‘Dragging the priest out of his cubicle and decapitating him.’
The captain closed his eyes, threw his head back and let out a slow and heartfelt sigh. ‘Forgive me, father, for I’ll rip your head off.’
‘Something like that.’
‘We all know what that means,’ the doctor said, taking another puff on his cigar.
‘That this is just the beginning,’ Captain Bolter said. ‘And if we don’t catch up with this killer soon, he’ll claim another victim.’
The wind had strengthened, and Doctor Winston pulled the collar of his suit blazer tighter around his neck before cocking a questioning eyebrow at the captain. ‘We?’
‘He’s right, captain.’ Hunter smiled. ‘From midnight tonight, you’re a retired man. You don’t have to worry anymore.’
‘Your work here is done, my son,’ Doctor Winston said in a low, Darth Vader-like voice.
‘It’s gotta feel good, hasn’t it?’
The captain gave Hunter an unconvincing smile. ‘Force of habit, I guess. I’ve given fifty years of my life to law-enforcement agencies in this city. It’s not something I can drop overnight, but I’ll get there.’
Hunter saw straight through the captain’s brave face. He was sad to be leaving.
‘So what’re you gonna do with your life now that you don’t have to worry about catching criminals anymore?’ Doctor Winston asked.
‘Beth wants to move.’
‘Really? Where to?’
‘Somewhere far away from here. She’s had enough of this city and I don’t blame her. LA has gotten too violent.’
‘I can vouch for that,’ Doctor Winston agreed. ‘As the years go by, what we see down at the morgue just gets more gruesome and sadistic. It’s like there’s no respect for life anymore. And the numbers are rising. We can barely keep up with our daily workload.’
Hunter quickly saw the need for a change of subject. ‘Maybe you won’t miss LA.’ He turned towards Captain Bolter. ‘But I know you’re gonna miss us.’
‘Like a hole in the head,’ he replied, puffing on his cigar.
They all laughed.
‘At least the new captain is a lot better looking than I am.’
‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ Hunter joked. ‘So, are you finally gonna end this goddamn mystery about who the new captain is?’
‘They don’t know it yet?’ Doctor Winston asked, biting his bottom lip.
‘Do you?’ Hunter asked, surprised.
‘Uh-huh.’
Hunter pinned Captain Bolter with a hawk-sharp gaze.
‘Don’t gimme that pissed-off housewife look,’ Captain Bolter said derisively. ‘I get enough of that at home, plus I wanted it to be a surprise.’ His grin made Hunter squint with a new worry.
‘Oh, she’ll surprise them alright,’ Doctor Winston laughed.
‘She?’ Hunter looked from one man to the other.
Captain Bolter held the suspense before conceding. ‘Her name’s Barbara Blake.’
‘You
are
kidding me, right?’ Hunter leaned back against the beechwood table.
‘Why? Because she’s a woman?’ the captain asked with a frown.
‘No, because her name’s Barbara. Are you telling me that the RHD will have Captain Barbie from now on?’
‘Ooh, don’t ever call her Barbie.’ Doctor Winston shook his head.
‘Definitely not,’ Captain Bolter added. ‘Unless you’ve grown tired of your balls. Don’t let the fact that she’s a woman fool you, Robert. She’s a great captain and a vicious bitch when she needs to be. She’s proven it many times. We were partners for two years before she asked to be transferred to Sacramento.’
Hunter detected sadness in the captain’s voice. ‘Just work partners?’ he asked as he finished the last of his single malt.
‘Don’t even think about psychoanalyzing me, Robert. Not anymore.’ Captain Bolter shook his head and pointed his cigar at Hunter.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘There you are, captain.’ Lieutenant Sheldon appeared at the door. ‘They’re calling for you. It’s speech time. And we all wanna know who’s taking over. No more suspense.’
‘I guess not.’
Hunter didn’t follow them in.
The main facility of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner is located on North Mission Road, number 1104. The building is an outstanding piece of architecture with hints of Renaissance. Old-fashioned lampposts flank the extravagant entrance stairway. Terracotta bricks and light gray lintels fronted the large hospital-turned-morgue. The whole building looked like it should be part of a prestigious Oxford college.
Criminalistics students Nelson Fenton and Jamaal Jackson still had another hour to go before the end of their night shift. Despite their job being part time and relatively simple, it required a very strong stomach. As forensic technicians for the LACDC, they were expected to transport, undress, photograph, clean and prepare bodies for autopsies.
‘How many more bodies do we have on the list?’ Jamaal asked, pulling his surgical mask down from his mouth and letting it hang loosely around his neck. They’d just finished preparing the body of a sixty-five-year-old man who’d been stabbed fifty-two times by his own son.
‘Two.’ Nelson pointed to the two black polyethylene body bags on the steel tables at the far end of the room.
‘Let’s just get on with it, then.’
First they needed to undress the bodies before thoroughly hosing them down in preparation for the post-mortem. While Jamaal was adjusting the strap on his surgical mask, Nelson approached the larger of the two body bags and unzipped it.
‘Oh shit!’ Nelson said, lifting both hands to his mouth and taking a step back.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Have a look.’
Jamaal checked the unzipped body bag. ‘Oh crap.’ He made a face as if he’d just tasted something bitter. ‘Headless.’
Nelson nodded. ‘But have a look at what he’s wearing.’
Only then Jamaal noticed the priest’s cassock. ‘Oh man, that’s bad. Who the hell would do this to a priest?’
‘Someone with a lot of anger,’ Nelson said, stepping forward again.
‘I’m not Catholic or nothing, but this is just . . .’ Jamaal shook his head without finishing the sentence. ‘This city’s messed up, man. Violence everywhere.’
‘The whole world’s messed up, dude. Let’s just finish this and get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough for today.’
‘You can say that again.’
They unbuttoned the cassock, pulled it open and froze.
‘Holy shit,’ Nelson whispered.
‘I think we better get Doctor Winston on the phone. Right now.’
Insomnia is a very unpredictable condition and it affects people in different ways. It can kick in before you go to bed or it can torture you, allowing you to fall asleep for an hour or so before creeping in and keeping you awake for the rest of the night. In the United States, one in five people suffer from it.
After spending most of the night researching on the internet, Hunter managed only a couple of hours’ sleep before his brain was wide awake again. The images of the church and Father Fabian’s murder played at the back of his mind like a film stuck on an agonizing loop. To disconnect, Hunter hit the gym at 4:00 a.m.
At 6:00 a.m., after a heavy workout and a hot shower, Hunter was staring out of the window of his small one-bedroom apartment in south Los Angeles. He was trying to organize his thoughts when his cell phone rang.
‘Detective Hunter speaking.’
‘Robert, it’s Jonathan Winston here.’
Hunter checked his watch. ‘What’s the matter, doc? Can’t sleep?’
‘At my age I rarely sleep past five in the morning anyway, but I ain’t calling to discuss my sleeping habits.’
The ominous tone in Doctor Winston’s voice cleared the grin from Hunter’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Well, you’d better get your partner and get here. I need you to see something before I start the autopsy on the decapitated priest.’
‘
Before
you start the examination?’ Hunter enquired skeptically.
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you at the County Coroner’s?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll call Carlos. We’ll be there in half an hour, doc.’
‘So what’s this all about?’ Garcia asked as he met Hunter in the parking lot to the County Department of Coroner at 6:35 a.m. ‘This place ain’t even open yet.’
Hunter shrugged. ‘The doctor didn’t say, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’
Doctor Winston greeted both detectives with a firm handshake by the entrance door.
‘So what happened, doc?’ Hunter asked as they entered the building.
‘Well, last night when I got to the Redwood Bar & Grill for William’s leaving do, I turned my cell phone off. After all, I’m a pathologist not a surgeon. I don’t get called for emergencies in the middle of the night.’
‘OK.’ Hunter said the word slowly.
‘When I turned my cell phone back on this morning I had a rather peculiar message from one of my forensic technicians.’
They walked through an empty front lobby, past the reception desk and into a long and well-lit corridor.
‘As you might expect, we’re one of the busiest coroners’ departments in the entire United States. Most of the gritty, autopsy-preparatory jobs are delegated to forensic technicians, who are usually university students.’
They reached the stairwell at the end of the corridor and went up to the first floor.
‘The corpses arrive here in a regular polyethylene body bag. In the specific case of your priest’s body, the coroner’s investigator at the scene was kind enough to remove the dog’s head from the body before sealing the bag.’
‘I can imagine a student’s surprise as he unzips a bag to find a human body with a dog’s head stuck to it,’ Hunter said.
‘Exactly,’ the doctor confirmed. ‘I haven’t seen the head yet.’
‘Where’s it now?’ Garcia enquired.
‘In the lab. It will be undergoing forensic tests this morning. If we’re lucky, we might get something.’
They stopped in front of the changing-room door.
‘Suit up,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll meet you at autopsy 2B. Second to last door on the left.’ He pointed down the corridor.
After Hunter and Garcia rejoined him, Doctor Winston continued, ‘OK, so last night the forensic technicians were preparing bodies for this morning’s examinations.’ He opened the door to room 2B and switched on the lights. Immediately, the smell of ammonia hit them and burned their lungs. A stainless-steel table occupied the middle of the spotlessly clean tiled floor. On one wall there was a large double sink and a metal counter with several tools neatly lined up on it, including a Stryker saw. On the opposite wall, shelves held numerous microscopes, vials and test tubes. Two state-of-the-art computers sat on two separate small desks.
‘The body needs to be washed before the examination is carried out,’ Doctor Winston said, stepping closer to the stainless-steel table. A body lay on it covered by a long white cloth. ‘Needless to say that before being washed, the body needs to be undressed.’
Hunter could already predict what would come next.
‘When the forensic technicians undid the priest’s cassock, this is what they found.’ Doctor Winston uncovered the body. All three men stared at it in silence for a few seconds.
‘Fuck,’ Garcia whispered, breaking the tense silence. On the priest’s chest, painted in red and about six inches long, was the number three.
It was past 9:30 a.m. by the time Hunter and Garcia arrived at the RHD headquarters in North Los Angeles Street. Usually the main squad room would be at least two-thirds empty at this time, with the majority of detectives out in the field. This morning it was surprisingly full.
‘Wow! Busy in here today,’ Garcia commented, looking around the open-plan office.
‘And there’s a reason for it,’ Hunter countered.
‘Homicides are finally on a slope in LA?’ Garcia joked.
‘Not even God could make that happen.’ Hunter pointed to the door at the far end of the squad room. ‘That’s the reason.’ The placard on its door read CAPTAIN BARBARA BLAKE.
‘Damn! I forgot all about the introductory meeting with the new captain this morning at eight.’
‘We had more important things to do,’ Hunter said, taking off his jacket and placing it on the back of his chair as he reached his desk.
Before he had a chance to sit down, the door to the captain’s office was pulled opened and Captain Bolter poked his head through. ‘Robert, Carlos, get in here.’
Without knocking, both detectives entered the spacious office. A stylish rosewood desk was positioned by the large back window. Casebooks lined the various shelves on the wall to the right of the desk. Most of the framed photographs that once decorated the room were now gone. Hunter guessed they were packed inside the boxes neatly arranged against the west wall. Captain Bolter was by the coffee machine in the corner. Standing beside the desk was a striking-looking woman.