With the use of the crime-scene photographs, Garcia explained that the sculptures had been placed at opposite ends of the desk. By positioning the victim’s head and his extracted eye at the appropriate spots, the killer had guided the light beam that would reveal the shadow images, like a movie director.
‘This is what we got from the second one.’ Garcia pinned the second shadow image photograph to the board.
Since the second hand sculpture was very similar to the first one, it was no surprise that the shadows cast by them were almost identical. No one had any doubts that it also depicted a person, but this time, because the killer had severed the ‘walking fingers’ at the first phalange, it looked like that person was either very short, or kneeling down. The way the thumb had been positioned – forward, with its broken tip pointing up – it looked like the person had his or her arm raised, pointing at the sky. On the floor, directly in front of the figure, there were large pieces of something unrecognizable. Their shadows were created by the carved out pieces from the victim’s thigh.
‘What the hell? He’s fucking with us, that’s what he’s doing,’ Captain Blake said, after an uneasy silence. ‘What the hell is all this now? A midget? A child? Someone kneeling down? Praying? Pointing at the sky?’ Her attention went back to the previous shadow-image photograph. ‘So we have someone staring at someone else inside a box . . .’ She stabbed her finger against the newest picture on the board, ‘. . . and a midget, a child, or someone kneeling down as if worshiping something. What does any of that have to do with this new victim?’
Everyone knew it was a rhetorical question.
‘I’ll tell you what . . .’ the captain carried on, giving no one a chance to reply anyway, ‘nothing. He’s playing us, giving us animals, horned monsters, wall messages, rock songs, and now this crap. He’s wasting our time, because he knows we’ll spend hours and hours trying to figure out what all of this junk means.’ She waved her hand in a circular motion to indicate the entire pictures board. ‘Meanwhile, he’s walking the streets, planning his next murder, staking out his next victim, and laughing at us all. Shadow puppets? We are the puppets here, and he’s manipulating us in whatever way he likes.’
Eighty-Two
During the afternoon, together with Garcia and Captain Blake, Hunter had faced a press conference that seemed more like a firing squad than anything else. Reporters had talked to everyone in Nathan Littlewood’s office building, and the stories they’d got ranged from dismemberment and decapitation, to ritualistic, real-voodoo-doll creation and cannibalism. One woman had even mentioned the word
Hunter, Garcia, and Captain Blake did their best to persuade the reporters that none of the stories they heard was true. But one thing was for sure: the news of a new serial killer was about to break.
After the press conference, Hunter and Garcia got to work on the names Littlewood’s secretary had given them. In the past three months, due to his already full roster, Nathan Littlewood had only been able to taken on three new clients – Kelli Whyte, Denise Forde, and David Jones.
Kelli Whyte and Denise Forde both started their therapy sessions last month, and each had had four in total. David Jones had called enquiring about a consultation two weeks ago. He had come in for his first ever session at the beginning of the week. Sheryl said that Jones was a tall man, maybe six two, six three, with broad shoulders and an average body. She wasn’t able to tell Hunter very much about his looks, though. She said that Jones had turned up for his only session a few minutes late, clearly concerned about concealing his appearance. He was wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat pulled low on his forehead; according to Sheryl, though, this wasn’t uncommon among clients, especially the Hollywood types.
Hunter found out that Kelli Whyte was a 45-year-old recent divorcee who lived in Hancock Park. She managed a stock-trade company based in downtown LA’s financial district, and since her divorce six months earlier, she had been struggling to cope with life in general.
Denise Forde was a 27-year-old computer analyst who lived alone in South Pasadena, and worked in a software company in Silver Lake. All they’d found out about her so far was that she was very shy, lacked confidence, and didn’t seem to have many friends.