‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed.
‘But why now?’
‘Because our killer didn’t know anything about what really happened until a few months ago,’ Hunter said.
All of a sudden, all the pieces were slotting into place in Garcia’s mind. ‘Nicholson,’ he said, returning to his desk, picking up his notebook and quickly flipping through it.
Captain Blake and Alice turned to face him.
‘Here it is. Derek Nicholson’s nurse told us that he said something about making his peace with God. About telling someone the truth about something. That no matter how much good you do in your life, there are certain mistakes that would haunt you until your dying day.’ He returned the notebook to his desk. ‘That must’ve been what he was talking about. The mistake that haunted him throughout his life.’ He looked at Hunter. ‘The person who visited him in his house. The man we still haven’t identified.’
Hunter nodded.
‘The nurse also said that Nicholson had only two visitors once he was taken ill,’ Garcia clarified, for the captain’s and Alice’s benefit. ‘DA Bradley was one of them, but we’ve never identified the second visitor. He’s got to be our killer. Nicholson finally told him the truth about what had happened. He didn’t want to carry that secret to the grave with him.’
‘And a few weeks later he was murdered,’ Captain Blake said. ‘The revenge rampage started.’
‘So if you’re right,’ Alice said to Hunter, as another piece of the puzzle clicked into place for her, ‘Derek Nicholson must’ve been friends, or at least acquainted, with our killer from before. If he asked him to come to his house so he could clear his conscience, he must’ve known him. And that’s why the killer considered him a liar.’ She shook her head. ‘Better yet, a deceiver. He felt betrayed. Exactly what the shadow image told us.’
Hunter nodded.
‘And with the next victim and shadow image,’ she continued, ‘the killer depicted Andrew Nashorn as the group or gang leader, the one they all followed.’
Another nod.
‘And Nathan Littlewood was the one left with the task of disposing of the body.’
‘I don’t think he disposed of it,’ Hunter disagreed. ‘I think he cut it to pieces, and packed them inside some sort of container. I think the person who disposed of that container is the last name on our killer’s hit list. The fourth member of the group. The next victim.’
Everyone paused and processed that information in their own time.
‘But as I said,’ Hunter massaged the back of his neck, ‘at the moment this is all just a crazy theory in my head. I have no proof of anything yet.’
‘Crazy or not, all the pieces seem to slot into place,’ Captain Blake said, returning her attention to the images on the board. ‘And that would also explain why our killer is dismembering his victims. It’s payback time – an eye for an eye – blood in, blood out.’
She paused for a brief moment while she worked things out in her head. It’d been sixteen days since the first murder, and as things stood, she was inclined to claw at any reasonable possibility. She also hated working with the FBI.
‘OK, it’s plausible, and it makes more sense than anything else we’ve got so far. Let’s go with it. Let’s get a team digging into our three victims’ past. If that group of friends really existed, I want to know who that fourth person was. If you need to get in touch with the FBI to dig deeper, do it. I don’t like them any more than you do, but they have resources that we don’t, and they can get access to things a lot faster than we can. Tell the team already digging into Derek Nicholson’s life to dig harder. We need to find out who visited him by his deathbed. Talk to his nurses again. And let’s get one last team looking into any cases where the victim was found chopped to pieces inside a box, a container, a matchbox, anything. I know there’s a possibility that the body was never found in the first place, but if it was found, and if you are right,’ she addressed Hunter, ‘we identify that victim, we identity our Sculptor killer.’
One Hundred
The next twenty-four hours went by in a blur. Everyone was working as fast and as hard as they could, but so far very little progress had been made.
With her experience in navigating databases, Alice had volunteered to run the searches for bodies found chopped to pieces inside any sort of container, but she hit a wall almost immediately. Her expertise was in the digital world. If any records were stored anywhere online, she would no doubt get to them. But when you’re searching for something that dates back years before the use of digital databases, it all becomes a lottery. If some underpaid clerk had, at some point, been given the mind-numbing task of transposing that information from paper to digital, then Alice knew she would find it. But if that information was still packed away inside a dark archive room somewhere, that was exactly where it would stay. Realistically, due to budgeting and a lack of staff, most government organizations would never manage to completely digitize their backlog of paper files.
Hunter and Garcia went back to Amy Dawson’s house – Derek Nicholson’s weekday nurse. She had seen the newspapers front pages and the photographs of all three victims. She couldn’t understand why a serial killer would go after Mr. Nicholson.
Hunter revisited the subject of Derek Nicholson wanting to make peace with God and tell someone the truth about something, but Amy told him that that had been all he’d said. He’d never mentioned anything else or any names. She had no idea what truth he had referred to, and she remembered nothing new about the second person who’d visited Mr. Nicholson that day.
Speaking to Melinda Wallis, Nicholson’s weekend nurse and the person who had found his body that morning, was a much more delicate affair. Since the murder, she had moved back into her parents’ house in La Habra Heights, a rural canyon community located on the border of Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Even with Hunter’s experience, interviewing her proved almost impossible. The trauma caused by what she had seen in that room, and the knowledge that she’d been a breath away from a ruthless killer, and the bloody message he had left on the wall specifically for her, had spread its roots deep into her conscious and subconscious mind. Even with years of psychotherapy, which her family couldn’t afford, she would never be the same person again. Sadly, Melinda had become another victim of the Sculptor.
One Hundred and One
Before returning to the PAB, Hunter and Garcia had one more stop – Allison Nicholson’s apartment in Pico-Robertson, just south of Beverly Hills.
Derek Nicholson’s youngest daughter lived in a luxurious two-bedroom apartment in the much sought-after Hillcrest development, adjacent to the famous Hillcrest Country Club. Hunter had contacted both of Nicholson’s daughters by phone earlier in the day. They’d arranged to meet at 7:15 p.m. at Allison’s apartment.
The Hillcrest development looked and felt more like a holiday resort than a residential complex. Its residents enjoyed a very large fitness center with a cardio island, dry sauna, two resort-style pools, two beauty spas, towering palm trees, waterfalls, and an outdoor fireplace with lounge area and barbeque grills. After signing in with the security guard at the complex’s electronic gates, both detectives were given instructions for finding the visitors’ parking lot.
The concierge at Allison’s apartment block’s entry lobby showed Hunter and Garcia to the elevator, and told them that Miss Nicholson’s apartment was located on the top floor.