‘So he’s laughing at us,’ Captain Blake said, leaning against Garcia’s desk, anger in her voice and a steely glint in her eyes. ‘Not only is this perp crazy enough to kill a state prosecutor and an LAPD cop, but he’s also bold enough to taunt us with messages written on walls, songs with double meanings, sculptures made from the flesh of his victims and shadow puppets. He’s making this his own private goddamn circus.’ Her eyes flashed fire. ‘And
No one replied.
Alice had redirected her attention back to the pictures board. ‘What did you get when you shone a light on this?’ She indicated one of the photographs of the new sculpture. ‘I know you’re not waiting for the lab to produce another replica to find out. You checked it last night, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what did you get?’ Captain Blake this time. ‘Shadow puppets of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?’
Garcia walked back to his desk, reached for an A4 brown-paper envelope and retrieved a single photograph from inside. He turned it over and showed it to the room.
‘We got this.’
Thirty-Six
Garcia crossed to the pictures board and pinned the new photograph onto it, just below the group containing the images of the sculpture found in Andrew Nashorn’s boat.
Captain Blake and Alice both craned their necks and squinted at the same time, as if in a synchronized dance move.
‘We used a forensic power light against the new sculpture to cast the shadows onto the wall,’ Hunter explained. ‘That’s how we managed to photograph the shadows. There was no need for a camera flash. It took us a while to find the correct angle. In fact, the killer was the one who showed us how exactly to look at it. He left us a clue.’
Neither Captain Blake nor Alice seemed to be paying attention to Hunter’s words. For them, during the past few seconds it was as if the whole world had disappeared, and all that was left was the photograph Garcia had just stuck to the board.
The captain was the first to speak. Her words came out slowly, surrounded by doubt. ‘What the hell is this?’
Hunter folded his arms and once again looked at the image that had taken over his mind since he first set eyes on it last night. ‘What does it look like to you, Captain?’
She took a deep breath. The way Andrew Nashorn’s arms had been bundled together – inside wrist against inside wrist, hands open outwards as if ready to catch a flying ball, cast a silhouette onto the wall that looked just like a distorted face. The thumbs, broken and twisted out of shape, pointing up, made it looked like crooked horns were growing out of its head.
‘Like a goddamn giant monster’s head with horns, or something. Maybe some sort of devil.’ The captain squinted harder and shook her head, hardly believing her eyes as she stared at the shadow images cast by the four figures that had been created by bundling all the severed fingers together two by two.
The way the killer had expertly carved out the figures – round and chunky at the top, curved at the center, and skinny at the bottom – and then placed them in relation to the light source was mesmerizing. A true work of a sick genius. With the light being shone from that specific angle, the shadows cast by the two upright figures look just like two people standing up, viewed from a profile perspective. The shadows cast by the two lying down figures also resembled two people, lying on top of each other on the floor.
‘And what is this devil doing?’ Captain Blake asked. ‘Staring at four people? Two standing up and two on the floor?’
Hunter shrugged. ‘You see exactly the same thing as we do, Captain.’
Captain Blake was getting fidgety. ‘Great! And all that crap means what, exactly?’
‘Another riddle within a riddle,’ Garcia said, returning to his desk.
‘We don’t know yet, Captain,’ Hunter admitted. ‘We haven’t had time to analyze and research the image and its connotations. We only got this last night, remember?’
‘The shadow that looks like a head with horns could represent the killer,’ Alice offered, pointing at the photograph and stealing everyone’s attention. ‘That’s why it’s so much bigger than the four other images. The crooked thumbs casting horn shadows and making the whole figure look like a devil’s head obviously characterizes evil. Maybe he believes he’s possessed by an evil being or something.’ She shrugged as she considered the rest of the image. ‘And one could maybe argue that the reason he’s looking down at four other figures is because they represent his . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she shuddered, scaring herself with the thought that swirled around in her head.
‘Victims,’ Hunter finished the sentence for her.
Captain Blake almost choked. ‘Wait up. So you’re saying that this new riddle, this new shadow image, could represent the killer and his agenda?’ The annoyed edge was still in her voice.
Hunter turned his palms up in a subtle ‘who knows’ gesture. ‘As I’ve said, we don’t know yet, Captain.’