By early afternoon Mike Brindle and his forensics team had collected a small bag of hairs, fibers and debris that could prove to be of interest, but in an alleyway with four large dumpsters, all of them packed full with several days’ worth of trash from a number of different establishments, no one was holding their breath for a breakthrough.
Hunter told Brindle about the pickup truck Keon Lewis had seen backing up from the alleyway. Brindle said that they had already come across two sets of tire prints. The first, and more prominent of the two, came from what looked like large, heavy-duty tires. The best impressions were just by the first dumpster. Brindle’s opinion was that the prints were left by one or more of the city’s garbage trucks on collection day. Hunter figured he was right, but the lab would have to confirm that.
Brindle’s team had gotten lucky about halfway down the alleyway, where they found a second, very faint, partial tire mark, courtesy of a small pothole with just enough dirty water to get a section of the tire wet. The partial print didn’t look to have come from a large and heavy vehicle such as a garbage truck. The problem was that by the time they found it, most of the impression had evaporated under the Los Angeles morning sun, but with the help of a special powder and a large sheet of black gelatin lifter, they were able to obtain traces of it. They hoped it would be good enough for the lab to get them something.
Hunter checked with Central Operations. Keon’s 911 call came in just before one in the morning. Hunter allowed two hours either side of that mark and contacted the Valley Bureau’s Traffic Division, asking them for whatever footage they might have from any road cameras surrounding the area from 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. They were still waiting on it.
‘OK,’ Garcia said, hitting the ‘print’ button on his computer. Hunter was at his desk, studying the photographs from the alleyway. He put them down and looked across his desk at his partner.
‘Sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda, can be bought in four main formats,’ Garcia explained. ‘Pallets, pearls, flakes or liquid. Because one of its main uses is as a cleaning agent, it can be easily found and purchased over the counter and Internet in a range of grades and pack sizes. Many vendors will sell it to pretty much anyone, no ID check necessary.’ Garcia got up and walked over to the printer in the corner of the room. ‘Actually, you can even find bottles of caustic soda in supermarkets. It’s also present in many cleaning products, including drain unblockers and floor and oven cleaners.’ He handed the printout to Hunter. ‘This thing is way too easy to obtain. This is a dead path.’
As Hunter took the sheet, the phone on his desk rang.
‘Detective Hunter, Homicide Special,’ he answered it and listened for a few seconds. ‘On our way.’ He put the phone down and nodded at Garcia. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘The morgue. Doctor Hove is done with the autopsy.’
‘Good afternoon, Detectives,’ she said in a voice that seemed to have been trained in a library.
‘How are you doing, Sandra?’ Hunter smiled back.
‘I’m well, thank you.’ The question wasn’t returned. Sandra had learned a long time ago never to ask anyone entering a morgue how
Hunter and Garcia pushed through them and carried on down the long, squeaky-clean white corridor. At the end of it they turned left into a shorter hallway, where an orderly wheeling a body on a gurney covered by a white sheet was coming their way. One of the two fluorescent ceiling lights was malfunctioning, flickering on and off at odd intervals. The scene reminded Hunter of some B-rated horror movie.
Hunter pinched his nose as if he was about to sneeze. The smell of the place got to him every time. It was like a hospital’s, but with a different punch to it. Something that seemed to claw at the back of his throat and slowly burn the inside of his nostrils like acid. But today the overpowering smell of disinfectant and cleaning products was churning his stomach even more. It was like he could smell the sodium hydroxide in them. Garcia seemed to have picked that up too, judging by the look on his face.
Another left turn and they were at the door to Autopsy Theater One.
Hunter pressed the intercom button on the wall and heard static crackle from the tiny speaker. ‘Doctor Hove?’ he called.
The heavy door buzzed and unlocked with a hiss like a pressure seal. Hunter pushed it open and he and Garcia stepped inside the large and winter-cold room. Its walls were tiled in brilliant white. Its floor was done in shiny vinyl. Three stainless-steel autopsy tables sprang out of a long counter with oversized sinks that ran along the east wall. On the ceiling, above each table, was a circular island of surgical lights. Metal crypts took up two walls and looked like large filing cabinets with bulky handles. The Chief Medical Examiner for the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner was standing at the far end of the room.
Doctor Carolyn Hove was tall and slim with penetrating green eyes and long chestnut hair that she usually kept in a ponytail, but today it was rolled up into a simple bun. Her surgical mask hung loosely around her neck, revealing full lips with just a touch of pink lipstick, prominent cheekbones and a petite, delicate nose. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her white lab coverall.
‘Robert, Carlos,’ she greeted each detective with a nod. Her voice was velvety but firm, the kind that was always in control.
Both detectives returned the gesture in silence.
‘Mike told me the whole story,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘So the killer called your office and made you watch?’ She moved toward the autopsy table closest to her. The other two were mercifully empty.
Hunter and Garcia followed.
‘Made us choose how the victim would die first,’ Garcia replied.
‘Any idea why?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Mike also told me that the killer created some sort of . . . torture chamber?’
‘Something like that,’ Hunter answered.
‘You can watch the footage if you like, Doc,’ Garcia said. ‘Maybe you can pick up something that we missed.’
She gave them a hesitant nod. ‘Sure, if you send it to me, I’ll have a look.’
There was a moment of silence before their attention moved to the corpse on the steel table. The skinless and faceless victim lay there like an androgynous creature. Nothing more than a distorted lump of flesh. The infamous Y incision, decorated by thick, black stitches, now added one more layer of grotesqueness to the body.
Doctor Hove put on a new pair of latex gloves, switched on the lights on the island overhead and looked down at the victim. ‘All these years as a forensics doctor and I still don’t understand it. How can a person do this to another human being?’
‘Some people are capable of worse, Doc,’ Garcia replied.
‘As far as pain goes, there isn’t anything worse, Carlos.’ Her tone sent a chill up Garcia’s spine. ‘Sodium hydroxide is a strong base substance,’ she explained. ‘It sits right at the opposite end of the pH scale from strong acids like sulfuric and hydrochloric. Everyone knows what sort of damage strong acids can do if they came in direct contact with human skin, right? But what few people are aware of is that strong bases, like sodium hydroxide, are over forty times more painful and destructive to the human body than strong acids.’
Garcia’s eyes widened. ‘Forty?’
Doctor Hove nodded. ‘Sulfuric acid feels like lukewarm water when compared to sodium hydroxide. What this killer has done was create an alkali bath with the victim in it.’ Her eyes returned to the body on the table. ‘For him, it was like he was being burned alive, but his brain would’ve carried on working for longer . . . a lot longer, so he felt every single burning pain that happened to his body. The solution ate through the two first layers of his skin in absolutely no time.’
‘And then the real pain started,’ Hunter said in a subdued voice.
‘That’s right,’ Doctor Hove agreed.
Garcia looked a little doubtful.
‘The main reason why sodium hydroxide is used in so many industrial cleaning products,’ the doctor explained, ‘is because of its incredible ability to dissolve grease, oils, fats and protein. The third layer of the human skin, the subcutaneous, is made mostly of fat. When that’s gone, you get muscle tissue, which is made mostly of protein. Are you starting to get the picture now?’
Garcia cringed.
‘Add to that the fact that the alkalosis in the solution would’ve kept overexciting the nerves, causing them to become terribly inflamed, and you have every single nerve in his body screaming in agony. The pain causes all the major muscles to spasm, lock and cramp. If he weren’t tied down in a sitting position, he would’ve probably broken his spinal cord from contorting. And his brain was still working, registering everything as his body literally dissolved, layer by layer.’
‘I think I get the picture now, Doc, thanks,’ Garcia said, looking green.
‘Luckily for him,’ the doctor said. ‘His heart gave up the fight early.’
‘Not early enough,’ Hunter said. ‘He was in that alkali bath for eleven minutes before he died.’
Doctor Hove agreed, tilting her head to one side. ‘Still, his heart gave in faster than it should have. Have you identified him yet?’
‘We’re still working on that,’ Hunter said.
‘So this might help.’ She retrieved a document from the counter behind her and handed it to Hunter. ‘The reason his heart failed earlier than a healthier one would have was because he suffered from mitral stenosis, which is a narrowing of the mitral valve in the heart. This forces the heart to work harder to pump blood from the left atrium into the left ventricle. With the immense pain he was put through, his heart would’ve had to speed up to supply his body with more blood. Because of his condition, his heart was fatally overworked sooner.’
‘How much sooner?’ Garcia asked.
‘I’d say about forty to fifty percent.’
‘He could’ve lasted double what he did?’
The doctor nodded. ‘A healthier person like you probably would.’
Garcia shook away the chilling sensation that trickled down the back of his neck.
‘A person with his condition would, most probably, be checking in with a cardiologist every few months just for precaution,’ Doctor Hove said.
‘Thanks, Doc,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll start checking right away.’
‘Unfortunately the body is a forensics black hole,’ the doctor concluded. ‘If there were anything to be found, the sodium hydroxide ate it away. Not even bacteria would’ve survived.’ She coughed to clear her throat. ‘If you are considering looking at this from a drug angle, I can tell that he wasn’t a drug user, or if he was it was purely recreational and he hasn’t touched anything in at least a week.’
Hunter knew that would be the case, but he sensed a flicker of hesitation in the doctor’s demeanor. ‘Is there something else, Doc?’
‘I’m confused about something,’ she said. ‘Even though the victim went into cardiac arrest quicker than a person with a healthier heart would have, the sodium hydroxide solution should’ve carried on eating away at the tissues and dissolving his body until there was nothing left. It didn’t. It stopped just as it was reaching muscle tissue.’
‘Just as he died,’ Hunter said.
‘I would say so, yes. Which suggests the killer emptied the torture tank and got the victim out of there as soon as he passed away.’
‘That’s probably what he did,’ Hunter agreed.
‘But why? And why dump the body in an alleyway? If the killer had left the victim in the tank it would’ve dissolved the body. Evidence problem solved. Why give the police something to work with?’
‘Because the killer wants to make sure we take him seriously,’ Hunter replied. ‘Without a body, we have no proof that what we saw over the Internet wasn’t just a graphics trick.’
‘Or someone acting it out,’ Garcia added. ‘The water inside the tank went bloody really quick, Doc. All we could see was the victim’s face, nothing else. We assumed he was in tremendous pain, that his body was dissolving, but it could’ve been somebody acting it out, playing a big “you-got-punked” hoax on the LAPD.’
‘The intention was also for the body to be found fast,’ Hunter said. ‘Hence the location where it was dumped – a back alleyway used by several shops. Garbage collection was today, early morning. I’m sure the killer knew that.’
‘So he gives you the body to prove that the whole thing wasn’t staged,’ Doctor Hove said.
‘That’s the idea,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Because now we know he’s for real.’
She placed her bag on the floor by the door and rubbed her tired blue eyes for a moment. It felt as if her brain was melting inside her skull. Headache pills had had no effect. What she needed was a long shower, a large glass of wine and a lot of rest.
After all, all the effort she’d put into her work in the past few weeks had finally paid off.
In the now dim light of her living room, her eyes found the portrait of her mother on the shiny black console by the window, and she gave a smile full of sadness.
Christina had never met her father, and she never wanted to. She had been conceived in the men’s restroom of a nightclub in West Hollywood. Her mother was drunk. The guy she had sex with was high on drugs. They had met that night. He was good-looking and charming. She was lonely. After they left the restroom, she never saw him again.
When Christina was old enough to understand, her mother told her the whole story. She also told her that she couldn’t even remember his name. But her mother wasn’t a bad person. Against all her friends’ advice, she decided not to have an abortion. She had her baby daughter, and she brought her up on her own, in the best way she could. She saved every spare cent, and when Christina graduated from high school her mother had enough put away in a savings account to send her daughter to university. When, four years later, Christina received her diploma, there was no one prouder in that graduation ceremony than her mother.
That same night, her mother died in her sleep from a brain aneurysm. That had been seven years ago. Christina still missed her like crazy.
Christina walked into her open-plan kitchen and checked the fridge. She had a bottle of Dom Ruinart 1998 she’d been keeping for a special occasion. Well, this sure as hell was one. She pouted her lips, pondering.
It seemed a shame that she had no one to share it with.