Team C had already photographed the entire basement in its original state, and was now in the process of sieving through everything as it was collected, tagged, and placed inside plastic evidence bags for further analysis. The first items to be taken down were the framed human skin pieces.
As Agents Lopez and Fuller carefully unhooked the first frame from the east wall, they both realized that the frames had been simply, but cleverly homemade. First, the human skin piece had been either soaked or sprayed with a preserving substance like formaldehyde or formalin, which is a solution of gas formaldehyde in water. Then, the piece had been stretched out and placed flat against a sheet of Plexiglas that was about 2 millimeters thick – equivalent to two regular microscope slides stacked together. A second sheet of Plexiglas, of identical thickness, was then placed over the human skin piece, sandwiching it between both Plexiglas sheets. To keep skin deterioration down to a minimum, the Plexiglas/human skin sandwich was finally airtight locked using a special sealant, before being framed just like any regular painting or picture.
‘This is one hundred percent fucked up,’ Lopez said, after dusting the last of the frames for fingerprints. There were none.
Lopez was tall and slim, with short curly hair, piercing dark brown eyes, and a hooked nose that had earned him the nickname Hawk.
‘No shit, Hawk,’ Agent Fuller said as he started tagging and bagging the frames. ‘You know we’ve seen enough killers’ trophies over the years, among them quite a few body parts, but this is pushing the boundaries.’ He made a head gesture toward the frames. ‘This guy didn’t just cut a finger or an ear off his victims. He skinned them, at least partially, maybe even while they were still alive, and to me that puts him in a new category I haven’t seen before.’
‘And what category is that?’
‘Psychopath freak show – level: grandmaster. One with a lot of skill and patience too.’
Hawk agreed with a nod. ‘Yeah, that is messed up, but what really gets me is this room.’ He looked around him.
Fuller’s gaze circled the room, following Hawk’s. ‘What do you mean?’
‘How many serial killers’ trophy rooms would you say that we’ve seen over the years?’
Fuller pulled a face and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Hawk. More than enough, for sure.’
‘Since this unit was put together, thirty-nine,’ Hawk confirmed. ‘But we’ve all seen hundreds of photographs of other trophy rooms, and you know they all look similar – small, smelly, grimy, dark, you know what I’m talking about. It’s usually just a cupboard-sized space or a shed somewhere where the perpetrators keep whatever parts they chopped off their victims. Somewhere they can go to jerk off, or fantasize, or whatever it is they do when they’re reliving the time they spent with their victims. You’ve seen them. They all look like some sort of sick shrine out of a Hollywood horror movie.’ Hawk paused, turned both of his gloved hands upward, and looked around the room again. ‘But look at this place. It looks like an average family’s sitting room. It’s just a little dusty.’ He ran two fingers over the top of the chest of drawers, showing the result to Fuller just to emphasize his argument.
‘OK, and your point is?’
‘My point is that I don’t think this guy came down here to be reminded of his murders, or of the time he spent with his victims. I think this guy came down here to watch TV, drink beer and read, just like regular folk. The difference is that he did all that surrounded by the framed skin of his victims.’
Hawk had walked the entire house before assigning the agents to their teams. He knew that the only TV set in the house was the old tube one down in the basement. He also knew that the small fridge in the corner had nothing but a few bottles of beer inside.
Something in Hawk’s voice concerned Fuller.
‘So what are you really saying, Hawk?’
Hawk paused by the bookcase and scanned through some of the titles.
‘What I’m saying is that I don’t think those were trophies.’ He pointed to the evidence bags on the floor now holding the five frames. ‘Those were just simple decorating items. If this guy really has a trophy room somewhere, this isn’t it.’ He paused and breathed in a worried breath. ‘I’m saying brace yourself, Fuller, because if this guy has a trophy room, we haven’t found it yet.’
Twenty-Seven
Upstairs in the house, Team B – Agents Miguel Reyna and Eric Goldstein, had just finished their swipe of the small bathroom and the first bedroom. They’d managed to collect several fingerprints from both rooms, but even without a more in-depth analysis, Goldstein, who was the team’s expert when it came to fingerprints, could tell that their patterns seemed identical, which hinted that they’d all come from the same person. The size of all the thumbprints found also indicated that the prints had probably come from a male subject.
The shower’s plughole had given them several hair strands, all of them short and dark brown in color. The high-intensity UV-light test they’d conducted in the first bedroom and in the bathroom had revealed no traces of semen or blood anywhere, not even in the bathroom’s washbasin from what could’ve been an old shaving cut. Several spots, some small, some large, did light up on the floor all around the toilet seat, and on the seat itself, but that was to be expected. Urine is extremely fluorescent when illuminated with ultraviolet light.
Just to be sure, they also ran a UV-light test on the walls. It’s not uncommon for perpetrators to try to cover bloodstained walls by giving them a new coat of paint. Though that would make them completely invisible to the naked eye, paint-covered bloodstains will still quite clearly reveal themselves under high-intensity UV-light scrutiny.
A few scattered speckles did light up on the corridor walls. Reyna and Goldstein collected samples of them all, but none of them were hidden behind the topcoat of paint. Both agents had their doubts that the samples they collected in the hallway would turn out to be blood.
They approached the last room at the end of the corridor, the master bedroom, and paused by the door, allowing their eyes to take everything in before proceeding.
The décor inside was sparse, cheap and messy, like a college dorm room furnished on a very low budget. The double bed pushed up against one of the walls looked like it had come from a Salvation Army shop, and so did the mattress and the black and gray bed cover and pillow cases. A wooden, drawerless bedside table, with a reading lamp on it, was also pushed up against the same wall, on the right side of the bed. An old-looking double-door wardrobe was centered against the west wall. The only other piece of furniture in that room was a small bookcase, crammed with books.
‘At least this shouldn’t take very long,’ Reyna said, slipping on a brand-new pair of latex gloves.
‘Good,’ Goldstein agreed. Even with the nose mask the strong mothball smell was starting to burn the inside of his nostrils.
They started like they had in the two previous rooms, with a high-intensity UV-light test, and as soon as they switched the UV light on, the bed covers lit up like a Christmas tree.
‘Well, no surprise there,’ Goldstein said. ‘Those sheets look like they’ve never been washed.’
While a variety of body fluids are fluorescent under high-intensity UV light – semen, blood, vaginal secretion, urine, saliva and sweat – using the light alone will not confirm exactly what sort of stain one is looking at. More tests are certainly needed. Also, several other non-body-fluid substances, like citric fruit juices or toothpaste, will certainly light up bright under a UV-light test.