From where Hunter and Garcia were standing, what once was her face now looked like a grotesque human pincushion, with numerous glass spikes protruding from it in all different directions.

‘I’m guessing you two are with the UVC Unit.’

Those words came from the forensics agent who had been carefully collecting hairs and fibers from the large rug in the main living room area, just past the dining table.

A couple of silent seconds went by before Hunter and Garcia finally managed to drag their attention away from the body.

‘I’m Dr. Susan Slater,’ the agent said, getting up from her kneeling position. ‘I’m the lead forensics agent assigned to this scene.’

Neither Hunter nor Garcia had ever worked with Dr. Slater before. She was about five-foot seven and looked to be in her early thirties, with a slim body, high cheekbones and a delicate nose. Her head was covered by the hood of her Tyvek jumpsuit, but a thin sliver of blonde hair could still be seen cutting across the top of her forehead. Her makeup was subtle and work-like, but effective enough to keep her attractiveness and femininity even under the unappealing white coverall. Her voice had an odd tone to it – soft and jovial, but at the same time giving the impression of being full of experience and knowledge.

‘Detective Robert Hunter, LAPD UVC Unit. This is Detective Carlos Garcia.’ They both greeted the doctor with a simple head nod before reverting their attention back to the victim.

‘It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?’ Dr. Slater commented. ‘How can anyone do something like that to another human being?’

‘The killer stabbed her in the face with glass shanks?’ Garcia asked, his expression clearly revealing his disbelief in his own words.

‘Might’ve done, Detective,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘That’s impossible to tell without a proper autopsy examination but, if that’s the case, that’s only part of the story.’

‘So what’s the other part?’ Garcia asked.

She took a couple of steps towards the victim. ‘Let me show you.’

Hunter and Garcia followed her. Sergeant Velasquez stayed by the chimed curtains.

Being careful to avoid the pool of blood on the floor, Dr. Slater squatted down by the side of the chair and beckoned Hunter and Garcia to do the same. Up close, the injuries to Karen Ward’s face were even more disturbing.

Several different-sized shards of mirrored glass had sliced through her skin and muscle tissue, practically tearing her face from its skeleton structure. Slabs of skin and flesh dangled loosely from her cheeks, her forehead, and her chin, where bone had also been exposed.

‘You see,’ Dr. Slater began, ‘if you look only at the large shards of glass . . .’ She indicated the ones protruding from the victim’s right and left cheek, left eye socket, and the one that had completely traversed the victim’s under-chin soft tissue, pinning her tongue to the lower part of her mouth. ‘The impression that you get is that the perpetrator violently stabbed the victim with improvised glass shanks, leaving each and every one embedded in her face as he did. Some were rammed into her face so hard, they have either fractured bone, or implanted themselves into it.’ She called their attention to two other pieces of glass – one sticking out of the victim’s lower jawbone, the other from her forehead. ‘But that’s not all we have here, Detectives. There’s an even larger number of smaller pieces of glass entrenched in her flesh.’ She indicated a few of them as she spoke. Some were as small as a pea. ‘These pieces are small enough to make it physically impossible for anyone to be able to use them as some sort of stabbing weapon. They are impact residue. Broken pieces from larger ones.’

Hunter tilted his head left then right as he studied the victim’s face. Despite all his experience, he still couldn’t help but cringe at the ferocity of her wounds. Each one would’ve brought with it a whole new dimension of pain. What that young woman must’ve suffered was almost unimaginable.

Dried blood covered most of her body, making it hard to be certain, but the impression Hunter got was that she carried no other wounds or bruises anywhere else. The killer’s rage had been exclusively directed at her face.

After several seconds, Hunter stood up and repositioned himself behind the chair to have a better look at the back of the victim’s head.

‘So what are you saying, doc?’ Garcia asked. ‘That the killer tied her to this chair and then slammed glass sheets into her face?’

‘No,’ Hunter was the one who replied, turning to look at the floor behind the victim’s chair – no glass residue. ‘The inverted motion, Carlos,’ he explained. ‘The killer rammed her face into glass.’

Six

A few hours earlier

‘This is stupid,’ Tanya Kaitlin said with a jittery giggle. ‘Give me a second and I’ll get her number for you.’

‘I gave you five,’ the demonic voice replied. ‘And those five seconds are up.

‘You wanted to know what happens when you give me a wrong answer . . . watch this.’

All of a sudden and to Tanya’s surprise, the person standing behind Karen’s chair grabbed hold of the leather gag around Karen’s mouth and, in one violent movement, yanked it down and off her lips so hard, it tore a gash to the right side of her bottom lip. Speckles of blood flew up into the air.

Tanya’s eyes were filled with shock as she struggled to understand what was really going on.

Before Karen could let go of a scream that must’ve been locked inside her throat for God-knows-how-long, Tanya saw her assailant place a gloved hand on the back of her head. A split second later, she heard a crushing noise as Karen’s head and face were firmly pushed forward and slammed down against something that had been previously placed in front of her.

Tanya couldn’t quite see what it was.

‘Oh my God!’ she screamed, her own head jerking back in horror. Despite how spooked she was, she never let go of her phone. ‘What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?’ Her tone lifted with a mixture of anxiety and fear.

The same gloved hand grabbed Karen by the hair and brought her head back up to its starting position. As her face filled the small screen on Tanya’s phone again, Tanya felt vomit travel up from her stomach and stand fast at the base of her throat.

Three large shards of glass had embedded themselves on to Karen’s face. The first one, about three inches long, had sliced through Karen’s left cheek. Its tip, which was now sitting inside Karen’s mouth, had also severed a small section of her tongue. The second piece of glass, this one much smaller than the one in her left cheek, had penetrated Karen’s right nostril, ripping a whole at the top of her nose. The third and last piece, which was about one and a half inches long, was protruding from her bloody forehead.

Tanya was no expert, but she was sure that the glass had hit bone. ‘Oh, my God, no . . . what the hell are you doing?’ Tanya’s words were drowning on tears. ‘Karen . . . no . . .’

‘Look . . .’ the demonic voice said threateningly, moving Karen’s face from left to right ever so slightly to better display the extent of her injuries. ‘Look . . .’

Tanya was staring straight at the camera in her phone.

‘Look . . .’ the demon said again.

‘I am looking . . .’ Tanya’s voice squealed with agony, as if she could physically feel her friend’s pain. ‘Oh, my God, Karen . . .’ With her left hand, she desperately began wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks.

‘She’s your best friend, Tanya,’ the demonic voice came back. ‘She has been so for many years. You should know her number by heart. What kind of friend are you, really?’