The Crucifix Killer Part 2

'Apparently it was an anonymous call to 911,' Garcia answered.

'Oh great, one of those.'

'Here, take this,' Garcia said handing Robert his flashlight.

'Would you like a barf bag as well?' Peter joked.

Hunter paid no attention to the comment and took a moment to study the house from the outside. There was no front door. Most of the wooden planks from the front wall were missing and gra.s.s had grown through the remaining floorboards, making the front room look like a private forest. He could tell the house had once been white from flecks of peeled paint on the remains of windowsills. It was obvious that no one had lived there for a long time and that bothered Hunter. First-time killers didn't go to the trouble of finding such a secluded place to commit murder.

Three police officers stood to the left of the house discussing last night's football game, all three holding steaming cups of coffee.

'Where can I get one of those?' Hunter asked pointing to the coffee cups.

'I'll get you one,' Garcia replied. 'The captain's in the last room on the left, through the corridor. I'll see you in there.'

'Working hard, guys?' Hunter shouted to the three officers who glanced at him indifferently before carrying on discussing the game.

Inside the house a peculiar smell hung in the air, a mix of rotten wood and raw sewage. There was nothing to see in the first room. Hunter turned on his flashlight and moved through the door at the far end into a long and narrow corridor that led to four other rooms, two on each side. A young police officer was standing outside the last door on the left. As Hunter made his way down the corridor, he quickly peeked inside each room he pa.s.sed. Nothing except for spider webs and old debris. The creaking floorboards gave the house an even more sinister feel. As Hunter approached the last door and the officer standing guard he felt an uncomfortable chill. The chill that comes with every murder scene. The chill of death.

Hunter produced his badge and the officer stepped to one side.

'Go right ahead, detective!'

On a table just outside the door Hunter found the customary overalls together with blue plastic shoes and head covers. Next to them a box of latex gloves. Hunter got himself ready and opened the door to face his new nightmare.

The shocking image that met his eyes as he stepped into the room sucked all the air out of his lungs.

'Jesus Christ.' His voice was just a weak whisper.

Five.

Hunter stood at the door of a large double room illuminated only by two moving flashlights Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston. Surprisingly the room was in much better condition than the rest of the house. A giant pit welled in his stomach as he stared at the image before him.

Directly in front of the bedroom door and about three feet from the back wall, the naked body of a woman hung from two parallel wooden posts. Her arms spread as wide as they'd go, her knees bent as they touched the floor placing her in a kneeling Y position. The rope restraining her wrists against the top of the poles had cut deep into her flesh and dark lines of dried blood now decorated her thin arms. Hunter stared at the dead woman's face. His mind struggling to understand what his eyes were seeing.

'Sweet G.o.d in heaven!'

An incessant swarm of flies were swirling around her body creating a relentless buzzing sound, but they left her face alone. Her skinless face. A shapeless ma.s.s of muscle tissue.

'Hunter! You finally decided to show up.' Captain Bolter was standing across the room next to Doctor Winston, the Chief Medical Examiner.

Hunter stared at the woman for a few more seconds before diverting his attention to the captain. 'Somebody skinned her?' he questioned from the doorway, his voice carrying a tone of disbelief.

'Alive . . . someone skinned her alive,' Doctor Winston's calm voice corrected Hunter. 'She died hours after her skin had been ripped off her face.'

'You've gotta be kidding me!' Hunter studied the faceless woman. The absence of skin made her eyes puff out of their sockets and they seemed to be staring straight at him. Her mouth hung open. No teeth.

Hunter guessed her age to be no older than twenty-five. Her legs, stomach and arms had defined muscle tone and it was clear she'd taken pride in her appearance. Her hair was golden blond, long and smooth, falling halfway down her back. Hunter was sure she'd been a very attractive woman.

'There is more. Have a look behind the door,' Doctor Winston said.

Hunter stepped into the room, closed the door and stared at it confused for a couple of seconds.

'A full-length mirror?' he said quizzically staring at his reflection. Suddenly he stepped out of the way and the woman's body came in full view on the mirror.

'G.o.d! The killer made her watch.' Her body had been positioned directly in front of the door.

'That's what it looks like,' Doctor Winston agreed. 'She probably spent her last living hours staring at her disfigured reflection in the mirror mental torture as well as physical.'

'This mirror doesn't belong on this door . . .' Hunter said looking around, ' . . . or in this room. It looks brand new.'

'Exactly, the mirror and those wooden posts were placed in here for a reason to increase her suffering,' Doctor Winston confirmed.

The bedroom door swung open in front of Hunter breaking his stare from the mirror. Garcia walked in holding a cup of coffee. 'Here you go,' he said handing it to Hunter.

'I think I'll pa.s.s, rookie, my stomach has seen better days and I'm very much wide awake now,' Hunter replied with a dismissive gesture.

Captain Bolter and Doctor Winston both shook their heads indicating they didn't want any either. Garcia reopened the door.

'Here you go,' he said to the young officer standing outside. 'You look like you could use a drink.'

'Uh! Thank you sir.' The officer looked surprised.

'Don't mention it.' Garcia closed the door and approached the victim with Hunter. A pungent smell filled their nostrils forcing Hunter to place a hand over his nose. The woman had been kneeling in a pool of urine and faeces.

'She was kept tied to those posts for several hours, maybe even an entire day. That was her toilet,' Doctor Winston explained pointing to the floor.

Garcia grimaced in disgust.

'How long has she been dead for, doc?' Hunter questioned.

'It's hard to be precise at this moment. The human body drops approximately 1.5 degrees in temperature every hour after death. Her body has dropped around twelve degrees which could mean that she's been dead for eight hours, but that depends on the circ.u.mstances. The summer heat would've no doubt slowed the process down and during the day I'm sure this room feels like a sauna. I'll have a better idea of the time of death once I get her into my autopsy room.'

'There are no cuts, no bullet wounds, no strangulation marks. Did she die from her facial injuries?' Hunter asked, looking at the woman's torso and waving his hands to get rid of some of the flies.

'Again, without an autopsy I can't be certain, but my guess would be heart failure induced by pure pain and exhaustion. Whoever did this to her, kept her in this position inflicting more and more pain until she was gone. The killer wanted her to suffer as much as possible, and suffer she did.'

Hunter looked around the room as if searching for something. 'What's this other smell? I can smell something else, something like vinegar.'

'You've got a good nose, Hunter,' Doctor Winston said pointing to one of the corners of the room. 'That jar over there, it was full of vinegar. You can also smell it over her body, predominantly on the top half. It looks like the killer poured it over her skinless face at set time intervals.'

'Vinegar also works as a fly repellent,' Hunter said.

'That's correct,' Doctor Winston confirmed. 'Now just imagine the sort of pain she had to go through. All the nerves around her face were completely exposed. Even a small gust of wind would've caused unbearable pain. She probably pa.s.sed out several times, or at least tried to. Remember, she had no eye lids no way of keeping the light away, no way of resting her eyes. Every time she regained consciousness, the first image she'd see would be her disfigured naked body. I'm not even gonna go into what sort of pain the acidity of vinegar poured over open flesh causes.'

'Jesus!' Garcia said taking a few steps back. 'Poor woman!'

'Was she conscious when she was skinned?' Hunter asked.

'Not without being anesthetized, but I don't think she was. I'd say she was drugged, knocked unconscious for several hours while this psycho went to work on her face. After he was done, she was brought up to this house, tied to the posts and tortured some more until she died.'

'What? You don't think she was skinned in this house?' Garcia asked, looking confused.

'No,' Hunter replied before Doctor Winston had a chance to do so. 'Look around. Check any room you like. Not even a speck of blood anywhere except directly under her body. True, I'm sure the killer cleaned up after himself, but this isn't the place. Correct me if I'm wrong, doc, but skinning a human being is a complicated process.'

Doctor Winston nodded in silence.

'The killer would need surgical equipment, operating room lights, not to mention a lot of time and knowledge,' Hunter continued. 'We're talking about one highly skilled psychopath here. Somebody with a great knowledge of medical practices. She wasn't skinned in this house. She was tortured and killed here.'

'Maybe the killer is a hunter. You know, knowledge of skinning animals?' Garcia suggested.

'Could be, but that wouldn't have helped,' Hunter replied. 'Human skin doesn't respond the same way animal skin does. Different elasticity.'

'How do you know that? Do you hunt?' Garcia asked intrigued.

'No, but I read a lot,' Hunter replied casually.

'Plus animals are dead by the time they're skinned,' Doctor Winston carried on. 'You can simply rip the skin off with no concern for the animal's life. Our killer kept the victim alive and that is a very delicate procedure in itself. Whoever this person is, he knows medicine. In fact, he'd make a very good cosmetic surgeon, except for the job on her teeth. They were simply pulled out, no finesse, but maximum pain.'

'The killer didn't want us to identify her,' Garcia concluded.

'He left her fingers intact,' Hunter shot back after quickly checking her hands. 'Why take the teeth and leave the fingerprints?'

Garcia nodded in agreement.

Hunter walked around the two wooden poles to have a look at the woman's back. 'A performing stage,' he whispered. 'A place where the killer's evil could come alive. That's why she was brought here. Look at her, her position is ritualistic.' He turned to face Captain Bolter. 'This killer's done this before.'

Captain Bolter didn't look surprised.

'No one could've handled this sort of pain in silence,' Garcia commented. 'This is the perfect place, totally secluded, no neighbors, no one to walk in on the killer. She could've screamed her lungs out and no one would've come.'

'The victim, do we have anything on her? Do we know who she is?' Hunter asked, still examining the woman's back.

'Nothing so far, but we haven't run her prints through yet,' Garcia answered. 'Our first look through this house has given us zip, not even a piece of clothing. She obviously didn't live here and searching the house for any clues on her ident.i.ty is probably a waste of time.'

'Do it anyway,' Hunter said firmly. 'How about missing persons?'

'I've fed her initial description into the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit database,' Garcia replied. 'No matches yet, but without a face . . .' Garcia shook his head as he considered the impossible task.

Hunter took a few seconds to look around the room before his eyes rested on a window on the south wall. 'How about tire tracks on the outside? There looks to be no other way of getting to this place except for that narrow lane. The killer must've driven up here.'

Captain Bolter nodded slightly. 'You're right. That lane is the only access to this house and all the police and forensic units have driven up and down it. If we had anything, it's been covered up. And I'll be having some a.s.ses for this.'

'Great!'

The room fell silent. They'd all seen it before. A victim that had no chance against a deranged opponent a blank canvas painted with the striking colors of death but this seemed different, it felt different.

'I don't like this,' Hunter broke the silence. 'I don't like this at all. This isn't your regular spur of the moment homicide. This was planned and for a f.u.c.king long time too. Just imagine the kind of patience and determination it takes to pull something like this off.' Hunter rubbed at his nose. The stench of death now getting to him.

'A crime of pa.s.sion perhaps? Maybe someone just wanted revenge over a broken affair,' Garcia offered a new opinion.

'This is no crime of pa.s.sion,' Hunter said with a shake of the head. 'No one that'd been in love with her would be able to do something like this. No matter how hurt he was, unless she was dating Satan himself. Just look at her, this is simply grotesque and that worries me. This ain't going to end here.'

Hunter's words sent a new chill into the room. The last thing the city of Los Angeles needed was another psychopath killer on the loose, someone wanting to be the next Jack the Ripper.

'Hunter's right, this isn't a crime of pa.s.sion. This killer has done this before,' Captain Bolter said finally, moving away from the window. His statement stopped everyone in their tracks.

'Do you know something we don't?' Garcia asked the question on everyone's lips.

'Not for long. There is one more thing I want you to see before I let the forensic boys in here.'

Hunter had been intrigued by that since his arrival. Usually the forensic team checks the scene before the detectives are allowed to walk all over the evidence, but today the captain wanted Hunter in there first. Captain Bolter rarely broke protocol.

'On the back of her neck, have a look,' he said tilting his head towards the body.

Hunter and Garcia exchanged a concerned look before approaching the dead woman once again.

'Give me something to lift her hair up with,' Hunter called to anyone in the room. Doctor Winston handed him a metal retractable pointer.

As his flashlight illuminated her now exposed neck Hunter's mind went into a whirlwind of confusion. He stared at it in disbelief the color drained from his face.

Garcia didn't have a clear view from where he was standing, but what disturbed him was the look in Hunter's eyes. Whatever Hunter was staring at, it had scared him soundless.

Six.

Despite being thirty-nine years old, Robert Hunter's youthful-looking face and impressive physique made him look like a man who'd just hit thirty. Always dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a beat-up leather jacket, Hunter was six foot with squared shoulders, high cheekbones and short blondish hair. He possessed a deliberate controlled strength that came across in every movement he made, but it was his eyes that were most striking. An intense pale blue that suggested intelligence and an unflinching resolve.

Hunter grew up as an only child to working-cla.s.s parents in Compton, an underprivileged neighborhood of South Los Angeles. His mother lost her battle with cancer when he was only seven. His father never remarried and had to take on two jobs to cope with the demands of raising a child on his own.

From a very early age it was obvious to everyone that Hunter was different. He could figure things out faster than most. School bored and frustrated him. He'd finished all of his sixth-grade work in less than two months and just for something to do he'd sped through seventh-, eighth- and even ninth-grade books. Mr Fratelli, the school princ.i.p.al, was amazed by the child prodigy and arranged an appointment at the Mirman School for the Gifted in Mulholland Drive, North West Los Angeles. Doctor Tilby, Mirman's psychologist, ran him through a battery of tests and Hunter was p.r.o.nounced 'off the scale.' A week later, he'd transferred to Mirman as an eighth-grader. He was only twelve.

By the age of fourteen he'd glided through Mirman's high-school English, History, Biology and Chemistry curriculum. Four years of high school were condensed into two and at fifteen he'd graduated with honors. With recommendations from all of his teachers, Hunter was accepted as a 'special circ.u.mstances' student at Stanford University. The top psychology university in America at the time.

In spite of Hunter's good looks, the combination of being too thin, too young and having a strange dress sense made him unpopular with girls and an easy target for bullies. He didn't have the body or the apt.i.tude for sports and preferred to spend his free time in the library. He read chewed up books with incredible speed. He became fascinated with the world of criminology and the thought process of individuals dubbed 'evil'. Maintaining a 4.0 Grade Point Average during his university years had been a walk in the park, but he soon grew tired of the bullying and of being called 'tooth-pick boy'. He decided to join a weights gym and started taking martial art cla.s.ses. To his surprise, he enjoyed the physical pain of the workouts. He became obsessed with it and within a year the effects of such heavy training were clearly visible. His body had bulked up impressively. 'Tooth-pick boy' became 'fit boy' and it took him a little less than two years to receive his black belt in karate. The bullying stopped and all of a sudden girls couldn't get enough of him.

By the age of nineteen Hunter had already graduated in Psychology and at twenty-three he received his PhD in Criminal Behavior a.n.a.lysis and Biopsychology. His thesis paper t.i.tled 'An Advanced Psychological Study in Criminal Conduct' had been made into a book and it was now mandatory reading at the FBI National Center for the a.n.a.lysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).