eliminate people from the suspects list. That’s usually how this works.’

‘Don’t be a goddamn smartass. That crap might be funny to your monkey friends, but not to me. I’m running this goddamn investigation, so you better show some respect, ’cos if you don’t, your next job will be walking the dogs from the K9 unit while they take a dump, you hear me?’

‘Loud and clear, but I’d still like to know if this other person who visited Mr. Nicholson is someone from this office.’

‘OK,’ Bradley said after a new pause. ‘I’ll check and let you know. Is there anything else, Detective?’ He consulted his watch.

‘Just one more thing. Did Mr. Nicholson ever mention anything to you about making his peace with someone? Telling someone the truth about something?’

A muscle twitched on Bradley’s jaw and for a quick instant he stopped chewing. ‘Making his peace with someone? What do you mean?’

Hunter told the DA what Amy Dawson had told him.

‘And you think that this man who visited him a few months ago was the person he was referring to?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

Bradley wiped his mouth and hands on a new paper napkin, sat back in his leather swivel chair, and regarded Hunter for a moment. ‘Derek never mentioned anything to me. Not about making his peace with anyone, or telling anyone the truth about anything.’

‘Do you have any idea what he could’ve been referring to?’

Bradley’s eyes jumped to his wall clock and then back to Hunter. ‘It’s a messed-up world we live in, Detective. You, better than anyone, can vouch for that. We, as state prosecutors, try our best to maintain order in our society by trying to make sure that the individuals who aren’t fit to live in it are put away. We deal with evidence that is given to us by detectives like yourself, forensic scientists, technicians, our own investigators, witnesses, etcetera. But we are also human and, as such, we’re bound to make mistakes. The problem is, when those mistakes occur, due to the nature of what we do, they tend to incur dramatic consequences.’

Hunter shifted on his seat. ‘You mean, either the wrong person gets sent to prison or the right one walks free.’

‘It’s never as simple as that, Detective.’

‘And was Mr. Nicholson ever guilty of one of these “mistakes”?’

‘I can’t answer that question.’

Hunter leaned forward. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

Bradley’s stare changed into something harder. ‘I can’t because I don’t know the answer.’

Hunter studied Bradley’s poker face.

‘But I can tell you that anyone who’s been a prosecutor for long enough would’ve experienced at least one of those situations. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve come across an accused man who was as guilty as water is wet, and because of some technicality, because of some idiot at the lab, or some rookie cop who fucked up at the arrest or at the crime scene, contaminating evidence, the sack of shit walked free.’

Hunter had been in that situation many times, but he knew that the opposite was also true. There would always be cases where an innocent person served time, or, worse, received the death penalty for something he or she didn’t do.

‘We’ve all been there, Detective. And Derek Nicholson was no exception.’

Hunter spent the rest of the day back in the office. His mind was swirling with questions, but he couldn’t stop chewing over what Miguel Jalmar had said.

Was that really it?
he thought. Was that what this killer was trying to tell them with that sculpture? Could he be so arrogant, so delusional, to think he was God? To think that he could do whatever he wanted without being stopped?

Hunter knew that the answer to that question was a resounding ‘yes’. It happened a lot more often than most criminal-behavior psychologists would like to admit. Some call it the ‘homicidal God complex’. In most cases it’s triggered by the moment a killer realizes that he or she has a power usually attributed only to God – the power to decide who lives and who dies. The power to become the supreme ruler of death. And that power can be a thousand times more addictive than any drug. It elevates their frequently damaged egos to heights they’d never imagined. And at that moment, it equates them to God. Once hooked, it is more than likely they’ll come back for more.

The sculpture was back by the pictures board, and Hunter still couldn’t stir his attention from it for more than a minute or so. It was starting to play with his mind.

Alice was tucked away in the corner, working on a laptop. Her task was to break down the list of perpetrators Derek Nicholson had put away into several separate categories. After his meeting with DA Bradley, Hunter also asked her to compile a new list – all the cases Derek Nicholson should’ve won but lost because of a technicality, or a mistake by someone involved with the arrest or the collection of evidence. He needed to know who the victims were, if they blamed Nicholson for losing the case, and if they were capable of any type of retaliation.

Garcia had spent the entire day checking with drugstores and pharmacists. So far, none had sold a prescription for all three of the drugs used by the killer to reduce Derek Nicholson’s heart rate. The problem was, Garcia discovered, obtaining any of those drugs through illegal Internet outlets was as easy as ordering candy.