Chapter Two
Detective Jake Chandler stared at the monitor showing Interview Room 3. It was midnight and the station was quiet—which meant that there was marginally less chaos than the dayshift. It was quiet because it was early; the trouble usually started around two am. The nightshift hadn’t brought in any hookers, or drunks that had got a little carried away when placing money into one of the girls’ G-strings at the local strip clubs. Fortunately, this gave Chandler time to contemplate his interview with Avgustin Juniper.
He turned back to the computer screen on his desk, pulling up the forensic photographs that had already been downloaded onto the system. Now he sent them all to the color printer in the corner of the room. He had a use for them.
Of course the autopsy and forensic analysis of Juniper’s and the body were not yet available. Forensics would get to it, though and then, Chandler knew, he would have a clearer picture of what had happened. Even so, he couldn’t imagine what weapon had been used to do the damage to the girl’s face. Nothing obvious had been found at Juniper’s. Nor in the garbage which was quickly examined.
Chandler watched Juniper. The man was catatonic. He hadn’t said a word, just kept crying. If it hadn’t been for the purse they had found, with the girl’s ID inside, then they wouldn’t, as yet, know her full name.
Chandler ran a hand through his pale, almost white, blond hair. He was tired. Weary of the treadmill that he could never get off. And now there was Juniper, and the death of Annabel Linton.
In his early forties, Chandler had been a cop since graduation some twenty years ago, quickly advancing from uniform to plain clothes when he showed a proclivity for analyzing the modus operandi of a high-profile serial killer. His investigation on that one particular case had been a career-maker.
Since then Chandler was the cop they brought in to work on media-focused cases, which meant that every new potentially prestigious case in his precinct was automatically placed in his hands. It also meant a great deal of unrelenting pressure: a pressure that he used to help focus his mind.
The printer stopped and silence fell before Chandler even registered that there had been noise. He picked up the photographs and placed them in a brown folder.
Chandler had studied killers. Most had an unrelenting narcissistic streak and were sociopaths who believed that they were always right: the world revolved around their needs. Few showed any signs of remorse.
One death, hardly made a serial killer, but the bizarre nature of this murder was why Chandler had been called in. Chandler knew what made most of these types tick. There was a pattern to it that could be found, just as certain as there was a trigger in most cases that made them repeat the act over and over again. They liked what they did, or found some logical justification that made it all acceptable.
Juniper didn’t fit into any normal pattern. Not even a crime of passion. In fact, the death of Annabel Linton made no sense at all. This very fact alone made Chandler wonder if the world around him had suddenly changed overnight making the logic he lived by meaningless.
Chandler picked up the folder. The newly printed photographs weighed heavy in his hands. He wondered what he would learn from Juniper and if his gut instinct—that the man was innocent—could be wrong.
“You ready?” said Gemma Sarasvatī as she opened the door. “He’s ripe for the picking—we’ve left him alone for quite a while.”
Chandler nodded. He opened the folder.
Sarasvatī looked down at the pictures. She didn’t react and Chandler thought how cold she was. He immediately rejected his own misogynistic opinion as soon as he had thought it. Sarasvatī had to be frosty; policing was still very male-dominated. A female officer wouldn’t get far if she showed even the slightest sympathy. A ridiculous reality because Chandler felt no need to hide his revulsion at a crime scene: it was natural to react to horrific circumstances. Sarasvatī, however, never gave anything she was feeling away.
Sarasvatī was from an ethnic family and Chandler thought that she was probably fighting against other stereotypes because of this too. Chandler never asked her origins, but it was rumored her parents originated from Nepal. She had an East Indian look, with dark skin, brown eyes, and delicate features. But Sarasvatī was taller than the average woman at around five feet ten. She was also fully westernized in her manner and dress. She rarely smiled and because of her constant frown, Chandler found it difficult to determine whether she was pretty or not. Not that he ever looked at his female colleges this way intentionally. But Sarasvatī intrigued him more than some of the others, who were either obviously feminine or attempted to be “one of the boys.” Sarasvatī tried to be neither. She was somewhat sexless if anything, though not from any obvious intention.
“If that doesn’t get him talking, nothing will. How he did it; that will be a tale worth listening to,” said Sarasvatī.
Shaken back into the present, Chandler glanced at Sarasvatī. Her expression hadn’t changed and her voice had been emotionless, as though she didn’t care one way or another how the murder had happened.
“I’m not sure he did anything,” Chandler said. “But his reaction to this will be telling.”
Avgustin Juniper had his head down on the desk when the door to the interview room opened. Nausea swirled around in his stomach. They had offered him coffee, but, so far, he could barely even choke down a mouthful of water. All he could see was the image of Annabel lying beneath his balcony, horribly mutilated.
“Mr. Juniper,” said Chandler as he pulled out the chair on the other side of the table. “I’m Detective Jake Chandler. And this is my co-worker, Detective Gemma Sarasvatī. This case has been assigned to my team. I’m going to interview you now and everything we say is being recorded here.”
Chandler placed a small recording device on the table between them.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Have you eaten?” said Sarasvatī.
Juniper looked up at her. He saw no kindness in Sarasvatī’s dark brown eyes. Offering him refreshment was merely a way of making sure they couldn’t be accused of maltreatment.
Juniper shook his head. “I don’t vont anyzing.”
Chandler sat back in his chair. He didn’t know why but he hadn’t been expecting Juniper, despite his unusual name, to be foreign.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m an American zitizen.”
“I realize you do have a visa to be here–”
“Not visa … full zitizen.”
“But you’re from Russia originally, right?”
“Yez. Moscow.”
“What brought you here?”
Juniper didn’t answer.
Chandler placed the folder down on the desk. He sighed as he wondered if Juniper, like most immigrants, was going to close up about his status. They always feared deportation despite being legal, and he was sure Juniper was legal.
“Tell us about Annabel Linton,” Sarasvatī said.
Juniper jumped. The sound of her name, so formal on the cold female detective’s lips, brought bile up into the back of his throat. He pushed himself up from the desk, sitting up to look at them both for the first time.
“She is my model.”
“You’re an artist?” said Chandler.
“Yez. Annabel is fine model.”
Sarasvatī blinked. “Was. She’s dead, Mr. Juniper. But you know that, don’t you?”
Juniper’s head dropped to his chin. Tears seeped through his long lashes.
“I don’t know vat happened.”
“Mr. Juniper, Afgustin …” Chandler began.
“It’s not Afgustin. Though spelt A-V-G-U-S-T-I-N it is pronounced Awgustin.” Juniper mangled the vowels and consonants to get his point across.
“Awgustin,” Chandler continued. “It would help your case if you showed a willingness to give information about Annabel’s murder.”
“I don’t know anyzing. I vent out. I come back. It’s all strange. I call her name, she doesn’t answer, then I zee zomething on zher balcony. Next … there’s shouting and I look over zher rail and …”
Juniper collapsed into silent sobs.
“It’s so horrible … I …”
Sarasvatī flipped open the folder. “We want to know how this happened. Then we can get you the help you need.”
“Vat are you zayin’?”
Juniper’s eyes fell on the top photograph. It was a close-up of Annabel’s face. Her beautiful face! Oh God! He hadn’t imagined what he saw—it had been real!
A sharp straight, perfect triangle had been cut out of one side of Annabel’s face. The triangle stretched from the top of her lip, took in her entire cheek and nicked a corner of one of her beautiful blue eyes. Right through! Juniper’s mind screamed as he realized he could see through the hole to the ground beneath.
“You see, on first glance I can’t imagine how you did this?” Chandler said. “It’s cauterized. Somehow. There’s no blood, though we did find some on your balcony. Then there is the missing piece. What did you do with it, Avgustin? And why?”
“I didn’t do anyzing!” Juniper cried.
The bile rose further up his throat. His heart pounded in his chest and all the time Chandler was pulling out more photographs. Oh, the horror of it! Juniper thought that he must surely be going insane with grief. He couldn’t think straight. His mind ran over those last few moments before Annabel had died. And it made no sense at all. What could he tell the detective that he would believe? He remembered vaguely thinking he had seen someone there, in the shadows, on his balcony but had dismissed it as impossible. “I vas falling in love with her,” was all he could say. “I vouldn’t hurt her. Don’t you understand?”
And then he could stand it no longer, he turned his head, and vomited on the floor beside the table. Even while the grotesque photographic images burned into his artist brain. No manner of purging would ever free him from this terrible sickness inside his heart and mind. His photographic memory could never be cleansed.
The mess splashed over the tiles and onto Chandler and Sarasvatī’s shoes. Sarasvatī jumped up in disgust, but Chandler didn’t move.
As he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, Juniper barely noticed the cold blank expression on Sarasvatī’s face. All he could think about was Annabel. Dead. Really gone. His mind rocked on the edge of sanity.