Hunter and Garcia blinked a couple of times while their eyes got used to the enhanced brightness.

‘As you can plainly see –’ she directed their attention to Sharon Barnard’s torso, arms and legs – ‘unlike the first victim, this one shows no signs of having been physically tortured prior to the total disfiguration of her face. No whipping marks or cuts of any kind. None to her back either.’ She turned and indicated the chart on the wall behind her, which itemized the weight of the deceased’s brain, heart, liver, kidneys and spleen. ‘All of her internal organs, including her brain, were in as good a condition as could be expected for a healthy twenty-two-year-old female.’

Hunter and Garcia flipped to the second page on the report. Just as the lead forensics agent at the crime scene, Doctor Brian Snyder, had guessed, the cause of death had been heart failure induced by acute loss of blood.

‘Again, unlike the first victim,’ Doctor Hove continued, ‘this one showed no indication of having been sexually assaulted.’

That discovery surprised Garcia a lot more than it did Hunter. In truth, Hunter was half expecting it. When he had examined Sharon Barnard’s body in situ that morning, he had seen no bruises or abrasions of any sort to her inner thighs, nor around her groin region.

‘Also,’ the doctor added, ‘this time there was no message. Nothing was left in her throat or anywhere else in her body.’

Garcia nodded as he explained, ‘The message was left on the carpet inside the victim’s house. Written in her own blood.’

Doctor Hove’s face was colored by intrigue. ‘What was the message?’

‘Same three words as before, Doc. I Am Death. That’s it. Nothing more. Written all in capital letters.’

The doctor’s gaze returned to Sharon Barnard, and to what should’ve been her face. ‘I will admit that, bar being shot in the face by a close-quarters shotgun, the trauma to her facial muscles and nerves was as severe as I’ve ever seen.’

‘The difference is,’ Hunter said in a somber voice, moving around to the other side of the table, ‘when you’re shot in the face by a close-quarters shotgun, chances are you’ll die instantly. No pain.’ He shook his head. ‘The killer didn’t want that to happen here.’

Everyone went quiet for a moment.

Garcia, whose gaze had returned to Sharon Barnard’s body on the examination table, let out a heartfelt breath.

‘I don’t get this. I don’t get any of this. How can a killer completely switch his MO this way? I’ve never heard of a case like this.’

‘That’s exactly the same thought that has been with me since I started the post mortem,’ Doctor Hove said. ‘If I hadn’t been told, I would’ve never guessed, or found out through the examination, that this victim belonged to the same killer who had tortured and murdered the victim from yesterday morning’s autopsy.’

‘Exactly,’ Garcia agreed, bowing his head in the doctor’s direction before looking at Hunter. ‘We’ve dealt with killers who like to experiment before, Robert. Killers whose MOs slightly change from one murder to the other, but this is nothing like that. Here, the break away from the previous MO is too severe. Like the Doc said, this could’ve been a completely different killer. If not for the fact that he likes to authenticate his work by signing it, we would’ve never known both murders were related. We wouldn’t even be in this autopsy room.’

Out of frustration, Garcia stated what Hunter and Doctor Hove already knew.

‘His first victim was abducted and tortured for arguably five-and-a-half days before she was murdered. Her body was covered in whipping marks and lacerations – one hundred and twenty in total. We all know that, when used, abduction and prolonged torture accounts for a large portion of the killer’s MO. That just simply didn’t happen here.’ He nodded at the body on the table. ‘The second victim was never abducted. She was subdued and murdered inside her own home in a matter of hours, not days. Also, the first victim’s cause of death could easily be considered a non-violent method. He kept her upside down long enough to induce oedema of the brain. Painful? Yes. Violent? Not quite. Now just look at this.’ Once again, Garcia pointed to Sharon Barnard’s body. ‘He scraped her whole face off with an electric sander and left her to die. Painful? Hell, yes. Violent? Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’

Garcia took a step back from the autopsy table and folded his arms in front of his chest. The coldness of the room was starting to get to him.

‘And my last point,’ he continued, ‘which baffles me more than all the others, is the fact that victim one was raped repeatedly.’ He shrugged as he spoke. ‘People who are dominated by sexual compulsion to commit ever-increasingly savage and brutal crimes will never find enough satisfaction in their acts to the point that it will make them spontaneously stop. We all know this. They simply can’t stop themselves. Nevertheless, we just found out that victim two wasn’t even touched.’ Garcia paused for breath. ‘Looking at both crimes, the only similarities we have, other than the “I AM DEATH” bullshit, is that both victims were female and in their early twenties. That’s it. Nothing else matches. Not even the level of violence.’

Hunter tucked his hands deep inside his pockets. ‘I know all this, Carlos, and you’re right on every point. Sociopaths who are guided by powerful MOs such as sexual gratification, extreme sadism, and victim abduction followed by torture and death rarely detour from those MOs. And even when they do, it’s usually an escalation, or a slight variation, not a total detachment like we have here. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a plausible theory to explain any of this since I first laid eyes on her this morning.’

Garcia looked at Hunter questioningly.

‘The only thing I could come up with was that this killer is lacking that uncontrollable urge.’

Garcia greeted Hunter’s statement first with silence, then by looking back at Sharon Barnard’s disfigured face.

‘The uncontrollable urge,’ Hunter repeated. ‘That compulsive desire inside of them that so many can’t even explain themselves and are completely helpless against. Like you said a minute ago – they simply can’t stop themselves. I don’t think that that’s what drove this guy to abduct, rape, torture and kill Nicole Wilson, or to invade Sharon Barnard’s home and mutilate her the way he did. That’s not why he’s doing what he’s doing.’

A thoughtful silence descended on the room one more time.

‘So why is he?’ Doctor Hove asked eventually.

Hunter shook his head. ‘I’m not sure what’s driving him yet. But this guy is not out of control, Doc. He’s not losing an internal battle against his urges. On the contrary, he’s completely in control of everything he does. He abducts, he rapes, he tortures, he kills, not to satisfy some overpowering desire inside of him.’

Hunter faced the body.

‘He does it because he wants to. He’s showing us that he can be any sort of killer he wants, morph from one type to another in no time at all. Because he’s not driven by compulsion. He’s a killer by choice.’

Forty-One

Garcia was the one who knocked on Captain Blake’s door. She had called both detectives into her office for an unscheduled meeting, which wasn’t at all unusual. The surprising fact was finding Chief of Police James Bracco in her office, also waiting for them.

Captain Blake was standing by the bookshelf on the south wall, while Chief Bracco had taken one of the two Chesterfield armchairs that faced her desk. He was nursing a full cup of coffee, from which no steam was visible. His posture and facial expressions were tense to say the least.