‘OK, but just humor me here. Do you think there’s a chance there could be more than one perpetrator? Two people acting together, maybe. One who hated Nicholson and the other Nashorn? Maybe they met in prison. Sent to the same institution, but for completely unrelated crimes. They became friends inside. That could’ve given them years to come up with a morbid revenge.’
‘She’s got a point,’ DA Bradley agreed.
‘That’s more than unlikely, given what was actually done to the victims.’
‘How so?’
Hunter walked over to the center of the room. ‘If you consider the severity of the psychosis manifested in both crimes, and the craziness of the act itself, it would be virtually impossible to have two separate attackers. The crime scenes suggest a compulsion acted out by the killer, down to the tiniest of details. Just look at the sculptures. At a psychological level, that’s impossible to share. Killing his victims, dismembering their bodies, and constructing the human-body-part sculptures gives him pleasure. It fulfills something inside him that only he understands. No one else would’ve had the same level of satisfaction. That kind of psychological disturbance can’t be shared. It’s the same killer, Captain. Trust me.’
A knock on the door interrupted them.
‘Yes,’ Captain Blake called out.
The door was pushed open halfway and Alice Beaumont popped her head through. She’d gone back to the District Attorney’s office to check on some files she couldn’t access over the Internet. Her eyes widened in surprise and she stood perfectly still. She didn’t know Hunter and Garcia were back from the morgue, and she’d had no idea DA Bradley would be in the room.
Everyone turned and faced Alice.
Three silent seconds.
‘Sorry to interrupt.’ Her eyes circled the room, making sure she had everyone’s attention. ‘But I think I finally got something.’
Forty-Five
DA Bradley motioned Alice into the office as if it were his own. He waited for her to close the door behind her.
‘So what have you got?’ he asked, throwing the autopsy-report copy on Captain Blake’s desk.
‘I’ve spent all morning going through the long list of names of criminals who were prosecuted by Derek Nicholson.’ She nodded at Hunter. ‘This time I went back fifteen years. I looked for links concerning the two victims. Mainly someone who’d been apprehended by Nashorn, and subsequently prosecuted by Nicholson.’ She fetched four sheets of paper from the green plastic folder she had with her and handed one to each person in the room. ‘Out of all the criminals Nashorn busted in the twelve years he was a detective, Nicholson prosecuted thirty-seven of them.’
Everyone’s attention moved to the names on the list.
‘Thirty-seven? There are only twenty-nine names here,’ DA Bradley said, his eyebrows rising slightly.
‘That’s because I did a preliminary check on the initial thirty-seven,’ Alice clarified. ‘Eight have already died. The problem is, all thirty-seven of them were just your average street criminal – armed robbery, mugging, drug dealing, sex exploitation, aggravated assaults, gang members, that kind of thing. When I checked their background, I got nothing but school dropouts and poorly educated people who came from broken homes and abusive parents. People with explosive tempers who just don’t fit the pattern.’
‘What pattern are you talking about?’ the DA asked.
‘The pathologist’s report from Nicholson’s autopsy suggested that the killer had some sort of medical knowledge,’ Alice explained.
‘That was further confirmed after Nashorn’s examination this morning,’ Garcia added.
‘So that would back up my argument,’ Alice proceeded. ‘The criminals on this list don’t have the level of education needed to be able to commit the kind of murders we’re investigating. They just wouldn’t have the knowledge, the patience, or the determination to dismember a victim and create the sculptures.’
‘So what you’re saying is that none of the names on this list is worth investigating?’ Captain Blake said with lilt in her voice. ‘So what’s the point in handing it to us?’ She dropped the list on her desk carelessly.
‘No,’ Alice shot back in the same tone. ‘What I’m saying is that that’s my opinion. I compiled the list because that was my job. In all the years I’ve worked for the DA’s office, one thing I’ve learned is that time is a precious commodity in any investigation. But if you have the resources and the time to investigate all twenty-nine names on that list, then please be my guest.’
DA Bradley smiled like a proud father as he looked at Captain Blake. The only thing missing was the sentence ‘That’s my girl’.
Hunter saw a muscle flex on the captain’s jaw. ‘But this isn’t what you’re excited about,’ he quickly intervened. ‘You found something else, didn’t you?’
A new glint brightened Alice’s eyes. ‘After I finished going over that list, I had an idea. I thought that maybe we could look at this from a different angle.’
‘And which angle is that?’ The captain’s voice was still dry.